Telling violence: the Toxcatl massacre at the Templo Mayor in sixteenth-century sources

In May 1520, on the day of the Feast of Toxcatl, a troop of Spaniards assaulted the Templo Mayor, the main temple in Mexico-Tenochtitlan. The incident was a turning point in the conquest of Mexico. In spite of this, the circulating descriptions have not been properly read against the primary documental sources or the historiographic antecedents that challenge their assertions. A survey of these sources suggests that the popular perceptions of the event owe less to the facts of the matter than to subsequent elaborations. In the different accounts, ranging from official inquiries to full-fledged histories, the episode evolves from a preventive strike into a malicious and bloody massacre. Early reports illustrate the contentious politics of the conquest that brought the event to light but also obscured its details. Nevertheless, the histories by Francisco Lopez de Gomara and Bernal Diaz del Castillo categorically indicted Pedro de Alvarado. In the works of Bernardino de Sahagun and Diego Duran, echoes of first-crusade historiography in the gruesome depiction of the assault complicate their identification as bearers of an indigenous perspective.