Just got this today, looking good so far. Shame it's

>>9716074
bump! also purchased this, /lit/'s opinions?

I have been trying to find an unabridged version in Spanish but they appear to be incredibly rare. Anyways, I hope you enjoy the read OP... maybe make another thread once you finish it telling us what you thought of it. I'll be perpetually lurking.

>>9717041
i am sure that the UNAM edited a unabridged not too long ago, i may be wrong thought.

>>9716074
Is it like Conquest of a Continent? (haven't read that but I have it on my laptop)

>>9716074
>blocks your path

>>9716116
Unironically made me a lot more respectful of Cortez, who, unlike most of the other conquistadors, wasn't a total piece of shit. I would even wager that there was little he did "wrong" in his position, except a few big oversights, and the campaign showed both a careful desire to spare innocent populations and general military competence. Didn't change my opinion of the Aztecs but enhanced my opinion of the Tlaxcalans.

>>9717448

It's ironic that everyone feels so bad for the Aztecs when they were such cruel oppressors.

>>9717455
Also the lengths people go to tarnish the names of the "opposition". Back when I was impressionable, I used to believe lies from a certain left-leaning community that targets "bad history" like "Cortez wasn't responsible for his great military victories, his veteran subordinate Alvarado was". By reading the book, I discovered that was totally untrue, since one of Cortez's greatest accomplishments, the surprise defeat and incorporation of the superior royal punitive expedition, occurred while Alvarado was holed up in Tenochtitlan. Never forget that partisan fucks will lie through their teeth about what was firmly established in the historical record, let alone provide the most charitable and likely explanation for the more controversial and lesser understood events. Keep reading and thinking for yourself /lit/, we were thrown into a world that did not deserve goodness.

>>9717455
Wasn't the main factor in the fall of the Aztec empire the fact that the cruelty of the Aztecs towards their neighbors made the other natives in the region willing collaborators with the Spaniards in destroying the Aztecs?

>>9717543
>what was firmly established in the historical record
to be fair, established historical record is notoriously biased. Especially regarding things from a time with spotty records. You're usually dealing with people who hate event/person X or people who love event/person X. Picking apart what actually happened is mostly guesswork and sometimes the person doing the picking has no interest in actually being impartial.

Famously, the whole "they weren't gay, just really, really, really good friends" joke.

>>9718963
>to be fair, established historical record is notoriously biased.
We're talking about movements of troops and who commanded what. The fact of the matter is that there's plenty of evidence that Alvarado was picked to command the Spanish garrison at Tenochtitlan while Cortez and the rest of the Spanish detachment rode off to meet the royal expeditionary forces near Veracruz.

>>9718968
Sure. I'm not denying that. I don't know enough about that incident to have any kind of opinion on it, only that "established historical record" isn't really something I'd put blind trust in, that's all.

>>9718981
Of course. I'm not going to put a lot of faith in Diaz's rationalizations and apologia. But the Tenochtitlan riots are well documented by both the Aztecs and the Spanish, who both argue over Alvarado's role in the affair. By all accounts that we know of, he was most likely that and not with Cortez on the march to the sea.

>>9718981
The weirdest thing I got, IMO, from the book is the numerous attempts that Cortez flips out and nearly kills a Spanish soldier for acting out, like stealing chickens or harming civilians, during his march to Tenochtitlan. It seems like Cortez had some degree of concern and/or respect for the natives not found in many other conquistadors, with the major character flaws only starting to reveal themselves when he became insistent on proselytizing and when he fought the inhabitants of Cholula. But hey, I imagine that the Aztecs would have been too much for the Christian Spaniards at this point, with the skirmishes and human sacrifice, that they might have just written them off as dogs after some turning point with the Tlaxcalans.

>>9719214
>>9719228
Do you have any recommendations?