Eduardo Matos Moctezuma on Creating Fruitful Cross-Border Collaborations

August 17, 2020
HDS Professor David Carrasco with Eduardo Matos Moctezuma in Mexico in 2019
HDS Professor Davíd Carrasco with Eduardo Matos Moctezuma in Mexico in 2019. Photo by Ryan Christopher Jones

The Eduardo Matos Moctezuma Lecture Series, the first lecture series to be named for a Mexican citizen in Harvard University’s 400-year history, was launched three years ago as part of a collaboration between Mexican cultural institutions and Harvard.

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To examine how that collaboration endures today and its continued importance, HDS communications sat down (virtually) with Matos, Mexico’s premier archaeologist. The scholar discussed cross-border academic collaborations, scholarly debates taking place in Mexico, and the future for Mexico/U.S. research cooperation and cultural exchange.

HDS: Three years ago, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the Divinity School, with support from Mexican businessman, José Antonio Alonso Espinosa, established the Eduardo Matos Moctezuma Lecture Series in your honor. This is the first lecture series named for a Mexican in Harvard’s nearly 400-year history. From your point of view, what is the significance of this initiative for the future of Mesoamerican studies as well as Harvard’s educational relationship to Mexico?

EMM: First of all, I must say that it is a great honor for me to be acknowledged with this lecture series that bears my name. I am very grateful to Harvard for this initiative, led, of course, by the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project. I think it has been a very fruitful idea that has exposed people in Mexico as well as in the United States to the decades of productive work that led up to the lecture series. I recall that it began in October 2017 with my presentation, “From Life to Death: Three Transformative Moments and a True Passion,” in which I spoke to an overflowing audience at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City about my search for knowledge concerning the Aztec world. The following spring I gave the inaugural lecture at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

HDS: Who else has given lectures in the series so far?

EMM: Several first-rate scholars have followed me with presentations that have alternated each year between Mexico City in October and Harvard in April. For example, anthropologist and historian Alfredo López Austin spoke at the National Museum of Anthropology in October 2018 on one of his favorite topics—mythology and cosmovision—in his talk, “El día que salió el sol: Trece pasos y un canto” (The Day the Sun Rose: Thirteen Steps and a Song). In April 2019, we had the pleasure of hearing the great historian Javier Garciadiego speak about the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920. The following October, Dr. Diana Magaloni from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art gave an illuminating lecture on the Florentine Codex and the different ways Spaniards and Mexica interpreted each other through writing and art. And soon we will hear the words of the great writer, Juan Villoro. Moreover, all of the lectures have been live-streamed online and recorded so that people throughout the world can access them. I believe that this pattern of Mexican scholars speaking in Mexico and at Harvard enables us to delve deeply into the study of the Aztecs (or the Mexica as they called themselves) and to know the creative thinking of different authors about this society and culture.

HDS: The series celebrates the interdisciplinary research method that you employed as the leader of the excavation of the Great Aztec Temple known as the Templo Mayor Project, which started in the late 1970s. What have been some of the most significant fruits of this method in Mexica or Mesoamerican studies at the Templo Mayor?

EMM: The fruits have been really impressive. First, when the project began in 1978, I brought together a group of specialists, including anthropologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, historians, and linguists, among others, to study the thousands of objects found in the excavation, along with restorers to preserve them. From the start, it was an interdisciplinary team that focused on the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, and its importance within the wider Mesoamerican world. All of this continues under the coordination of Leonardo López Luján. This multidisciplinary method, in the 42-year life of the ongoing project, has produced more than 1,200 books, articles, reviews, and guides. These publications grew out of my original intention to communicate what we were finding at the Great Temple, that is, what the archaeology was yielding with the support of these other disciplines. In addition, the project has generated more than 100 theses by different specialists, mainly by Mexican archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, biologists, and restorers. In other words, it has been an unparalleled locus for training new researchers as well as a catalyst for publishing our findings. In those initial years of the project, our approach was enhanced when I met the Mexican American historian of religions and Harvard Divinity School professor, Davíd Carrasco, and I invited him to join our group because we needed a perspective from the comparative study of religion. We began to work together on various conferences and publications as we analyzed the discoveries at the Templo Mayor.

HDS: In the book, Breaking through Mexico’s Past, Carrasco tells about the first time the two of you met when you were Deputy Director of Prehispanic Monuments in Mexico City. He notes that you gave him a copy of your book, Muerte a filo de obsidiana (Death by Obsidian Blade), in which you mention the great historian of religions Mircea Eliade at the University of Chicago. What influence did Eliade’s work have on your studies on the Templo Mayor and Mesoamerica?

EMM: Mircea Eliade was a great researcher of religions. Something that caught my attention after reading several of his books was that in the structure and symbolism of the spatial organization at the Templo Mayor, I could see the physical manifestation of many of the observations he had made about myth and sacred places. One key notion was that such buildings represented the center of the universe. So I was very interested in all of his works. Eliade developed those insights from the perspective of the history of religions, and his very clear, didactic, and direct thinking fit perfectly with what we were finding at the Templo Mayor. That was what I really liked about him and why I consider him to be one of the great researchers of religions. Therefore, I thought it important that a historian of religions like Carrasco and his Mesoamerican Archive join our project to deepen our understanding of what Eliade called the axis mundi.

HDS: So, the Eduardo Matos Moctezuma Lecture Series is one of the fruits of the collaboration between the Templo Mayor Project and the Mesoamerican Archive. From your perspective, what is the significance of the initial formation of the Archive, its current presence at Harvard, and its strong relationship with the Divinity School?

EMM: The Mesoamerican Archive was extremely important because over the years it convened a series of meetings in which different types of specialists from Mexico and other countries participated. For example, starting in 1979, our initial meetings included the great archaeologist Pedro Armillas, the African American historian of religions Charles Long, urban geographer Paul Wheatley, art historian Doris Heyden, anthropologist and historian Alfredo López Austin, art historian Elizabeth Boone, colonial historian William Taylor, anthropologist and musician José Cuellar, art historian John Hoag, ethnohistorian H.B. Nicholson, ethnologist Johanna Broda, and archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni, among others. In short, it was a strong group of specialists, each with their own ideas and approaches. Its presence now at Harvard is very important because the lecture series has enabled the dissemination of this knowledge from different specialists to a much wider audience in Mexico and the United States. So I think that the work of the Divinity School and the Mesoamerican Archive has been important for the exchange of ideas and thought in a free, cross-border, and broad manner that allows us to get to know the Mexica and other ancient peoples from a comparative perspective.

HDS Professor Davíd Carrasco with Eduardo Matos Moctezuma in Mexico in 2019. Photo by Ryan Christopher Jones
 

HDS: We are in a time of incendiary words, insults, and exclusion against Mexicans in the United States, originating from the highest levels. How have researchers in pre-Hispanic studies responded to this atmosphere? How has this affected your collaboration with the Divinity School and the David Rockefeller Center? Does this collaboration seem important to you at this time?

EMM: These issues are very important to me. The collaboration has continued and is better than ever. Our work has not been diminished despite the hostile atmosphere that exists from some very powerful places in the United States. It continues to be a very positive exchange between institutions in Mexico and the United States that expands the panorama of research, instruction, and especially publications, which is another important result of this collaboration. Thus, I think that a good example is being set of what international cooperation and learning should be.

HDS: Can you talk about the interest and impact that the lecture series and this collaboration have had in Mexico and with other researchers? Dean David Hempton of the Divinity School, who attended the Mexico City lectures, has told us about the strong outpouring of support and interest shown by the Mexican people at the National Museum of Anthropology. What impact has the lecture series had on the public in Mexico City?

EMM: The impact has been very broad and positive. I have noticed that the lectures in the enormous auditorium of the National Museum of Anthropology have become increasingly more crowded. There also is great interest among people in the United States who attend or tune into the lecture series. It is particularly encouraging that many students in Mexico and at Harvard ask very good questions after the presentations. It is evident that they know about or have previously studied Mesoamerican cultures. In addition, my inaugural lecture and those of Alfredo López Austin and Diana Magaloni have been published in Arqueología mexicana, one of Mexico’s leading cultural magazines, which has enjoyed enormous success since the 1990s when it began. It has a circulation of 35,000 copies and reaches many specialists and non-specialists throughout the world. Thus the lectures are being shared more widely each year.

HDS: Have any discoveries or new insights resulting from these collaborations been published in English, for example, in the United States?

EMM: Yes, many works on various topics and aspects of the Mesoamerican Archive meetings have been published. Moreover, many Archive colleagues participated in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, whose editorial board and many entries had ample Mexican representation. Archive and Templo Mayor collaborations also encouraged the publication of English translations of Mexican-authored books like Alfredo López Austin’s Tamoanchan, Tlalocan: Places of Mist and Leonardo López Luján’s The Offerings of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan, as well as my Life and Death in the Templo Mayor. All of these publications offer a good sampling of collaboration among Mexican authors and those from the United States, Europe, and even Japan.

HDS: You have used the word “collaboration” many times in this interview—collaboration among Mexican scholars and with researchers of other nationalities or from other countries. Throughout your career you have greatly encouraged and supported students so that they may advance their studies and publish their work. You have also been very generous to all of the foreign scholars who have visited the Templo Mayor. Recently the newspaper El País published a review/interview with the North American writer Camilla Townsend on her new book, Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs. One of the issues that journalist Pablo Ferri noted is that she marginalizes Mexican researchers and says that “We in the U.S. don’t have a monopoly on good academic work, but I think we produce more than half.” She claims that this imbalance is due, in part, to the superior financial support that U.S. universities give to their scholars. Do you agree that Mexico produces less than half of the good work on the Mexica?

EMM: I was recently able to take a look at Dr. Townsend’s book. And, well, the first thing that caught my attention was its title, which speaks of a new Aztec history. This seems a bit pretentious to me. On the question about “more than half,” I think there are many publications, some very, very good, by North American colleagues who are Mesoamericanists. I think this is important. I have also mentioned earlier how the Templo Mayor Project has produced around 1,200 publications and 100 theses by authors of various nationalities, but predominantly Mexican. So I think this gives you an idea of what is being produced in Mexico. The United States has more economic resources than Mexico, including academic support, but I don’t think that this justifies minimizing the many contributions of Mexican researchers.

HDS: In the book itself, one gets the impression that archaeology is not essential to our knowledge of the Mexica. It argues that studying the Nahuatl language and colonial Nahua sources is more important. Townsend also gives very little attention to the Templo Mayor, the symbolism of its offerings, its mythic significance, and its role as the center of the Mexica universe. What is your opinion on the invisibility of all these data and years of research by Mexican scientists over the course of nearly a half-century of excavations and publications?

EMM: I think there is a fundamental error in considering archaeology in this manner. I have always said that those who wish to study Mesoamerican societies before and after they come into contact with Europeans—be they archaeologists or historians—must have a deep knowledge of the archaeological data and the written pictographic and alphabetical sources. If one of them is favored and others are demeaned, then a serious methodological mistake is made. Alphabetical sources—for example, the various Spanish and Nahuatl chronicles and annals—do indeed contain very important information. But they offer an incomplete view because in the case of the Mexica, archaeology is quite relevant and has provided very rich information about rural and urban areas, and especially the Templo Mayor and its Sacred Precinct, which were the center of their empire and worldview.

HDS: In your view, then, what the Mexica made with their hands—their art, architecture, sculpture, the design of their city, and their offerings to the gods—are just as important as what they wrote with their hands in the century after their encounter with Spaniards.

EMM: All of the materials that we are finding in the course of the excavations are crucial to our knowledge of the pre-Hispanic world. This is a very extensive source of information, generated, as I previously said, by anthropologists, biologists, chemists, geologists and others, along with physicists for establishing dates. So those who brush aside that information are seeing only part of the Mexica world and do not understand that many of the materials that are in the offerings of the Templo Mayor were made by the Mexica people. They were produced by artists, sculptors, lapidaries, goldsmiths, and other specialists, and each of the objects had its own symbolism that tells us what the Mexica thought and made together. So a history written from such a limited perspective is seeing only one part without being complemented by the others, because archaeology and the pictographic and alphabetical sources mutually support and form a unit. Although the book contains some interesting data, I think it suffers from not giving adequate attention to the other parts.

HDS: In that same El País piece, Townsend mentions your longtime colleague, Miguel León-Portilla, the great interpreter of the indigenous literature of Mexico. She says, “Frankly, being a great man does not necessarily mean being the best nahuatlato.” Please tell our readers about León Portilla’s achievements and their significance in the study of the Mexica, Mexico, and Mesoamerica.

EMM: I believe that Miguel León-Portilla is indisputably one of the great Mexican nahuatlatos, past or present, along with Alfredo López Austin and Rafael Tena. Our team at the Templo Mayor has worked with them and other Nahuatl specialists who have studied various written sources, especially the chronicles. León-Portilla, however, is recognized not only in Mexico, but throughout the world, as a great researcher and translator to such an extent that in the United States he was called a living legend. This gives us a sense of the importance of his contributions. Many years ago, he had the idea, innovative at the time, to give voice to the vanquished. This is very important because he was able to piece together from many different indigenous sources a coherent set of poignant statements against colonization, the war, and the Spaniards in his book, Visión de los vencidos (known in English as The Broken Spears).

HDS: You and our readers may be interested to know that works by León-Portilla will be used in a course entitled “Moctezuma’s Mexico: Then and Now taught by Professors Davíd Carrasco and William Fash. The Divinity School also plans to host some events in his honor during this academic year here at Harvard. So the last question for you involves divining the future. How does the future relationship between Mexico and Harvard look to you, and what are researchers on both sides of the border going to study to continue our fruitful collaboration?

EMM: Well, I think that the future looks very positive in the sense that if we continue with the generous support of José Antonio Alonso Espinosa and the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in México, and the Mesoamerican Archive, the Divinity School, and the David Rockefeller Center at Harvard, we can develop new research plans and approaches with the understanding that our findings will be published. In fact, given the example of Dr. Townsend’s recent book, it seems imperative to create a viable means of disseminating the latest fruits of our collaboration to the widest possible audience in a more balanced, inclusive, and timely manner. The research, of course, does not end at any given moment, it continues. And our collaboration is a magnificent example of how these things ought to be done. So, yes, I think that the future looks very promising indeed and that we are going to be able to undertake various new lines of research, and perhaps not only on the Mexica, but also other societies that existed in Mesoamerica.