know the paintings. [the codices]
Those who are subject, [the people]
they shall spoil
and earth shall be crooked
because many lies are kept there
and many in them have been taken as gods."
(Sahagún informers)
"With the old books burnt, the aztecs begin a new historical and religious vision." (Miguel Leon Portilla. 1961)
The philosophical and religious reforms.
The mexicas led by Tlacaelel destroyed the most important and ancient codices, trying to erase Toltec history and philosophy. Thus, the transgression of the Quetzalcoatl rule and change of his religion. This is, the real problem —unsolved to date— that mexicans have had for more than six centuries. The conquest and all the subsequent evils derived from "the absence of the wise Toltec masters and of the philosophical and ideological transgression the mexicas started and later culminated by the Spaniards."
Under the Tlacaelel rule the mexica began a new era in the cultural life of people that had thousands of years of living in the Anahuac Valley and which by that time had almost five centuries of cultural decline after the collapse of the Classical period. With the vigor and the powerful will that characterized the mexicas, the decadent culture was “re—functionalized" and created a new proposal to stimulate the postclassical culture.
"After this party ended, the Lords of the cities went to their provinces and kingdoms and tried to imitate the Mexicans, and thus began to build temples and to sacrifice, in that fashion and means, men, and to have and to elect priests and to make those ceremonies and rituals; to form cavalry orders, and to have armed armies,
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