SPANIARDS IN MEXICO

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30811, 24 July 1965, Page 4

SPANIARDS IN MEXICO

The Lords of New Spain. By Alonso de Zorita. Edited and translated by Benjamin Keen. Phoenix House. 287 pp., notes and index. “If water were lacking to irrigate the Spaniard’s farms they would have to be watered with the blood of I Indians.” This utterance of a i Spanish judge sums up the [attitude of the lords of New Spain—the Conquistadores who conquered Aztec Mexico ■ in the mid-sixteenth century. The decimation, in seventy years, of the Indian population from 17 millions to (about ope million with the accompanying ruthless destruction of the Aztecs’ com- [ plex and planned society ; marks one of the most horrible acts of genocide that the world has known. Alonso de i Zorita was a Spanish judge, or pider, , who . spent almost his entire career in Mexico. Outstanding in life among his fellow men as compassionate and incorruptible, he died a ■ poor man but left, in manu-i script, his "The Brief and! Summary Relation of the [ Lords of NeW Spain." This! was written,- it is assumed, to urge Philip H to effect remedial action on the tragedy that was unfolding in the Indies. Some years earlier a royal cedula addressed to the viceroys and Audiencias of the Indies requested an exhaustive review of the elements. of the tribute problem, past and present This order was in the form of a questionnaire and it is on answers to these questions that Zorita based his “Brief Relation.” Written in retirement he

could, and did, use much greater candour and vehemence than would be appropriate for a judge in office. Four editions of the “Brief Relation.” one French and three Spanish, have been published previously. Benjamin Keen has in “The Lords of New Spain” edited the first English edition of the work, the editing involving, apart from translation, a pruning of “redundant material and long-worded phrases without, substantive content.” Approximately a quarter of the book is taken up with a very valuable introduction by Benjamin Keen concerning background material and Zorita’s personal history together with excerpts from [ contemporary documents that, in the main, support the contentions of Zorita’s “Brief Relation.” The major cause of the rapid decline of the Aztec population following the Conquest has. until recent times, been considered to be due to i epidemic • diseases of Eurotpean origin. Zorita’s view [that Spanish mistreatment ■and overwork of the Indians was an equally important fac!tor- has now been supported by recent studies of population trends in New Spain in the 16th century as well as by contemporary documents. The “Brief Relation” is really in two parts in that it offers a portrait of life in i Mexico before the Conquest and then contrasts the pagan Golden Age with the misery of the Indian under Spanish rule. It also: searches for solutions to the insoluble problems of Spain’s Indian policy. As Benjamin Keen points out, this “is no aca-

j demic treatise smelling of the lamp. Its style is unadorned and unaffected, its tone urgent and sometimes agonised as befits a work telling of social catastrophe.” There is plenty of evidence to support Zorita’s sombre assessment of the conditions of the Indians under Spanish rule but Mr Keen suggests, and provides evidence, that Zorita’s picture of preConquest times is highly idealised. This of course greatly increases the dramatic force of the “Brief Relation” since it becomes “an unrelieved study in black and white.” The great factual value of Zorita’s work however more than compensates for the distortion of Aztec reality. It is. Benjamin Keen .claims, the only full description available of the structure of the Aztec clan. Equally valuable are the sketches of the various types of Indian nobility and land tenure and the operation of the tribute system. Life in royal palaces and in peasants’ huts, education and justice are ail topics dealt with in the “Brief Relation” and are of considerable vsiue to historian and scholar. Perhaps one of the most outstanding features of Zorita’s work is his scrupulous attention to quoting authorities and sources for all his; material, a feature not par-! ticularly notable among contemporary writers with whom plagiarism was fairly common.

This is a book well worth reading not only for its scholarly mine of information on ancient and colonial Mexico but also for the power of the social conscience that it projects.