08/15/2021 1:39 PM
Clarín.com
Dresses
Updated 08/15/2021 1:39 PM
Five centuries after the fall of the Aztec empire, different impulses beat among the descendants of Moctezuma II, from vindicating the ruler against accusations of treason, to
demanding millionaire sums from Mexico.
It is estimated that
there are about 500 heirs of the emperor
in Mexico (including the current ambassador to the United States, Esteban Moctezuma) and others in Spain where they
hold two titles of nobility.
"How to demonstrate that I am descended from the great tlatoani (ruler)? Through the census of the emphyteutic payments", says the historian Blanca Barragán Moctezuma, about some extinct retributions of the government.
At his home in Mexico City, he exhibits documents to prove that his family received the
"Moctezuma pension"
centuries ago.
The commemoration last Friday of the 500 years of the resistance of Tenochtitlan (AFP).
The descendants of the tlatoani, born to his daughter Isabel, received this annual payment (between
60,000 and 90,000 dollars
today according to experts in values)
until 1934,
when it was eliminated.
Unsuccessfully, a descendant litigated to get it back.
"There was no legal argument, perhaps there was no more money, it was post-revolutionary Mexico," notes Jesús Juárez, Blanca's husband and lawyer.
The pensions were "compensation for usufruct the lands of Isabel's descendants," explains Alejandro González Acosta, a researcher at the National Autonomous University (UNAM).
The Spanish King Carlos V granted Isabel in perpetuity the dominion of Tacuba after the fall of the Great Tenochtitlán (capital of the empire), which marked the 500th anniversary last Friday.
The descendants of Moctezuma
Why was Isabel, who died in 1550,
privileged with this vast territory?
"Moctezuma had many children, but
Tecuichpo Ichcaxóchitl was the only legitimate one,
" explains Blanca, calling her by her Nahuatl names, spoken by the Aztecs or Mexica: "daughter of the ruler" and "white flower."
Some scholars believe it was to quell a rebellion.
But Tecuichpo, who had seven children,
is little known
despite her power ties.
Esteban Moctezuma, current Mexican ambassador to the US (EFE).
At the age of 11, after Moctezuma died, she
was symbolically married to his successors:
Cuitláhuac (uncle) and Cuauhtémoc (cousin).
Her other husbands were Spanish and she
lived with Hernán Cortés
, who according to historians and descendants
would have raped her.
Around 1528 she gave birth to
Leonor, daughter of the conqueror
, whom she repudiated, says Blanca, who shows batons, spears, pipes or images of the splendid Aztec plume held by Austria that (she claims) belonged to Moctezuma, contradicting other versions. .
From the fourth and fifth marriages comes the bulk of the line:
the Andrada-Moctezuma and the Cano-Moctezuma.
Pablo Moctezuma, historian and brother of the ambassador in Washington, descends from the Andrada family, which once
embarrassed him.
"I did not like Moctezuma, I called him a coward," he recalls about a vision of the ruler as a superstitious man who capitulated by confusing Cortés with the god Quetzalcoatl.
The gold in the Moctezuma plume (AFP).
"That was an invention," objects Pablo, who has also found contradictions about
Moctezuma's death
in July 1520.
"The conquerors say that the Mexica killed him, but religious and indigenous chroniclers say it was the Spanish," adds the author of the book "Moctezuma y el Anáhuac, una vision Mexicana."
Pablo was mayor of Azcapotzalco, capital sector of the dominion of Tacuba.
The Moctezuma are counts in Spain
The line arrived in Spain with
Pedro, son of the emperor and a concubine
, who was taken there as a child, probably to prevent an uprising.
In 1627, the crown granted a great-grandson
the title of county,
elevated in 1992 to Duchy of Moctezuma de Tultengo.
The current duke
, Juan José Marcilla de Teruel-Moctezuma, criticizes the demand of the Mexican president, Andrés López Obrador, that
Spain apologize
for the excesses in the Conquest.
The mural of the encounter between Moctezuma and the invader Hernán Cortés (AP).
"It makes no sense to demand that the king apologize for something that happened five centuries ago, and someone who has Aztec blood tells him," he said.
Installed in Granada, the Cano-Moctezuma family hold the title of the
county of Miravalle,
created in Mexico in 1690.
"They are one more family among the descendants," explains González Acosta, who met the 12th Countess of Miravalle, Maricarmen Enríquez de Luna, who died in 2014.
But Spanish newspapers such as
Independiente de Granada
presented the countess as
"the first person in the order of succession to the Aztec empire
,
"
while
El Mundo
announced that Mexico had a new empress "when Carmen Ruiz Enríquez inherited the title.
For González Acosta, all this is
"creation" of the Spanish press.
The Plume of Moctezuma, claimed by Mexico that is in the Ethnographic Museum of Vienna (EFE).
The media also reproduced attempts by the Miravalles to recover the pension in 1991 and 2003, along with the Acosta, a Mexican family descended from Moctezuma.
"They are ridiculous claims," objected Pablo.
For Blanca, from the Cano branch, the legacy is historic.
"I work for the vindication of my grandparents Moctezuma and Tecuichpo, in particular of her, of whom the official history knows so little and invents so much."
For González Acosta, the claim will remain latent "because
the lands and the heirs are there."
AFP Agency.
GML
