Trojan Horse in Tenochtitlan

          As I mentioned in my first blog, I am a Mapuche descendent, the Indigenous people in the Americas that resisted the Spanish during hundreds of years.  I have always felt proud of that heritage because even though the crown had the obvious advantage in war instruments and gear, the Mapuche people were capable of causing the Spanish crown grief through their cleverness and strategy in the battle field.

          In my last blog I openly criticized the way in which the Spanish conquerors acted towards the Native American people. Even though I do not take back or regret what I said, I fell as though I should also give credit where credit is deserved. It was a very subtle and smooth strategy for the Spanish to dissolve the Tenochtitlan Empire.

          In one of the readings it said that “the final stage of the military conquest of Mexico took place in roughly one year” (Schwartz, Stuart;  Victors and Vanquished, p. 82).  An entire empire was taken down by the Spanish Crown in just about a year.  This speaks of an exceptional war strategy which I would like to focus on in my blog in order to be more objective in my comments and be able to add something positive to the Spanish combatants.  It is from this idea that I can also see a similarity between two completely different worlds whose history has barely been told in this way before.  Both of these groups of people used this same war strategy. The Mapuche people used this strategy on several occasions to beat the  Spanish Army that not only conquer the Americas but also the Aztec Empire.

          This really reminds me of one of the most famous war strategies, the Trojan horse.  From my personal point of view, the connections that the Spanish people had with the Indians contrary to the supremacy of the Aztecs and their translators (like Malinche) who were familiar with the military forces of their rivals were their “Trojan Horses” in order to defeat Tenochtitlan.