Moctezuma Ilhuicamina and Tlacaelel gave special emphasis to consumption and luxury objects, during the Triple Alliance expansion. At that time the pochtecas[1] or trader—spies, began to use cocoa and cooper items, as trade instruments, although they never created a currency.
As a consequence of the expansion Aztec wars, the Tlatócan or Aztec Supreme Council, started to concede their victorious military, part of the riches they obtained from confiscated goods and began to create a social elite that had the possibility of obtaining, for the first time, many goods, slaves and land. The same happened to the Aztecs and Tlatelolco pochtecas, who through trade began to gather wealth, which had never been allowed to a common citizen.
In these three and a half centuries, between the departure of the Toltecs, which caused the "collapse of the Classical period", and the arrival of the Aztecs to the Central Highlands, the peoples and cultures of Cem Anahuac suffered internal and regional wars for power and its consolidation, that could not be completed, as in the Toltec days.
The city-states or Lordships began to flourish throughout the Cem Anahuac during the Postclassical period. In the Maya area primarily was Chichen Itza and Mayapán. In the Oaxaca area Tututepec, Zaachila and Tehuantepec. In the Central Highlands Tenochtitlan and Tula. In Michoacán Tzintzuntzan and Tinganbato. On the shores of the Gulf of Mexico was Cempoala. The intention of re-creating the mythical "Toltec Empire" was present in all peoples and cultures of the Postclassical.
Characters such as: Zapotec Cosijoeza, Mixtec Eight Deer Jaguar Claw, Aztecs Moctezuma Ilhuicamina, Tlacaelel and Axayacatl,
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- ↑ Pochteca (sing. pochtecatl) were professional, long-distance traveling merchants in the Aztec Empire. They were a small, but important class as they not only facilitated commerce, but also communicated vital information across the empire and beyond its borders. The trade or commerce was referred to as pochtecayotl. The pochteca also traveled outside the empire to trade with neighboring lands throughout Mesoamerica, from Nicaragua to New Mexico. Because of their extensive travel and knowledge of the empire, pochteca were often employed as spies.
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