SOURCE: "Anticolonialism in Heine's 'Vitzliputzli'," in Colloquia Germanica, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1993, pp. 37-47.

In the following essay, Pettey investigates Heine's representation of the Spanish conquest of Mexico in his poem "Vitzliputzli" as primarily a violent clash of religions.

In "Vitzliputzli",¹ the longest of the "Historien" in Romanzero (1851), Heine avoided sentimentalizing the Aztecs vis-à-vis their Spanish conquerors and colonizers. He was chiefly concerned with presenting his historical vision in a disturbingly vivid, nightmarish account of the clash between two diverse cultures. Following a major theme found in the "Historien," "Vitzliputzli" illustrates the dominance of barbarity attended by a baffling lack of transcendent benevolence in human history.² As was always his wont, Heine sided overtly with the underdog, and yet he pulled no punches about the cruelty in Aztec rituals. Indeed, the historical problem addressed deals primarily with a conflict between religions. His poetic rendering of the Conquest of Mexico...