The Toxcatl Massacre, 1520: Student Activities
Students will experience the readings for this section, both silently and aloud, after having visited the different sites involved through resources on the Web. As a culminating activity for this segment, students will put on a show. Using Poniatowska's work as a starting point, students will take first hand accounts of the 1520 massacre and approach them as Poniatowska approached her source material, selecting and arranging segments of testimony from the Spanish and the Aztec sides to create a narrative. Students will perform the selected narratives aloud, giving careful intention to the meaning they add to the plain text through body language, emphasis, and elocution.
I have organized the formative activities by reading, rather than by days. All blogging, journaling, or discussion is to be done in the target language.
1520 Student Activities: Formative Assessment
First Strata: Present Day—Caistor
For homework, students will be assigned to read Nick Caistor's chapter on the events of 1520 from his Mexico City. In class, students will retrace Caistor's geography lesson on the course of events, starting with an exploration of the Templo Mayor, the associated residential complexes, and the site of Tacuba to get a sense of the scale. We'll use Google Earth, Google Maps, and Bing Maps, all together as a class using the interactive white board. Then, students will break into small groups with laptops assigned to find images and resources on their own: reconstructed views of Tenochtitlán, maps of the old city superposed over the existing city for scale, and illustrations of the events from Aztec codices. Students will be asked to journal or blog about their reflections on the lesson.
Second Strata: The Florentine Codex
Working backwards chronologically once again, we find the historical strata have been disrupted. The latest of the actual eyewitness narratives in terms of publication is the Florentine Codex, translated from the Nahuatl and brought to light in 1955. The Florentine Codex is the work of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún and his native collaborators. He was a Franciscan who trained and educated indigenous men for the priesthood. From 1545 to 1590, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún and his students compiled a massive study of prehispanic native Mexican lore, ranging from history to religion to ethnobotany. The work was suppressed in its own time but an overlooked thirteen volume manuscript in Nahuatl was ultimately found and translated to English. 29 We will use the nineteenth through the twenty first chapter of Book 12, The Conquest of Mexico. While these were first translated from Nahuatl to English, we'll use the modernized Spanish version provided by Miguel León-Portilla in Visión de los vencidos: relaciones indígenas de la conquista, pages 39-43 and 75-87 of the 1961 edition. 30 Students will read a native account of the massacre at the main Temple. This indigenous account of the story pins the motive of Alvarado's men on greed for the golden ornaments the dancers were wearing.
First, students will discuss prior knowledge of the work and make predictions about what they expect to encounter in the readings. Students will read for comprehension in groups and will share observations about the reading. Small groups will identify target vocabulary that proves a challenge. We will meet as a large group to agree on an overall vocabulary list for this piece. The list will be divided up into groups and each group will be responsible for coming up with gestural representations to help recall target vocabulary—in other words, we will review this vocabulary by associating the Spanish words with performed actions, rather than associating the Spanish word with the English word. I call this "Spanish with Marcel Marceau."
The teacher will display or distribute photos of Aztec illustrations from the Florentine Codex to the students. Writing about a picture or photograph is a common language classroom activity; here we'll tie it to actual content. Students will be required to write about their pictures and describe what they represent. Students will be highly praised for completion of the activity. Students into markers and glitter glue will be encouraged to color their illustrations and post them in the classroom on the fridge at home, as appropriate.
Students will discuss the emotions conveyed in the piece. The narrative certainly has emotional content, but the tone is somewhat matter of fact. Is this because the eyewitness narrative was set down so many years after the fact? One set of students will be assigned to perform the readings aloud as is if they were eyewitnesses speaking in 1520 and another set as if they were speaking in 1545.
Students will be assigned to seek out indigenous Mexican informants regarding the public display of emotion. Are displays of emotion when talking about heavily charged memories culturally appropriate or not?
Third Strata: The Aubin Codex
Published in 1867, the Aubin Codex is a post-Conquest Nahuatl text, composed over the years 1576- 1607. The Aubin Codex contains a brief but poignant account of the massacre harmonious with that of Sahagún. We'll also read this Spanish translation from León-Portilla's collection in Visión de los vencidos, pages 87-89. 31
We'll start with a vocabulary quiz, and play Spanish with Marcel Marceau, giving students the opportunity to improve their scores through successful play. Then, we'll review the results of student inquiries into culturally appropriate display of emotion. In groups, students will divide up the Aubin Codex selection to be read by a lector with choral response. Students will present their arrangements.
Fourth strata: Bernal Díaz del Castillo
A manuscript that lay dormant for many years (written 1568, published 1632) is the Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España of Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Following the publication of the work of López de Gómora, Díaz wrote his account of his campaign years with Cortés to refute the history put forth by Cortés' secretary. Díaz was with the Cortés contingent that struck the Spanish army sent to arrest Cortés, and hence was not an immediate eyewitness to this massacre, though he certainly witnessed others. Of all the chroniclers, he makes the clearest case for arguing that Alvarado's actions were part of a rational and strategic course of action. We'll read Chapter 125, which gives an account based on Alvarado's testimony of the massacre. 32 We'll also read an excerpt of Chapter 128, which gives a gripping account of the flight of the Spanish and their native allies from the capital. 3 3
These readings are hard. I recommend cutting down the excerpts to manageable sizes. Students will be asked what they think of Díaz del Castillo's attitude toward the Spanish treatment of the indigenous people. How would they characterize such a person in a performance? Students will be assigned different interpretations of Díaz del Castillo's character—hero, man of his times, no nonsense grizzled warrior, war criminal, psychopath—and will present readings from his testimony accordingly.
Fifth strata: López de Gómora
Francisco López de Gómora was Cortés' personal secretary and had access not only to Cortés' personal papers and letters but also to his closest associates. While López de Gómora's account of the Conquest has been called into question on his handling of the facts, his portrayal of Alvarado has had lasting influence. We will read his chapters on "Causes of the rebellion" 3 4—dealing with the Toxcatl massacre—and "How Cortés fled Mexico" 3 5.
Students will read the excerpts together and parse them grammatically. For homework, students will journal or blog on the following topic: López de Gómora is often accused of giving a whitewashed portrayal of his patron Cortés, shifting blame to others that actually belonged to Cortés. López de Gómora states that when Cortés found out about Alvarado's massacre he concealed his anger with his subordinate. Did Cortés really concealed his anger, or do you think he wasn't really angry?
Sixth strata: Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés, The earliest account is that of Cortés himself, in the second letter he wrote to the young emperor Charles V, October 30, 1520. Cortés' account is surprisingly brief: while his contingent went to contest Narvaez, the Spanish garrison left to hold Mocetezuma's palace came under attack by the Mexica, and he had to return to rescue them. 36
For homework, students will read an excerpt from the biography of Cortés by Frank McNutt, pages 34-39. 37 McNutt portrays Cortés as a noble and virtuous man of piety, integrity, and humility, once submitting to be publicly flogged for missing Mass—the same penalty levied out to the indigenous. Students will be asked to recall pages 39-43 of Visión de los vencidos, recounting Cortés wholly unprovoked massacre at Cholula. How do we judge someone like Cortés? Must we judge him by the standard of his times, or are there universal standards that apply in any era? Students will be asked to blog or journal on this topic.
Students will be given the assignment: perform Cortés letter in a way that lets the audience know he is concealing something grave. What are some different portrayals of Cortés that could arise?
1520 Student Activities: Summative Assessment
Students will be divided into groups of five, six or more students. Having read a contemporary history of the events of 1520, they will select excerpts of the readings on the massacre at the Templo Mayor to perform for dramatic effect. As it is not desirable to have five or six productions of the same play, student groups will be assigned different emphases and venues for their productions. In this way, students will see how historians and dramatists may reconstruct history in widely divergent ways while drawing on the same evidence. Teachers may wish to give students the option of using a reader's theater format, to allow students to focus on expression and meaning, rather than devoting hours of class time to memorization and rehearsal.
Option One: Hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 1527
In 1527 the Spanish crown established an Audiencia, a form of appellate court to oversee the colony of New Spain and take the reins from Hernán Cortés. No one ever established a commission to investigate the massacre at the Templo Mayor, but we'll imagine they did. This group will select and arrange excerpts from the first hand narratives we have read to present before the Audiencia. The testimony, selected and arranged for maximum dramatic effect, should be presented as if these were hearings recorded for C-SPAN. In the interest of verisimilitude and dramatic effect the readings may be adapted, with discretion, to provide a more natural flow of speech. Students should design the production for video and record it for presentation in class.
More than one group may perform this option. Each group should have a particular angle to pursue regarding their selection and presentation of material. For example, one group could portray Cortés as bearing the ultimate responsibility. This group would wish to highlight Cortés' prior conduct in the Cholula massacre and his recurrent use of subterfuge and deceit in dealing with his enemies. Another group could shift blame to Alvarado, portraying the massacre as the product of a failure of leadership by an overwhelmed and unworthy subordinate of Cortés. This group would do well to highlight the mutually disastrous immediate consequences of the massacre, citing the losses the Spanish suffered in their frantic retreat from the city. A third group could present the massacre as an emergent catastrophe that arose from a convergence of forces, any one of which could have been sufficient to provoke the incident. Alvarado's impetuousness, Cortés' prior conduct at the Cholula massacre, the greed of the Spanish soldiers of fortune for the gold ornaments worn by the dancers: all played a role, and the interplay of influences was complex.
Students should submit a proposed script for approval, then prepare, perform and preferably record their presentation. Student groups should submit a transcript and a video for the final evaluation.
Option Two: Templo Mayor Commemorative Stela Tour
Students will imagine a major Chicano actor and collector of Chicano artwork has commissioned a stela for the plaza of the Templo Mayor in Mexico City to commemorate the massacre of May 10, 1520 like the one at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas memorializing the defeat of Cuauhtémoc. The stela will tour bilingual immersion schools throughout the United States before proceeding to tour schools in Mexico. Middle school students from each city the stela will visit will perform adapted readings from the historical record.
Imagine there is a contest to design the stela and the performance that will accompany it on its tour. First, students produce a design of a stela with an inscription as a digital image or actual mock up. Then, they select and arrange appropriate excerpts from the eyewitness testimonies and perform them.
Groups will select and arrange appropriate eyewitness testimonies and adapt or interpret them to make them suitable for a middle school audience. While taking care to cling to the historical record in terms of content, students are free to present the historical testimonies as they are or to interpret them through song, slam poetry, rap, rhythmic movement, shadow puppets, or any other means. The final production as staged should be appropriate for a small auditorium but should be recorded on video. Students will submit a script for approval before staging their performance. A video of the performance should be submitted along with a final transcript. If multiple groups stage this presentation, each should choose or be assigned a different emphasis.
Option Three: Toxcatl: Drought, a Requiem
The massacre at the Main Temple occurred at the festival of Toxcatl, or "Drought," also the name of the month in which it occurred. At the festival, a young war captive who had lived as the living image of the god Tezcatlipoca for a year was sacrificed and eaten and his successor was chosen, likely by putting on the flayed skin of his predecessor. 38 The massacre at the Main Temple is also referred to as the Toxcatl Massacre.
The instructions to the students are as follows: you and your fellow guests at the Hostal Virreyes will create a performance commemorating the events of May 10-June 30, 1520 as the opening of Days of the Dead observances in the lobby. The Hostal Virreyes in the Centro Histórico has been described by the New York Times as "an art school dorm party without the art school;" 39 the lobby serves as a frequent and sometimes impromptu performance venue. 40 Use selections from our original documents with the addition of original song, poetry, spoken narration, choral call and response, video or rhythmic movement. Your performance should be designed and staged with a medium sized auditorium in mind. You may produce a linear narrative or may focus on creating a specific mood. Is there a theme of death and rebirth to be found here, or something else entirely? You decide.
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