Here Rice has ironically placed Alfredo Chavero’s lithograph showing La Noche Triste (the sad night) an important event from the conquest of Mexico during in which the Spanish under Cortés fled the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan by night only to suffer crippling casualties, next to a page from the Codex Durán, in which unarmed Aztec nobles were slaughtered by the Spanish during an important religious event.
Although the true story of the siege of Tenochtitlan and the fall of the Aztec Empire may be impossible to reconstruct, this image brings attention to the constructed quality of the stories that have survived, which are enveloped in myth and propaganda. Chagoya has, however, introduced some telling changes in the image from the Codex Durán; he has replaced Cortés’ horses with a tank and positioned Mickey Mouse alongside Cortés and La Malinche in their battle against the Aztecs. In this way the violence of the past is connected to the present, and popular American cultural icons are implicated in the destruction of Mexican culture.
