Book Review Of The Broken Spears By Miguel Leon-Portilla

Throughout history, the conquest of Mexico has been told in the perspective of the Spanish and their triumphs. It was not until 1962 a Mexican anthropologist named Miguel Leon-Portilla published his book The Broken Spears: An Aztec account of the Conquest of Mexico. He described in his book the indigenous account of the conquest of Mexico. The Broken Spears contains surviving codices written in Nahuatl (Aztec) language that survived the Spanish destruction. The book starts off discussing some bad omens that foretold the destruction of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. Throughout the book, we get a narrative perspective of how the advanced Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was at its height and how it fell into the hands of the Spanish conquistadors. Leon-Portilla gave a different perspective of history that always tends to be silenced. Many colonized people throughout the world have had their voices silenced and ignored. However, Leon-Portilla shared a different account of the conquest of Mexico. After Leon Portilla's book was published it has received some critiques and criticisms over the

According to Carl B. Compton, he stated that Miguel Leon-Portilla's The Broken Spears was a fascinating book that has connected the coming of the Spaniards to Mexico and the conquest of Tenochtitlan in one account told through the perspective of the natives. Compton argued that Leon-Portilla's introduction to his book did a great job of summarizing the Aztec empire, the way of life, and the situation surrounding the conquest. In his review, Compton believed that the first chapter of The Broken Spears that dealt with Aztec omens were quite provocative. He argued that a person is inclined to speculate as to how much consists in exaggeration of natural phenomena after the conquest and how much was it based on Aztec myths and how much was pure fabrication on someone's