The Contested Crown

The so-called Penacho de Moctezuma has been a source of mystery for centuries. Did this feather headdress actually belong to Moctezuma? Is it really a headdress, or is it a banner or some other form of regalia? Was it a “gift” to the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés? Cortés most likely forwarded the headdress to Emperor Charles V in Europe, where it has remained in Austria to this very day. By the late sixteenth century, the object could be found in Innsbruck, in the cabinet of curiosities at Ambras Castle. By the nineteenth century, it had become part of Vienna's natural history collection and was later incorporated into Vienna's Museum für Völkerkunde, which is now known as the Weltmuseum. Over the years, numerous figures have demanded the penacho be returned to Mexico. In the 1860s, the Hapsburg emperor Maximilian called for its repatriation in one of his many attempts to legitimize his rule in Mexico. More recently, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked to borrow the penacho for an exhibition celebrating his country's 200-year anniversary of independence from Spain. Austria has consistently denied all such requests. The Weltmuseum refuses to relinquish the headdress; it argues that the object arrived in Austria as a gift and that it is far too fragile to travel. Austria has tried to appease Mexico with a replica that is displayed in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll makes a case for repatriating the penacho in The Contested Crown: Repatriation Politics between Europe and Mexico. “Encased in glass,” she explains, “this prize of colonial conquest is held in suspended animation between Austria and Mexico” (p. 85). An artist and art historian, Carroll has a personal interest in the topic. As she reveals, the penacho once belonged to her family's collection. She is a descendant of the Hapsburgs who owned the Ambras Castle that held the penacho. Carroll's goal is thus not only to analyze the story of this contested object but also “to reflect on the collective through the personal” (p. 7). She muses on “decolonizing whiteness and the perpetrator position” through her own family history as she analyzes the political and cultural power struggles surrounding the penacho (p. 27).The Contested Crown is made up of an introduction and seven chapters that attempt to examine this charged topic through different lenses. This has the effect of giving the narrative little continuity, making the book choppy and hard to follow. Chapters discuss theories related to cultural patrimony and repatriation, replicas of the headdress, and protests aimed at repatriating the object. The Penacho de Moctezuma often gets lost in these discussions. Certain sections of the book that actually deal with the headdress are very interesting, such as the passages about the problems that threaten the preservation of the object, including feather-eating bugs that have damaged the headdress; since the 1960s, the Weltmuseum has sprayed with pesticides.An early chapter focuses on Xokonoschtletl Gómora, the Mexican performer and activist who regularly leads protests outside the Weltmuseum to demand the penacho's return to Mexico. Carroll is also an activist and performer and has taken part in these protests. In one of her performances she assumes the voice of Quetzalcoatl, the mythical feathered serpent associated with the headdress, stating, “I am Quetzalcóatl the feathered serpent. . . . I was a priest banished from the ancient city of Tula” (p. 30). This reflection is particularly cringeworthy in a work that denounces white privilege and the appropriation of Indigenous culture. Throughout the book Carroll considers her own privilege, but what she is trying to say about the “collective” and “personal” by linking her family history with the story of the penacho is not clear.Two chapters examine Nazi looting of cultural artifacts, and while Carroll uses the Holocaust as a benchmark for analyzing colonialism and dispossession, the comparison with the penacho does not work. It is one thing to return looted possessions to relatives of Holocaust victims and another to repatriate an artifact to the Mexican state, a historical construction that, moreover, has itself acted as a colonial collector, dispossessing Indigenous peoples of objects to create national museums. Scholars and activists have been actively debating who has the right to Mexican artifacts, but Carroll's work is not in conversation with this scholarship and discussion or with the cultural politics of contemporary Mexico. She does not delve into what she labels “the Mexican perspective,” making her stance come off as dismissive (p. 177).In fact, the book is based on little scholarship on Mexico and Latin America. Names of scholars are repeatedly misspelled, and a prominent figure like the renowned archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma is identified as an “expert named Motecuhzoma” (p. 115). The work is also plagued by factual errors. One of the most egregious is the reference to Moctezuma as the last Aztec emperor—a claim also found on the book's dust jacket (p. 96). Even a student in a basic history of Mexico course would know that this ruler was Cuauhtemoc

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