How were Hernan Cortes and the conquistadors represented by the Aztec ? Were they portrayed as evil beings?

by HeezerTop
Accidental_Historian

Ooo, that's a good question. TL;DR: Not really. The Aztec initially dreaded the Spanish because they were unknown, then welcomed them as gods with a measure of fear, and ultimately condemned them as barbarians.

Dread was certainly the first reaction the Aztec and Mexica had to reports that strange beings, in "castles on the sea" had arrived at their shore. Mexica texts in the Codex Florentino (a Spanish document) record the Aztec ruler, Motecuhzoma, dispatched messengers with rich gifts to the coast to determine who the strange beings were. As he waited, it's written:

While the messengers were away, Motecuhzoma could neither sleep nor eat, and no one could speak with him. He thought that everything he did was in vain, and he signed almost every moment. He was lost in despair, in the deepest gloom and sorrow. Nothing could comfort him, nothing could calm him, nothing could give him any pleasure. (Portilla et. al., The Broken Spears, 29)

Interestingly, the Aztecs also commented on how much the Spaniards appeared to like god and treasure. The scribes of a local Mexica chief named Sahagun record that upon receiving gifts, Cortes and his men

Burst into smiles; their eyes shone with pleausre; they were delighted by them. They picked up the gold and fingered it like monkeys; they seemed to be transported by joy, as if their hearts were illuminated and made new...their bodies swelled with greed, and their hunger was ravenous; they hungered like pigs for that gold. (Portilla et. al., The Broken Spears, 51)

Upon meeting Cortes, the Aztecs treated them as gods, specifically Quetzalcoatl, the feathered-serpent deity prominent in Mexica theology and culture. Fear was likely a strong part of the Aztec's veneration of the Spaniards. However, while they believed them to be very powerful beings, it doesn't seem that they believed the Spaniards to be particularly evil beings. An account of Montecuhozoma's speech, written in 1528, records the speech that Motecuhozoma gave to Cortes and his men when they met. apparently Motecuhozoma said:

Our lord, you are weary. The journey has tired you, but now you have arrived on the earth. You have come to your city, Mexico. You have come here to sit on your throne, to sit under its canopy. The kings who have gone before, your representatives, guarded it and preserved it for your coming. The kings Itzcoatl, Montezuma the Elder, Axayacatl, Tizoc and Ahuitzol ruled for you in the city of Mexico. The people were protected by their sowrds and sheltered by their shields...This was foretold by the kings who governed your city, and now it has taken place. You have come back to us; you have come down from the sky. Rest now, and take posession of your royal houses. Welcome to your land, my lords! (Source can be found here)

Of course, the subsequent capture of Montecuhozoma, the brutal sack of Tenochtitlan, and the massacre of the Aztec people changed how the Mexica thought of the Spaniards. Perhaps the best summary of how the Aztec came to regard the Spaniards is found in The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (which I've cited several times above). The editors write:

The invaders, the cause of [the Aztec's] affliction, appeared to their eyes as another type of being, utterly different from them, and the presence of these strangers was not easy to place within their cultural categories. It is true that at first they thought Cortes could be Quetzalcoatl...however, the behavior of such "gods" forced the Aztecs to change their minds. When they saw how greedily the Spaniards reacted to gold, the native chorniclers described them as monkeys. And at the end of their writing, they referred to them as popolocas, a word whose closest equivalent is "barbarians." (Portilla et. al., The Broken Spears, 188)

Hopefully this helps! The sources cited are below!

Portilla, Miguel Leon, Nagel Maria Garibay, Lysander Kemp, and Alberto Beltran. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990.

"Aztec Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico," accessible online here.