Moctezuma's Revenge: The State of IR in Mexico

Abstract

In 1519, Hernan Cortes landed on the east coast of the Aztec Empire ruled by Moctezuma II. According to the Florentine Codex, written fifty years after the Spanish conquest, the Aztecs believed the Spaniards to be gods and Cortes to be the returned god Quetzalcoatl. Altough the historical accuracy of the Codex is open to debate, there is little doubt that the Aztecs ontology included only Indians and gods, and therefore the Spaniards had to gods. This musunderstanding played an important role in the Spanish conquest and subsequent decline in the Aztec Empire. The point being that how we understand the world goes far in contributing to how that reality unfolds, and incorrect understanding can have dire consequences.The purpose of this essay is to examine the of IR in Mexico, and the experience of Moctezuma and the Aztecs is relevant. It is argued here that IR in Mexico has followed too closely the IR discipline in the United States, and as a result has misunderstood and misrepresented domestic and international realities that define Mexico's place in the world. Such misunderstanding may be said to constitute Moctezuma's revenge. The fault lies not merely within the Mexican IR discipline, but equally (if not more so) with how the discipline of IR has developed in the United States. Of couse, such claims about the IR discipline in Mexico and the United States cannot be fully elaborated or supported in an essay of this lenght, and therefore this work should be seen as merely a preliminary attempt or propedeutic to reveal questions and concerns about the state of IR in Mexico in the hope that other scholars will begin to reflect seriously upon these issues.