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This tour into the thicket of Aztec thought is indispensable, which is why I gave it four stars. But it was written forty years ago, leaving it with two glaring problems.

The author: What might seem to be hyper-political-correctness is actually poignantly outrageous ancestor worship. The Aztecs can do no wrong, so get used to it. On p. 155 Leon-Portilla takes us through the "sagacity" of book burning! "The common folk were worshipping pictures of their ancient rulers as gods." (Sound familiar?) How, exactly, was this culture-destroying move sagacious? Well, it shows that the Mexica had "a strong awareness of history"!

(But when the Spanish burn books, poetry, art and music - beauty itself - leave the planet forever.)

This quaint attitude actually helps make a difficult topic entertaining. The translation is a more aggravating problem. "Deities of the Close Vicinity"? Why didn't our translator throw in some English, like "Lords of the Nearby"? And he gives us "tiger" in place of jaguar! (Spanish for jaguar is "tigre.")

Leon-Portilla goes to great lengths to explain a phenomenon common in Náhautl, difrasismo, which apparently is rare in Spanish. But the translation completely ignores that it's the bread and butter of English - difrasismo is the coupling of words, like "bread and butter"! The crucial Aztec phrase "face and heart," for example, is apparently untranslatable into Spanish, but English has "body and soul," or the plural "hearts and minds"! How beautifully Nahuatl must translate directly into English!

This is a must-read for the student of ancient America, and not just because there's nothing else out there. But oh for a new translation!

Book review from Amazon

Must-read, but with two caveats, January 15, 2005

By yankee-in-ca