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Mexico City - Tlatelolco - End of the Aztec Empire - "more than forty thousand were killed or taken that day"
Text of Monument of Tlatelolco:
"August 13, 1521 --
Heroically defended by Cuauhtémoc, Tlatelolco fell to the power of Hernán Cortés. It was neither a triumph nor a defeat. It was the painful birth of the mestizo nation that is the Mexico of today."
On the site of the traditional Aztec market, on an island near the end of the causeway leading north from the Templo Mayor, Cortez finally crushed the Aztec empire. The Aztecs held out for 80 days, but in the end the dead bodies were so thick it was impossible to walk.
As Cortez wrote:
"They no longer had nor could find any arrows, javelins or stones with which to attack us, and our allies fighting with us were armed with swords and bucklers, and slaughtered so many of them on land and in the water that more than forty thousand were killed or taken that day."
Now part of the Plaza of Three Cultures, the site includes this partially excavated Aztec temple, a Catholic church (where Saint Juan Diego was baptized), and the former Ministry of Foreign Relations building. In an echo of the slaughter of the Aztecs by Cortez in 1521, many thousands of students were massacred here in 1968, just a few days before the Olympics.
Added June 2013: visited again (in a heavy rain). The pathway through the ruins has been greatly upgraded and restoration work on the pyramid was underway. For much of the 20th century the site was buried under the Estacion de Carga Nonoalco-Tlatelolco (a railroad freight terminal) and was only "rediscovered" during excavation for a housing project. The housing project plan was modified and currently surrounds the site.
Mexico City - Tlatelolco - End of the Aztec Empire - "more than forty thousand were killed or taken that day"
Text of Monument of Tlatelolco:
"August 13, 1521 --
Heroically defended by Cuauhtémoc, Tlatelolco fell to the power of Hernán Cortés. It was neither a triumph nor a defeat. It was the painful birth of the mestizo nation that is the Mexico of today."
On the site of the traditional Aztec market, on an island near the end of the causeway leading north from the Templo Mayor, Cortez finally crushed the Aztec empire. The Aztecs held out for 80 days, but in the end the dead bodies were so thick it was impossible to walk.
As Cortez wrote:
"They no longer had nor could find any arrows, javelins or stones with which to attack us, and our allies fighting with us were armed with swords and bucklers, and slaughtered so many of them on land and in the water that more than forty thousand were killed or taken that day."
Now part of the Plaza of Three Cultures, the site includes this partially excavated Aztec temple, a Catholic church (where Saint Juan Diego was baptized), and the former Ministry of Foreign Relations building. In an echo of the slaughter of the Aztecs by Cortez in 1521, many thousands of students were massacred here in 1968, just a few days before the Olympics.
Added June 2013: visited again (in a heavy rain). The pathway through the ruins has been greatly upgraded and restoration work on the pyramid was underway. For much of the 20th century the site was buried under the Estacion de Carga Nonoalco-Tlatelolco (a railroad freight terminal) and was only "rediscovered" during excavation for a housing project. The housing project plan was modified and currently surrounds the site.