Why the Aztecs lost

[OB]

I wrote a short piece on why the Aztecs lost and Moctezuma’s role in that. 

Different decisions might have brought the Aztecs some breathing space.  If it is of interest here is the link.
 
https://youdonotknowthenorth.blogspot.com

[Belligerentparrot]

If you want a (hopefully constructive) comment, I wouldn't be quite so quick to dismiss the "They thought the Spanish were gods" aspect. There seems to be a lot of truth in the following possibility: the Aztecs didn't have a category to fit the Spanish into, and 'some sort of god we haven't encountered before' was where their conceptual outlook had the most latitude. So it wasn't that the Aztecs thought they knew exactly what they were encountering but were mistaken - more a case of the Aztecs not being sure exactly what they were encountering because they needed to expand their conceptual scheme to make proper sense of it. That must have shaped their practical deliberations in various ways.
Anthony Pagden has some really good books on this, and people like Marshal Sahlins and Clifford Geertz have written very interesting stuff on the general point (conceptual change in the face of unexpected encounters) too.

If you want a nice example of the same phenomenon, the most interesting thing about Christopher Columbus (imho) is that to his dying day he refused to accept that he'd discovered America. Because if he had done that, he'd have had to accept what was unthinkable to him, namely that Biblical history could not be literally true - the narrative of the three sons of Noah repopulating the earth (Europeans, Asians, Africans) doesn't have room for a fourth group of people in isolation from the rest. Columbus didn't have conceptual space for the indigenous peoples of America any more than they - initially - had for him.

Sorry for the longwindedness - I'm procrastinating at work 

[OB]

Not at all, it's a popular point of view and may well be correct.  I'm not convinced just yet.

I struggle to see how the very human Spanish behavior would fit into Aztec cosmology. 

Post Moctezuma, the Aztecs show no reluctance in attacking the Spanish. 

Moctezuma himself had arranged an attack upon them by a subject tribe and tried to bribe and magic them away.  Not normal acts of worship in my view.

[Inkpaduta]

I would agree. The Aztecs did have a god that had gone away promising to return.
he was light skinned and bearded. It did cause Aztec leadership to hesitate for a while.

[OB]

Moctezuma certainly hesitated. 

There is scholarly debate on how real the identifying Cortez with a returning god was.  Some simply seeing it as a Spanish invention.