Since the discovery of the tomb of King Tut-ankh-a-men there has been in Mexico an amusing feeling of jealousy of Egypt. The era of the mythical Atlantis has been pitted against the era of the biblical Pharaohs. Archeologists in Yucatan are reputed to be digging feverishly for some remains of the Maya civilization which will divert the interest of the world from Luxor.
I have, however, stood in the Kings Chamber in the center of Cheops Pyramid and now I have stood on the apex of the great pyramid of Cholula, and though the remains of Mexico's great past are impressive Egypt is by far the more haunting to a European mind. The thought, however, strikes one—what if in that era of the past when these pyramids were built, the people of these lands so far apart knew one another? Is it possible that the repute of the pyramids of Egypt raised the pyramids of Mexico?
At the time when Cortes came the Aztecs were building pyramids as fast as we build churches; but there were several pyramids in the land which had been there before the Aztecs came to the country ascribed to Toltecs and Chichimecs and other imperial races which had had their day. The Aztecs hewed massive altars of stone and raised them to the heights of the old pyramids, and they made human sacrifice on them and lit votive flames, which glared red in the night as the army of Cortes marched inland from the sea.
Cholula was the holy city of Anahuac, possessing many temples. It was a center of pagan piety, conservative, uncompromising. Cortes did not believe its people could possibly be his friends, and so, with the psychology of a tragedy villain, he suddenly in the midst of friendly seeming accused them of treachery and put them to the sword. The populace took refuge on the hundred and twenty steps of the great pyramid, which had then superstructures of wood, but the Spaniards fired it and all who stood on the pyramid perished, even the priest who came out on the apex invoking Quetzalcoatl, the God of the Air. The priest in a shroud of flame burned to death in the sight of all who were below. The remaining Cholultecs fled to the hills. Cortes put up a cross on the apex of the pyramid and then rode away.
The massacre of Cholula was one of the chief crimes charged against Cortes by his enemies in Spain. That it was a dark and impolitic act was not denied, and had the Emperor Montezuma been a warlike monarch he would have met the Spaniards straightway in arms and have certainly destroyed them. He had hundreds of thousands at his command, but the army of Cortes was only a little over four hundred men. But Montezuma, abounding in manners and piety, was notably deficient in brains and pluck. Cortes built a causeway from Cholula to the saddle of the ridge which separates Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, the great volcanoes, and from the height he and his followers looked down on the rich valley of the capital and upon the scene of a decade of loot and centuries of struggle. When they reached the city the Emperor came out in friendly guise to meet them and Montezuma bade Cortes sit upon his right hand as an equal.
So the destruction of Cholula was proved no error The Spaniards won their way. They obtained vast quantities of gold, later to be lost; they sacked the pagan temples and destroyed not only the false gods but all the records of the people. They put up Christian churches. They carved out the vice-royalty of New Spain. As they had no women of their own they took Indian wives. Every Spaniard in those days was a Solomon. And they bred the Mexican who now appears.
I stood on the top of that old pyramid of Cholula. I climbed by an old stone way, not seldom stepping over stones graven with hieroglyphics of a lost religion. Beside an old cross and in the shadow of a Catholic church I looked on what was Cholula; a squat city with a petrol street car running through it, a dozen old rusty-colored churches built of the stones of shattered Aztec temples, a vast ill kept city square where a large army could be assembled but now tenanted by fifty Indian women selling wares which were spread on the dirt—herbs, fruits, cottons, imitation jewelry—a fountain with stone angels but no water inscribed to Philip III, King of Spain and the Indies; poor people, beshawled women, bare-footed men with ancient, grimy, high-crowned hats of straw.
Change has followed change. By the last revolution in Mexico the Indian has attained equality with the Spaniard; he has in many parts seized the lands of the Spanish; the great haciendas are no more. As workingman the Indian terrorizes capital. And as for the Catholic Church into which his forefathers were forcibly baptized, he comes daily to spurn it more. In no other Catholic country in the world is Catholicism more openly humiliated than in Mexico. Is not the popular craze of the time a climbing of the façades of the cathedrals by acrobats and small boys, a kicking off of the noses of the saints in order to advertise beer! Whilst the Papal Nuncio is told sharply to pack up and quit the country with less notice than would be given a general servant, the petty indignities are manifold and great.
As I go from Cholula in the night and look behind me I see a light burning above the apex of the pyramid—no, not the fires of Quetzalcoatl broken out again, only an electric lamp hung above the cross of the church that you may know that it is there.