Everything about Aztl N totally explained
Aztlán (from
Nahuatl Aztlān [ˈast͡ɬaːn]) is the
legendary ancestral home of the
Nahua peoples, one of the main cultural groups in
Mesoamerica. "Azteca" is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlan."
The legend
Nahuatl legends relate that seven tribes lived in
Chicomoztoc, or "the place of the seven caves." Each cave represented a different Nahua group: the Xochimilca, Tlahuica,
Acolhua, Tlaxcalan,
Tepaneca, Chalca, and Mexica. Because of a common linguistic origin, those groups also are called "Nahuatlaca" (Nahua people). These tribes subsequently left the caves and settled "near" Aztlán,o r Aztatlan.
The various descriptions of Aztlán are seemingly contradictory. While some legends describe Aztlán as a paradise, the
Aubin Codex says that the Aztecs were subject to a tyrant elite called the Azteca Chicomoztoca. Guided by their priest, the Aztec fled, and on the road, their god
Huitzilopochtli forbade them to call themselves Azteca, telling them that they should be known as
Mexica. Ironically, the scholars of the 19th century would name them Aztec.
The role of Aztlán is slightly less important to Aztec legendary histories than the
migration to
Tenochtitlán itself. According to the legend, the southward migration began on
May 24,
1064, the first Aztec solar year beginning on May 24, after the Crab Nebula events from May to July of 1054.
CE. Each of the seven groups is credited with founding a different major
city-state in Central Mexico. The city-states reputed to have an Aztec foundation were:
These city-states formed during the
Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerica (
1300-
1521 CE).
According to Aztec legends the Mexica were the last tribe to emigrate. When they arrived at their ancestral homeland, the present-day
Valley of Mexico, all available land had been taken, and they were forced to
squat on the edge of
Lake Texcoco.
After the
Spanish conquest of Mexico, the story of Aztlán gained importance and was reported by Fray
Diego Durán in
1581 and others to be a kind of
Eden-like paradise, free of disease and death, which existed somewhere in the far north. These stories helped fuel Spanish expeditions to what is now the American state of California.
Places postulated as Aztlán
While Aztlán has many trappings of myth, similar to
Tamoanchan,
Chicomoztoc,
Tollan and
Cibola, archaeologists have nonetheless attempted to identify the geographic place of origin for the Mexica.
The name of
Aztalan, Wisconsin (a
Mississippian site) was proposed by N. F. Hyer in 1837 because he thought it might have been Aztlán, following a suggested etymology of "Aztatlan" by
Alexander von Humboldt.
In the mid-19th century, fringe theorist
Ignatius L. Donnelly, in his famous book, sought to establish a connection between Aztlán and the fabled "lost continent" of
Atlantis of Greek mythology; Donnelly's views, however, have never been recognised as credible by mainstream scholarship.
In
1887, Mexican anthropologist Alfredo Chavero claimed that Aztlán was located on the Pacific coast in the state of
Nayarit. While this was disputed by contemporary scholars, it achieved some popular acceptance. In the early
1980s,
Mexican President José López Portillo suggested that
Mexcaltitán, also in Nayarit, was the true location of Aztlán, but this was denounced by Mexican historians as a political move (Jáuregui 2004). Even so, the state of Nayarit incorporated the symbol of Aztlán in its coat of arms with the legend "Nayarit, cradle of Mexicans."
Eduardo Matos Moctezuma presumes Aztlán to be somewhere in the modern-day states of
Guanajuato,
Jalisco, and
Michoacán (Matos Moctezuma 1988, p.38).
It has also been proposed that the area around
Lake Powell was originally the site of Aztlán. Part of the migration legend also describes a stay at Culhuacán ('leaning hill' or 'curved hill'). Proponents of the Lake Powell theory equate this Culhuacán with the ancient home of the
Anasazi at
Cliff Palace,
Mesa Verde National Park.(Vollemaere 2000
(External Link
))
There is currently no consensus among scholars as to whether Aztlan is a mythical location only or whether the myth also has an actual historical component, nor where such an historical location might have been (Smith, 1996:39)
Primary sources
The primary sources for Aztlán are the
Boturini Codex, the
Codex Telleriano-Remensis, and the
Aubin Codex. Aztlán is also mentioned in the
History of Tlaxcala (by
Diego Muñoz Camargo, a Tlaxcalan
mestizo from the
17th century), as well as
Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca.
It should be noted that all the documents mentioned above were written (in Spanish) after the
Spanish conquest of Mexico.
Etymology
The meaning of the name
Aztlan is uncertain. One suggested meaning is "place of
egrets" — the explanation given in the
Crónica Mexicáyotl — but this isn't possible under Nahuatl
morphology: "place of egrets" would be
Aztatlan.(Andrews 2003, p. 496 and Launey 1986, p. 26). Another proposed derivation is "place of whiteness" (Andrews 2003, p. 496).
J. Richard Andrews conjectures the translation "At the Place in the Vicinity of Tools", sharing the
āz- element of words such as
teponāztli "drum" (from
tepontli "log").(Andrews 2003, pp. 496, 616).
Aztlán [asˈtlan] is the
Spanish language spelling and pronunciation of Nahuatl
Aztlān [ˈas.t͡ɬaːn]. The spelling
Aztlán and its matching last-syllable stress can't be Nahuatl, which always stresses words on the second-to-last syllable. The accent mark on the second
a added in Spanish marks stress shift (from
oxytone to
paroxytone), typical of several Nahuatl words when
loaned into Mexican Spanish.
Use by the Chicano Movement
The name Aztlán was first taken up by a group of Chicano independence activists led by
Oscar Zeta Acosta during the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. They used the name "Aztlán" to refer to the lands of Northern Mexico that were annexed by the United States as a result of the
Mexican-American War. Combined with the claim of some historical linguists and anthropologists that the original homeland of the Aztecan peoples was located in the southwestern United states, Aztlán in this sense became a symbol of mestizo activists who believe they've a legal and primordial right to the land.
Groups who have used the name "Aztlán" in this manner include
Plan Espiritual de Aztlán,
MEChA (
Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, "Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán"), and the
Nation of Aztlán (NOA).
Many in the Chicano Movement attribute poet
Alurista for popularizing the term
Aztlán in a poem presented during the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in Denver, Colorado, March 1969.
In fiction
"Aztlán" has been used as the name of speculative fictional future-states that emerge in the southwest US or Mexico after the central US government suffers collapse or major setback; examples appear in such works as the novels
Warday,
The Peace War,
The House of the Scorpion,
Sins of the Assassin, and
World War Z, as well as the role-playing game
Shadowrun.
In
Michael Flynn's
alternate history story "The Forest of Time",
Colorado is part of a nation-state called
Nuevo Aztlán.
Aztlan is also used in
House of the Scorpion, by
Nancy Farmer, as the name of the former Mexico, with the country of "Opium" separating it from the United States.
Thomas Pynchon refers to Aztlan as the "mythic ancestral home of the Mexican people" in his latest novel "
Against the Day":
"'Hallucinatory country and cruel, not hard to understand that Mormons might have found it congenial enough to want to settle, but this is much older--Thirteenth Century anyway. There were perhaps tens of thousands of people back then, living all through that region, prosperous and creative, when suddenly, within one generation--overnight as these things go--they fled, in every appearance of panic terror, went up to the steepest cliffsides they could find and built as securely as they knew how defenses against...well, something.'" (277)
In
Gary Jennings' novel
Aztec, his hero, Mixtli (Dark Cloud), finds Aztlan at one point in his explorations, and stays for a while. Later, he helps facilitate contact between Aztlan and the Aztec Triple Alliance, just before
Cortez' arrival.
Further Information
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