The Aztec
The Empire of Tenochtitlan
A promised land. The allure of such a place has driven people across the centuries to follow the whims of their gods, in the belief that a sanctuary lay at the end of whatever miseries beset them. For the Biblical Hebrews, it was Canaan; for the fourteenth century Mexica (Aztec), it ended up being an island on Lake Texcoco, smack in the heart of the valley of Mexico. Huitzilopochtli (wheat-see-loh-pohch-tlee) was suddenly conceived by the Mother Goddess, angering his sister and brothers. When they sought to slay the unborn Huitzilopochtli and his mother, he burst from the womb, fully grown, garbed as a warrior wielding an atlatl, and bearing the incarnated spirit of a fire deity. Hewing his siblings down one by one, Huitzilopochtli cast their severed heads into the void, forming moon and stars with a neverending vendetta against the sun.
Master of the sun, he was born the God of war - weapons literally at the ready. He had a wrathful visage that fascinated Spaniards, like Bernal Diaz del Castillo centuries later: “He had a very broad face and huge terrible eyes. And...was girdled with huge snakes made of gold and precious stone, and in one hand he held a bow, in the other some arrows.” A belligerent god for a belligerent people, Huitzilopochtli's defeat of his kin mirrored the Mexica conquest of their own neighbors, for as a native song relates, when Huitzilopochtli slew his kindred, “he took possession of them/ he introduced them into his destiny/ he made them his own insignia.” What better explanation for the rise of the empire than this? Guided by his orders, the Mexica came as newcomers into the valley of Mexico - mistrusted wanderers, who fought and antagonized, until Huitzilopochtli bid them settle at the place where an eagle nested upon a cactus.
The traditional founding date is 1345, but how long the Aztecs were wandering is a matter of scholarly debate. Another problem in dealing with the historiography of the Aztecs, is that it begins with the sixteenth-century Spanish, post-conquest. Working with the native population, Nahuatl speaking priests, like Fray Bernardino de Sahagun and Fray Diego Duran, painstakingly produced the earliest written sources of Aztec customs, mythology, history, learning, military and civil organization, and daily life. Besides the obviously orally dominated culture, a secondary reason for this may be derived from de Sahagun, who noted that Aztec codices detailing their early history were “burned when Itzcoatl ruled in Mexico [1427 -1440]...for [they] contaneth many falsehoods.” Perhaps the Empire’s founder wanted to erase history before his time, and begin a new imperial history - starting with his own reign. The Spanish, no doubt, did the rest. In any case, orally transmitted customs, written down by these dedicated clerics (or projects conducted by native artists or craftsmen under the auspices of the new Spanish regime), provide the earliest written sources for the Aztec Empire. Having just defeated them, and with a mission to evangelize the populace, these accounts are often spun with a Christian bent, invoking a natural bias against. Undeniable admiration and fascination for Aztec culture and belief was evident, though, before the coming of Cortes.
Within a hundred years from Tenochtitlan’s traditional founding date, the city was part of an alliance with Tlacopan and Texcoco. Eventually, Tenochtitlan outstripped its partners, becoming the dominant of the three, and capital of an ever-expanding empire. Militarily, Aztec armies centered on semi-professional farmers who could be called up for a brief campaign, so long as it did not interfere with the harvest. On a permanent basis, Aztec Tlatoani (‘one who speaks’) called upon units based directly in Tenochtitlan or in outposts strung across the empire. Schools for nobility and commoners dotted the cityscape, producing the next generation of the empire’s military and religious elites.
Conventional wars were kept as short as possible, simply because the Aztec army, while fierce, was rather small; disaster on the battlefield did not bode well for imperial longevity. Counteracting this problem, Aztec leaders engaged in several modes of deterrence: first, instill fear among the conquered, to such a degree that the mere thought of rebellion never dared enter their minds; second, avoid confronting an enemy strong enough to hurt you, by limiting the fighting to a ‘Flower War,’ a highly ritualistic mode of warfare, whereby a predetermined number of warriors meet one another on a chosen field, and duke it out as champions of their respective nations. The first method involved plenty of human sacrifices. Aztecs fully believed their gods must be nurtured by human blood. As they gave of themselves to create the world, and endured trials in humanity’s defense (Huitzilopochtli fought an eternal war against his vengeful siblings who wanted nothing more than to destroy the sun and plunge the world into darkness), so their creations gave of themselves in return. It also worked to keep people in line because, “witnessing the gruesome deaths of not only enemy soldiers but also local slaves, infants, and the occasional free commoner, must have made most people think twice before engaging in any form of resistance against their king or local noble.”
The Flower Wars, on the other hand, were designed to minimize loss of life as much as possible. Attrition, pure and simple, but kept within the confined limits of a highly controlled environment. Flower Wars allowed the Aztec to pin down a peer power for decades, if they wanted, enabling them to dedicate military resources to other theaters of conflict. However, if an opponent was not intimidated into submission, the war escalated as, “the number of combatants increased, captives were sacrificed rather than returned, and bows and arrows introduced indiscriminate death rather than individual demonstrations of skill and bravery.”
Upon these foundations, Aztec armies conquered clear across the waist of central Mexico, isolating pockets of defiance in a ring of territory and choking them down until there was nothing left of them. The Imperial heartland itself flourished in the century following the empires’ rise in the 1430’s. Master engineers and architects, the Aztecs damned the vital waters of Lake Texcoco and forged its breadth with massive causeways, linking Tenochtitlan with the mainland. Soaring skyward, Aztec temples and palaces intimidated and awed all who gazed upon them. “When we saw all those cities and villages built in the water,” Castillo remembered, “we were astounded. These great towns and buildings rising from the water, all made of stone, seemed like an enchanted vision from a tale of Amadis. Indeed, some of our soldiers asked whether it was not all a dream.”
What had taken a century to erect, however, toppled in three years. Imperial control came by ostracizing the conquered. Exploiting these grudges, Cortes created an alliance of Mesoamerican cities against the Tenochtitlan of their nightmares. Where disease did most of the work, the Spanish alliance finished Tenochtitlan off. 1521 saw the Empire of the Aztec crumble, in fire and blood.
The sun gives life, but what happens when the moon and the stars are trying to destroy it as a means to annihilate humanity? Best not to think about that, so the Aztec sacrificed humans to strengthen their patron deity, Huitzilopochtli (wheat-see-loh-pohch-tlee), the sun, and god of war. Human sacrifice gave him strength to maintain his struggle against the eternal forces of moon and stars, who just so happened to be his sister and brothers - who he’d murdered because they’d previously cut off their mother’s head in a long tale of family drama. How, then, does Huitzilopochtli measure up, compared to other pantheon heads? Zeus for example, the maniacal King of Olympus, who sires heroes off of unwilling women, because he can, or Odin, the one-eyed Aesir King, trying desperately to stop Ragnorok, while building an army made up of the best-fallen warriors - just in case. Chief gods serve specific purposes in the minds of their worshipers. What is Huitzilopochtli’s purpose? Better yet, besides the obvious human sacrifice, what role did the lord of the sun play in the daily lives of the Mexica people? For background, look here:
Bernal Diaz del Castillo. The Conquest of New Spain, trans. J. M. Cohen. (New York: Penguin Books, 1962), 236 -237.
Leon-Portilla, Mative Mesoamerican Spirituality, 225.
Diego Duran. The History of the Indies of New Spain, trans. Doris Heyden. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 42 -44; Mundy, Barbara E. The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City. (Austen: University of Texas Press, 2018), 1.
de Sahugan, Anderson and Dribble. The Florentine Codex, General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 11, 191.
Hassig, Ross. Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 30 -34.
Smith. Michael E. The Aztecs. (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 225.
Hassig, Ross. Mexico and the Spanish Conquest. (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2006), 37.
Castillo and Cohen. The Conquest of New Spain, 214 -215.