Koldo Mitxelena was the author of this first project.

Koldo Mitxelena fue el autor de este primer proyecto.

Koldo Abrego doesn’t have any images in his gallery.

Koldo Abrego no tiene ninguna imagen en su galería.

Notes: The date corresponds to the original in the Koldo Mitxelena.

Notas: La fecha corresponde al original del Koldo Mitxelena.

See also second copy available in the Koldo Mitxelena collection (sig.

Ver además, segundo ejemplar disponible en el fondo del Koldo Mitxelena (sig.

Also consult second copy available in the Koldo Mitxelena collection (sig.

Consultar además, segundo ejemplar disponible en el fondo de Koldo Mitxelena (sig.

We took the year from the Koldo Mitxelena catalogue.

El año lo tomamos del catálogo de Koldo Mitxelena.

I know that you’re alive, because I can feel you, Koldo.

Sé que estás vivo, porque puedo sentirte, Koldo.

We took the year from the Koldo Mitxelena catalogue.

El año lo tomamos del catálogo de Koldo Mitxelena. Autografiado.

We took the year from the Koldo Mitxelena catalogue.

El año lo tomamos del catálogo del Koldo Mitxelena.

Also consult the other editions available in the Koldo Mitxelena collection (sig.

Consultar además las demás ediciones disponibles en el fondo de Koldo Mitxelena (sig.

Aztecs. Militant Subjects of Montezuma

Jacques Soustelle

Aztecs. Militant Subjects of Montezuma

As long as this world stands, the honor and glory of Mexico City Tenochtitlan must not be forgotten.

Chimalpain Kuautleuanicin

Introduction

First of all, it is necessary to determine what place the subject of this book’s study occupies in space and time, since for two or three millennia BC until the fateful year of the European invasion (1519, or the 1st year of Kamysh, according to the local calendar) on the vast expanses of Mexico were replaced by many different civilizations. They rose in turn, like waves on the sea, and, like waves, they disappeared, leaving ruins.

The subject of this book is the daily life of the Mexicans – “mexica” as they called themselves – at the beginning of the 16th century. At the end of each century, which lasted 52 years according to the local chronology, the Great Feast of the New Fire, “linking the years”, was held. The last such celebration took place in 1507 during the reign of Montezuma II Shokoyotsin (“the younger”). Mexican civilization was then in its full bloom and youth. Not even a hundred years have passed since Itzcoatl (1428-1440), the first of the great rulers, founded the union of the three cities. One of these three was Mexico City Tenochtitlan, which became the capital. It was in this city, on the shores and even on the water of the lake, located in the depression of the central valley at an altitude of 7500 feet and surrounded by snow-capped volcanoes, that the power of the Aztecs gradually increased. A few decades later, their dominance extended to the largest area that this part of the world has ever known.

At that time, in 1507, on a vast territory from the arid northern steppes to the hot jungles of the isthmus, from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, no one could imagine that this vast empire, its culture, art, gods in a few years will be destined to sink into a historical cataclysm, against which even the fall of Constantinople seems relatively insignificant. In Mexico, no one knew that people with white skin from another world had already firmly established themselves on the islands of the western sea since 1492 years. There must have been 27 years between the first voyage of Columbus and the landing of Hernán Cortes on the continent, a quarter-century delay during which the two worlds lived side by side, unaware of each other, separated by only a narrow sea strait.

Les peuples tout enfants a peine se decouvrent

Par dessus les buissons nes pendant leur sommeil. ¹
These lines of de Vigny come to mind when we think about this strange, stopped time. In Europe, the modern world began to break out of its usual framework: in the same 1507, when the Mexicans once again “bind the years”, lighting a new fire on the top of Huixachtecatl, Luther was ordained. The year before, Leonardo da Vinci had painted La Gioconda, and Bramante had begun building St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. France was involved in a war with Italy, and in Florence Niccolò Machiavelli was Minister of the Interior. Spain defeated the Moors at Granada, and thus regained the last of the territories conquered from her; and irresistible expansion prompted the Spanish caravels, soldiers and missionaries to go to the newly discovered lands. But so far the wave has not taken them out of the islands – Cuba, the Bahamas, Tahiti. They had just reached the coast of the mainland – it was the coast of Honduras and the Gulf of Darien: not a single white person knew yet that vast territories with their densely populated cities, wars, states and temples lay beyond the Yucatan Strait and the Gulf of Mexico.

In Mexico, in the same way, they did not suspect anything, did not have the slightest idea that fate was already at the door. The Emperor continued methodically to organize life in the territories subordinated to the Mexica, ruling people. One by one, the last free cities fell, and remote tropical villages succumbed to the power of the high central plain. True, some small states retained their independence, especially the aristocratic republic of Tlaxcala, a besieged enclave in the middle of the empire, cut off from trade and markets. But xochiaoyotl, war was necessary when peace reigned throughout Mexico, for the sake of serving the gods and for the glory of the sun.

Several years passed, and the veil that hid one world from another was torn down, which was inevitable. And they stood face to face: steel blades against obsidian swords, guns against arrows and spear-throwers, iron helmets against feathered headdresses. Palaces, pyramids, causeways through lakes, stone statues and turquoise masks, processions glittering with precious stones and feathers, priests, kings, sacred books – all this was destined to melt and disappear like a dream. And before it disappears, let’s try to capture the iridescent image, splendor and shadows of an already doomed world.

The last to arrive on the central plateau of , the Mexica, or Aztecs, as they were sometimes called in memory of Azlan, the mythical starting point of their wanderings, have always regarded themselves as the heirs of the brilliant civilizations that had preceded them. Their knowledge of the past did not go beyond a few hundred years: for them the pyramids of Teotihuacan, which we date to the sixth century, were built by the gods at the dawn of the world, at the same time that they created the sun and moon. For them, all the high arts, architecture, sculpture, engraving, feather mosaics, the invention of the calendar appeared thanks to the former inhabitants of Tula, the Toltecs, whose culture reached its peak in the X-XI centuries.

The Mexicans placed Tula and its king, the god Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, in a distant and fabulous past: it was Quetzalcoatl and the Toltecs who discovered the arts and sciences that Mexico has since possessed. But the black magic of Tezcatlipoca, the dark god of the night sky, triumphed, and the radiant Quetzalcoatl, expelled from Mexico, went across the Atlantic Ocean along the “sacred water” or, as other legends say, burned himself on a funeral pyre.

In the chaos that followed the fall of Tula, wave after wave of nomadic northern tribes raided the central plateau, collectively known as chichimeka, which corresponded to the Greek word for barbarians. In this place, legend and history coincide. In the 12th century, a great migration began, which brought the migrating peoples one by one to the south. They were hunters and warriors who did not have dwellings, who did not know how to cultivate the land or weave. These tribes, who came into contact with the remnants of the Toltec civilization and with the settled local farmers who remained after the collapse of Tula, soon founded villages and cities and adopted the lifestyle of their predecessors. Instead of their rough dialects, they began to speak the classic Nahuatl dialect of the Mexicans. They built the cities of Colhuacan, Azcapotsalco, Tezcoco, in which the aristocracy lived an exclusively cultural life. These cities fought for supremacy in the valley, and each of them in turn achieved it. And in this world, so reminiscent of Renaissance Italy, full of battles, conspiracies and amazing vicissitudes, a poor, uninvited, humiliated tribe managed to take possession of several small marshy islands in the lake of their powerful neighbors. Mexica founded their capital, a miserable hamlet of thatched huts, around the temple of Huitzilopochtli, the envious and stubborn god who had been their guide for one hundred and fifty years of their wanderings. Around them stretched marshes with no sign of arable land, wood or stone for building; all the drained land was the property of the already established cities, and they firmly held on to their fields, forests and quarries. In 1325, these wanderers were first allowed to settle in one gloomy place. However, in this place they saw a sign promised to them by their god: an eagle sitting on a cactus pecking at a snake. Another fifty years had to pass before they reached a sufficient level of organization and proclaimed their first monarch, Acamapichtli. And even then the Mexican state was still so weak, and its fate so uncertain, that they were forced to accept the dominion of Azcapotsalco in order to survive; they could not free themselves from it until 1428.

No one could see the emerging empire in these humble beginnings: no one but the “messengers of the gods”, warrior priests who served the idol of Huitzilopochtli during their wanderings. They interpreted his prophecies to the people and believed that in the end his promise would be fulfilled and they would gain power. It was they who formed the primary core of that ruling class, which in less than two hundred years was to lead Mexica to the pinnacle of their imperial power.

By the beginning of the 16th century, nothing remained of this poor and modest beginning, except for chinampas on the outskirts of the city – the original floating gardens, which are left over from the time when landless Mexicans were forced to create solid ground for themselves by pouring silt from the bottom of the lake onto wicker rafts. Mexico City Tenochtitlan, Venice of the New World, proudly raised its embankments and pyramids above the waters: for two dozen tribes, the name of its emperor Montezuma meant greatness and power. The riches of the provinces flocked here, whose luxury constantly increased. Since the fabulous times of Tula, not a single Indian of Mexico City has seen such miracles.

We know about Mexico City at the time when the first Europeans came here, from numerous travel notes that can be compared and combined. Archaeological research in the Valley of Mexico has already yielded a great deal, and there is hardly a place during excavation in which there is nothing from the time of the Aztecs or even earlier. Many ritual and domestic ceramic vessels, tools, weapons and sculptures have already been found. And yet, inasmuch as the Mexicans used to burn their dead instead of burying them, as did the Zapotecs or Mixtecs, for example, we do not have the almost inexhaustible source of household utensils, clothing, and ornaments that graves store in other places. Moreover, not a single ancient monument has survived in Mexico City itself due to the systematic destruction of the city by the Spaniards during the siege of 1521 and after it. Paradoxically, we are much more familiar with the architecture of the 7th century of the distant Maya than with the Mexican architecture of the 16th century. The temples and pyramids of Palenque or Yaxchilan, lost in the jungles of Chiapas, withstood both the onslaught of bad weather and the invasion of vegetation for more than a thousand years, while the buildings of Mexico City disappeared due to the destructive will of man.

But the period of time that interests us differs from other periods in the richness of written sources. The Mexicans were interested in their history; they were indefatigable orators and great lovers of poetry; they were not left indifferent to the customs and products of other tribes. But most of all they were concerned about the future, so they attached great importance to signs and wonders. Thus, a huge number of books were created, written in a pictographic way, which at the same time was symbolic and phonetic, on history, history combined with mythology, geography, rituals and divination. Mexican culture knew books; she also knew bureaucracy and heaps of official papers. The Aztec empire had features of the rule of law, and every dispute, every trial led to the accumulation of folders with documents: for example, if two villages were arguing over arable land, they confirmed their testimony with maps and their genealogies to prove that this or that family has rights to these fields.

Most of these records were deliberately destroyed after the Spanish conquest. Many of the books had to do with religion and magic: Bishop Zumarraga ordered them to be seized and burned along with other, no doubt, exclusively worldly books, such as books on history and the like. Fortunately, a large number of books escaped the fire; in addition, the Indians soon saw the advantages of the alphabetic writing that the Europeans brought with them, compared to the fuzzy and complex system that they used before. Based on old pictographic manuscripts (some of which were undoubtedly preserved by aristocratic families despite the ban), they compiled annals, sometimes in Mexican, but using European characters, sometimes in Spanish. These chronicles are of great value: the Annals of Cuautitlán, books on the history of Chimalpain Cuautleuanicin, Tesosomoc and Ixtlilxochitl, which are literally overflowing with the most accurate information about the life of the ancient Mexicans.

Finally, the Spaniards themselves left us some very important documents. The first wave of invaders, men as uncouth as they were brave, nonetheless had as their leader the statesman Hernan Cortés, and among their ranks was a born writer, a man who could both see and retell all that he there was an eyewitness, Bernal Diaz del Castillo. The first testimonies of a European about a world completely unfamiliar until then are contained in the letters of Cortes to Charles V and in the memoirs that Bernal Diaz dictated in his old age before his death. Cortes’ evidence is more detailed; Diaz – spontaneous, funny, tragic. In fact, none of them tried to see and evaluate what they saw impartially; their eyes were fixed mainly on fortifications and weapons, wealth and gold. They did not know the local language, which they monstrously distorted on every word. They were genuinely disgusted by the religion of the Mexicans, which, as they saw it, was disgusting and reprehensible worship of the devil. But, despite this, their testimonies are of great value as written documents, because through their eyes we see what a person is never destined to see again.

After the soldiers came the missionaries. The most famous of them, Father Bernardino de Sahagún, reached Mexico City in 1529. He learned the Nahuatl language, and by taking notes in that language under the dictation of Indian aristocrats and using the help of Indian scribes to illustrate the manuscript, Sahagún produced an admirable monumental book entitled A General History of the Events of New Spain. He devoted his whole life to this work, and it brought him the distrust of the authorities, who twice, in 1571 and 1577, took away his papers. Having said the last forgiveness to “his children of the Indians”, he died in Mexico City in 1590 year, and not rejoicing at the publication of at least the smallest fragment of his book. Other ministers of the church, although they were not like Sahagún, also left respectable works, especially Motolinia.

In addition to these books of paramount importance, mention must be made of the often anonymous descriptions and accounts of the sixteenth century written by priests, government officials, or jurists: and although they must often be used with reservations (accuracy was not always the main distinguishing feature of their authors), nevertheless they are a treasure trove of information. There are also many post-conquest Native American pictographic records, such as the Code of 1576, and legal documents, as both Indians and Spaniards were involved in innumerable disputes over land and taxes; and many valuable facts can be found in them.

In short, there is a lot of literature on the subject that allows us to see this last stage of Mexican civilization in an image, although imperfect due to many questions left unanswered, but nevertheless detailed, lively and vivid.

To avoid wrong chronology and confusion, we must limit ourselves not only in time but also in space. We are going to describe mainly urban life, the life of the townspeople in Mexico City Tenochtitlan. In addition, there was an obvious cultural unity between this city and some of the neighboring cities, especially Tezcuco, located on the solid ground of the coast of a huge lake, so there will be no more objection to using historical sources related to Tezcuco than to including some details in our description. taken from Xochimilco, Chalco, Cuautitlán or others. Indeed, everything suggests that life in the Valley of Mexico, at least in the cities, proceeded in the same way.

But one cannot ignore all the references to the empire, whose existence, products, political activities and religious ideas had such a strong influence on the capital itself. The empire was born in the 15th century, starting with a tripartite alliance, a three-headed association that linked the cities of the state of Mexico, Tezcoco and Tlacopan (now Tacuba): this association arose as a result of the wars that destroyed the supremacy of Azcapotsalco. However, the original rationale for the tripartite alliance soon fell apart: first Tlacopan and then Tezcoco found their privileges and their independence increasingly under pressure from the Mexicans. By the early 16th century, although the rulers of Tlacopan and Tezcuco were theoretically still allies of the Mexican Emperor, their alliance was to a large extent only an honorific. The Aztec monarch could interfere in the order of succession in both dynasties, and in fact appointed himself vassals, who were in reality imperial officials. When Cortes entered Mexico City, he was received by Montezuma, accompanied by two kings and several appointed rulers, indicating how close the status of kings was to that of state officials. Theoretically, the taxes from the provinces were still divided among the three ruling cities according to the original proportion (two-fifths Mexico City and Tezcuco, one-fifth Tlacopan), but there is reason to believe that the emperor of Tenochtitlan divided the taxes as he saw fit. In all likelihood, this union was already becoming a state headed by one person.

At the end of Montezuma II’s reign, the empire consisted of 38 tribute-paying provinces; to these we must also add small states with an indeterminate status, which were located along the caravan and military roads between Oashaka and the southern borders of Shokonochko. The empire reached the coast of both oceans: the Pacific in Cuautitlán and the Atlantic along the entire coast of the Gulf of Mexico from Tochpan to Tochtepec. In the west, its neighbor was the highly developed Tarascan tribe of Michoacan, in the north – nomad hunters, chichimequi ; in the northeast, the Haushtecs, a branch of the Maya who broke away. In the southeast, the independent but allied province of Xicalanco formed a sort of buffer state between the Mexicans of the central part of the empire and the Maya of the Yucatán. A number of possessions or territories of tribal unions retained their independence from Mexico City, being either enclaves in the territory of the empire, or located on its borders. Such was the case with the Nahuatl republic of Tlaxcala on the central plateau, with the Principality of Metztitlán (and also Nahuatl) in the mountains to the northeast, with the little state of Yopi on the Pacific coast, and with the Chinantecs, the inhabitants of the highlands, who lived then, as in ours. days, in an impregnable mountain range between the coastal plain and the valleys of Oaxaca.

The provinces themselves were more fiscal than political units. In the capital of each province lived a government official, kalpishki, who was entrusted with collecting taxes: his duties and powers were limited to this. There were no rulers appointed by the central authority, except for fortified cities on the borders of the empire or in newly annexed lands, such as in Ostoman opposite the country of the Tarascans, in Sosolan in the territory of the Mixtecs, in Oaxaca, or in Shokonochko on the border of the Mayan possessions – everything was fifteen or twenty such cities. As for the rest of the territory, there “province” meant nothing more than a financial framework in which the united cities existed under very diverse political regimes of government. Some retained their chieftains on the condition that they pay tribute, others were more brutally colonized and had new rulers appointed in Mexico City. Each city retained its political and administrative autonomy on the sole condition that it would pay taxes, maintain its armies, and refer lawsuits to Mexico City or Tezcoco as the court of last resort. Therefore, there was no true centralization: what we call the Aztec empire was in fact a somewhat vague confederation of city-states with widely divergent political organizations. Until its very end, the political thought of the Mexicans did not go beyond the concept of the city (altepetl): the basic unit of the empire was the autonomous city; he could ally with other cities or submit to another city, but nevertheless he remained the most important unit of the political structure. The empire was a mosaic of cities.

The existence and state of the empire, of course, had a huge impact on the ruling city and the way of life in it. Either by tribute or by trade, everything that was produced in the provinces found its way to Mexico City, especially tropical goods hitherto unknown on the central plateau, such as cotton, cocoa, hides, colorful feathers, turquoise, and finally gold. Therefore, luxury could appear in Tenochtitlan: luxury in clothes and jewelry, luxury in food, luxury in houses and furnishings – luxury, which was based on a huge variety of goods that did not cease to flock to the capital from all corners of the confederation.

On the other hand, in the empire that was formed in this way, when some of its members (Oaxaca, for example) had only recently become such, not everything was calm. There was always a city that tried to regain its former independence, refusing to pay tribute and brutally cracking down on kalpishki and his people. After that, a punitive expedition was usually sent there in order to restore order and punish the rebels. More and more, the resident of Mexico ceased to be, as before, a peasant warrior and became a professional fighter, constantly on the battlefield. The vast empire, made even larger by the fact that every journey through it was a journey on foot through difficult terrain, was like a Penelope tapestry, always unfinished, always in need of work. Therefore, the Mexican, already naturally warlike, seldom put aside his weapon. Over vast expanses, the emperor was either forced to endlessly prolong military campaigns, or to maintain permanent garrisons in remote places. This state of affairs left far behind the primitive tribe of the Mexicans, in which every adult regularly left military service and returned to the cultivation of his land, leaving his sword for koa (a tool resembling a shovel for plowing the land. – Auth.). Thus, there was a tendency to attribute warfare to the main occupation of the Aztecs, and everyone else was obliged to work for them.

Finally, this empire included many tribes of other origins who spoke completely different languages: it is true that in the central provinces there was a population that spoke the Nahua language, but the Otomi already living next to them spoke their incomprehensible language and worshiped their ancient gods: sun, wind and earth. And at the same time, it was the Otomi who made up the bulk of the population of Cuauacan, Shilotepec, Waypochtla and Atocpan. To the northeast and east were the Huashtecs in Oshitipan, the Totonacs in Tochpan and Tlapacoyan, and the Mazatecs in Tochtepeque. In the southeast, there were the Mixtecs in Yoaltepec and Tlacchiauco, and the Zapotecs in Coyolapan. In the frontier country of Shoconochco, the Maya lived in the south, and in the southwest, the Tlappanecs in Chiauteopan and the Cuitlatecs and Coixca in Cihuatlán and Tepecuacuilco. Finally, to the west were the Masahua and Matlalzink tribes in Xocotitlán, Tolokan, Ocuylan, and Tlachko. Inevitably the customs and beliefs of these dissimilar tribes influenced the customs and beliefs of the tribe in power. At the time in question, the Mexicans had already adopted feather ornaments from the inhabitants of the tropics, amber jewelry attached to the lower lip from the Maya from Zinacantlán, colorful, embroidered clothes from the Totonacs, gold jewelry from the Mixtecs, as well as the goddess of the flesh the love of the Huashtecs and the festival of Atamalcualizli, celebrated by the Mazatecs once every eight years in honor of the planet Venus. Their religion was open, the pantheon of gods susceptible to the emergence of new gods: all the small local gods of the agrarian tribes, such as Tepoztecatl, the rural god of harvest and strong drink, who was worshiped in Tepozotlan, easily fell into it. In fact, some rituals were accompanied by chants in the languages ​​of other peoples.

Thus, during the period of time when the Spaniards intervened in the established course of events, a historical and social development took place, as a result of which the Mexicans turned from simple nomadic farmers into a ruling people, having their own city state and dominating over many other lands and peoples.

The old tribal order of society changed greatly with the advent of a class of merchants who began to enjoy significant privileges, as well as with the growth of royal power. Official morality extolled the modesty of former times as vainly as it did in the last days of the Roman Republic, and the laws governing expenditure fought in vain against ostentation.

However, on the outskirts of rich and magnificent cities, the peasant – Nahuatl, Otomi, Zapotec, etc. – continued quietly and patiently to lead his life, full of hard work. We know almost nothing about him, about this maseualli, whose labor fed the townspeople. Sometimes you can see his sculptural image, where he is dressed only in a loincloth, since embroidered cloaks were not available to him. Neither his nor the Spanish historian was of interest to himself, or his hut with a maize field and turkeys, or his small monogamous family, or his narrow outlook. They mentioned him only in passing, between descriptions of the life of the Aztecs and historical events. But it is very important to speak about him here, if only in order to feel his silent presence in the shadow of the splendor of urban culture, especially since after the disaster of 1521 and the complete decline of all power, all ideas, the entire structure of society and religion, he alone survived and continues to live.

Catalog: books
books -> Textbook Nizhny Novgorod 2011
books -> Textbook can be used by students, graduate students studying psychological, social, pedagogical sciences, as well as teachers, psychologists, social workers. L. M. Shipitsyna, 2007 Publisher
books -> Collection of materials of the III International Scientific and Practical Conference Yekaterinburg 2011 bbk 448-951. 663. 1
books -> Textbook Nizhny Novgorod 2011
books -> S. A. Belicheva. Fundamentals of preventive psychology
books -> Elena Petrovna Gora study guide
books -> Educational and methodological complex in the discipline “Practical polygraphy”
books -> Livanova E. Yu. “The role of practice in the formation of professional competencies of a university graduate”
books -> Igor Ivanovich Kalnoy, Yuriy Askoldovich Sandulov Philosophy for postgraduate students