Page:Historia Verdadera del Mexico profundo.djvu/207

 The delivery of the Mexicas to the Spaniards.

Finally, and against the popular will and of many mexica leaders and priests, the Tlatócan ordered Moctezuma to receive Cortes in Tenochtitlan, the captain of Quetzalcoatl. It is documented by Cortés and Bernal Díaz, a fact that clearly reveals what happened in the conquest. Moctezuma summons all Lords that paid tributes in the Cem Anahuac, and in front of the spanish tells them that had finally had arrived he whom they expected and that they should obey and pay tribute to the king of Spain, as they had thus far done to him. That is, that the mighty aztec empire, knowing the transgression made by their ancestors under the command of Tlacaelel, accepted their ideological and religious usurpation, delivering themselves to the will of the mythical and ancient God of the peoples of Cem Anahuac. In the voice of Moctezuma himself and ordering the speech to be recorded by the Cortés clerk, since the Tlatoani stated that it would be a very important event, Moctezuma told his tributary Lords, which he had summoned for the event from the entire empire:

"Brothers and friends, you know that from a long time you and your parents and grandparents have been and are my subjects and vassals of my ancestors and mine, and always from them and me you have been very well treated and honored, and you have also been what good and loyal vassals are obligated to their natural lords; and I also believe that you have memory of your predecessors as we [*the mexicas] are not natural from these lands, and that came to it from faraway lands, and were brought by a Lord [*Quetzalcoatl] that left them there, as they all were vassals. Who returned long time ago and found that our grandparents were already populated and settled in this land, and married to women of this land and had large children multiplication, so that they would not wish to return with him and not least wanted to receive him as a Lord of this land [*the transgression of his philosophy and religion]; ''and he returned, and said that he would return or would send with such power, which could constrain and attract to his service. And you well know that we have always expected him [*with fear], and according to the things that the captain [*Cortés] has said of that king and lord that sent him''