erished them by dividing up their
great estates, they held a landed
monopoly that made them the
country's ruling class. Today they
are a social aristocracy without
political power. Often educated in
the universities of Paris, London,
and Madrid, they have adopted
European culture as the base of
their own culture. They have no
moral or cultural links with the
Indians who fonn the mass of the
population, and they tend to be
Catholic, conservative, and anti–
nationalist.
The Mexicanizers are chiefly in–
tellectuals of the small-bourgeois
class, often with Indian family
backgrounds. They are usually of
the left, but, oddly enough, it
is
they who are the ardent national–
ists and patriots. They reject every–
thing that is not "indigenous,"
and search in the pre-Spanish past
for their national traditions. The
original discoverer of the bones,
Eulalia Guzman, is herself a good
specimen of this group: Indian by
race, of a poor rural family, she
devoted herself passionately to the
study of Aztec art and religion.
Hatred for the Spanish invaders
has been the organizing principle
of her scholarship; she compares
them to the Nazis, and denounces
Cortez as vehemently as if she
were writing of some contemporary
political figure. One of the big
dailies printed her photo with the
caption:
"EULALIA GUZMAN, VICTIM
OF THE DEFENDERS OF FOREIGN
766
PIRATES
THAT ARE
NOW EN–
TRENCHED IN THE LEADERSHIP OF
THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF AN–
THROPOLOGY."
Among the documents that were
found at Ichcateopan, one in par–
ticular may be the clue to the
whole affair. A certain Florentino
Flores, the grandfather of the man
who first revealed the secret to the
priest, kept a kind of journal from
1880 to 1914. Judging from these
jottings, Don Florentino was a
man of great vitality and brilliance.
He lived all his life in Ichcateopan,
and spent his time collecting the
folklore and legends of the region,
which he loved deeply.
Endowed with a flair for history
and a sensibility about the past
that were quite remarkable, Don
Florentino discovered in the cult
of Cuatemoc a finn base for
his
own racial and patriotic prejudices.
"Cuatemoc," he wrote, "was the
bravest young man of his age.
While he was a prisoner, he was
denounced, and the vile and
scoundrelly Cortez had
him
hung
along with other Mexican nobles.
. . . No torture could make him
reveal the secret of the nation.
He was the king of the secret and
will be the secret of eternity." He
added, perceptively: "History is
made by the conqueror, not by the
conquered. The revelation of this
secret would mean a frightful
scandal, for they never wanted any–
thing known about the young
king." And one notes with sur-
