Quarto
Unknown Enemy
The Aztecs' story is false. Considering that for most of their stay in Tenochtitlan, Cortez' people's safety was guarateed by Moctezuma, and that they only barely made it out alive after he was killed, there is no reason whatsoever to believe Cortez would have Moctezuma killed. To quote Khasra, that would be suicide. Furthermore, it is unlikely that any sort of eyewitness account from the Aztec side would have survived until this day, whereas eyewitness accounts from Cortez' expeditions have survived. And the Spanish would have no reason to lie about this - they had done many worse things and didn't worry about falsifying the accounts.Originally posted by junior
IIRC, there are conflicting stories about what happened to Moctezuma. The Spaniards claimed he was killed by his own people (in a riot, in which case the 'stone' story would probably be true), while the Aztecs said the Spaniards did it (don't remember the details, unfortunately).
As for Malinche, she betrayed no one. She was a slave, and was given to Cortez by Moctezuma's emissaries. By definition, the only person she could have betrayed was her owner - and she didn't. Besides, if she had no qualms about helping Cortez, we certainly couldn't blame her for it, because most of the population of the Aztec Empire hated the Aztecs with a passion, and had very good reasons for it.