The Aztecs

The central highlands of Mexico had been the site of civilization in Middle America since the
time of Teotihuacán. But the cities of this altiplano were exposed to invasions by nomadic
Chichimec tribes from the northern prairies. One such were the Mexica, who, according to
their own legends, commenced their long migration from the region of Aztlán in the north-
west down into central Mexico in the latter half of the twelfth century. For another hundred
years the small Mexican tribe roamed across the central plateau suffering trials and
privations, settling for a while near Tula, where they absorbed Toltec influences, and
eventually making a home on the hill of Chapultepec on the western shores of Lake Texcoco
in the Anáhuac basin (the modern Valley of Mexico). There they merged with the people of
the surrounding areas and, without ever losing the core of their tribal identity, they adopted
many of the local customs and beliefs, including the tutelary deity Huitzilopochtli. Several
decades later they were driven from Chapultepec and taken into captivity by the neighbouring
city-state of Culhuacan.

The original myth of the Mexica relates their release from this bondage and their quest for a
homeland of their own: the tribal god Huitzilopochtli commanded that they should put down
roots in the place where an eagle perched on a cactus bush was to be found attacking a
serpent (the national emblem of the Republic of Mexico represents this sign). The portent
appeared on a large island on Lake Texcoco, and the Mexica built their capital there in the
middle years of the fourteenth century, calling it Tenochtitlán, the ‘place of the cactus’. On
this marshy terrain the Mexica developed a technique of land reclamation for agriculture,
which involved forming soil-beds called chinampas, using heaps of earth and sediment held
together with wickerwork. Chinampas were extremely fertile, permitting year-round
cultivation of crops, but these man-made strips of packed earth could not on their own sustain
a growing population; and there were other raw materials required for urban living which
were not available in the areas surrounding the lake.

Lack of space and material resources forced the Mexica to look outside their lakeland
territory and this led to a process of expansion that within a century had converted a once
despised and errant tribe of barbarians into the makers of a brilliant imperial civilization. At
its centre lay Tenochtitlán, by then a kind of Venice of America, a city of canals and
causeways with a population of some 200,000 inhabitants, larger than that of any
contemporary European metropolis. The rise to power of the Mexica began in the early
fifteenth century (possibly in the year 1427), when the chieftain Itzcoatl rebelled against
paying tribute to the citystate of Atzcapotzalco, then the dominant force in the Valley of
Mexico and the capital of the Tepanec kingdom. Victory, however, had to be won in alliance
with two other neighbours, the city-state of Texcoco on the far northeastern shore of the
lagoon, and the small town of Tlacopán (later known as Tacuba). It was this Triple Alliance
that constituted the Aztec Confederation. The term Aztec, though derived from Aztlán, the
place of origin of the Mexica tribe, was rarely employed at the time, but it has become a
useful name by which to call the alliance of the three city-states of the Anáhuac valley that
went on to win an empire. Tenochtitlán was the dominant partner in the alliance: the Aztec
emperor was invariably a member of the royal lineage of the Mexica, though he was chosen
in consultation with the lords of Texcoco and Tlacopán.

The royal chieftain Itzcoatl led the alliance in the conquest of all the cities and towns that had
formerly paid tribute to the Tepanecs. It was his successor, Montezuma I, who carried Aztec
power outside the area of Tepanec dominion, pushing south into the region of Oaxaca, home
of the Mixtec people. He subdued several of their urban centres, inflicting terrible massacres,
and established Aztec colonies in their midst. The next people to be conquered were the
Totonacs, whose territory lay in the tropical lowlands around the Gulf of Mexico. Later rulers
would carve out Aztec domains on the Pacific coast around Acapulco and further down
towards the present-day Guatemalan border at Soconusco. Nevertheless, there were limits to
Aztec power. Close to their homeland, for instance, they were unable (or perhaps unwilling)
to subjugate the Tlaxcalans, who inhabited a neighbouring valley; attempts to expand towards
the north-west were thwarted by the Tarascans, who ruled an emerging ‘empire' in the area of
modern Michoacán. Aztec society itself was sharply divided between nobles and commoners.
The aristocracy comprised warriors, priests and important state officials, who owned private
land and directly profited from the fruits of conquest.

The mass of commoners, however, were agricultural labourers, who lived as their forebears
had done before the Aztecs embarked on their imperial career. In common with other peoples
of Middle America this large lower class was organized into calpulli, communal entities
which appear to have derived from kinship groups but which developed into clans performing
certain social and economic functions. Most calpulli were rural, and each inhabited a head
town and a few outlying villages. The chiefs of the calpulli were intermediaries responsible
for channelling goods and services to the Aztec ruling class, either through imperial
administrators or through the ethnic lords of subject kingdoms, whom the Aztecs co-opted
into the empire and permitted to benefit from the tribute system. In the cities there were
calpulli which did not own land but were dedicated instead to a particular trade, much like
medieval European guilds. These artisans and merchants formed a middle stratum that was
able to profit from imperial expansion, yet did not enjoy any special social privileges. A
further class of landless calpulli were those whose members worked as household servants or
on the estates of the aristocracy in a condition similar to serfdom in Europe. There was also a
large class of slaves; these were people who had been captured in battle, or simply peasants
who had fallen on hard times and could survive only by selling themselves into slavery. Life
for the majority of commoners was very poor.

Rural labourers eked out a subsistence living tilling the soil; they also had to pay tribute and
take their turn to do the coatequitl service, which meant performing such obligations as
labouring on state lands, working on the construction of public buildings or serving in the
army. Land, though held by the community, was allocated for cultivation to individual
families, who were not permitted to dispose of their plots but could pass them on to the next
generation. The calpulli's affairs were regulated by hereditary chieftains; they formed a
council of elders which included local priests and officials such as a record-keeper and a
treasurer. The basis of Aztec dominion was the levying of tribute in the form of goods and
labour from tribes defeated in battle. Territory was also expropriated and distributed as
private estates to deserving Aztec nobles. To maintain their hegemony, the Aztecs planted
colonies in conquered lands and supported these with Aztec garrisons. Tribute-collectors
would bring back an abundance of goods to

Tenochtitlán, not just staples such as maize or beans but also luxuries and trappings of status
that the Aztec aristocracy craved – objects of jade and gold, precious stones, quetzal feathers
and jaguar skins. Indeed, Aztec conquests were motivated as much by religious and cultural
factors as by purely economic needs. Defeated tribes were forced to add the Aztec deities to
their pantheon and to adopt the Nahuatl tongue. A major reason for waging war was the
taking of prisoners to be sacrificed upon the altars of the great pyramid at Tenochtitlán. The
Aztec gods stimulated belligerence by their unceasing demand for human blood, and it is
possible that the purpose of the continual ‘wars of flowers' against the neighbouring
Tlaxcalans was to ensure a steady supply of sacrificial victims rather than conquest as such.
The Aztec nobility were able to live in great luxury by adapting the traditional customs and
institutions of Middle American tribal culture to their own advantage. The most effective of
these adaptations was in the field of myth and religion, for it was religion that underpinned
the unquestionable authority of the Aztec emperor or tlatoani (‘he who speaks’), and provided
the rationale for conquest and the imposition of tribute.

Religion was a particularly effective tool of imperialism because much of the Aztec religion
was common to other peoples of Middle America, all of whom could trace their heritage to
the Toltecs, the true founders of Nahuatl civilization. Once the Aztecs had started on their
imperial expansion, they took pride in styling themselves the heirs of the Toltecs, a claim
which served to give their rule a sacred justification. Nahuatl religion was exceedingly
complex and is far from being fully understood. A major difficulty here is the lack of fixed
identities in the well-stocked Aztec pantheon of some 126 main gods. Opposite attributes
could be given to the same deity, or a quality associated with one god might be assumed
intermittently by his enemy. This mutability arose from the dualism which permeated the
Aztec mind. For instance, the originator of the universe was the ‘dual god‘, Ometeotl, who
had both a male and a female manifestation, ‘Two Lord' and ‘Two Lady’; through their union
four sons were born – the white, black, red and blue ‘smoking mirrors' – who were each
responsible for the creation of particular worlds and all the creatures that lived in them. But
then again these four creator-gods were also characterized as representing different aspects of
a single all-seeing and all-powerful deity known as the Smoking Mirror, Tezcatlipoca. In
Aztec cosmogony four worlds, or ‘suns’, had come into being and each had been successively
destroyed. The age in which they lived, the Fifth Sun, was believed to have been inaugurated
with the rise of Teotihuacán, the ‘city of the gods’, and was the special creation of the Sun
God himself, whom the Aztecs self-servingly identified with their own tribal god
Huitzilopochtli.

In order for the life of this Fifth Sun to be sustained, the Sun God demanded to be nourished
on human hearts – hence the need to procure victims through constant warfare. This Fifth Sun
was destined to be destroyed, a certainty that burdened the Aztec psyche with a presentiment
of doom. Another important myth – also linked to that of cosmic destruction and renewal,
and which the Aztecs turned to imperialistic ends – was the story of Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed
Serpent, a god-made-man said to have reigned in Tula and to have brought civilization, law
and good government to the Toltecs. The Plumed Serpent was driven out of Tula by his
enemies, taking refuge in the East, from where he was supposed to return one day to
inaugurate a golden age. Some Spanish chroniclers recorded that when Hernán Cortés
appeared out of the East in 1519, the Indians believed him to be Quetzalcoatl. By claiming a
kind of apostolic succession to this Toltec redeemer-king and law-giver (priests were called
‘successors to Quetzalcoatl’), the Aztecs imbued their imperial rule with a religious authority,
for, like all other imperialists, the Aztecs believed they were conferring the benefits of
civilization upon the people they conquered.