Excavations Uncover Details About the Aztec Town Where Spaniards Were Sacrificed Jan-Albert Hootsen - VICE News
go to original December 12, 2015

In the early summer of 1520 life was still quiet for the five thousand inhabitants of Zúltepec-Tecoaque.

Its population — known as Acolhuas or Texcocanos — were vassals of the powerful city state of Texcoco, which was a member of the Aztec Triple Alliance. The alliance was led by the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, some 35 miles to the west, where Mexico City stands today.

Even as the armies of Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés were advancing towards their victory over the Aztec empire, the townspeople grew corn, beans, agave and avocados. They offered flowers to the gods. They led simple lives.

That life was lost forever after the Acolhuas captured a Spanish-led caravan of hundreds of people who were held prisoner in the town, sacrificed and probably eaten.

Suddenly this small insignificant town was catapulted to the center of indigenous resistance to, and ultimate defeat by, the European invasion.

The story was already known from the Spanish chroniclers. But now excavations have yielded a treasure trove of artifacts and skeletal remains that provide both new details about the events and an unprecedented window on the indigenous perspective.

"It's unlike any other place we've seen in Mexico. The events here really stuck with the conquistadores", Enrique Martínez Vargas, the head of the excavation, tells VICE News. "It was a place that showed that their invasion didn't go all that easily."

Read the rest at VICE News

Photo: Flickr/Fondo Antiguo de la Universidad de Sevilla

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