When one thinks of the conquests where indigenous people are the losers, most assume that they were silenced by their oppressors with their culture lost in the wind. On the contrary, in Miguel Leon-Portilla’s Broken Spears, the Aztecs’ account of the events and their culture is well documented through manuscripts, codices, and written records of eyewitness accounts. The conquest is usually depicted as the Spaniards’ fight for land and resources, but Broken Spears shows that it was the Aztecs fight for the survival of their culture and way of life. Broken Spears uses written records of verbal accounts as its source on the conquest of Mexico. In the foreword, Klor de Alva addresses the quality of these sources by saying, “Eyewitness accounts of the events and sentiments …show more content…
To illustrate that point, eyewitness accounts are like the game of telephone with the players as the time passed and the message as the account: as the message travels from player to player, the inaccuracy of the message increases. In addition, Aztec culture emphasized strict memorization during their education in calmecac and telpochcalli which led to the preservation of literary works (xlvi). This strict memorization embedded in the culture makes the verbal accounts more reliable. Not only that, the Nahuatl language was written in the latin alphabet through the teachings of Franciscans who arrived in 1524 (xvi) which lead to the creation of works such as Manuscrito de Tlatelolco, Cantares Mexicanos, Florentine Codex, and other works to be recorded. These sources are advantageous