The Finding and Founding of Mexico Tenochtitlan
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Stear Dissertation COGA Submission 26 May 2015
BEYOND THE FIFTH SUN: NAHUA TELEOLOGIES IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES By ©Copyright 2015 Ezekiel G. Stear Submitted to the graduate degree program in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson, Santa Arias ________________________________ Verónica Garibotto ________________________________ Patricia Manning ________________________________ Rocío Cortés ________________________________ Robert C. Schwaller Date Defended: May 6, 2015! ii The Dissertation Committee for Ezekiel G. Stear certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: BEYOND THE FIFTH SUN: NAHUA TELEOLOGIES IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES ________________________________ Chairperson, Santa Arias Date approved: May 6, 2015 iii Abstract After the surrender of Mexico-Tenochtitlan to Hernán Cortés and his native allies in 1521, the lived experiences of the Mexicas and other Nahuatl-speaking peoples in the valley of Mexico shifted radically. Indigenous elites during this new colonial period faced the disappearance of their ancestral knowledge, along with the imposition of Christianity and Spanish rule. Through appropriations of linear writing and collaborative intellectual projects, the native population, in particular the noble elite sought to understand their past, interpret their present, and shape their future. Nahua traditions emphasized balanced living. Yet how one could live out that balance in unknown times ahead became a topic of ongoing discussion in Nahua intellectual communities, and a question that resounds in the texts they produced. Writing at the intersections of Nahua studies, literary and cultural history, and critical theory, in this dissertation I investigate how indigenous intellectuals in Mexico-Tenochtitlan envisioned their future as part of their re-evaluations of the past. -
Cannibalism and Aztec Human Sacrifice Stephanie Zink May, 2008 a Senior Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Require
CANNIBALISM AND AZTEC HUMAN SACRIFICE STEPHANIE ZINK MAY, 2008 A SENIOR PROJECT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN- LA CROSSE Abstract As the nature of Aztec cannibalism is poorly known, this paper examines the extent to which it was practiced and the motives behind it. Using the methodology of documentary research I have determined that the Aztecs did in fact engage in cannibalism, specifically ritual and gustatory cannibalism, however, the extent of it is indefinite. The analysis that I have conducted suggests that, while several hypotheses exist, there is only one that is backed by the evidence: Aztec cannibalism was practiced for religious reasons. In order to better understand this issue, other hypotheses must be examined. 2 Introduction Cannibalism is mostly considered a taboo in western culture, with the exception of sacraments in Christianity, which involve the symbolic eating of the body of Christ and the drinking of Christ’s blood. The general public, in western societies, is disgusted by the thought of humans eating each other, and yet it still seems to fascinate them. Accounts of cannibalism can be found throughout the history of the world from the United States and the Amazon Basin to New Zealand and Indonesia. A few fairly well documented instances of cannibalism include the Aztecs; the Donner Party, a group of pioneers who were trapped while trying to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the winter of 1846-1847; the Uruguayan soccer team that crashed in Chile in 1972 in the Andes Mountains (Hefner, http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/c/cannibalism.html). -
Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World
S Y M P O S I U M A B S T R A C T S Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World _______________________________________________________________________________________ Cecelia F. Klein, University of California, Los Angeles Huitzilopochli’s magical birth and victory, and Suffer the Little Children: Contested Visions of Child the world-mountain of cosmic renewal. Such Sacrifice in the Americas contrasting, alternating themes, the subject that I explore here, were similarly expressed at other This talk will address the ways that artists over the sacred mountains in the Valley of Mexico. The centuries have depicted the sacrifice of children in juxtaposed celebrations of conquest and tributary the preconquest Americas, and what those images rulership, alternating with the call for world can tell us about the politics of visual representation regeneration, were complementary aims engaged in complex arenas where governments and social in the annual cycle, expressing the dynamic factions struggle to negotiate a more advantageous obligations of Aztec kings in maintaining the place for themselves. The focus will be on the formal integration of society and nature. differences between New and Old World representa- tions of Aztec and Inca child sacrifice and the ways in which western artistic conventions and tropes Carolyn Dean, University of California, Santa Cruz long used in Europe to visualize its “Others” were Inca Transubstantiation deployed in the making of images of Native American child sacrifice. Colonial and early modern images of In Pre-Hispanic times the Inca believed that the subject, it will be argued, were largely shaped, objects could host spiritual essences. Although not by the desire to record historical “truths” about rocks were the most common hosts, a wide child sacrifice among the Aztec and the Inca, but by variety of things (including living bodies) were their makers and patrons’ own ambitions at home, capable of housing sacred anima. -
Aztec Festivals of the Rain Gods
Michael Graulich Aztec Festivals of the Rain Gods Aunque contiene ritos indiscutiblemente agrícolas, el antiguo calendario festivo de veintenas (o 'meses') de la época azteca resulta totalmente desplazado en cuanto a las temporadas, puesto que carece de intercalados que adaptan el año solar de 365 días a la duración efectiva del año tropical. Creo haber demostrado en diversas pu- blicaciones que las fiestas pueden ser interpretadas en rigor sólo en relación con su posición original, no corrida aún. El presente trabajo muestra cómo los rituales y la re- partición absolutamente regular y lógica de las vein- tenas, dedicadas esencialmente a las deidades de la llu- via - tres en la temporada de lluvias y una en la tempo- rada de sequía - confirman el fenómeno del desplaza- miento. The Central Mexican festivals of the solar year are described with consi- derable detail in XVIth century sources and some of them have even been stu- died by modern investigators (Paso y Troncoso 1898; Seler 1899; Margain Araujo 1945; Acosta Saignes 1950; Nowotny 1968; Broda 1970, 1971; Kirchhoff 1971). New interpretations are nevertheless still possible, especially since the festivals have never been studied as a whole, with reference to the myths they reenacted, and therefore, could not be put in a proper perspective. Until now, the rituals of the 18 veintenas {twenty-day 'months') have always been interpreted according to their position in the solar year at the time they were first described to the Spaniards. Such festivals with agricultural rites have been interpreted, for example, as sowing or harvest festivals on the sole ground that in the 16th century they more or less coincided with those seasonal events. -
Sweeping the Way: Divine Transformation in the Aztec Festival of Ochpaniztli
S CONTENTS WEEPING THE WAY LIST OF FIGURES IX ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI FOREWORD BY ELIZABETH HILL BOONE XV INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE 17 Sources for Ochpaniztli: Negotiating Text and Image in Early Colonial Mexican Manuscripts CHAPTER TWO 35 Visualizing the Sacred in the Ochpaniztli Festival CHAPTER THREE 69 Purification and Renewal during the Festival of Ochpaniztli CHAPTER FOUR 103 The Colonial Image of Tlazolteotl CHAPTER FIVE 123 Ochpaniztli in the Mexican Codex Borbonicus CONCLUSION 155 NOTES 167 BIBLIOGRAPHY 209 INDEX 223 vii SWEEPING THE WAY INTRODUCTION Perhaps no other aspect of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica has engendered more interest than the sanguinary practices for which the Mexica of central Mexico (the so-called Aztecs) are particularly infamous. Since the arrival in the early six- teenth century of Spanish conquistadors and, soon after, Spanish Christian mis- sionaries, descriptions and depictions of human sacrifice have held a special place in the literature describing Mexico’s aboriginal inhabitants. Worried that the na- tive population continued to practice “idolatrous” and sacrificial rites—perhaps even in the guise of Christian pageantry—the mendicant friars paid special at- tention to understanding indigenous ritual practices. To this end they initiated an extraordinary series of manuscripts, many of them illustrated, that aimed to document Mexican calendars, associated calendrical rituals, and the nature of the aboriginal “gods.” These sources span the first century of Spanish presence in central Mexico. Although some studies, -
Lorena Morales Aztec Identity Narratives from Aztlán to the DF.Pdf
Aztec Identity Narratives: From Aztlán to the D.F. © Lorena Morales, February 2011 1 Paper prepared for the Euroacademia International Conference Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities Zagreb, 18 – 20 April 2013 This paper is a draft Please do not cite Aztec Identity Narratives: From Aztlán to the D.F. © Lorena Morales, February 2011 2 Aztec Identity Narratives: From Aztlán to the D.F. ©Lorena Morales Independent Scholar, New York, USA & EuroAcademia Affiliated Member Aztec Mexico identity slippage psychic trauma The Aztecs crafted a hegemonic political, religious, societal, and cultural topography in the basin of Mexico during the fifteenth century. This occurred a mere three hundred years after Nahuatl speakers emigrated from the mythic land of Aztlán to the Lake Texcoco of Central Mexico region during the Middle Postclassic Period (AD 1150 - 1350). i The Aztecs, a composite and irredentist people of several city-states in the Basin of Mexico, asserted themselves militarily to maintain a cohesive societal structure, extended from the locus of the Mexican capital of Tenochtitlán (Figure 1). Various scholars have examined political, ceremonial, commercial and social roles, before and well after the Hispanic advent. Others concentrate on explicating the identities and roles of the religious Aztec pantheon. However, the branding of an objective / subjective meta-Aztec identity that transcends specific roles (for example: that of the king, the priest, the warrior, the sage, the medic, the mother, et cetera) the me remains for consideration. This paper investigates the problematization of Aztec identity (its constant erasure and re-inscription since the Middle Postclassic Period) through a structuralist assessment of ritual in late PostClassic and Aztec colonial manuscripts. -
El Origen Del Maíz En Relación a Los Dos Géneros Y La Creación De La
El origen del maíz en relación a los dos géneros y la creación de la tierra fértil en el mito de Tlaltecuhtli The Origin of Maize in Relation to the Two Genera and the Creation of the Fertile Land in the Myth of Tlaltecuhtli Leda Peretti Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7355-697X [email protected] Resumen: En los mitos modernos relativos al maíz del área maya y de la costa del Golfo, cuando el protagonista es una mujer se establece que su sacrificio, generalmente operado por el Sol, es el evento necesario a traducir en bienes concretos lo que ella contiene a nivel poten- cial, los granos de maíz; viceversa, cuando el protagonista es un varón, su muerte, provocada tanto por su abuela como por su madre, es lo que permite la transformación del joven en el dios del maíz. Símilmente, en el mito cosmogónico de Tlaltecuhtli, del cual se propone una nueva lectura, la cultura mexica establece que es el sacrificio de la entidad primigenia femenina, realizado por deidades masculinas, el acto creador de la Tierra bondadosa. Esta transformación de la materia telúrica femenina en tierra fértil, en el mito en cuestión, tiene una valencia masculina. De manera congruente, en la veintena Ochpaniztli, propiciatoria de la regeneración periódica de la vegetación e in primis del maíz, tenía que ser un varón el que vistiera la piel de la diosa Toci, después de su sacrificio y despellejamiento. Palabras clave: maíz; sacrificio; mito de Tlalteutl-Tlaltecuhtli;Toci; Ochpaniztli; Nahua; costa del Golfo; México. Abstract: In the modern maize myths of the Mayan area and the Gulf Coast where the protagonist is a woman, it is established that her sacrifice, usually carried out by the Sun, is the necessary event to transform what she contains at the potential level into concrete goods, that is corn. -
The University of Chicago the History of Idolatry and The
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO THE HISTORY OF IDOLATRY AND THE CODEX DURÁN PAINTINGS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY BY KRISTOPHER TYLER DRIGGERS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JUNE 2020 Copyright © 2020 by Kristopher Driggers All rights reserved. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ………..……………………………………………………………… iv ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………….. viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .….………………………………...………………………….. ix INTRODUCTION: The History of Idolatry and the Codex Durán Paintings……………… 1 CHAPTER 1. Historicism and Mesoamerican Tradition: The Book of Gods and Rites…… 34 CHAPTER 2. Religious History and the Veintenas: Productive Misreadings and Primitive Survivals in the Calendar Paintings ………………………………………………………… 66 CHAPTER 3. Toward Signification: Narratives of Chichimec Religion in the Opening Paintings of the Historia Treatise…………………………………………………………… 105 CHAPTER 4. The Idolater Kings: Rulers and Religious History in the Later Historia Paintings……………………………………………………………………………. 142 CONCLUSION. Picturing the History of Idolatry: Four Readings ………………………… 182 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………. 202 APPENDIX: FIGURES ……………………………………………………………………... 220 iii LIST OF FIGURES Some images are not reproduced due to restrictions. Chapter 1 1.1 Image of the Goddess Chicomecoatl, Codex Durán Folio 283 recto…………………..220 1.2 Priests, Codex Durán Folio 273 recto………………………………………………......221 1.3 Quetzalcoatl with devotional offerings, Codex Durán folio 257 verso………………...222 1.4 Codex Durán image of Camaxtli alongside frontispiece of Motolinia manuscript (caption only)..……………………………………………………………………….....223 1.5 Priests drawing blood with a zacatlpayolli in the corner, Codex Durán folio 248….….224 1.6 Priests wearing garlands and expressively gesturing, Codex Durán folio 246 recto.…..225 1.7 Tezcatlipoca, Codex Durán folio 241 recto ..………………………………….……….226 1.8 Image from Trachtenbuch, Christoph Weiditz, pp. -
The Devil and the Skirt an Iconographic Inquiry Into the Prehispanic Nature of the Tzitzimime
THE DEVIL AND THE SKIRT AN ICONOGRAPHIC INQUIRY INTO THE PREHISPANIC NATURE OF THE TZITZIMIME CECELIA F. KLEIN U.C.L.A. INTRODUCTION On folio 76r of the colonial Central Mexican painted manuscript Codex Magliabechiano, a large, round-eyed figure with disheveled black hair and skeletal head and limbs stares menacingly at the viewer (Fig. 1a). 1 Turned to face us, the image appears ready to burst from the cramped confines of its pictorial space, as if to reach out and grasp us with its sharp talons. Stunned by its gaping mouth and its protruding tongue in the form of an ancient Aztec sacrificial knife, viewers today may re- coil from the implication that the creature wants to eat them. This im- pression is confirmed by the cognate image on folio 46r of Codex Tudela (Fig. 1b). In the less artful Tudela version, it is blood rather than a stone knife that issues from the frightening figures mouth. The blood pours onto the ground in front of the figures outspread legs, where a snake dangles in the Magliabecchiano image. Whereas the Maglia- bechiano figure wears human hands in its ears, the ears of the Tudela figure have been adorned with bloody cloths. In both manuscripts, long assumed to present us with a window to the prehispanic past, a crest of paper banners embedded in the creatures unruly hair, together with a 1 This paper, which is dedicated to my friend and colleague Doris Heyden, evolved out of a talk presented at the 1993 symposium on Goddesses of the Western Hemisphere: Women and Power which was held at the M.H. -
PRE-HISPANIC CENTRAL MEXICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY One of Tlie
www.senado2010.gob.mx PRE-HISPANIC CENTRAL MEXICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY H. B. NICIIOLSON Los indígenas no sólo de MCnico, sino de toda Mesoamhica, poseían una ver- dadera vocación histórica y relataban y esnibían historia . No me parece justo, después de quemarles a los indios sus historias, declarar que no las escribían. INTRODUCTION One of tlie leading diagnostics of the Mesoamerican Area Co-Tradition was the detailed recording of past events over relatively long time spans. 'í'his "cliroiiiclc conciousness", as 1 have elsewliere (Nicholson 1955b) refcrred to it, was much more fully developed here than in any other aboriginal New World region. Even many Old World cultures assigned to a substantially higlier rung on the ladder of cultural complexity cannot offer historical records nearly as rich or extending over such long periods. Students interested in the historical aspect of WIesoamerican studies Iiave always intensively utilized these native chronicles, but less attention has been directed to the native concepts of history and to transinission media and techniques. In a preliminary paper, deliver- cd orally 9 years ago an published only in brief abstract form (Ni- cholson 1963), 1 hriefly discussed the former aspect. Mesoamerican concepts of history -which would include consideration of why such a strong interest in history fluorished in this are- deserve much more analysis tlian they have yet re~eived.~However: this paper will iiot be concerned with concepts but rather will focus on the methods employed to transmit knowledge of the past aud the kinds of events recorded -its historiography, if you wili- in one Meso- amcrican subarea, Central Mexico. -
Tlaltecuhtli
1 TLALTECUHTLI 2 TLALTECUHTLI 3 TLALTECUHTLI LEONARDO LÓPEZ LUJÁN 5 22 TLALTECUHTLI 23 24 ExpLORAndO EL CEntrO DE CEntrOS El capítulo más reciente sobre el arte escultórico monumental de los mexicas se escribe con el descubrimiento de la ciclópea imagen de la Tlaltecuhtli, “señora de la Tierra”, progenitora y a la vez devoradora de todas las criaturas. La que se ha convertido desde el memorable 2 de octubre de 2006 en la mayor talla jamás ex- traída del subsuelo de la Ciudad de México asomó ese día uno de sus cantos, casi en la confluencia de las calles de República Argentina y República de Guatemala. Apareció en su posición original, a unos cuantos metros del ombligo simbólico de la antigua Tenochtitlan,1 el cual se marcaba con el cruce de los dos ejes rectores del espacio insular: la calzada de Iztapalapa, que corría en sentido norte-sur, y la calzada de Tlacopan, con orientación este-oeste. Es exactamente en esa intersec- ción primigenia donde se erigió el Templo Mayor en un año 2-Casa2 y es justo al pie de esta gran pirámide donde se colocó mucho tiempo después el impresionan- te monolito de la diosa terrestre que nos ocupará en las siguientes páginas.3 El lugar del hallazgo, hay que subrayarlo, tiene una importancia mayúscula en la memoria colectiva de la Ciudad de México, en primerísimo lugar porque su centralidad se ha perpetuado a lo largo de los siglos. Esto se debe a que Alonso García Bravo —el “muy buen jumétrico” a quien Hernán Cortés encomendara a fines de 1521 la traza del futuro asentamiento colonial— decidió usar la calzada IZQUIERDA: La Tlaltecuhtli (detalle del rostro), de Iztapalapa como cardo máximo y la de Tlacopan como decumano máximo.4 andesita, Posclásico Tardío, Retomó así el punto gravitacional y los ejes de la urbe prehispánica para organi- Museo del Templo Mayor. -
UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Chicana/O Indigenous Affirmation As Transformational Consciousness
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Chicana/o Indigenous Affirmation as Transformational Consciousness: Indigeneity and Transnational Human Rights Advocacy since the Chicana/o Movement A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by José Luis Serrano Nájera 2015 © copyright by José Luis Serrano Nájera 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Chicana/o Indigenous Affirmation as Transformational Consciousness: Indigeneity and Transnational Human Rights Advocacy since the Chicana/o Movement by José Luis Serrano Nájera Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Chair Indigenous social movements in the Americas have multiple sources, but in regards to Mexican Americans, my focus considers Chicana/o Indigeneity of particular importance to decolonization efforts because of its density, scope, and breadth, as well as spatial location. My dissertation answers the following question: how are Chicana/o assertions of cultural Indigeneity, intrinsically parallel and related to Chicana/o participation in Indigenous transnational struggles? The underlying premises for my investigation of Chicana/o Indigeneity are the following subquestions: how do transnational these efforts enrich our understanding of the respect of human rights, and what are the bases of Chicana/o Indigeneity? I explicate how Chicana/o historic consciousness is influenced by the complex transnational activism with Indigenous Peoples to decolonize the Americas and contend that Chicana/o Indigenist activists, informed by trans-border interactions, cultural practices, and long oral traditions challenged hegemonic constraints of Indigeneity constructed by Mexican and U.S. pro-western domination premised ii assimilationist projects. These challenges have resulted in Chicana/o participation in broader challenges to the prominence of western cultural hegemony in the nation-states of the Americas.