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THE MEXICAS VII.

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THE MEXICAS VII.
The philosophical and religious reforms.
The mexicas led by Tlacaelel destroyed the most important and ancient codices, trying to erase Toltec history and philosophy. Thus, the transgression of the Quetzalcoatl rule and change of his religion. This is, the real problem ?unsolved to date? that mexicans have had for more than six centuries. The conquest and all the subsequent evils derived from "the absence of the wise Toltec masters and of the philosophical and ideological transgression the mexicas started and later culminated by the Spaniards."

THE MEXICAS VII.Under the Tlacaelel rule the mexica began a new era in the cultural life of people that had thousands of years of living in the Anahuac Valley and which by that time had almost five centuries of cultural decline after the collapse of the Classical period. With the vigor and the powerful will that characterized the mexicas, the decadent culture was ?re?functionalized" and created a new proposal to stimulate the postclassical culture.

"After this party ended, the Lords of the cities went to their provinces and kingdoms and tried to imitate the Mexicans, and thus began to build temples and to sacrifice, in that fashion and means, men, and to have and to elect priests and to make those ceremonies and rituals; to form cavalry orders, and to have armed armies, colleges and schools of singing and dancing and all the exercises the town of Mexico had." (Fray Diego Durán)

The new ideology proposed changing the spirit cult, by the material cult. They maintained that the heart sacrifice was not spiritual, that people had to be sacrificed physically and with their pulsating heart feed the "Fifth Sun" that was threating their existence, according to the ancient prophecies. But the expansion was not only religious and philosophical, defeated peoples were subjected to heavy tax burdens, as never before happened in the Anahuac. The Tlacaelel changes gave the bases of Aztec power and paradoxically also signified their ruin upon the Europeans arrival.

"With the aztecs victorious, Tlacaelel took several measures that transformed the thinking and the life of his people. Tlacaelel never wanted to be king. He preferred to act only as an adviser, first to Itzcóatl and then Moctezuma Ilhuicamina and Axayacatl... The happy Tlacaelel conjunction and these two extraordinary monarchs, Itzcóatl and Moctezuma Ilhuicamina, certainly were the beginning and consolidation of the ancient mexicas. The Tlacaelel figure, as noted the by the famous scientist, apparently of German origin, Henrico Martinez, at the beginning of the 17TH century, that was ?to whom the aztecs owed almost all of their empire glory?, requires much more attention than the almost non-existent, thus far granted." (Miguel Leon Portilla. 1961)

Tlacaelel replaced the millennial religious pair of Tlaloc?Quetzalcoatl, the later replaced by Huitzilopochtli, aztec god of war and the material. He replaced the spiritual sacrifice for the material captives sacrifice. In a time of cultural decadency, with the absence of the great masters, the prophecies of the Quetzalcoatl return and the threat that every 52 years would end the Fifth Sun; the Mexica "re?functionalized the system by changing the philosophical and religious premises in favor of material development, warrior, fanatical and of neighboring people exploitation. In other words, the mexicas changed the spiritual meaning of life, by a material sense. The materialistic ideology, warrior mystical became at the same time his greatest achievement and also the origin of their defeat, because when the spaniards arrived in the year that the prophecy predicted the return of Quetzalcoatl, and that Hernán Cortés skillfully exploited, assuming himself as captain of the expected personage. Almost everyone in the Anahuac world turned against those that one hundred years before, had violated millennial humanistic thought. The mexica themselves, many years before the arrival of the conquistadors and under a Tlacaelel initiative, sent messengers to the mythical place of origin, and returned to tell Moctezuma I, that he was threatening the Huitzilopochtli power.

"And of the main complaints that Coatlicue had of her son Huitzilopochtli, and how she expected it and what she said, that after some time, he should be thrown from that land and that he had to return, because by the same order that he had to hold nations, by the same order they would be taken away and removed the domain and lordship he had over them". (Fray Diego Durán)

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