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THE MEXICAS IX.

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THE MEXICAS IX.
The Divine Mission.
The mexicas called themselves the "Sun supporting" people. And they self-assigned the divine mission to sustain and conquer the "land surrounded by heavenly waters" through the imposition of their tribal god Huitzilopochtli, in replacement of the millenary Quetzalcoatl. The Tlacaelel reforms changed the spiritual sense of religion and society and gave it a material sense. Tlacaelel used Toltec forms, but definitely changed its essence. It is for this reason that we find the symbolism of mexica religion poetic, in their totally dehumanized practices.

THE MEXICAS IX."How can it be accepted that the belief in the Sun tyranny over physical life could have taken roots at the hearts of men? It is more likely to think that only by force they could implant it and that the spirituality of some aspects of the aztec life should come from an ancient tradition, betrayed in it?s his essence for the benefit of a temporary structure dominated by a ruthless will to power". (Laurette Séjourné. 1957)

To carry out this titanic enterprise, society was militarized. Schools no longer had the spiritual mystical character and began forming warrior groups for "material battles". The Telpochcalli was transformed into a military academy for the commoners (macehuales) where troops were formed. The Calmécac went, from being a school for the pililis or noblemen sons, to train officers? cadres. The Toltec flower war became a war to take prisoners and take them to ritual sacrifices to "feed" the Fifth Sun and prevent its death and the end of the Aztec Empire. The Tlaloc-Quetzalcoatl duality was replaced by that of Tlaloc-Huitzilopochtli.

"To die in combat, or better yet, in the stone of sacrifices, was for them the promise of a happy eternity: because the warrior fallen on the battlefield, or destroyed, had assured himself a place among the "eagle peers", the quauhteca, who accompanied the Sun from its raise on the east through its setting, in a resplendent and joyful procession, to later reincarnate into a hummingbird and forever live among the flowers." (Jacques Soustelle. 1955)

The mexicas changed the millenary people?s organization of independent communities and began to develop from the Triple Alliance, new lordships groups as a powerful military, political and economic force, as was never seen before in the Anahuac. War became "state reason" and small skirmishes, almost symbolic and little bloody, became major military campaigns that moved thousands of warriors to great distances, in neatly organized, armed and equipped armies, as had not happened before in the Anahuac.

"In aztec religion, we are told, men had no other purpose on earth that to feed to the Sun with his blood, without which the star died exhausted. It is this tragic dilemma which imposed upon leaders? the sad obligation to choose between the killing and the end of the world." (Laurette Séjourné. 1957)

Lordships were subjected and created heavy tax burdens, because the objective of the war was not only to obtain the "divine liquid" to feed the Fifth Sun, but also obtain goods and raw material in large quantities from the subject peoples, that allowed the formidable growth of Tenochtitlan, that in a few years had monumental works, which perhaps could not had been created in that short period of time, only by the effort and work of the mexicas. A vigorous impulse was given to trade, as never before in the Anahuac. The pochtecas or traders came to occupy a high hierarchy in the Tenochtitlan social scale.

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