Translation:True History of the Profound Mexico/14

by Guillermo Marín Ruiz

13. THE POSTCLASSICAL PERIOD.

The end or collapse of the late Classical period is to date, one of the greatest mankind mysteries. In fact, all the Anahuac glory for more than a thousand years and which was preceded by almost six thousand years of formative period, called the Preclassical period; was mysteriously truncated. At the same time, in all Cem Anahuac, men and women of knowledge destroyed themselves, the ancient centers of research and education, now known as archaeological sites, covered them with dirt and literally disappeared without leaving any archaeological trace. Given that they did not leave any archaeological trace or subsequently appeared elsewhere.

Upon the mysterious departure of "the venerable Toltec Masters", the Cem Anahuac peoples and cultures started, little by little, changing and modifying the laws, regulations, rules and traditions to govern, direct and manage the peoples that were taught and supervised by the Toltec for more than ten centuries. The solid social structures began breaking and the "the inertia of matter" began gaining strength and momentum, i.e., ambition, ego, greed, envy, abuse and violence.

Leaders ceased to be "real men" they no longer were "smokeless torches" and began transmitting power through family lines until turning into lineages. Administrators were not the most honest, but the smarter; the priests created their own lineages and began corrupting the religion taught by Quetzalcoatl.

Nothing new happened in Cem Anahuac, which has not been seen in the history of mankind. Over time, spirit poverty and dazzling over material goals was more important and conveniently imposed to maintain power over time. The Toltecáyotl began to slowly suffer negative changes that eventually made it lose the original sense that sought to guide human beings in society through a path of virtue and impeccability. The customs, religion, Administration and Government were relaxed. New lineages began to create "Lordships". Small city-states with influence on large rural areas. Conflicts and wars were soon present. The ideal of the peoples and cultures of the Postclassical, were trying to restore the Toltec domain, not by virtue and wisdom, but by alliances and weapons. The creation of a "Zuyuano State"^[1] predominated in the Postclassical period.

In almost all powerful Postclassical period towns, they tried to justify material expansion and dominance over other peoples and regions, by seeking to reactivate or recreate the total domination of the Cem Anahuac, the Toltec managed in the previous Millennium. This nostalgia for power was not supported by wisdom and virtue, as was proposed by the Toltecáyotl. It was not what prompted this desire for power and material wealth. What encouraged this expansion were political power and expansion of their State, given that, despite the decline, the anahuacas did not use trade as a source of power, since their ancient culture imposed a traditional austerity and frugality attitude that has survived until today in the people called indigenous and peasants of the so-called "profound Mexico".

Within the anahuaca civilization, there was no consumption cult, not “many goods” were produced and of these, very few were luxurious. Goods produced were always for families and communities self-consumption. Barter satisfied the few consumption needs. This changed a little since 1440, when Moctezuma Ilhuicamina and Tlacaelel gave special emphasis to consumption and luxury objects, during the Triple Alliance expansion. At that time the pochtecas^[2] 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,

and Purépecha Huitzimengari and Calzontzin, among many others, sought by means of alliances and weapons to recover the Toltec Cem Anahuac hegemony, but no one achieved it and their victories were only temporary and for reduced geographical spaces in relation to the whole Anahuac.

The Mexicas arrived in the Valley of Mexico as nomad hunter-gatherers. They didn't speak the millenarian Nahuatl language, did not plant corn, or wove cotton. Their codices of those times described them as "faceless people". Their history suffered many changes.

They were first recorded by ancient people as vagabonds and uncivilized peoples. Subsequently, while Tlacaelel was the Tenochtitlan Cihuacoátl, ordered the destruction of the ancient Cem Anahuac history and created a new version, where the Aztecs occupied a central place, appropriating the Anahuac origin myths. As the famous pilgrimage that started at Chicomoztoc,^[3] place of "the seven caves" in search of a promised land, guided by a messiah born of a Virgin Mother. Later the conquistadors and missionaries in the 16th century portrayed the Aztecs as cannibals and idolaters to justify their crimes "against humanity". Towards the 18th century the creoles mythically portrayed them as "the Romans" of these ancient lands, in search of an original glorious identity. And finally, for the neo-colonial official history, the Mexicas become Aztecs and are the "most important culture" representing the Cem Anahuac ancient history.

The Fifth Sun prophecy

Existed separately an ancient story that before this humanity, there had been four failed attempts to find

human perfection. Each period was called Sun and it was known that the current period was the Fifth Sun called “Sun movement". That it would end after a 52 year cycle or “bundle of years”, the sun would not rise the next day. It would be the sign of the beginning of the end of the Fifth Sun.

Then began an obscurantism and anxiety era among the Anahuac peoples. The Toltec masters had inexplicably suddenly left and peoples remained orphan. Over the years, first the leaders and then the priests began to use religion, social organization and the teachings of the respectable teachers for personal benefit, represented by the symbolic figure of Quetzalcoatl.

Nothing new in mankind history. When common human beings, take the teachings of the masters or spiritual guides for their personal interests. Moral, ethical and religious standards began to change and adjust to their expansionist interests and for personal power of the leaders and priests. Wars and human sacrifices ensued, that were completely forbidden by the Quetzalcoatl doctrine and gave the Anahuac peoples total peace.

The seven and a half thousand years of anahuaca history that conform the ancient Mexico, place it as one of the six "Mother" most ancient civilizations and with autonomous origin in the world. It can be said that the Preclassical or Formative period is a very long time and very important, as it is then that the anahuaca civilization foundations are built. The classical period, bears the fruit of the long journey of this incredible effort made by our ancestors to reach, perhaps, to culminate the brightest aspirations of the human spirit. Be it as it may, the Toltec knowledge and advancements in human development, allowed life for centuries for the Cem Anahuac peoples, a golden age. However, the mysterious collapse that provoked the sudden disappearance –thus far unexplained- of the venerable Toltec masters, triggered the third period called Postclassical. It represents an orphanage and decline of the Anahuac peoples, without their masters, began distorting the Toltecáyotl generating precepts, until the complete transgression by the Aztecs that ideologically and religiously facilitated, the subsequent Spanish conquest.

Historical value of the Postclassical period.

Hence the Postclassical period is the best known and studied by scholars, but the least important period of our valuable past. It is partly known because the conquistadors and missionaries wrote about the conquest and the beginning of colonization. Then, because the creoles, as of their independence from Spain, began the formation of their "patriotism" against the gachupines^[4] from "appropriating" or taking as their own, the unclear Mexica or Mexican history that was written by people such as Friar Diego Durán and Francisco Javier Clavijero. Because the first "local researchers" of the 19th century, took as the "beginning" of their regional cultures, the lineages and lordships of the late Postclassical period, especially from information collected from historical sources.

"In contrast with the creole elites of the viceroyalties of Peru or New Granada, which for various reasons moved away from the prehispanic past and their indigenous descendants, the New Spain (Mexico) creoles had the genial perception of appropriating the indigenous past to give historical legitimacy to their own claims. At the same time, they separated that past from their true historical descendants. This creole expropriation of the native past makes the difference between the New Spain creoles to assume political leadership in their country, and claim, against peninsular spaniards, the right to direct and govern the patria destiny." (Enrique Flores Cano. 1987)

Challenges in the construction of the own history.

Mexicans need to decolonize the ancient past of Mexico. "The Anahuac discovery" is urgently required. We need to reread the sources with a different view. We need to reinvestigate our “own

ours” history, we need to rethink and reinvent our true history. We need to dismantle the scaffolding of lies and half-truths that developed: first from the mexicas, then the spaniards during the 300 years of colony and finally the creoles in the last two hundred years of "independent life". During which they have made, in the official hispanic History, the biography of the colonizing State in which we live up to our days.

It is essential deeply knowing the philosophy, ethical and moral standards, that the old grandparents built over thousands of years, harmonious societies, fair and respectful of the values, principles and human rights, which are universal in time and space and reconnect them to the sound moral principles, ethical, mystical and social that in some way contemporary Mexicans live, especially the so-called "indigenous" and peasants.

"Every school child knows something about the colonial world. The great archaeological monuments serve as national symbols.

There is a circumstantial pride over the past that somehow is assumed to be glorious, but it’s lived as a dead issue, a matter for specialists or an irresistible magnet to attract tourism. And, above all, it is presumed as something foreign, which happened here before, in the same place where we Mexicans live. The only link made is in the fact that we occupy the same territory in a different time, —they and us—. A historical link is not recognized, a continuity. It is thought that them were murdered —for some— or redeemed for others at the time of the spanish invasion. There would only remain ruins: some in stone and others alive. That past is accepted and is used as the past —of the territory—, but never in depth as —our— past: it’s the indians, it is the indian. And that is how a rupture is marked and is accentuated with a revealing and disturbing superiority load. That resignation and denial of the past, does it actually represent a total historic break and irreparable? Did the indian civilization died and what possible remains of it are fossils already doomed five centuries ago to disappear because they have no possible present or future? It is imperative to rethink the answer to these questions, because many other questions and urgent responses depend on them, for the Mexico of today and what we may wish to build". (Guillermo Bonfil Batalla. 1987)

The recovery of ancient history "own—ours" is a priority to dismantle the colonial system and thereby build a more just society. We need to recover our historical memory, we need to take away the "the ancient history of Mexico" from foreign scholars and their local colonized assistants and incorporate it into everyday life. Take it from museums, libraries and research centers. Incorporate it into the values and principles of the new society. Recreate new myths that support "our-own" future, with the foundations of the ancient civilization. Add it to the paradigms and the magical stories that give us memory and roots. Make the "ancient Mexican" our beloved and admired old grandparents, and put an end to the evil perception that there are no existing links or continuity between the ancient past and present. Understand and feel that the Anahuac civilization is alive and vibrates in every one of our dozing hearts.

1. The Zuyuano regime is a concept developed by Alfredo López Austin and Leonardo López Luján based on mythology and the Mesoamerican political structures of the 15th century; its meaning is different from the Zuyuan. When speaking of the zuyuano it does not only refer to an ethnic group, a language or specific region. The zuyuano refers to a type of political control and its ideological base which possibly arose shortly before 800 CE, as a combination or derivation of the Coyotlatelco culture. Political control corresponds to a hegemonic model of military government of large territorial areas on a heterogeneous ethnic population. The ideological basis is crystallized in political-religious institutions (the Triple Alliance) which seek to establish world order through military orders cohesively for the common worship, (either Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli) the establishment of a Government of a demigod is the case of the "Moteuczomas" and their projections (see Gillespie, Susan. The Aztec Kings. Ed. Siglo XXI. 1993.) According to this tradition its origin is from the same place that among other names is called Tollan, Zuyúa, Tulán-Siwán. In this regime the Quetzalcoatl myths are linked to justify power over various ethnic groups.
2. 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.
3. Chicomoztoc is the name of the mythical place of origin for Aztecs, Mexicas, Tepanecs, Acolhuas and other Nahuatl (or Nahua) speaking peoples from Mesoamerica, in the central region during the Postclassical period. Different versions locate this this mythical place in different places, but its location is not known. This is the location where the Aztecs, purportedly started their migration from the north to the Mexico central plateau, and where older people and children were left behind. According to Francisco Javier Clavijero, (1780), the Aztecs remained at this place for nine years during their voyage to Anahuac.
4. Gachupin is a common name given to Spaniards in Mexico