Mexico City 5

Posted on January 26, 2003 in Myths & Mysticism Photos Vacations

Click on the picture

One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls. — Jack Keruouac

In 1487, the Emperor Ahuizotl, the grandfather of the better known Montezuma II, wanted to reconsecrate the Templo Mayor after his great successes in battle against his neighbors. Prisoners were lined up and marched up the steep steps of the pyramid for four days straight. Streams of blood flowed freely down the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, gathering into pools and coagulating as even the most hardened Aztec elders grew sick at the sight.

Aztec priests were said to be most adept at their job. Like other native American peoples, they worked fast to ensure that suffering was kept to a minimum. Here, their victims were not deer or sheep but men: with their obsidian knives, they cut just under the chest and severed the heart in a matter of seconds. Many scholars think that the victim was dead before he knew what had happened to him.

The sheer number claimed by the Spanish leads some scholars to doubt the claims. Still, most agree that the number was in the thousands, if not the tens of thousands. The truth, if it will ever be known, lies underneath the Cathedral where the largest of all the skull racks is reputed to be.

It doesn’t take much imagination to splash blood over the whole lava-rock complex. Running barefooted over the stones themselves would reduce the feet to crimsom shreds. One can imagine the ragged condition of the bodies that the priests kicked and shoved off the temple’s highest platform.

Most foul to the imagination are the rivulets of blood that collected in basins flanking the double-crowned Templo Mayor on all sides. The smell reeked worse than the butchers gathered in the open markets of today’s Mexico City; the knowledge that these pools sprang from humans must have made it all that much worse. The lower classes of Aztec society averred to missionaries that the priests and the cream of Aztec society feasted on choice bits of the flesh.

I can imagine the reaction of the Aztecs when Christian missionaries first arrived with the ritual of Holy Communion where bread and wine is said to be transformed into the body and blood of Christ. “You mean,” they must have said, “we can do this symbolically? Cool!” The popularity of pork in Mexico today also suggests a substitution: human flesh or “long pig” is said to taste very much like that of the boars, hogs, and sows brought by the conquistadors.

Yes, it’s sick, but that’s how it was.

---

A few notes on today’s pictures: The Spanish leveled the Templo Mayor and built an episcopal palace atop it. In 1978, a crew working for the electric company uncovered a large round stone depicting the chopped up goddess Coyalxauhqui. The location of this icon at the foot of the pyramid was symbolic of her pieces being cast out of the heavens after being sliced and diced by her brother Huitilopochtli for having led a rebellion against their mother Coatlicue. (It is nigh impossible to pronounce a string of Aztec deity names without choking, I believe.)

I don’t know how they did it, but in 1900 or so, a work crew built a brick sewer right through the site without noticing anything unusual. As you go up the walkway which winds through the interior of the Templo, you can see where it went through — right between the walls.

The Aztecs liked to create faux skull racks, too. The last picture in the series shows one of these.

More on the Templo Mayor tomorrow.