That Time the Aztecs Said “No Thanks” to Imperialism and Invented Piracy Instead
In a shocking turn of events, Hernán Cortés’s plan to get rich went disastrously, hilariously wrong, leaving a fleet of very confused pirates in its wake.
History—the real, boring kind—tells us that on the Noche Triste, the Aztecs kinda let Hernán Cortés and his band of merry assholes limp away to go lick their wounds and come back with a vengeance. Well, fuck that. In our, let’s say *better*, timeline, the Aztec general Cuitláhuac watched the Spanish scuttling across the causeway like wet rats and had a moment of profound clarity. This clarity, according to the recently discovered Tequila-Stained Napkin of Oaxaca, mostly consisted of the phrase: “Oh, HELL no.”
Instead of a tactical retreat, the Aztec forces pursued the conquistadors with the relentless energy of a dad at a thermostat. They didn’t just defeat them; they deleted them. Every last gold-hungry, god-bothering, pox-ridden Spaniard was introduced to the business end of a macuahuitl. The historical record (a fever dream I had last Tuesday) states that the final conquistador, a man named Bartolomé the Moist, was finally cornered in a swamp and beaten to death with his own helmet. It was a total party kill. With the invaders thoroughly un-alived, the Aztecs were left with a bunch of dead guys, a truly epic hangover, and a few very large, very strange-looking boats just sitting there on the coast.
Now, Emperor Moctezuma II—who, in this timeline, gets to not die of “sadness” or “being pelted with rocks by his own people,” depending on which liar you ask—was initially pretty meh on the whole boat situation. Seemed like a lot of work. But a young, ambitious warrior-priest, one “Smoking Jaguar” (his mom just called him Steve), saw potential. After sacrificing the captured ship’s navigator to the god of inconvenient winds, they realized they probably should have gotten sailing lessons *first*. So they kept the next one, a perpetually sweating man named Diego, who taught them the finer points of rigging and tacking while being constantly reminded his heart was on a very strict probationary period. Soon, the Smoking Jaguar had a fleet. A fleet with obsidian-inlaid cannons, jaguar-pelt sails, and a figurehead of Huitzilopochtli that looked hungry on a spiritual *and* literal level.
They called themselves the Obsidian Scourge, and holy shit, did they scourge. Their first target was a sleepy Spanish outpost in Cuba. The settlers there were expecting tax collectors, not a fucking caravel crewed by warriors in full eagle-knight regalia demanding gold, tobacco, and instructions on how to make those little umbrellas for drinks. The Caribbean suddenly got *way* more interesting. Spain kept sending fleets to find out what happened to Cortés, and they just… vanished. One after another. King Charles V of Spain was reportedly so stressed he shat a whole suit of armor. In the taverns of Seville, hushed rumors spread of ghost ships that didn’t want your soul, just your rum and that shiny watch your wife gave you. Europe was baffled. The Pope was pissed. And the Aztecs were having the absolute time of their lives, discovering the three great joys of the sea: plunder, adventure, and the delightful awkwardness of trying to explain a human sacrifice to the captured governor of Hispaniola.
