
I have seen the ruins of the Templo Mayor, the main Aztec temple of Tenochtitlan, from the side of the Cathedral three weeks ago, but as it was late in the day, the museum was already closed.
It didn’t look that big, so I thought I could make a quick visit, walk through the ruins and then on to another museum. Bad judgement.
The Templo Mayor needs, and merits, a few hours of visiting time.
What you can see today is the result of several rounds of excavations, started as late as 1978, after the electric company, while digging in the area, found a huge, 8.5 ton pre-hispanic monolith, depicting what was determined to be Coyolxauhqui, the moon goddess.
The exact location of the temple was lost over the centuries. Once the Spanish tore it down, and built the colonial city of Mexico on top of the old Tenochtitlan, the temple was forgotten, or believed to be underneath the Cathedral. So no one really cared to look for it.
The discovery of the monolith though triggered public interest, and finally, the search began. To be able to dig, some 13 buildings, some of them historic themselves, had to be demolished.
On the site today you can see the twisted foundations of the temple, caused by the sinking of the city. The temple itself was basically a huge, massive pyramid. Different layers were added over the centuries by various Aztec kings, to improve and enlarge it, in synch with the enlargement of the Aztec Empire.
Today, they have identified seven different stages of enlargement, all of them visible and labeled but the very first one.
Some 7000 objects have been salvaged and are now exhibited in the nearby modern museum building, from offerings to Gods, skeletons, to parts of the building.
It is a fascinating history. What strikes me the most though is how easily that vast empire and city fell to a handful of Spaniards.
I’m over-simplifying of course, but it is a fascinating read about the arrival of Cortéz; the encounters with Moctezuma II; the question why he did not resist, whether or not he thought them Gods; the temple massacre; the role of La Malinche, a former Slave, in translating from Nahuatl into Maya and Spanish; the role of Cortez’ Tlaxcalan allies, the flight of Cortéz and his return; smallpox; the siege of Tenochtitlan and the ultimate fall of the Aztecs…
What is really sad is to see how complete the Spanish annihilation of the Aztec culture was.
Not so much that they put an end to the human sacrifices (but replaced them by their own tortures)… after all, in some Aztec festivities a thousand hostages were sacrificed on altars, their bodies opened alive and their hearts cut out… with streams of blood running down the temples…
It’s sad to see that mostly all the knowledge was lost too, about the calendars, the myths, the stories and histories.
All in all, they estimate that about 1800 Spaniards were lost in the two year campaign. Some 100.000 inhabitants of Tenochtitlan died, and some 20.000 Tlaxcalan warriors lost their lives.
The Aztecs surrendered on August 13, 1521.
Today, on the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, which celebrates Mexico’s roots of Pre-columbian, colonial Spanish and Mestizo cultures, a plaque reads:
“Heroically defended by Cuauhtémoc, Tlatelolco fell to the power of Hernán Cortés. It was neither a triumph nor a defeat. It was the painful birth of the mestizo nation that is the Mexico of today.”