1.
Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire
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The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was one of the most significant events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Many of those on the Cortés expedition of 1519 had never seen combat before, in fact, Cortés had never commanded men in battle before. However, there was a generation of Spaniards who participated in expeditions in the Caribbean and Tierra Firme, learning strategy. The Spanish conquest of Mexico had antecedents with established practices, in their advance, the allies were tricked and ambushed several times by the people they encountered. When Cortés left Tenochtitlan to return to the coast and deal with the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez, Alvarado allowed a significant Aztec feast to be celebrated in Tenochtitlan and on the pattern of the earlier massacre in Cholula, closed off the square and massacred the celebrating Aztec noblemen. The biography of Cortés by Francisco López de Gómara contains a description of the massacre, the Alvarado massacre at the Main Temple of Tenochtitlan precipitated rebellion by the population of the city. When the captured emperor Motecuhzoma II, now seen as a puppet of the invading Spaniards, attempted to calm the outraged populace. Cortés had returned to Tenochtitlan and his men fled the city during the Noche Triste in June,1520. The Spanish, Tlaxcalans and reinforcements returned a year later on August 13,1521 to a civilization that had wiped out by famine. This made it easier to conquer the remaining Aztecs, the fall of the Aztec Empire was the key event in the formation of the Spanish overseas empire, with New Spain, which later became Mexico, a major component. The Spanish conquerors could and did write accounts that narrated the conquest from the first landfalls in Mexico to the victory over the Mexica in Tenochtitlan on August 13,1521. Indigenous accounts are from particular native viewpoints and as the events had a impact on their polity. All accounts of the conquest, Spanish and indigenous alike, have biases, in general, Spanish accounts do not credit their indigenous allies support. Individual conquerors accounts exaggerate that individuals contribution to the conquest, downplaying other conquerors, indigenous allies accounts stress their loyalty to the Spanish and their particular aid as being key to the Spanish victory. Their accounts are similar to Spanish conquerors accounts contained in petitions for rewards and these were almost immediately published in Spain and later in other parts of Europe. Interestingly, Cortéss right-hand man, Pedro de Alvarado did not write at any length about his actions in the New World, two letters to Cortés about Alvarados campaigns in Guatemala are published in The Conquistadors. Rather than it being a petition for rewards for services, as many Spanish accounts were, the account was used by eighteenth-century Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero in his descriptions of the history of Mexico. On the indigenous side, the allies of Cortés, particularly the Tlaxcalans, wrote extensively about their services to the Spanish Crown in the conquest, the most important of these are the pictorial Lienzo de Tlaxcala and the Historia de Tlaxcala by Diego Muñoz Camargo
2.
Tenochtitlan
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Mexico-Tenochtitlan, commonly known as Tenochtitlan was a Mexica located on an island in Lake Texcoco, in the Valley of Mexico. Founded on June 20,1325, it became the capital of the expanding Aztec Empire in the 15th century, at its peak it was the largest city in the Pre-Columbian Americas. It subsequently became a cabecera of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, today the ruins of Tenochtitlan are located in Mexico Citys downtown. Tenochtitlan was one of two Nahua āltēpetl on the island, the other being Tlatelolco, traditionally, the name Tenochtitlan was thought to come from Nahuatl tetl and nōchtli and is often thought to mean, Among the prickly pears rocks. However, one attestation in the late 16th-century manuscript known as the Bancroft dialogues suggest the second vowel was short, Tenochtitlan covered an estimated 8 to 13.5 km2, situated on the western side of the shallow Lake Texcoco. At the time of Spanish conquests, Mexico City comprised both Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, the city was connected to the mainland by causeways leading to the north, south, and west. The causeways were interrupted by bridges that allowed canoes and other traffic to pass freely. The bridges could be pulled away, if necessary, to defend the city, the city was interlaced with a series of canals, so that all sections of the city could be visited either on foot or via canoe. Lake Texcoco was the largest of five interconnected lakes, since it formed in an endorheic basin, Lake Texcoco was brackish. During the reign of Moctezuma I, the levee of Nezahualcoyotl was constructed, estimated to be 12 to 16 km in length, the levee was completed circa 1453. The levee kept fresh spring-fed water in the waters around Tenochtitlan and kept the brackish waters beyond the dike, two double aqueducts, each more than 4 km long and made of terracotta, provided the city with fresh water from the springs at Chapultepec. This was intended mainly for cleaning and washing, for drinking, water from mountain springs was preferred. Most of the population liked to bathe twice a day, Moctezuma was said to take four baths a day. According to the context of Aztec culture in literature, the soap that they most likely used was the root of a plant called copalxocotl, and to clean their clothes they used the root of metl. Also, the classes and pregnant women washed themselves in a temazcalli, similar to a sauna bath. This was also popular in other Mesoamerican cultures, and some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream. I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never heard of or seen before. The city was divided into four zones, or campan, each campan was divided into 20 districts, there were three main streets that crossed the city, each leading to one of the three causeways to the mainland of Tepeyac, Ixtapalpa, and Tlacopan
3.
Mexico City
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Mexico City, or City of Mexico, is the capital and most populous city of Mexico. As an alpha global city, Mexico City is one of the most important financial centers in the Americas and it is located in the Valley of Mexico, a large valley in the high plateaus at the center of Mexico, at an altitude of 2,240 metres. The city consists of sixteen municipalities, the 2009 estimated population for the city proper was approximately 8.84 million people, with a land area of 1,485 square kilometres. The Greater Mexico City has a domestic product of US$411 billion in 2011. The city was responsible for generating 15. 8% of Mexicos Gross Domestic Product, as a stand-alone country, in 2013, Mexico City would be the fifth-largest economy in Latin America—five times as large as Costa Ricas and about the same size as Perus. Mexico’s capital is both the oldest capital city in the Americas and one of two founded by Amerindians, the other being Quito. In 1524, the municipality of Mexico City was established, known as México Tenochtitlán, Mexico City served as the political, administrative and financial center of a major part of the Spanish colonial empire. After independence from Spain was achieved, the district was created in 1824. Ever since, the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution has controlled both of them, in recent years, the local government has passed a wave of liberal policies, such as abortion on request, a limited form of euthanasia, no-fault divorce, and same-sex marriage. On January 29,2016, it ceased to be called the Federal District and is now in transition to become the countrys 32nd federal entity, giving it a level of autonomy comparable to that of a state. Because of a clause in the Mexican Constitution, however, as the seat of the powers of the federation, it can never become a state, the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan was founded by the Mexica people in 1325. According to legend, the Mexicas principal god, Huitzilopochtli indicated the site where they were to build their home by presenting an eagle perched on a cactus with a snake in its beak. Between 1325 and 1521, Tenochtitlan grew in size and strength, eventually dominating the other city-states around Lake Texcoco, when the Spaniards arrived, the Aztec Empire had reached much of Mesoamerica, touching both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. After landing in Veracruz, Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés advanced upon Tenochtitlan with the aid of many of the native peoples. Cortés put Moctezuma under house arrest, hoping to rule through him, the Aztecs thought the Spaniards were permanently gone, and they elected a new king, Cuitláhuac, but he soon died, the next king was Cuauhtémoc. Cortés began a siege of Tenochtitlan in May 1521, for three months, the city suffered from the lack of food and water as well as the spread of smallpox brought by the Europeans. Cortés and his allies landed their forces in the south of the island, the Spaniards practically razed Tenochtitlan during the final siege of the conquest. Cortés first settled in Coyoacán, but decided to rebuild the Aztec site to erase all traces of the old order and he did not establish a territory under his own personal rule, but remained loyal to the Spanish crown
4.
Aztec Empire
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The Aztec Empire, or the Triple Alliance, began as an alliance of three Nahua altepetl city-states, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. The Triple Alliance was formed from the faction in a civil war fought between the city of Azcapotzalco and its former tributary provinces. Despite the initial conception of the empire as an alliance of three self-governed city-states, Tenochtitlan quickly became dominant militarily. By the time the Spanish arrived in 1519, the lands of the Alliance were effectively ruled from Tenochtitlan, the alliance waged wars of conquest and expanded rapidly after its formation. Aztec rule has been described by scholars as hegemonic or indirect, the Aztecs left rulers of conquered cities in power so long as they agreed to pay semi-annual tribute to the Alliance, as well as supply military forces when needed for the Aztec war efforts. In return, the imperial authority offered protection and political stability, the state religion of the empire was polytheistic, worshiping a diverse pantheon that included dozens of deities. Many had officially recognized cults large enough so that the deity was represented in the temple precinct of the capital Tenochtitlan. The imperial cult, specifically, was that of Huitzilopochtli, the distinctive warlike patron god of the Mexica, peoples in conquered provinces were allowed to retain and freely continue their own religious traditions, so long as they added the imperial god Huitzilopochtli to their local pantheons. The word Aztec in modern usage would not have used by the people themselves. The name comes from a Nahuatl word meaning people from Aztlan, for the purpose of this article, Aztec refers only to those cities that constituted or were subject to the Triple Alliance. For the broader use of the term, see the article on Aztec civilization, Nahua peoples descended from Chichimec peoples who migrated to central Mexico from the north in the early 13th century. According to the pictographic codices in which the Aztecs recorded their history, Early migrants settled the Basin of Mexico and surrounding lands by establishing a series of independent city-states. These early Nahua cities were ruled by petty kings called tlahtohqueh, most of the existing settlements, which had been established by other indigenous peoples before the Nahua migration, were assimilated into Nahua culture. These early city-states fought various small-scale wars with other, but due to shifting alliances. The Mexica were the last of Aztlan migrants to arrive in Central Mexico and they entered the Basin of Mexico around the year 1250 AD, and by then most of the good agricultural land had already been claimed. The Mexica persuaded the king of Culhuacan to allow them to settle in a relatively infertile patch of land called Chapultepec, the Mexica served as hired mercenaries for Culhuacan. After they served Culhuacan in battle, the appointed one of his daughters to rule over the Mexica. According to mythological native accounts, the Mexica instead sacrificed her by flaying her skin, when the king of Culhuacan learned of this, he attacked and used his army to drive the Mexica from Tizaapan by force
5.
Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
6.
Spanish Empire
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The Spanish Empire was one of the largest empires in history. The Spanish Empire became the foremost global power of its time and was the first to be called the empire on which the sun never sets, the Spanish Empire originated during the Age of Discovery after the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Following the Spanish–American War of 1898, Spain ceded its last colonies in the Caribbean and its last African colonies were granted independence or abandoned during Decolonisation of Africa finishing in 1976. The unity did not mean uniformity, nevertheless, some historians assert that Portugal was part of the Spanish monarchy at the time, while others draw a clear distinction between the Portuguese and Spanish empires. During the 15th century, Castile and Portugal became territorial and commercial rivals in the western Atlantic. The conquest was completed with the campaigns of the armies of the Crown of Castile between 1478 and 1496, when the islands of Gran Canaria, La Palma, and Tenerife were subjugated. The Portuguese tried in vain to keep secret their discovery of the Gold Coast in the Gulf of Guinea, chronicler Pulgar wrote that the fame of the treasures of Guinea spread around the ports of Andalusia in such way that everybody tried to go there. Worthless trinkets, Moorish textiles, and above all, shells from the Canary and Cape Verde islands were exchanged for gold, slaves, ivory and Guinea pepper. The Crown officially organized this trade with Guinea, every caravel had to get a government license, the treaty delimited the spheres of influence of the two countries, establishing the principle of the Mare clausum. It was confirmed in 1481 by the Pope Sixtus IV, in the papal bull Æterni regis, thus, the limitations imposed by the Alcáçovas treaty were overcome and a new and more balanced worlds division would be reached at Tordesillas between both emerging maritime powers. Seven months before the treaty of Alcaçovas, King John II of Aragon died, Ferdinand and Isabella drove the last Moorish king out of Granada in 1492 after a ten-year war. The Catholic Monarchs then negotiated with Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor attempting to reach Cipangu by sailing west, Castile was already engaged in a race of exploration with Portugal to reach the Far East by sea when Columbus made his bold proposal to Isabella. Columbus discoveries inaugurated the Spanish colonization of the Americas and these actions gave Spain exclusive rights to establish colonies in all of the New World from north to south, as well as the easternmost parts of Asia. The treaty of Tordesillas was confirmed by Pope Julius II in the bull Ea quae pro bono pacis on 24 January 1506, Spains expansion and colonization was driven by economic influences, a yearning to improve national prestige, and a desire to spread Catholicism into the New World. The Catholic Monarchs had developed a strategy of marriages for their children in order to isolate their long-time enemy, the Spanish princes married the heirs of Portugal, England and the House of Habsburg. Following the same strategy, the Catholic Monarchs decided to support the Catalan-Aragonese house of Naples against Charles VIII of France in the Italian Wars beginning in 1494. As King of Aragon, Ferdinand had been involved in the struggle against France and Venice for control of Italy, these conflicts became the center of Ferdinands foreign policy as king. Only a year later, Ferdinand became part of the Holy League against France and this war was less of a success than the war against Venice, and in 1516, France agreed to a truce that left Milan in its control and recognized Spanish control of Upper Navarre
7.
Tlaxcala (Nahua state)
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Tlaxcala was a pre-Columbian city and state in central Mexico. The Tlaxcalans arrived in Central Mexico during the Late Postclassic and they first settled near Texcoco in the valley of Mexico, between the settlement of Cohuatlinchan and the shore of Lake Texcoco. After some years the Tlaxcallans were driven out of the valley of Mexico and moved to the east, over the subsequent years, the Tlaxcallan state expanded with the foundations of Ocotelulco and Tizatlán. The fourth major settlement, Quiahuiztlan, was founded by members of the Tlaxcallan group that had remained in the valley of Mexico. Ancient Tlaxcala was a republic ruled by a council of between 50 and 200 chief political officials and these officials gained their positions through service to the state, usually in warfare, and as a result came from both the noble and commoner classes. Tlaxcala was never conquered by the Aztec empire, but was engaged in a state of perpetual war, as a result of their alliance with the Spaniards, Tlaxcala had hidalgo privileged status within Spanish colonial Mexico. After the Spanish conquered Tenochtitlan and the rest of Mexico, Tlaxcala was allowed to survive and preserve its pre-Columbian culture. In addition, as a reward to the Tlaxcalans unyielding loyalty to the Spanish, conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes the first battle between the Spanish force and the Tlaxcalteca as surprisingly difficult. Xicohtencatl the Younger was later condemned by the Tlaxcaltecan ruling council, due to protracted warfare between the Aztecs and the Tlaxcala, the Tlaxcala were eager to exact revenge, and soon became loyal allies of the Spanish. Even after the Spanish were expelled from Tenochtitlan, the Tlaxcala continued to support their conquest, Tlaxcala also assisted the Spanish in the conquest of Guatemala. Following the Spanish Conquest, Tlaxcala was divided into four fiefdoms by the Spanish corregidor Gómez de Santillán in 1545 and these fiefdoms were Ocotelolco, Quiahuiztlan, Tepeticpac, and Tizatlan. At this time, four houses or lineages emerged and claimed hereditary rights to each fiefdom. During the colonial period, the Tlaxcalan people were regarded as being of higher status, however, the indigenous population who had been living in Tlaxcala were reduced to a small minority. It was painted by Tlaxcalteca artists under Spanish supervision, crónica Mexicayotl was written by Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, in Nahuatl and Spanish, in the last decades of the 16th century. Mexico, Manuel Orozco y Berra, Leyenda, fargher, Lane F. Richard E. Blanton and Verenice Y. Egalitarian Ideology and Political Power in Prehispanic Central Mexico, The Case of Tlaxcallan, xicotencatl, rethinking an indigenous Mexican hero, Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, UNAM. Land and Succession in the Indigenous Noble Houses of Sixteenth-Century Tlaxcala, invading Guatemala, Spanish, Nahua, and Maya Accounts of the Conquest Wars. University Park, Pennsylvania, USA, Pennsylvania State University Press, Spanish language description of the historiography of Tlaxcala Article in Sciencemag about archeological findings at Tizatlan
8.
Texcoco (altepetl)
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Texcoco was a major Acolhua city-state in the central Mexican plateau region of Mesoamerica during the Late Postclassic period of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican chronology. It was situated on the bank of Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico, to the northeast of the Aztec capital. The site of pre-Columbian Texcoco is now subsumed by the modern Mexican municipio of Texcoco and its major settlement and it also lies within the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City. Pre-Columbian Texcoco is most noted for its membership in the Aztec Triple Alliance, at the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, it was one of the largest and most prestigious cities in central Mexico, second only to the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. A survey of Mesoamerican cities estimated that pre-conquest Texcoco had a population of 24,000, the people of Tetzcohco were called Tetzcocatl or Tetzcocah. Texcoco was founded in the 12th century, on the shore of Lake Texcoco. In or about 1337, the Acolhua, with Tepanec help, expelled Chichimecs from Texcoco and Texcoco became the Acolhua capital city, in 1418, Ixtlilxochitl I, the tlatoani of Texcoco, was dethroned by Tezozomoc of Azcapotzalco. Ten years later, in 1428, Ixtlilxochitls son, Nezahualcoyotl allied with the Mexica to defeat Tezozomocs son and successor, Texcoco and the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan, with the Tepanecs of Tlacopan, subsequently formalized their association as the Triple Alliance. However this was an alliance as Tlacopan entered the battle against Azcapotzalco late. Texcoco thereby became the second-most important city in the eventual Aztec empire, Texcoco was known as a center of learning within the empire, and had a famed library including books from older Mesoamerican civilizations. Erected by the hill of Texcotzingo, the residence had aqueducts, baths, gardens, stairways. The palace gardens were a vast botanical collection that included plants from not only the growing Aztec Empire, the water used to irrigate the gardens was obtained from the springs beyond the mountains to the east of Texcoco. The water was channeled through canals carved into the rock, in certain areas, rock staircases were used as waterfalls. After clearing the mountains, the canals continued downhill to a point a distance from Texcotzingo. There the path to the city was blocked a deep canyon that ran north to south. Nezahualcoyotl ordered that the gap be filled with tons of rocks and stones, the whole hill of Texcotzingo was also served by this canal system and converted by his designers into a sacred place for the rain god Tláloc, complete with waterfalls, exotic animals and birds. Xolotl was said to be the founder of Texcoco in 1115 AD and he was followed by Nopaltzin, Tlotzin, Quinatzin, Techotlalazin, Ixlilxochitl, Nezahualcoyotl, Nezahualpilli, Cacama, Coanchochtzin, and Don Fernando Ixtlilxochitl. Nezahualcoyotl was a poet, philosopher, and patron of the arts
9.
Xochimilco
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Xochimilco is one of the 16 mayoralities or boroughs within Mexico City. The borough is centered on the independent city of Xochimilco. Today, the borough consists of the eighteen “barrios” or neighborhoods of this city along with fourteen “pueblos” or villages that surround it, covering an area of 125 km2. Xochimilco is best known for its canals, which are left from what was an extensive lake and these canals, along with artificial islands called chinampas, attract tourists and other city residents to ride on colorful gondola-like boats called “trajineras” around the 170 km of canals. This canal and chinampa system, as a vestige of the area’s pre-Hispanic past, has made Xochimilco a World Heritage Site. In 1950, Paramahansa Yogananda in his celebrated classic Autobiography of a Yogi wrote that if there is a beauty contest. However, severe environmental degradation of the canals and chinampas has brought that status into question, the borough of Xochimilco was created in 1928, when the federal government reorganized the Federal District of Mexico City into sixteen boroughs. The Xochimilco borough was centered on what was the city of Xochimilco, the area’s historic separation from Mexico City proper remains in its culture. While officially part of the city, its identity is more like a suburb and this historic center was designated as a Barrio Mágico by the city in 2011. The borough is center-south of the center of Mexico City. It extends over 125 km2, accounting for 8. 4% of the Federal District’s territory and it is the third largest borough, after Tlalpan, and Milpa Alta. The borough has an emblem, also known as an Aztec glyph, in spite of the serious environmental issues,77. 9% of the territory is designated as ecological reserve,15. 2% as residential and 4.6 as commercial and industrial. The borough is divided into eighteen “barrios, ” which make up the old city of Xochimilco, there are also 45 smaller divisions called “colonias” and twenty major apartment complexes. The city acts as the government for all the communities of the borough. These offices are located on Calle Guadalupe I. Ramirez 4, the borough has 11.4 km of primary roadway and 4,284,733 square metres of paved surface. Major thoroughfares include the Xochimilco-Tulyehualco road, Nuevo León, Periférico Sur, Avenida Guadalupe, however, many of the areas of the borough are still semi-rural, with communities that still retain many old traditions and economic activities. For example, San Antonio Molotlán is noted for textiles and its Chinelos dancers, San Lorenzo Tlaltecpan is known for the production of milk and there are still a large number of stables in the area. The most notable neighborhoods/communities include Xaltocan, Ejidos de Tepepan, La Noria, Las Cruces, Ejidos de Xochimilco, San Francisco Caltongo is one of the oldest neighborhoods of the borough
10.
Iztapalapa
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Iztapalapa is one of the Federal Districts of Mexico City’s 16 boroughs, located on the east side of the entity. The borough is named after and centered on the independent municipality of Iztapalapa. The rest is made up of a number of communities which are governed by the city of Iztapalapa. With a population of 1.8 million as of 2010, Iztapalapa is the most populous borough of Mexico City, over 90% of its territory is urbanized. This is the result of an influx of people into the borough starting from the 1970s. The area has a level of socioeconomic marginalization, with a significant number of people lacking sufficient access to clean potable water. Crime is also a problem, with much of it related to drug trafficking. However, the borough is home of one of Mexico City’s major cultural events, Iztapalapa today is a borough of the Federal District of Mexico City, centered on what used to be an independent settlement with its origins in the pre-Hispanic period. It has a territory of 116. 67km2, and is located on the east side of the Federal District bordering the boroughs of Iztacalco, Xochimilco, Tláhuac, Coyoacán and Benito Juárez. The State of Mexico borders the borough on the east side, the modern borough is made up of 15 “barrios” or neighborhoods, considered to be part of city of Iztapalapa, and 18 other “pueblos” or communities outside of it. To distinguish the city of Iztapalapa from the rest of the borough. Records of the barrios of Iztapalapa” go back at least until 1898. Borough authorities have sought “Barrios Mágicos Turísticos” status for these, for a similar to the “Pueblos Mágicos” tourism program run by the federal government. The borough has an elevation of 2240 masl and extends over firm land. These are recent geological formations, with evidence of lava flow still existent, culturally, the most important of these elevations is the Cerro de la Estrella, which was the site of the New Fire ceremony. Since the pre-Hispanic period, Lake Texcoco has been drained, leaving only two natural river called the Churubusco and La Piedad, which unite to form the Unido River. However, the rivers are encased in tubes as is one of the canals, for this reason, there are no longer any naturally occurring surface water. The climate of the area is divided into four zones, one consists of a warm wet climate with temperatures above 18C in the coldest months
11.
Tlatelolco (altepetl)
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Tlatelolco was a pre-Columbian Nahua altepetl in the Valley of Mexico. Its inhabitants were known as Tlatelolca, the Tlatelolca were a part of the Mexica ethnic group, a Nahuatl speaking people who arrived in what is now central Mexico in the 13th century. They settled on an island in Lake Texcoco where they founded their city on the northern part — the other Mexica group, the Tenochca, founded their city Tenochtitlan on the southern part. The city was tied with its sister city, which was largely dependent on the market of Tlatelolco. The Tlatelolco archaeological site is an excavation site in Mexico City. In February 2009, the discovery of a grave with 49 human bodies was announced by archaeologists. The grave is considered unusual because the bodies are laid out in ritual fashion, in 1337, thirteen years after the foundation of Tenochtitlan, the Tlatelolca declared themselves independent from the Tenochca and inaugurated their first independent Tlatoani. Under the king Cuacuauhpitzahuac, the first two stages of the Main Pyramid of Tlatelolco were constructed, under Tlacateotl, the Tlatelolca assisted the Tenochca in the war against the Tepanecs, shortly thereafter, the first war between the Tenochca and Tlatelolca erupted. Also during Tlacateotls reign, the stage of the Main Pyramid was constructed. Under Cuauhtlatoa, the Tlatelolca conquered the citystate of Ahuilizapan, the fourth and fifth stages of the Main Pyramid were constructed in this period. The ruler Moquihuix constructed the stage of the temple, but in 1473 he was defeated by the Tenochca Tlatoani Axayacatl. Itzcuauhtzin ruled Tlatelolco during a period in which it was almost completely incorporated into Tenochtitlan, after the Spanish Conquest in 1521, Tlatelolco became a municipality of New Spain, and was renamed Santiago Tlatelolco. Tlatelolco remained an important location, partly because of the foundation there of the university Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, today its remains are located within Mexico City
12.
Gonzalo de Sandoval
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Gonzalo de Sandoval was a Spanish conquistador in New Spain and briefly co-governor of the colony while Hernán Cortés was away from the capital. Sandoval was the youngest of the lieutenants of Cortés and they arrived together in New Spain in 1519. After the subjugation of Moctezuma, Cortés placed him in command at Villa Rica de Vera Cruz as alguacil mayor and he seized the messengers of Pánfilo de Narváez, who demanded the surrender of the town, and sent them as prisoners to Cortés. In the ensuing battle, it was Sandoval who captured Narváez, afterwards, Gonzalo led attacks against the towns of Cacatami and Xalacingo. He stayed there until the brigantines were built for the attack by water on the capital, during the Siege of Tenochtitlan, he led attacks on the Mexican garrisons in Chalco and Tlamanalco, and escorted the timber needed for the sloops, to Texcoco. Gonzalo also led three battles around Huaxtepec in March 1521, Gonzalo commanded one of four forces under Cortes. Sandoval was wounded twice during one of the battles on the causeways, Sandoval was sent by Cortes to counter a threat by Guatemocs allies in the Spanish rear, returning with two captured Matlazingo chieftains as prisoner. Along the way he was ordered to conquer a town the Spanish had named poblado morisco in Calpulalpa or Sultepec, the population fled at the approach of the Spanish. Sandoval found some horse hides hung in a temple, in another temple he found the inscription, Here was imprisoned the hapless Juan Yuste, with many others I brought in my company. Yuste was one of the soldiers who had arrived with Narváez, Sandoval destroyed the town, and then returned to his task of transporting the vessels for the attack on Tenochtitlan. In the siege he occupied the eastern approach and his company, and Cortes, was eventually able to join Pedro de Alvarados company in the Tlatelolco marketplace. One of the men under his command, García Holguín, in command of one of the brigantines in the assault on Tenochtitlan, Holguín and Sandoval took him to Cortés. In December 1521, Sandoval met Cristóbal de Tapia, who had been sent by the Crown to relieve Cortes and he became the godfather of one of the nobles of Tlaxcala, Citlalpopocatzin, who took the baptismal name of Bartolomé. Later he was sent to the region of Coatzacoalcos, where he pacified Huatusco, Tuxtepec, in Pánuco, he repressed an indigenous insurrection. After Juan Rodríguez de Villafuerte was defeated by the Indigenous in the Valley of Tecomán in 1522, Cortés sent Gonzalo de Sandoval there with instructions to conquer the territory and found a town. In the indigenous town of Caxitlán, near the coast, Sandoval founded the city of Colima in its first location on July 25,1523 and he also established its city government, the third oldest in New Spain. Later, in 1527, Francisco Cortés de San Buenaventura moved the city to its present location and he was with Cortés in Honduras in 1524, where he was made alguacil and granted some encomiendas, such as Xacona. On his return from this expedition, he was made mayor of New Spain
13.
Pedro de Alvarado
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Pedro de Alvarado y Contreras was a Spanish conquistador and governor of Guatemala. He participated in the conquest of Cuba, in Juan de Grijalvas exploration of the coasts of the Yucatán Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico and he is considered the conquistador of much of Central America, including Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Historiography portrays that indigenous people, both Nahuatl-speakers and speakers of languages, called him Tonatiuh, meaning sun in the Nahuatl language. Yet he was also called Red Sun in Nahuatl, which allows a variety of interpretations, whether this epithet refers to Alvarados red hair, some esoteric quality attributed to him, or both, is disputed. Pedro de Alvarado was flamboyant and charismatic, and was both a brilliant military commander and a cruel, hardened man and his hair and beard were blond, which earned him the name of Tonatiuh from the Aztecs, the name of one of their sun gods. He was handsome, and presented an appearance, but was volatile. He was ruthless in his dealings with the peoples he set out to conquer. Historians judge that his greed drove him to excessive cruelty, and he was a poor governor of territories he had conquered, and restlessly sought out new adventures. His tactical brutality, such as the massacre in the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan and he was also accused of cruelty against fellow Spaniards. Alvarado was little suited to govern, when he held governing positions and his letters show no interest in civil matters, and he only discussed exploration and war. Alvarado stubbornly resisted attempts by the Spanish Crown to establish ordered taxation in Guatemala, american historian William H. Prescott described Alvarados character in the following terms, Alvarado was a cavalier of high family, gallant and chivalrous, and warm personal friend. He had talents for action, was possessed of firmness and intrepidity, while his frank, but, underneath this showy exterior, the future conqueror of Guatemala concealed a heart rash, rapacious, and cruel. He was altogether destitute of that moderation, which, in the position he occupied, was a quality of more worth than all the rest. Spanish chronicler Antonio de Remesal commented that Alvarado desired more to be feared than loved by his subjects, in his easy recourse to violence, Alvarado was a product of his time, and Alvarado was not the only conquistador to have resorted to such actions. Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro carried out deeds of similar cruelty, Pedro de Alvarado was born in 1485 in the town of Badajoz, Extremadura. His father was Gómez de Alvarado, and his mother was Leonor de Contreras, Pedro de Alvarado had a twin sister, Sarra, and four full-blood brothers, Jorge, Gonzalo, Gómez, and Juan. Pedro had a half brother, also named Juan, referred to in contemporary sources as Juan el Bastardo. Very little is known of Pedro de Alvarados early life before his arrival in the Americas, during the conquest of the Americas, tales of his youthful exploits in Spain became popular legends, but their veracity is doubtful
14.
Xicotencatl I
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Xicotencatl I or Xicotencatl the Elder was a long-lived tlatoani of Tizatlan, a Nahua altepetl within the pre-Columbian confederacy of Tlaxcala, in what is now Mexico. His Nahuatl name, pronounced, is sometimes spelled Xicohtencatl, in 1519 he was baptized as Lorenzo Xicotencatl or Don Lorenzo de Vargas. At the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico he was very old and he was instrumental in aligning the Tlaxcala with Cortes Spaniards. Tlaxcalan historian Diego Muñoz Camargo wrote of him that he was more than 120 years old and he also writes that he had more than 500 wives and concubines and consequently a large number of children, including Xicotencatl II and the wife of Jorge de Alvarado - Doña Lucía. This Cortés ordered and Xicotencatl II was hanged, one song or poem attributed to Xicotencatl is known. Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire Xicotencatl II León-Portilla, Miguel, fifteen Poets of the Aztec World
15.
Xicotencatl II
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His Nahuatl name, pronounced, is sometimes also spelled Xicotencatl and means Person from the bumblebee edge place. The Spaniards retreated when too many of their men were killed or wounded, Maxixcatzin, the ruler of Ocotelolco, was in favour of allying with the Spaniards, but Xicotencatl II opposed this idea and continued to fight, nearly wiping out the Spanish force. However, in a moment, the soldiers from Ocotelolco retreated from the battlefield following the orders of Maxixcatzin. The Spaniards with the Tlaxcaltec forces marched on Tenochtitlan, where stayed until the Noche Triste. The remnants of the Spanish forces made it to Tlaxcala where they once again asked for the assistance of the Tlaxcaltec, however, Maxixcatzins faction was again successful, and the Spaniards stayed in his palace while they regrouped and received reinforcements. The night before the march, he was apprehended and accused of treason by Cortés and by the Ocotelolcan warleader Chichimecateuctli. He was summarily executed by hanging, the description of Xicotencatl has been subject to changing attitudes in the understanding of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. In the early period he was mostly as a traitor who tried to halt the arrival of the Spanish liberation of the Indians from Aztec dominance. Later he was romantically construed as a hero who valiantly opposed the onslaught of the Spanish. The charge of treason lodged against him and his subsequent execution were, in this view, the logical result of the Ocotelolcans finally achieving the upper hand
16.
Capital punishment
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Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a government sanctioned practice whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime. The sentence that someone be punished in such a manner is referred to as a death sentence, etymologically, the term capital in this context alluded to execution by beheading. Fifty-six countries retain capital punishment,103 countries have abolished it de jure for all crimes, six have abolished it for ordinary crimes. Capital punishment is a matter of controversy in various countries and states. In the European Union, Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment, also, the Council of Europe, which has 47 member states, prohibits the use of the death penalty by its members. The United Nations General Assembly has adopted, in 2007,2008,2010,2012 and 2014, non-binding resolutions calling for a moratorium on executions. Although most nations have abolished capital punishment, over 60% of the population live in countries where executions take place, such as China, India. Execution of criminals and political opponents has been used by nearly all societies—both to punish crime, in most countries that practise capital punishment it is reserved for murder, terrorism, war crimes, espionage, treason, defection or as part of military justice. In many countries use the death penalty, drug trafficking is also a capital offence. In China, human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are punished by the death penalty, in militaries around the world courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offences such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny. The use of formal execution extends to the beginning of recorded history, most historical records and various primitive tribal practices indicate that the death penalty was a part of their justice system. Communal punishment for wrongdoing generally included compensation by the wrongdoer, corporal punishment, shunning, banishment, usually, compensation and shunning were enough as a form of justice. The response to crime committed by neighbouring tribes or communities included a formal apology, a blood feud or vendetta occurs when arbitration between families or tribes fails or an arbitration system is non-existent. This form of justice was common before the emergence of a system based on state or organized religion. It may result from crime, land disputes or a code of honour, acts of retaliation underscore the ability of the social collective to defend itself and demonstrate to enemies that injury to property, rights, or the person will not go unpunished. However, in practice, it is difficult to distinguish between a war of vendetta and one of conquest. Elaborations of tribal arbitration of feuds included peace settlements often done in a religious context, compensation was based on the principle of substitution which might include material compensation, exchange of brides or grooms, or payment of the blood debt. Settlement rules could allow for animal blood to replace human blood, the person offered for execution did not have to be an original perpetrator of the crime because the system was based on tribes, not individuals
17.
Prisoner of war
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A prisoner of war is a person, whether combatant or non-combatant, who is held in custody by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the prisoner of war dates to 1660. The first Roman gladiators were prisoners of war and were named according to their ethnic roots such as Samnite, Thracian, typically, little distinction was made between enemy combatants and enemy civilians, although women and children were more likely to be spared. Sometimes, the purpose of a battle, if not a war, was to capture women, a known as raptio. Typically women had no rights, and were legally as chattel. For this he was eventually canonized, during Childerics siege and blockade of Paris in 464, the nun Geneviève pleaded with the Frankish king for the welfare of prisoners of war and met with a favourable response. Later, Clovis I liberated captives after Genevieve urged him to do so, many French prisoners of war were killed during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. In the later Middle Ages, a number of religious wars aimed to not only defeat, in Christian Europe, the extermination of heretics was considered desirable. Examples include the 13th century Albigensian Crusade and the Northern Crusades, likewise, the inhabitants of conquered cities were frequently massacred during the Crusades against the Muslims in the 11th and 12th centuries. Noblemen could hope to be ransomed, their families would have to send to their captors large sums of wealth commensurate with the status of the captive. In feudal Japan there was no custom of ransoming prisoners of war, in Termez, on the Oxus, all the people, both men and women, were driven out onto the plain, and divided in accordance with their usual custom, then they were all slain. The Aztecs were constantly at war with neighbouring tribes and groups, for the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, between 10,000 and 80,400 persons were sacrificed. During the early Muslim conquests, Muslims routinely captured large number of prisoners, aside from those who converted, most were ransomed or enslaved. Christians who were captured during the Crusades, were either killed or sold into slavery if they could not pay a ransom. The freeing of prisoners was highly recommended as a charitable act, there also evolved the right of parole, French for discourse, in which a captured officer surrendered his sword and gave his word as a gentleman in exchange for privileges. If he swore not to escape, he could gain better accommodations, if he swore to cease hostilities against the nation who held him captive, he could be repatriated or exchanged but could not serve against his former captors in a military capacity. Early historical narratives of captured colonial Europeans, including perspectives of literate women captured by the peoples of North America. The writings of Mary Rowlandson, captured in the fighting of King Philips War, are an example
18.
Tlaxcallan
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Tlaxcala was a pre-Columbian city and state in central Mexico. The Tlaxcalans arrived in Central Mexico during the Late Postclassic and they first settled near Texcoco in the valley of Mexico, between the settlement of Cohuatlinchan and the shore of Lake Texcoco. After some years the Tlaxcallans were driven out of the valley of Mexico and moved to the east, over the subsequent years, the Tlaxcallan state expanded with the foundations of Ocotelulco and Tizatlán. The fourth major settlement, Quiahuiztlan, was founded by members of the Tlaxcallan group that had remained in the valley of Mexico. Ancient Tlaxcala was a republic ruled by a council of between 50 and 200 chief political officials and these officials gained their positions through service to the state, usually in warfare, and as a result came from both the noble and commoner classes. Tlaxcala was never conquered by the Aztec empire, but was engaged in a state of perpetual war, as a result of their alliance with the Spaniards, Tlaxcala had hidalgo privileged status within Spanish colonial Mexico. After the Spanish conquered Tenochtitlan and the rest of Mexico, Tlaxcala was allowed to survive and preserve its pre-Columbian culture. In addition, as a reward to the Tlaxcalans unyielding loyalty to the Spanish, conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes the first battle between the Spanish force and the Tlaxcalteca as surprisingly difficult. Xicohtencatl the Younger was later condemned by the Tlaxcaltecan ruling council, due to protracted warfare between the Aztecs and the Tlaxcala, the Tlaxcala were eager to exact revenge, and soon became loyal allies of the Spanish. Even after the Spanish were expelled from Tenochtitlan, the Tlaxcala continued to support their conquest, Tlaxcala also assisted the Spanish in the conquest of Guatemala. Following the Spanish Conquest, Tlaxcala was divided into four fiefdoms by the Spanish corregidor Gómez de Santillán in 1545 and these fiefdoms were Ocotelolco, Quiahuiztlan, Tepeticpac, and Tizatlan. At this time, four houses or lineages emerged and claimed hereditary rights to each fiefdom. During the colonial period, the Tlaxcalan people were regarded as being of higher status, however, the indigenous population who had been living in Tlaxcala were reduced to a small minority. It was painted by Tlaxcalteca artists under Spanish supervision, crónica Mexicayotl was written by Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, in Nahuatl and Spanish, in the last decades of the 16th century. Mexico, Manuel Orozco y Berra, Leyenda, fargher, Lane F. Richard E. Blanton and Verenice Y. Egalitarian Ideology and Political Power in Prehispanic Central Mexico, The Case of Tlaxcallan, xicotencatl, rethinking an indigenous Mexican hero, Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, UNAM. Land and Succession in the Indigenous Noble Houses of Sixteenth-Century Tlaxcala, invading Guatemala, Spanish, Nahua, and Maya Accounts of the Conquest Wars. University Park, Pennsylvania, USA, Pennsylvania State University Press, Spanish language description of the historiography of Tlaxcala Article in Sciencemag about archeological findings at Tizatlan
19.
Aztec
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The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to 16th centuries. The Nahuatl words aztecatl and aztecah mean people from Aztlan, a place for the Nahuatl-speaking culture of the time. Often the term Aztec refers exclusively to the Mexica people of Tenochtitlan, situated on an island in Lake Texcoco, who referred to themselves as Mēxihcah Tenochcah or Cōlhuah Mexihcah. From the 13th century, the Valley of Mexico was the heart of Aztec civilization, here the capital of the Aztec Triple Alliance, the Triple Alliance formed a tributary empire expanding its political hegemony far beyond the Valley of Mexico, conquering other city states throughout Mesoamerica. At its pinnacle, Aztec culture had rich and complex mythological and religious traditions, as well as achieving remarkable architectural and artistic accomplishments. Subsequently, the Spanish founded the new settlement of Mexico City on the site of the ruined Aztec capital, the term extends to further ethnic groups associated with the Aztec empire such as the Acolhua and Tepanec and others that were incorporated into the empire. In older usage the term was used about modern Nahuatl speaking ethnic groups. In recent usage these ethnic groups are referred to as the Nahua peoples. Linguistically the term Aztecan is still used about the branch of the Uto-Aztecan languages that includes the Nahuatl language and its closest relatives Pochutec, to the Aztecs themselves the word aztec was not an endonym for any particular ethnic group. Rather it was a term used to refer to several ethnic groups, not all of them Nahuatl speaking. In the Nahuatl language aztecatl means person from Aztlan and this usage has been the subject of debate in more recent years, but the term Aztec is still more common. For the same reason the notion of Aztec civilization is best understood as a horizon of a general Mesoamerican civilization. Particular to the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan was the Mexica patron God Huitzilopochtli, twin pyramids, the Aztec Empire was a tribute empire based in Tenochtitlan that extended its power throughout Mesoamerica in the late postclassic period. Soon Texcoco and Tlacopan became junior partners in the alliance, which was de facto led by the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, the empire extended its power by a combination of trade and military conquest. The political clout of the empire reached far south into Mesoamerica conquering cities as far south as Chiapas and Guatemala, the Nahua peoples began to migrate into Mesoamerica from northern Mexico in the 6th century. They populated central Mexico, dislocating speakers of Oto-Manguean languages as they spread their influence south. As the former nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples mixed with the civilizations of Mesoamerica, adopting religious and cultural practices. During the Postclassic period they rose to power at such sites as Tula, in the 12th century the Nahua power center was in Azcapotzalco, from where the Tepanecs dominated the valley of Mexico
20.
Aztec society
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Politically, the society was organized into independent city-states, called altepetls, composed of smaller divisions, which were again usually composed of one or more extended kinship groups. Economically the society was dependent on agriculture, and also to an extent on warfare. Other economically important factors were commerce, long distance and local, in the middle of the first millennium CE, the first waves of tribes speaking the forefather language of the Nahuan languages migrated south into Mesoamerica. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers and arrived in a region that was populated by complex societies at a highly advanced technological level. They held on to their language, many of their religious systems, Aztec society was not isolated from the larger Mesoamerican context, and in fact, most aspects of it were similar in structure to what existed in the surrounding societies. The definition of the term Aztec which will be applied here is that of Michael E. Smith, the sources for information about Aztec society are primarily documents written in the Spanish language in the first century after the Spanish conquest. This understanding entails a social stratification that is built from the bottom – up, family and lineage were the basic units of Aztec society. Ones lineage determined ones social standing, and noble lineages were traced back to the mythical past, prestigious lineages also traced their kin back through ruling dynasties, preferably ones with a Toltec heritage. The extended family group was also the social unit and living patterns were largely determined by family ties. Lineage was traced through both the maternal and paternal lines, although with a preference for paternal lineage, the calpulli was a political unit composed of several interrelated family groups. The exact nature of the calpulli is not completely understood and it has variously described as a kind of clan, a town, a ward. In Nahuatl another word for calpulli was tlaxilacalli – a partition of houses, the calpulli was ruled by a local chief, to whom its members were normally related. He provided the members with lands for cultivation or with access to non-agricultural occupations in exchange for tribute. The calpulli also ran a temple where the adoration of the deity of the calpulli was performed, in some Aztec citystates calpullis were specialised in a trade, which was practiced by all of its members, and these calpullis functioned something like a medieval trade guild. This was the case in Otompan and in Texcoco and Tlatelolco, other calpullis were composed of immigrant groups from other areas of Mesoamerica who settled together. There is evidence that Tenochtitlan had calpullis composed of Otomis, Mixtecs and Tlapanecs, the altepetl was a citystate composed of several calpullis and ruled by a tlatoani. The altepetl was the unit that held sway over a territory and defended. The tlatoani was the head of the most influential calpulli, often because of having the most prestigious lineage, altepetl states would normally strive towards dominating neighboring altepetl through warfare
21.
Aztec religion
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The Aztec religion is the Mesoamerican religion of the Aztecs. Like other Mesoamerican religions, it had elements of human sacrifice in connection with a number of religious festivals which were held according to patterns of the Aztec calendar. Aztec cosmology divides the world into thirteen heavens and nine earthly layers or netherworlds each level associated with a set of deities. The concept of Teotl is central to the Aztecs, the term is often translated as god, but may have held more abstract aspects of divinity or supernatural energy akin to the Polynesian concept of Mana. The many gods of the Aztecs can be grouped into complexes related to different themes, other deities, for example Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl, had roots in earlier civilizations of Mesoamerica and were worshiped by many cultures and by many names. Some gods embodied aspects of nature, a large group of gods were related to pulque, drunkenness, excess, fun and games. Other gods were associated with specific trades, many gods had multiple aspects with different names, where each name highlighted a specific function or trait of the god. Occasionally, two gods were conflated into one, and quite often deities transformed into one another within a single story. Aztec images sometimes combined attributes of several divinities, nicholson classed the gods into three groups according to their conceptual meaning in general Mesoamerican religion. The first group he calls the Celestial creativity – Divine Paternalism group, the second, the earth-mother gods, the third group, the War-Sacrifice-Sanguinary Nourishment group contained such gods as Ome Tochtli, Huitzilopochtli, Mictlantecutli and Mixcoatl. Instead of Nicholsons subtle classification in the following a more impressionist classification is presented, on the state level, religion was controlled by the Tlatoani and the high priests governing the main temples in the ceremonial precinct of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. For example, on the feast of Huey Tozoztli, the ruler himself ascended Mt. Tlaloc, throughout society, each level had their own rituals and deities and played their part in the larger rituals of the community. On the feast of Ochpaniztli, all participated in sweeping the streets. Huixachtlan, lit on the chest of a person by the high priests. The Tlatoani of Tenochtitlan was the head of the cult of Huitzilopochtli and he had special priestly duties in different rituals on the state level. However, the Aztec religious organization was not entirely under his authority, under these religious heads were many tiers of priests, priestesses, novices, nuns and monks who ran the cults of the various gods and goddesses. Sahagun reports that the priests had a strict training, and had to live very austere and ethical lives involving prolonged vigils, fasts. For instance, they often had to bleed themselves and undertake prescribed self-mortifications in the buildup to sacrificial rites, additionally, Sahagun refers to classes of religious specialists not affiliated with the established priesthood
22.
Aztec mythology
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Aztec mythology is the body or collection of myths of Aztec civilization of Central Mexico. The Aztecs were Nahuatl-speaking groups living in central Mexico and much of their mythology is similar to that of other Mesoamerican cultures, according to legend, the various groups who were to become the Aztecs arrived from the north into the Anahuac valley around Lake Texcoco. The location of this valley and lake of destination is clear – it is the heart of modern Mexico City –, there are different accounts of their origin. In the myth the ancestors of the Mexica/Aztec came from a place in the north called Aztlan, other accounts cite their origin in Chicomoztoc, the place of the seven caves, or at Tamoanchan. The Mexica/Aztec were said to be guided by their god Huitzilopochtli, at an island in Lake Texcoco, they saw an eagle holding a rattlesnake in its talons, perched on a nopal cactus. This vision fulfilled a prophecy telling them that they should found their new home on that spot, the Aztecs built their city of Tenochtitlan on that site, building a great artificial island, which today is in the center of Mexico City. This legendary vision is pictured on the Coat of Arms of Mexico, to the Aztec, the Toltec were the originators of all culture, Toltecayotl was a synonym for culture. Aztec legends identify the Toltecs and the cult of Quetzalcoatl with the city of Tollan. Because the Aztec adopted and combined several traditions with their own earlier traditions, coatlicue was the mother of Centzon Huitznahua, her sons, and Coyolxauhqui, her daughter. She found a ball filled with feathers and placed it in her waistband and her other children became suspicious as to the identity of the father and vowed to kill their mother. She gave birth on Mount Coatepec, pursued by her children, but the newborn Huitzilopochtli defeated most of his brothers and he also killed his half-sister Coyolxauhqui by tearing out her heart using a Xiuhcoatl and throwing her body down the mountain. Our age, the age, or fifth creation, began in the ancient city of Teotihuacan. According to the myth, all the gods had gathered to sacrifice themselves, although the world and the sun had already been created, it would only be through their sacrifice that the sun would be set into motion and time as well as history could begin. The handsomest and strongest of the gods, Tecuciztecatl, was supposed to sacrifice himself but when it time to self-immolate. Instead, Nanahuatl the smallest and humblest of the gods, who was covered in boils, sacrificed himself first. The sun was set into motion with his sacrifice and time began, humiliated by Nanahuatls sacrifice, Tecuciztecatl too leaped into the fire and became the moon. Water deities Tlaloc, rain god Chalchiuhtlicue, goddess of water, lakes, rivers, seas, streams, horizontal waters, storms, Xipe-Totec, god of force, lord of the seasons and rebirth, ruler of the East. Quetzalcoatl, god of the life, the light and wisdom, lord of the winds, Huitzilopochtli, god of the war, lord of the sun and fire, ruler of the South
23.
Aztec calendar
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The Aztec or Mexica calendar is the calendar system that was used by the Aztecs as well as other Pre-Columbian peoples of central Mexico. It is one of the Mesoamerican calendars, sharing the basic structure of calendars from throughout ancient Mesoamerica, the calendar consisted of a 365-day calendar cycle called xiuhpohualli and a 260-day ritual cycle called tonalpohualli. These two cycles formed a 52-year century, sometimes called the calendar round. The xiuhpohualli is considered to be the calendar, since it is based on the sun. The tonalpohualli consists of a cycle of 260 days, each day signified by a combination of a number from 1 to 13 and this cycle of number and day signs would continue similarly until the 20th week, which would start on 1 Rabbit, and end on 13 Flower. It would take a full 260 days for the two cycles to realign and repeat the sequence back on 1 Crocodile, the set of day signs used in central Mexico is identical to that used by Mixtecs, and to a lesser degree similar to those of other Mesoamerican calendars. Each of the day signs also bears an association with one of the four cardinal directions, there is some variation in the way the day signs were drawn or carved. Those here were taken from the Codex Magliabechiano, wind and Rain are represented by images of their associated gods, Ehecatl and Tlaloc. Other marks on the stone showed the current world and also the worlds before this one, each world was called a sun, and each sun had its own species of inhabitants. The Aztecs believed that they were in the sun and like all of the suns before them they would also eventually perish due to their own imperfections. The 260 days of the calendar were grouped into twenty periods of thirteen days each. Scholars usually refer to these weeks as trecenas, using a Spanish term derived from trece thirteen. The original Nahuatl term is not known, each trecena is named according to the calendar date of the first day of the thirteen days in that trecena. In addition, each of the twenty trecenas in the 260-day cycle had its own deity, In ancient times the year was composed of eighteen months. The days of the year were counted twenty by twenty, Diego Durán Xiuhpohualli is the Aztec year count. One year consists of 360 named days and 5 nameless and these extra days are thought to be unlucky. The year was broken into 18 periods of twenty days each, the Aztec word for moon is metztli but whatever name was used for these periods is unknown. Through Spanish usage, the 20-day period of the Aztec calendar has become known as a veintena
24.
Aztec medicine
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The Aztec medicine concerns the body of knowledge, belief and a ritual surrounding human health and sickness, as observed among the Nahuatl-speaking peoples in the Aztec realm of central Mexico. The Aztecs knew of and used an extensive inventory consisting of hundreds of different medicinal herbs, elements of traditional medicinal practices and beliefs are still found among modern-day Nahua communities, often intermixed with European or other later influences. Establishing a treatment for any given ailment depended first upon determining the nature of its cause, disease had an ambivalent or dualistic aspect, representing an imbalanced state but at the same time its presence could indicate the existence of a communion with the supernatural world. Aztec use of entheogens Mesoamerican medicine Aguilar-Moreno, Manuel, handbook to Life in the Aztec World. Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, verdadera medicina, cirugía y astrologia en tres libros dividida. Pestilence and Headcolds, Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico
25.
Human sacrifice in Aztec culture
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Human sacrifice was a religious practice of the pre-Columbian Aztec civilization, as well as other Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Maya and the Zapotec. The extent of such practices is debated by modern scholars, for example, Bernal Díazs The Conquest of New Spain includes eyewitness accounts of human sacrifices, as well as descriptions of the remains of sacrificial victims. In addition, there are a number of accounts of human sacrifices written by Spanish friars. The literary accounts have been supported by archeological research, a wide variety of explanations and interpretations of the Aztec practice of human sacrifice have been proposed by modern scholars. Most scholars of Pre-Columbian civilization see human sacrifice among the Aztecs as a part of the cultural tradition of human sacrifice in Mesoamerica. The practice of sacrifice was widespread in the Mesoamerican and in the South American cultures during the Inca Empire. Like all other known pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica, the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, the extant sources describe how the Aztecs sacrificed human victims on each of their eighteen festivities, one festivity for each of their 20-day months. It is unknown if the Aztecs engaged in human sacrifice before they reached the Anahuac valley and started absorbing other cultural influences. The first human sacrifice reported in the sources was the sacrifice and skinning of the daughter of the king Cóxcox of Culhuacán, several ethnohistorical sources state that under the guidance of Tlacaelel, the importance of human sacrifice in Aztec history grew. The Aztecs would perform a series of rituals on nearby tribesmen, sacrifice them using an obsidian knife and they would end the sacrificing when he had finished drinking and he was no longer thirsty. This ritual would go on for a whole weekend so as to please the gods, Sacrifice was a common theme in Mesoamerican cultures. In the Aztec Legend of the Five Suns, all the gods sacrificed themselves so that mankind could live. Some years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, a body of Franciscans confronted the remaining Aztec priesthood and demanded, under threat of death, the Aztec priests defended themselves as follows, Life is because of the gods, with their sacrifice they gave us life. What the Aztec priests were referring to was a central Mesoamerican belief, everything on earth is tonacayotl—spiritual flesh-hood. All things—earth, crops, moon, stars and people—spring from the severed or buried bodies, fingers, humanity itself is macehualli, those deserved and brought back to life through penance. A strong sense of indebtedness was connected with this worldview, indeed, nextlahualli was a commonly used metaphor for human sacrifice, and, as Bernardino de Sahagún reported, it was said that the victim was someone who gave his service. Human sacrifice was in this sense the highest level of an entire panoply of offerings through which the Aztecs sought to repay their debt to the gods. Even the stage for human sacrifice, the massive temple-pyramids, was a mound, crammed with treasures, grains, soil and human
26.
Templo Mayor
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The Templo Mayor was one of the main temples of the Aztecs in their capital city of Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. Its architectural style belongs to the late Postclassic period of Mesoamerica, the spire in the center of the adjacent image was devoted to Quetzalcoatl in his form as the wind god, Ehecatl. The Great Temple devoted to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, measuring approximately 100 by 80 m at its base, construction of the first temple began sometime after 1325, and it was rebuilt six times. The temple was destroyed by the Spanish in 1521 to make way for the new cathedral, today, the archeological site lies just to the northeast of the Zocalo, or main plaza of Mexico City, in the block between Seminario and Justo Sierra streets. The site is part of the Historic Center of Mexico City, after the destruction of Tenochtitlan, the Templo Mayor, like most of the rest of the city, was taken apart and covered over by the new Spanish colonial city. The Temple’s exact location was forgotten, although by the 20th-century scholars had an idea where to look for it. This was based on the work done at the end of the 19th century. Leopoldo Batres did some work at the end of the 19th century under the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral because at this time. In the first decades of the 20th century, Manuel Gamio found part of the southwest corner of the temple, however, it did not generate great public interest in excavating further because the zone was an upper-class residential area. In 1933, Emilio Cuevas found part of a staircase and beam, in 1948, Hugo Moedano and Elma Estrada Balmori excavated a platform containing serpent heads and offerings. In 1966, Eduardo Contreras and Jorge Angula excavated a chest containing offerings that was first explored by Gamio, the push to fully excavate the site did not come until late in the 20th century. On 21 February 1978, workers for the company were digging at a place in the city then popularly known as the island of the dogs. It was so named because it was elevated over the rest of the neighborhood. Just over two meters down, the diggers struck a pre-Hispanic monolith and this stone turned out to be a huge disk of over 3.25 meters in diameter,30 centimeters thick and weighing 8.5 metric tons. The relief on the stone was later determined to be Coyolxauhqui, Huitzilopochtlis sister, from 1978 to 1982, specialists directed by archeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma worked on the project to excavate the Temple. Initial excavations found many of the artifacts were in good enough condition to study. Efforts coalesced into the Templo Mayor Project, which was authorized by presidential decree, to excavate,13 buildings in this area had to be demolished. Nine of these were built in the 1930s and four dated from the 19th century and these objects are housed in the Templo Mayor Museum
27.
History of the Aztecs
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The Aztecs were a Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican people of central Mexico in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. The Republic of Mexico and its capital, Mexico City, derive their names from the word Mexica, the capital of the Aztec empire was Tenochtitlan. During the empire, the city was built on an island in Lake Texcoco. Modern-day Mexico City was constructed on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, the Spanish colonisation of the Americas reached the mainland during the reign of Huey Tlatoani Moctezuma II. In 1521, Hernán Cortés, along with an army of other Native Americans, conquered the Aztecs through germ warfare, siege warfare, psychological warfare. From 1376 until 1427, the Mexica were a tributary of Azcapotzalco, the Aztec rulers Acamapichtli, Huitzilihuitl and Chimalpopoca were, in fact, vassals of Tezozomoc, the Tepanec ruler of Azcapotzalco. When Tezozomoc died in 1425, his son Maxtla ascended to the throne of Azcapotzalco, matla sought to tighten Azcapotzalcos grip on the nearby city-states in the Valley of Mexico. In the process, Chimalpopoca, tlatoani of Tenochtitlan, was assassinated by Maxtlas agents while Nezahualcoyotl of Texcoco was forced into exile, in the Valley of Mexico, there existed numerous city-states, including Chalco, Xochimilco, Tlacopan, Culhuacan, and Atzcapotzalco. The most powerful were Culhuacan on the shore of Lake Texcoco and Azcapotzalco on the west shore. As a result, when the Mexica arrived in the Valley of Mexico as a semi-nomadic tribe, in roughly 1248, they first settled on Chapultepec, a hill on the west shore of Lake Texcoco, the site of numerous springs. In time, the Tepanecs of Azcapotzalco ousted the Mexica from Chapultepec, there they married and assimilated into Culhuacan culture. In 1323, they asked the new ruler of Culhuacan, Achicometl, for his daughter, unknown to the king, the Mexica actually planned to sacrifice her. The Mexica believed that by doing this the princess would join the gods as a deity, as the story goes, during a festival dinner, a priest came out wearing her flayed skin as part of the ritual. Upon seeing this, the king and the people of Culhuacan were horrified and expelled the Mexica. Forced to flee, in 1325 they went to an island on the west side of Lake Texcoco where they began to build their city Tenochtitlan. It is said that the Aztec god, Huitzlipochtli, instructed the Aztecs to found their city at the location where they saw an eagle, on a cactus, the Aztecs, apparently, saw this vision on the small island where Tenochtitlan was founded. Another Mexica group settled on the side of this island. Originally, this was an independent Mexica kingdom, but eventually it was absorbed by Tenochtitlan, the famous marketplace described by Hernán Cortés and Bernal Diaz del Castillo was actually located in Tlatelolco
28.
Aztec warfare
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The Aztec state was centered on political expansion and dominance of and exaction of tribute from other city states, and warfare was the basic dynamic force in Aztec politics. Thus, only specifically chosen men served in the military, the sacrifice of war captives was an important part of many of the Aztec religious festivals. Warfare was thus the driving force of both the Aztec economy and religion. There were two main objectives in Aztec warfare, the first objective was political, the subjugation of enemy city states in order to exact tribute and expand Aztec political hegemony. The second objective was religious and socioeconomic, the taking of captives to be sacrificed in religious ceremonies and these dual objectives also influenced the kind of warfare practiced by the Aztecs. Warriors were essential to Aztec life and culture, at birth, an Aztec boy would receive two symbols of being a warrior. A shield would be placed in his hand, and an arrow would be placed in his right. After a short ceremony the newly born boys umbilical cord, shield and these parts would symbol the rise of a warrior. Each shield and arrow would be specifically for that boy and would resemble his family. These birth rituals show the importance of culture to the Aztecs. As for girls, at birth their umbilical cord would be buried usually under the family fireplace, since all boys starting at age 15 were trained to become warriors Aztec society as a whole had no standing army. Therefore, warriors would be drafted to a campaign through a Tequital, outside of battle, many warriors were farmers and tradesmen. They would learn their trade from their father, warriors would be married by their early twenties and would be a vital part of Aztec daily life. They would work a certain trade usually passed on through family status, warriors would be lower class citizens, that when called upon would engage in battle. Being a warrior did, however, present a way to move up in Aztec society, the warriors life was a chance to change ones social status. If they were successful as a warrior they would be presented with gifts, if they reached the rank of Eagle or Jaguar warrior they would be considered as nobles. They would also become full-time warriors working for the city-state to protect merchants and they resembled the police force of Aztec society. Aztec culture valued appearance, and appearance defined people within society, warriors had a very distinct appearance
29.
Aztec codices
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Aztec codices are books written by pre-Columbian and colonial-era Aztecs. These codices provide some of the best primary sources for Aztec culture, the pre-Columbian codices mostly do not in fact use the codex form and are, or originally were, long folded sheets. They also differ from European books in that they mostly consist of images and pictograms, the colonial era codices not only contain Aztec pictograms, but also Classical Nahuatl, Spanish, and occasionally Latin. Some are entirely in Nahuatl without pictorial content, although there are very few surviving pre-conquest codices, the tlacuilo tradition endured the transition to colonial culture, scholars now have access to a body of around 500 colonial-era codices. Colonial-era Nahuatl language documentation is the texts of the New Philology. The Codex Borbonicus is a written by Aztec priests around the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Like all pre-Columbian Aztec codices, it was pictorial in nature. Codex Bornobicus is held at the Library of the National Assembly of France, the Boturini Codex was painted by an unknown Aztec author some time between 1530 and 1541, roughly a decade after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Pictorial in nature, it tells the story of the legendary Aztec journey from Aztlán to the Valley of Mexico, rather than employing separate pages, the author used one long sheet of amatl, or fig bark, accordion-folded into 21½ pages. There is a rip in the middle of the 22nd page, unlike many other Aztec codices, the drawings are not colored, but rather merely outlined with black ink. Also known as Tira de la Peregrinación, it is named one of its first European owners. It is now held in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, the Codex Mendoza is a pictorial document, with Spanish annotations and commentary, composed circa 1541. It is divided into three sections, a history of each Aztec ruler and their conquests, a list of the tribute paid by each province. It is held in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, the Florentine Codex is a set of 12 books created under the supervision of Bernardino de Sahagún between approximately 1540 and 1585. It is a copy of original materials which are now lost. Perhaps more than any source, the Florentine Codex has been the major source of Aztec life in the years before the Spanish conquest. Anderson published English translations of the Nahuatl text of the books in separate volumes. A full color, facsimile copy of the codex was published in three bound volumes in 1979
30.
Aztec writing
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Aztec or Nahuatl writing is a pictographic and ideographic pre-Columbian writing system with significant number of logograms and syllabic signs which was used in central Mexico by the Nahua people. The majority of the Aztec codices were burned either by Aztec tlatoani, remaining Aztec codices such as Codex Mendoza, Codex Borbonicus, and Codex Osuna were written on deer hide and plant fiber. The Aztec writing system is adopted from writing systems used in Central Mexico, mixtec writing is also thought to descend from the Zapotec. The first Oaxacan inscriptions are thought to encode Zapotec, partially because of numerical suffixes characteristic of the Zapotec languages, Aztec was pictographic and ideographic proto-writing, augmented by phonetic rebuses. It also contained syllabic signs and logograms, there was no alphabet, but puns also contributed to recording sounds of the Aztec language. While some scholars have understood the system to not be considered a writing system. There are conventional signs for syllables and logograms which act as signs or for their rebus content. Logosyllabic writing appears on painted and carved artifacts, such as the Tizoc Stone. However, instances of phonetic characters often appear within a significant artistic, in native manuscripts, the sequence of historical events are indicted by a line of footprints leading from one place or scene to another. The concepts of motion and walking were indicated by a trail of footprints, a glyph could be used as a rebus to represent a different word with the same sound or similar pronunciation. This is especially evident in the glyphs of town names, for example, the glyph for Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, was represented by combining two pictograms, stone and cactus. Aztec Glyphs do not have a set reading order, as do Mayan hieroglyphs, as such, they may be read in any direction which forms the correct sound values in the context of the glyph. However, there is an internal reading order in that any sign will be followed by the sign for the following sound in the word being written. They do not jumble up the sounds in a word, the Aztec numerical system was vigesimal. They indicated quantities up to twenty by the number of dots. A flag was used to indicate twenty, repeating it for quantities up to four hundred, while a sign like a fir tree, meaning numerous as hairs, signified four hundred. The next unit, eight thousand, was indicated by an incense bag, aztecs embraced the widespread manner of presenting history cartographically. A cartographic map would hold an elaborately detailed history recording events, the maps were painted to be reading sequence, so that time is established by the movement of the narrative through the map and by the succession of individual maps
31.
Moctezuma II
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During his reign the Aztec Empire reached its greatest size. Through warfare, Moctezuma expanded the territory as far south as Xoconosco in Chiapas and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and he changed the previous meritocratic system of social hierarchy and widened the divide between pipiltin and macehualtin by prohibiting commoners from working in the royal palaces. The portrayal of Moctezuma in history has mostly been colored by his role as ruler of a defeated nation, the biases of some historical sources make it difficult to understand his actions during the Spanish invasion. Moctezuma had many wives and concubines but only two women were his Queens – Tlapalizquixochtzin and Teotlalco and he was also a King Consort of Ecatepec because Tlapalizquixochtzin was Queen of that city. His many children included Princess Isabel Moctezuma — and sons Chimalpopoca, the Nahuatl pronunciation of his name is. It is a compound of a noun meaning lord and a meaning to frown in anger. The Aztecs did not use numbers, they were given retroactively by historians to more easily distinguish him from the first Moctezuma. The Aztec chronicles called him Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, while the first was called Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina or Huehuemotecuhzoma, the descriptions of the life of Moctezuma are full of contradictions, and thus nothing is known for certain about his personality and rule. He did not wear his hair long but just over his ears and his face was rather long and cheerful, he had fine eyes, and in his appearance and manner could express geniality or, when necessary, a serious composure. He was very neat and clean, and took a bath every afternoon and he had many women as his mistresses, the daughters of chieftains, but two legitimate wives who were Caciques in their own right, and only some of his servants knew of it. He was quite free from sodomy, the clothes he wore one day he did not wear again till three or four days later. He had a guard of two hundred chieftains lodged in rooms beside his own, only some of whom were permitted to speak to him. It was stated that he had reigned for seventeen years, and was the best king they ever had in Mexico, I have spoken of the sorrow we all felt when we saw that Montezuma was dead. We even blamed the Mercederian friar for not having persuaded him to become a Christian, Moctezuma in particular is depicted unfavorably as a weak-willed, superstitious, and indulgent ruler. Historian James Lockhart suggests that the people needed to have a scapegoat for the Aztec defeat, unlike Bernal Díaz, who was recording his memories many years after the fact, Cortés wrote his Cartas de relación to justify his actions to the Spanish Crown. His prose is characterized by descriptions and explanations, along with frequent personal addresses to the King. They came in two columns, pressed very close to the walls of the street, which is wide and beautiful. Mutezuma came down the middle of street with two chiefs, one on his right hand and the other on his left
32.
Spanish conquest of Mexico
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The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was one of the most significant events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Many of those on the Cortés expedition of 1519 had never seen combat before, in fact, Cortés had never commanded men in battle before. However, there was a generation of Spaniards who participated in expeditions in the Caribbean and Tierra Firme, learning strategy. The Spanish conquest of Mexico had antecedents with established practices, in their advance, the allies were tricked and ambushed several times by the people they encountered. When Cortés left Tenochtitlan to return to the coast and deal with the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez, Alvarado allowed a significant Aztec feast to be celebrated in Tenochtitlan and on the pattern of the earlier massacre in Cholula, closed off the square and massacred the celebrating Aztec noblemen. The biography of Cortés by Francisco López de Gómara contains a description of the massacre, the Alvarado massacre at the Main Temple of Tenochtitlan precipitated rebellion by the population of the city. When the captured emperor Motecuhzoma II, now seen as a puppet of the invading Spaniards, attempted to calm the outraged populace. Cortés had returned to Tenochtitlan and his men fled the city during the Noche Triste in June,1520. The Spanish, Tlaxcalans and reinforcements returned a year later on August 13,1521 to a civilization that had wiped out by famine. This made it easier to conquer the remaining Aztecs, the fall of the Aztec Empire was the key event in the formation of the Spanish overseas empire, with New Spain, which later became Mexico, a major component. The Spanish conquerors could and did write accounts that narrated the conquest from the first landfalls in Mexico to the victory over the Mexica in Tenochtitlan on August 13,1521. Indigenous accounts are from particular native viewpoints and as the events had a impact on their polity. All accounts of the conquest, Spanish and indigenous alike, have biases, in general, Spanish accounts do not credit their indigenous allies support. Individual conquerors accounts exaggerate that individuals contribution to the conquest, downplaying other conquerors, indigenous allies accounts stress their loyalty to the Spanish and their particular aid as being key to the Spanish victory. Their accounts are similar to Spanish conquerors accounts contained in petitions for rewards and these were almost immediately published in Spain and later in other parts of Europe. Interestingly, Cortéss right-hand man, Pedro de Alvarado did not write at any length about his actions in the New World, two letters to Cortés about Alvarados campaigns in Guatemala are published in The Conquistadors. Rather than it being a petition for rewards for services, as many Spanish accounts were, the account was used by eighteenth-century Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero in his descriptions of the history of Mexico. On the indigenous side, the allies of Cortés, particularly the Tlaxcalans, wrote extensively about their services to the Spanish Crown in the conquest, the most important of these are the pictorial Lienzo de Tlaxcala and the Historia de Tlaxcala by Diego Muñoz Camargo
33.
Conquistador
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Conquistadors /kɒŋˈkɪstəˌdɔːrz/ is a term used to refer to the soldiers and explorers of the Spanish Empire or the Portuguese Empire in a general sense. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, Oceania, Africa and Asia, conquering territory and they colonized much of the world for Spain and Portugal in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Portugal established a route to China in the early 16th century, sending ships via the southern coast of Africa, human infections gained worldwide transmission vectors for the first time, from Africa and Eurasia to the Americas and vice versa. The spread of diseases, including smallpox, flu and typhus. In the 16th century perhaps 240,000 Europeans entered American ports, by the late 16th century silver imports from America provided one-fifth of Spains total budget. The conquistadors were professional warriors, using European tactics, firearms and their units would often specialize in forms of combat that required long periods of training that were too costly for informal groups. Their armies were composed of Iberian and other European soldiers. Native allied troops were largely equipped with armament and armour that varied geographically. Some groups consisted of men without military experience, Catholic clergy which helped with administrative duties. These native forces often included African slaves and Native Americans and they not only fought in the battlefield but served as interpreters, informants, servants, teachers, physicians, and scribes. India Catalina and Malintzin were Native American women slaves who worked for the Spaniards, Castilian law prohibited foreigners and non-Catholics from settling in the New World. However, not all conquistadors were Castilian, many foreigners Hispanicised their names and/or converted to Catholicism to serve the Castilian Crown. For example, Ioánnis Fokás was a Castilian of Greek origin who discovered the strait that bears his name between Vancouver Island and Washington State in 1592, german-born Nikolaus Federmann, Hispanicised as Nicolás de Federmán, was a conquistador in Venezuela and Colombia. The origin of people in mixed expeditions was not always distinguished. Castilian law banned Spanish women from travelling to America unless they were married and accompanied by a husband, women who travelled thus include María de Escobar, María Estrada, Marina Vélez de Ortega, Marina de la Caballería, Francisca de Valenzuela, Catalina de Salazar. Some conquistadors married Native American women or had illegitimate children, European young men enlisted in the army because it was one way out of poverty. Catholic priests instructed the soldiers in mathematics, writing, theology, Latin, Greek, and history, Kings army officers taught military arts. An uneducated young recruit could become a leader, elected by their fellow professional soldiers
34.
Interpreter
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Interpretation or interpreting is oral translation of speech or sign from a language into another. Translation studies is the study of the theory, description and application of interpretation and translation. The terms interpretation and translation are used interchangeably but are not synonymous. Interpretation describes immediate conversion of source orally, whereas translation is the conversion of source to text, the primary practical distinction is that, in translation, the translator has more time to consider the output and may access resources in that process. g. A spoken Chinese dialect written using characters or spoken English represented in a signed form of English, Signed Exact English. In a legal context, such as interpretation, where ramifications of misinterpretation may be dire. Teams of two or more interpreters, with one actively interpreting and the monitoring for greater accuracy. Translators have time to consider and revise each word and sentence before delivering their product to the client, while live interpretations goal is to achieve total accuracy at all times, details of the original speech can be missed and interpreters can ask for clarification from the speaker. In any language, including languages, when a word is used for which there is no exact match. The most common form is extempore SI, where the interpreter does not know the message until he or she hears it. In the ideal setting for language, the interpreter sits in a sound-proof booth and speaks into a microphone. The simultaneous interpretation is rendered to the target-language listeners via their earphones, the technology arose in the 1920s and 1930s when American businessman Edward Filene and British engineer Alan Gordon Finlay developed simultaneous interpretation equipment with IBM. In consecutive interpreting, the speaker is required to pause to allow interpretation — accuracy is greatly enhanced, traditionally, the interpreter will sit or stand near the speaker. Consecutive interpretation can be conducted in a pattern of short or long according to the interpreters preference. In short CI, the interpreter relies mostly on memory whereas, in long CI, Consecutive interpreting of whole thoughts, rather than in small pieces, is desirable so that the interpreter has the whole meaning before rendering it in the target language. This affords a truer, more accurate, and more accessible interpretation than where short CI or simultaneous interpretation is used, on occasion, document sight translation is required of the interpreter during consecutive interpretation work. Sight translation combines interpretation and translation, the interpreter must render the source-language document to the target-language as if it was written in the target language, sight translation occurs usually, but not exclusively, in judicial and medical work. This is also known as double-interpretation
35.
Malinche
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She was one of 20 women slaves given to the Spaniards by the natives of Tabasco in 1519. Later, she became a mistress to Cortés and gave birth to his first son, Martín, the historical figure of Marina has been intermixed with Aztec legends. In Mexico today, La Malinche remains iconically potent and she is understood in various and often conflicting aspects as the embodiment of treachery, the quintessential victim, or simply as symbolic mother of the new Mexican people. The term malinchista refers to a disloyal countryperson, especially in Mexico, La Malinche was born sometime between 1496 and 1501, in the region between the Aztec-ruled Valley of Mexico and the Maya states of the Yucatán Peninsula. She was named Malinalli after the Goddess of Grass, and later Tenepal meaning one who speaks with liveliness, in her youth, her father Cacique of Paynala died, and her mother remarried another Cacique and bore a son. Now a stepchild, the girl was given to people from Xicalango. Bernal Díaz del Castillo claims Malinallis family faked her death by telling the townspeople that a deceased child of a slave was Malinalli. The Xicalango gave the child to the Tobascans, Malinalli was introduced to the Spanish in April 1519, when she was among 20 slave women given by the Chontal Maya of Potonchán after the Spaniards defeated them in battle. At this time, she was probably in her teens or early 20s. Bernal Díaz del Castillo remarked on her beauty and graciousness, she was the one of the slaves whose name he remembered. Cortés singled her out as a gift for Alonso Hernandez Puertocarrero, according to Díaz, she spoke to emissaries from Moctezuma in their native tongue Nahuatl and pointed to Cortés as the chief Spaniard to speak for them. Cortés had located a Spanish priest, Gerónimo de Aguilar, who had spent several years in captivity among the Maya peoples in Yucatán following a shipwreck, thus, he had learned some Mayan, but he did not speak Nahuatl. Cortés used Marina for translating between the Nahuatl language and the Chontal Maya language, then Aguilar could interpret from Mayan to Spanish until Marina learned Spanish and could be the sole interpreter. She accompanied Cortés so closely that Aztec codices always show her picture drawn alongside of Cortés, the natives of Tlaxcala, who formed an alliance with Cortés against Moctezuma, called both Marina and Cortés by the same name, Malintzin. According to surviving records, Marina learned of a plan by natives of Cholula to cooperate with the Aztecs to destroy the small Spanish army and she alerted Cortés to the danger and even pretended to be cooperating with her native informants while Cortés foiled their plot to trap his men. Cortés turned the tables on them and slaughtered many Cholulans, in this manner, she is often considered as a traitor by many and her name is not revered among many locals. Historians such as Prescott generally lost track of Marina after her journey to Central America, some contemporary scholars have estimated that she died less than a decade after the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan at some point in 1529. Historian Sir Hugh Thomas in his book Conquest reports the date of her death as 1551, deduced from letters he discovered in Spain alluding to her as alive in 1550
36.
Spanish colonization of the Americas
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The Colonial expansion under the crown of Castile was initiated by the Spanish conquistadores and developed by its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Catholic faith through indigenous conversions and it is estimated that during the colonial period, a total of 18.6 million Spaniards settled in the Americas and a further 3.5 million immigrated during the post-colonial era. Spains loss of these last territories politically ended the Spanish rule in the Americas, the Catholic Monarchs Isabella of Castile, Queen of Castile and her husband King Ferdinand, King of Aragon, pursued a policy of joint rule of their kingdoms and created a single Spanish monarchy. Even though Castile and Aragon were ruled jointly by their respective monarchs, the Catholic Monarchs gave official approval for the plans of Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus for a voyage to reach India by sailing West. The funding came from the queen of Castile, so the profits from Spanish expedition flowed to Castile, in the extension of Spanish sovereignty to its overseas territories, authority for expeditions of discovery, conquest, and settlement resided in the monarchy. Columbus made four voyages to the West Indiesas the monarchs granted Columbus the governorship of the new territories and he founded La Navidad on the island later named Hispaniola, in what is present day Haiti on his first voyage. After its destruction by the indigenous Taino people, the town of Isabella was begun in 1493, in 1496 his brother, Bartholomew, founded Santo Domingo. By 1500, despite a death rate, there were between 300 and 1000 Spanish settled in the area. The local Taíno people continued to resist, refusing to plant crops, the first mainland explorations were followed by a phase of inland expeditions and conquest. In 1500 the city of Nueva Cádiz was founded on the island of Cubagua, Venezuela, the Spanish founded San Sebastian de Uraba in 1509 but abandoned it within the year. There is indirect evidence that the first permanent Spanish mainland settlement established in the Americas was Santa María la Antigua del Darién, the Spanish conquest of Mexico is generally understood to be the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire which was the base for later conquests of other regions. Later conquests were protracted campaigns with less spectacular results than conquest of the Aztecs, but not until the Spanish conquest of Peru was the conquest of the Aztecs matched in scope by the victory over the Inca empire in 1532. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire was led by Hernán Cortés, the victory over the Aztecs was relatively quick, from 1519 to 1521, and aided by his Tlaxcala and other allies from indigenous city-states or altepetl. These polities allied against the Aztec empire, to which they paid tribute following conquest or threat of conquest, leaving the political hierarchy. The Spanish conquest of Yucatán was a longer campaign, from 1551 to 1697, against the Maya peoples in the Yucatán Peninsula of present-day Mexico. When Hernán Cortés landed ashore at present day Veracruz and founded the Spanish city there on April 22,1519, Spain colonized and exerted control of Alta California through the Spanish missions in California until the Mexican secularization act of 1833. It was the first step in a campaign that took decades of fighting to subdue the mightiest empire in the Americas. In the following years Spain extended its rule over the Empire of the Inca civilization, in the following years the conquistadors and indigenous allies extended control over Greater Andes Region
37.
Pacific Ocean
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The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of the Earths oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, the Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres. Both the center of the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean, the oceans current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521, as he encountered favourable winds on reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means peaceful sea, important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times. Long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan, trade, and therefore knowledge, extended to the Indonesian islands but apparently not Australia. By at least 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality, from 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean. The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and he named it Mar del Sur because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. Later, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Castilian expedition of world circumnavigation starting in 1519, Magellan called the ocean Pacífico because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century, sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered the Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, and Papua New Guinea. In 1542–43 the Portuguese also reached Japan, in 1564, five Spanish ships consisting of 379 explorers crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi and sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands. The Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history, Spanish expeditions also discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. In the 16th and 17th century Spain considered the Pacific Ocean a Mare clausum—a sea closed to other naval powers, as the only known entrance from the Atlantic the Strait of Magellan was at times patrolled by fleets sent to prevent entrance of non-Spanish ships. On the western end of the Pacific Ocean the Dutch threatened the Spanish Philippines, Spain also sent expeditions to the Pacific Northwest reaching Vancouver Island in southern Canada, and Alaska. The French explored and settled Polynesia, and the British made three voyages with James Cook to the South Pacific and Australia, Hawaii, and the North American Pacific Northwest, one of the earliest voyages of scientific exploration was organized by Spain in the Malaspina Expedition of 1789–1794. It sailed vast areas of the Pacific, from Cape Horn to Alaska, Guam and the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, and the South Pacific. Growing imperialism during the 19th century resulted in the occupation of much of Oceania by other European powers, and later, Japan, in Oceania, France got a leading position as imperial power after making Tahiti and New Caledonia protectorates in 1842 and 1853 respectively. After navy visits to Easter Island in 1875 and 1887, Chilean navy officer Policarpo Toro managed to negotiate an incorporation of the island into Chile with native Rapanui in 1888, by occupying Easter Island, Chile joined the imperial nations
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Santiago, Cuba
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Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city of Cuba and capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province in the south-eastern area of the island, some 870 km south-east of the Cuban capital of Havana. Historically Santiago de Cuba has long been the second most important city on the island after Havana and it is on a bay connected to the Caribbean Sea and is an important sea port. In 2004 the city of Santiago de Cuba had a population of about 509,143 people, Santiago de Cuba was the fifth village founded by Spanish conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar on July 25,1515. In 1516 the settlement was destroyed by fire, and was immediately rebuilt and this was the starting point of the expeditions led by Juan de Grijalba and Hernán Cortés to the coasts of Mexico in 1518, and in 1538 by Hernando de Sotos expedition to Florida. The first cathedral was built in the city in 1528, from 1522 until 1589 Santiago was the capital of the Spanish colony of Cuba. The city was plundered by French forces in 1553, and by British forces under Christopher Myngs in 1662, the city experienced an influx of French and British immigrants in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, many coming from Haiti after the Haitian slave revolt of 1791. This added to the citys cultural mix, already rich with Spanish. It was also the location where Spanish troops faced their main defeat at San Juan Hill on July 1,1898, after capturing the surrounding hills, General William Rufus Shafter laid siege to the city. Spain later surrendered to the United States after Admiral William T. Sampson destroyed the Spanish Atlantic fleet just outside Santiagos harbor on July 3,1898, Cuban poet, writer, and national hero, José Martí, is buried in Cementerio Santa Efigenia. Pope Francis visited Cuba in 2015, Santiago was also the home of the revolutionary hero, Frank País. On July 26,1953, the Cuban Revolution began with an armed attack on the Moncada Barracks by a small contingent of rebels led by Fidel Castro. Shortly after this incident, País began talking with students and young working people informally. This developed into highly organized cells coordinating a large scale urban resistance that became instrumental in the success of the Cuban Revolution, País group prepared carefully, accruing weapons, collecting money, collecting medical supplies. They published a newsletter that reported news that criticized the government. In the summer of 1955, País organization merged with Castros July 26 Movement, País became the leader of the new organization in Oriente province, though two years later he was betrayed to the police and was shot after his capture. On January 1,1959, Fidel Castro proclaimed the victory of the Cuban Revolution from a balcony on Santiago de Cubas city hall, Santiago de Cuba was the hometown of poet José María Heredia. It is the birthplace of the world-famous Bacardi Brand, which was started by Facundo Bacardi Masso in 1862 and it now houses a museum that displays the extensive art collection of the Bacardí family. Santiago de Cuba is well known for its cultural life, some of Cubas most famous musicians, including Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer and Eliades Ochoa and trova composer Ñico Saquito were born in the city or in one of the villages surrounding it
39.
Veracruz, Veracruz
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Veracruz, officially known as Heroica Veracruz, is a major port city and municipality on the Gulf of Mexico in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The city is located along the coast in the part of the state,90 km southeast of the state capital Xalapa along Federal Highway 140. It is the states most populous city, with a population that is greater than the municipalitys population, at the 2010 census, the city had 554,830 inhabitants,428,323 in Veracruz Municipality and 126,507 in Boca del Río Municipality. Developed during Spanish colonization, Veracruz has been Mexico’s oldest, largest and it was the second Spanish settlement on the mainland of the Americas but the first to receive a coat-of-arms. During the colonial period, this city had the largest mercantile class and was at times wealthier than the capital of Mexico City and its wealth attracted the raids of 17th-century pirates, against which fortifications such as Fort San Juan de Ulúa were built. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Veracruz was invaded on different occasions by France and it has become the principal port for most of Mexico’s imports and exports, especially for the automotive industry. Veracruz has a blend of cultures, mostly indigenous, ethnic Spanish, the influence of these three is best seen in the food and music of the area, which has strong Spanish, Caribbean and African influences. The name Veracruz, derives from the Latin Vera Crux, having established the settlement of Villa Rica on Good Friday 1519, Cortés dedicated the place to the True Cross as an offering. The Spanish captain Juan de Grijalva, along with Bernal Díaz del Castillo, the Spanish gave it that name because they landed on the Christian feast of John the Baptist, and in honor of the captain. De Ulúa is derived from the name for the Aztecs. According to tradition, when the Spanish arrived, they found two men who had been sacrificed. When they asked the locals what had happened, they said the Aztecs had ordered the sacrifice, the word for Aztec evolved into Ulúa. Because the first expedition detected the presence of gold in the region, Cortés and his men landed at the shore opposite the island where Grijalva had moored, which has the pre-Hispanic name of Chalchihuecan. Cortés, Francisco de Montejo and Alonso Hernández Puertocarrero founded the settlement, the name Villa Rica referred to the gold that was found here and Vera cruz was added because the Cortés expedition landed on Good Friday, a Christian holy day. When Cortés and his soldiers elected a Justicia Mayor and a Capitán General, the city was the first on mainland America to receive a European coat of arms, which was authorized by Carlos V in Valladolid, Spain on 4 July 1523. The original settlement was moved to what is now known as Antigua and this separated the city from the port, as ships could not enter the shallow river. Ships continued to dock at San Juan de Ulúa, with boats being used to ferry goods on. When large-scale smuggling of goods took place to avoid customs officials, docks and an observation tower were constructed on the island to ensure that goods went through customs officials
40.
Totonac people
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The Totonac /ˈtoʊtoʊˌnɑːk/ people resided in the eastern coastal and mountainous regions of Mexico at the time of the Spanish arrival in 1519. Today they reside in the states of Veracruz, Puebla, and they are one of the possible builders of the pre-Columbian city of El Tajín, and further maintained quarters in Teotihuacán. Until the mid-19th century they were the main producers of vanilla. The term totonac refers to the living in Totonacapan, some authors had translated the term totonac as a Nahuatl word meaning People of Hot Land. The translation for this according to the Totonac Language is tutunacu meaning Three Hearts signifying their three cities or cultural centers, Cempoala, Tajin and Teayo. In the 15th century, the Aztecs labeled the region of the Totonac Totonacapan, Totonacapan was largely hot and humid. Along with the agricultural crops of maize, manioc, squash, beans, pumpkin and chili peppers. Even during the disastrous central Mexican famine of 1450-1454, the region remained an agricultural center. At that time, many Aztecs were forced to sell themselves or their members as slaves to the Totonac in exchange for subsistence maize. There is an absence of comals, metates and manos meaning the Totonacs did not eat tortillas, however. The Totonacs ate fruit most notably zapotes, guavas, papayas, plantains, men hunted and fished shark, turtle, deer, armadillo, opossums, and frogs. Peasants as well as nobles ate corn porridge in the morning, lunch was the main meal of the day and consisted of manioc, bean stew or even a rich meat sauce for the nobles. Fish and seafood as well as game was eaten by both nobles and farmers, Totonac women were expert weavers and embroiderers, they dressed grandly and braided their hair with feathers. The Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún stated that, in all aspects of their appearance, the women were quite elegant, women wore skirts, noble women wore shell and jade necklaces and earrings and often tattooed their faces with red ink. Married women wore their hair in the Nahuatl fashion while peasant women wore their hair long, likewise, the noble men dressed well, adorning themselves with multicolored cloaks, loin cloths, necklaces, arm bands, lip plugs and devices made of the prized quetzal feathers. Hair was kept long with a tuft of hair on the top tied up with a ribbon. Houses were generally thatched and had an overhang, the region of Totonacapan was subject to Aztec military incursions from the mid-15th century until the Spanish arrival. Despite the e tablishment of Aztec fortifications throughout the region, rebellion was endemic, major Totonac centers were Papantla, with an estimated population of 60,000 in 1519, Xalapa, and Cempoala
41.
Xicotencatl the Elder
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Xicotencatl I or Xicotencatl the Elder was a long-lived tlatoani of Tizatlan, a Nahua altepetl within the pre-Columbian confederacy of Tlaxcala, in what is now Mexico. His Nahuatl name, pronounced, is sometimes spelled Xicohtencatl, in 1519 he was baptized as Lorenzo Xicotencatl or Don Lorenzo de Vargas. At the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico he was very old and he was instrumental in aligning the Tlaxcala with Cortes Spaniards. Tlaxcalan historian Diego Muñoz Camargo wrote of him that he was more than 120 years old and he also writes that he had more than 500 wives and concubines and consequently a large number of children, including Xicotencatl II and the wife of Jorge de Alvarado - Doña Lucía. This Cortés ordered and Xicotencatl II was hanged, one song or poem attributed to Xicotencatl is known. Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire Xicotencatl II León-Portilla, Miguel, fifteen Poets of the Aztec World
42.
Florentine Codex
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The Florentine Codex is a 16th-century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. Sahagún originally titled it, La Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva España, after a translation mistake, it was given the name Historia general de las Cosas de Nueva España. The best-preserved manuscript is commonly referred to as The Florentine Codex, as it is held in the Laurentian Library of Florence, Italy. In partnership with Nahua men who were formerly his students at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, Sahagún conducted research, organized evidence, wrote and he worked on this project from 1545 up until his death in 1590. The work consists of 2,400 pages organized into twelve books and it documents the culture, religious cosmology and ritual practices, society, economics, and natural history of the Aztec people. It has been described as “one of the most remarkable accounts of a non-Western culture ever composed. ”The Americans Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson were the first to translate the Codex from Nahuatl to English, in a project that took 30 years to complete. In 2012 high-resolution scans of all volumes of The Florentine Codex, in Nahuatl and Spanish, the three bound volumes of the Florentine Codex are found in the Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Palat. 218-220 in Florence, Italy, with the title Florentine Codex chosen by its English translators, Anderson and Charles Dibble, following in the tradition of nineteenth-century Mexican scholars Francisco del Paso y Troncoso and Joaquín García Icazbalceta. The manuscript became part of the collection of the library in Florence at some point after its creation in the sixteenth century. It was not until the eighteenth century that scholars become aware of it. The work became more known in the nineteenth century, with a description published by P. Fr. The Spanish Royal Academy of History learned of work and, at the 5th meeting of the International Congress of Americanists. In 1888 German scholar Eduard Seler presented a description of the illustrations at the 7th meeting of the International Congress of Americanists, Mexican scholar Francisco del Paso y Troncoso received permission in 1893 from the Italian government to copy the alphabetic text and the illustrations. The three-volume manuscript of the Florentine Codex has been analyzed and compared to earlier drafts found in Madrid. The Tolosa Manuscript was known in the 1860s and studied by José Fernando Ramírez The Tolosa Manuscript has been source for all published editions in Spanish of the Historia General. The English translation of the complete Nahuatl text of all volumes of the Florentine Codex was a decades-long work of Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles Dibble, a contribution to the scholarship on Mesoamerican ethno-history. In 1979 the Mexican government published a full-color, three-volume facsimile of the Florentine Codex in an edition of 2,000
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Arquebus
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The arquebus is an early muzzle-loaded firearm that appeared in late 15th century Europe, and was until the 17th century the primary firearm used in European armies. The arquebus was originally a hand cannon with a hook, a matchlock mechanism was added to it around 1475 and it became the first firearm with a trigger. The heavy arquebus, known as the musket, was developed around 1521 to penetrate plate armor, a standardized arquebus, the caliver, was introduced in the early 16th century. The name caliver is derived from the English corruption of calibre, the smoothbore matchlock arquebus is considered the forerunner to the rifle and other long gun firearms. Heavy arquebuses mounted on wagons were called arquebus à croc and these carried a ball of about 3.5 ounces. In the early 16th century, the arquebus had a confusing variety of meanings. Some writers used it to denote any matchlock shoulder gun, referring to light versions as caliver and heavier pieces fired from a fork rest as musket, others treated the arquebus and caliver synonymously, both referring to the lighter, forkless shoulder-fired matchlock. As the 16th century progressed, the term came to be clearly reserved for the lighter forkless weapon. When the wheel lock was introduced, wheel-lock shoulder arms came to be called arquebuses, while lighter, in the mid-17th century, the light flintlock versions came to be called fusils or fuzees. As a low-velocity firearm, the arquebus was used against enemies who were partially or fully protected by steel-plate armor. Plate armor worn upon the torso was standard in European combat from about 1400 until the middle of the 17th century, good suits of plate would usually stop an arquebus ball at long range. It was a practice to proof armor by firing a pistol or arquebus at a new breastplate. The small dent would be circled by engraving to call attention to it, however, at close range, it was possible to pierce even heavy cavalry armor, although penetration is heavily dependent on the power of the arquebus and the quality of the armor. This led to changes in usage, such as the three-quarter plate. The development of volley fire — by the Dutch in Europe, and by the Japanese, just as soon as the first rank has fired, then by the drill they will march to the back. The second rank either marching forward or standing still, will then fire just like the first, after that the third and following ranks will do the same. When the last rank has fired, the first will have reloaded, once volley firing had been developed, the rate of fire and efficiency was greatly increased and the arquebus went from being a support weapon to the primary focus of most early modern armies. The arquebus had a larger bore than its predecessors, until the middle of the 16th century, they were fired by a matchlock mechanism, after which the newer wheellock mechanisms were used instead
Spanish Empire
Confederacy of Tlaxcala
Texcoco
Xochimilco
Mixquic
Iztapalapa
Cuauhtémoc (POW)
