Enrigue’s pandemic text is a playful dissertation on the arrival of Cortes at the court of Moctezuma. This is the ur story for the founding of modern Mexico - Iñaritu also incorporated it in his ‘Mexican’ film, Bardo. That first clash of kingdoms, civilisations, ways of thinking, that would shape the geographical territory now known as Mexico, from whence cometh Enrigue himself. The author chooses to engage with the narrative in a playful, self-acknowledged Borgesian form. Using well-known accounts from the time, and great big ice cream cones of his own imagination, he takes the reader back to those days which can only be described as fateful, letting them unravel like the skin of a dead warrior left too long in the sun.
For those who are not familiar with the more Latino account of the tale, the Mexica and their glorious city of Tenochtitlan, were not brought down by the Spaniard’s superior military skill or technology, but by the conflicts endemic to the territory, which Cortes skilfully turned against the Aztecs, and the decadence of their own empire. Enrigue’s Moctezuma is a mushroom junkie. He has the mental confusion and lucidity of a Burroughs, which is exciting but hardly suitable for maintaining an empire against multiple threats. His court is riven with paranoia, given its ruthless martial politic. A warrior culture ensures rigid discipline and clean streets but when the leader goes rogue, more Kurtz than Genghis, the whole edifice topples and it only takes one jumped up conquistador to bring it down.
Enrigue details all of this with playful charm. He takes us through the long-lost streets of the Aztec capital, one of the lost wonders of the world. His cast of characters are all possessed of a glorious, doleful humanity which goes above and beyond cultural origins. If you want a cracking read about the end of the world, and one can imagine why the author chose to address this subject during the pandemic, this is it.
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