“The Aztecs thought Cortes was a god”

The idea that the Aztecs believed Hernán Cortés was the returning god Quetzalcoatl is a pervasive historical misconception. This narrative likely emerged in the decades following the Spanish conquest, primarily through the writings of Spanish friars and some indigenous chroniclers. These post-conquest accounts may have served to explain the rapid fall of the Aztec Empire by attributing it to divine will or a misunderstanding by the indigenous people, thereby justifying the Spanish conquest and simplifying a complex historical event.

However, historical evidence largely refutes this claim. Contemporary Aztec sources, such as those within the Florentine Codex, do not support the idea that they viewed Cortés as a deity. Instead, they describe the Spanish as powerful, foreign invaders. The fierce resistance and numerous battles waged by the Aztecs against Cortés's forces also contradict the notion that they believed him to be a god. While the Aztecs had prophecies related to Quetzalcoatl, there is no strong evidence suggesting a pre-conquest belief that Cortés specifically fulfilled these prophecies. Cortés himself, in his letters to the King of Spain, never claimed to have been mistaken for a god.

The myth's enduring popularity can be attributed to its convenient nature for various parties. For the Spanish, it provided a narrative of divine justification for their conquest. Later historians and educators often perpetuated it as a dramatic and simplistic explanation for the Aztec Empire's collapse, suggesting a kind of fatalistic credulity on the part of the indigenous population. This narrative became deeply embedded in popular culture and textbooks, making it a widely accepted, though inaccurate, part of history.