Espionage in Early Mexico

The religion of the Aztecs boasted a god of espionage -an unusual deity in any other new world religion. The Aztecs were brilliant soldiers and administrators and viewed espionage and intelligence gathering as a key to domination. The successor regimes to the Aztecs also created elaborate and successful entities for political and spiritual control: this monograph discusses the efforts of the Hapsburg and Bourbon administrations to exact information (as well as gold and silver) on a wide scale. Mahoney has done new research on the war of independence (not surprisingly large numbers of informants worked both sides of the conflict), Spanish clergy as spies, and the revolution of 1910 (which began with a celebration of the 1810 revolt and ended by being the bloodiest revolution in the history of the Americas). Involvements of American, British, German and Japanese agents are outlined and the social and political well springs of modern Mexican society's obsession with power and secrecy are detailed.