Aztlán

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Aztlán (/as.ˈtlan/, from Nahuatl Aztlan /ˈas.tɬaːn/) is the legendary ancestral home of the Nahua peoples, one of the main cultural groups in Mesoamerica. "Azteca" is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlan."

Contents 1 The legend 2 Places identified as Aztlán 3 Primary sources 4 Etymology 5 Use by the Chicano Movement 6 In fiction 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 External links

[edit] The legend

Nahuatl legends relates that seven tribes lived in Chicomoztoc, or "the place of the seven caves." Each cave represented a different Nahua group: the Xochimilca, Tlahuica, Acolhua, Tlaxcalan, Tepaneca, Chalca, and Mexica. Because of a common linguistic origin, those groups also are called "Nahuatlaca" (Nahua people). These tribes subsequently left the caves and settled in Aztlán.

The various descriptions of Aztlán are contradictory. While some legends describe Aztlán as a paradise, the Aubin Codex says that the Aztecs were subject to a tyrant elite called the Azteca Chicomoztoca. Guided by their priest, the Aztec fled, and on the road, their god Huitzilopochtli forbade them to call themselves Azteca, telling them that they should be known as Mexica (pronounced: me-she-ka). Ironically, the scholars of the 19th century would name them Aztec.

The role of the homeland of Aztlán is slightly less important to Aztec legendary histories than the migration to Tenochtitlán itself. According to the legend, the southward migration began around 830 CE. Each of the seven groups is credited with founding a different major city-state in Central Mexico. The city-states reputed to have an Aztec foundation were:

• Xochimilco,
• Tlahuica (in the modern-day state of Morelos),
• Acolhua,
• Tlaxcala,
• Huexotzinca (the modern-day city of Puebla, Puebla),
• Tepaneca (now Azcapotzalco, a delegación of the Mexican Federal District), and
• Matlatzinca (whose language was otomian and not of the Uto-Aztecan family).

These city-states formed during the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerica (1300-1521 CE).

According to Aztec legends, the Mexica were the last tribe to emigrate and took 302 years to reach their destination. When they arrived at the Anahuac Valley, the present-day Valley of Mexico, all available land had been taken, and they were forced to squat on the edge of Lake Texcoco.

After the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the story of Aztlán gained importance and was reported by Fray Diego Durán in 1581 and others to be a kind of Eden-like paradise, free of disease and death, which existed somewhere in the far north. These stories helped fuel Spanish expeditions to what is now the Southwestern United States.

[edit] Places identified as Aztlán

While Aztlán has many trappings of myth, similar to Tamoanchán, Chicomoztoc, Tollán and Cibola, archaeologists have nonetheless attempted to identify the geographic place of origin for the Mexica.

The name of Aztalan, Wisconsin (a Mississippian site) was proposed by N. F. Hyer in 1837 because he thought it might have been Aztlán, following a suggested etymology of "Aztatlan" by Alexander von Humboldt.

In the mid-19th century, fringe theorist Ignatius L. Donnelly, in his famous book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, sought to establish a connection between Aztlán and the fabled "lost continent" of Atlantis of Greek mythology; Donnelly's views, however, have never been recognised as credible by mainstream scholarship.

In 1887, Mexican anthropologist Alfredo Chavero claimed that Aztlán was located on the Pacific coast in the state of Nayarit. While this was disputed by contemporary scholars, it achieved some popular acceptance. In the early 1980s, Mexican President José López Portillo suggested that Mexcaltitán, also in Nayarit, was the true location of Aztlán, but this was denounced by Mexican historians as a political move.^[1] Even so, the state of Nayarit incorporated the symbol of Aztlán in its coat of arms with the legend "Nayarit, cradle of Mexicans."

Eduardo Matos Moctezuma presumes Aztlán to be somewhere in the modern-day states of Guanajuato, Jalisco, and Michoacán. ^[2]

It has also been proposed that Lake Powell was originally the site of Aztlán. Part of the migration legend also describes a stay at Culhuacán ('leaning hill' or 'curved hill'). Proponents of the Lake Powell theory equate this Culhuacán with the ancient home of the Anasazi at Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park.^{[citation needed]}

As of today, despite serious efforts of many scholars and activists, there is no evidence of the actual existence of Aztlán, never mind any proof of its specific location. Claims, unsupported by evidence, that Aztlán was situated in (what is currently known as) Arizona, Colorado or Utah seem to contradict a well-established consensus among scholars that these areas were inhabited by North American Indians who, as opposed to Aztecs, left enough artifacts in these areas to document their existence there. Also, North American Indians have specific names for the geographical areas and landmarks; those areas also figure into the tribal stories and history.

[edit] Primary sources

The primary sources for Aztlán are the Boturini Codex, the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, and the Aubin Codex. Aztlán is also mentioned in the History of Tlaxcala (by Diego Muñoz Camargo, a Tlaxcalan mestizo from the 17th century), as well as Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca. It should be noted that all the documents mentioned above were written (in Spanish) after the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

[edit] Etymology

The meaning of the name Aztlan is uncertain. One suggested meaning is "place of egrets" — the explanation given in the Crónica Mexicáyotl — but this is not possible under Nahuatl morphology: "place of egrets" would be Aztatlan.^[3][4] Another proposed derivation is "place of whiteness".^[3] J. Richard Andrews conjectures the translation "At the Place in the Vicinity of Tools", sharing the āz- element of words such as teponāztli "drum" (from tepontli "log").^[5]

Aztlán [asˈtlan] is the Spanish language spelling and pronunciation of Nahuatl Aztlan [ˈas.tɬaːn]. The spelling Aztlán and its matching last-syllable stress cannot be Nahuatl, which always stresses words on the second-to-last syllable. The accent mark on the second a added in Spanish marks stress shift (from oxytone to paroxytone), typical of several Nahuatl words when loaned into Mexican Spanish.

[edit] Use by the Chicano Movement

Due to the association of Aztlán with growing Mexican nationalism among Mexicans in the United States, and its northern location, the name Aztlán was taken up by some revolutionary Chicano movement activists of the 1960s and 1970s to refer to the Southwestern United States that Mexico lost when the United States occupied the region following the Mexican-American War, that they suggested rightfully belonged to Mexico. Aztlán appears in the title of the 1968 manifesto issued by the radical Chicano youth movement that called for the liberation of that land from colonial occupation by the United States, the Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, as well as the names of several organizations, such as MEChA, (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, "Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán"), an organization that gained notoriety for making claims against the United States' occupation of Aztlan on behalf of Mexico. Many in the Chicano Movement attribute poet Alurista for popularizing the term Aztlán in a poem presented during the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in Denver, Colorado, March 1969.

[edit] In fiction

"Aztlán" has been used as the name of speculative fictional future-states that emerge in the southwest US and/or Mexico after the central US government suffers collapse or major setback; examples appear in such works as the novels Warday, The House of the Scorpion, and World War Z, and the role-playing game Shadowrun. In Michael Flynn's alternate history story "The Forest of Time," Colorado is part of a nation-state called Nuevo Aztlán. Thomas Pynchon refers to Aztlan as the "mythic ancestral home of the Mexican people" in his latest novel "Against the Day": "'Hallucinatory country and cruel, not hard to understand that Mormons might have found it congenial enough to want to settle, but this is much older--thirteenth century anyway. There were perhaps tens of thousands of people back then, living all through that region, prosperous and creative, when suddenly, within one generation--overnight as these things go--they fled, in every appearance of panic terror, went up to the steepest cliffsides they could find and built as securely as they knew how defenses against...well, something.'" (277)

[edit] See also

• Chicomoztoc

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Andrews, J. Richard (2003). Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, Revised Edition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 2002026705.  (English)
• Jáuregui, Jesús (2004). "Mexcaltitán-Aztlán: un nuevo mito" (abstract). Arqueología mexicana XII (67).  (Spanish)
• Launey, Michel (1986). "Catégories et opérations dans la grammaire Nahuatl". (French)
• Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo (1988). The Great Temple of the Aztecs: Treasures of Tenochtitlan (New Aspects of Antiquity), Doris Heyden (trans.), New York: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-39024-X.  (English)

[edit] External links

• "Aztlan and the Origin of the Aztecs" Laputan Logic, December 3, 2004
• Sanderson, Susana, "Tenotchtitlan and Templo Mayor", California State University, Chico.