The Mexica are a Nahuatl-speaking people of the Valley of Mexico who were the rulers of the Triple Alliance, more commonly referred to as the Aztec Empire. The Mexica established Tenochtitlan, a settlement on an island in Lake Texcoco, in 1325. A dissident group in Tenochtitlan separated and founded the settlement of Tlatelolco with its own dynastic lineage. In 1521, their empire was overthrown by an alliance of Spanish conquistadors and rival indigenous warriors, led by the Tlaxcaltec leader Xicotencatl the Elder and the Spaniard Hernán Cortés. The Mexica were subjugated under the Kingdom of Spain for 300 years, until the Mexican War of Independence in 1821.
Music and dance during a One Flower ceremony, from the Florentine Codex
Huitzilopochtli, the patron god of the Mexica, as depicted in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis
Nahuatl, Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about 1.7 million Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller populations in the United States.
The Aztecs called (red) tomatoes xitōmatl, whereas the green tomatillo was called tōmatl; the latter is the source for the English word tomato.
Page of Book IV from the Florentine Codex. The text is in Nahuatl written in the Latin alphabet.
Text about the language by Fray Joseph de Carranza, second half of the 18th century (click to read)
