Tenochtitlan was the beating heart of the cosmos, but also the hub of a powerful military machine. Mirroring the cosmology in miniature, the city formed what Geertz ( Citation1980, 13) called an ‘exemplary centre’, which embodied both the supernatural universe and the state. In the Aztec worldview, their capital was framed explicitly as the axis mundi: the centre of both the terrestrial and celestial worlds, which were intricately entwined. Scholars have, at times, attempted to ‘rationalize’ Aztec culture and rejected ‘superstitious’ explanations for their violence but, as I will demonstrate, the separation of the physical and spiritual worlds would have made no sense to the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan. In this article, I argue that war and religion were inextricable in Aztec culture. This was also a society in which religion and the supernatural were so deeply embedded in their belief and behaviour that it is almost impossible to distinguish religious practice from day-to-day activities. Mythical histories emphasized their origins in conflict and all men were warriors. The Aztec (or, more properly, Mexica) people of Tenochtitlan were, by their own definition, a ‘warlike’ culture, their collective identity closely tied to military ideals and behaviours. Warfare was inextricable from belief in Tenochtitlan, and only by seeing the Aztecs within their own frame of reference, giving value and meaning to their rituals and histories, can we understand the conjunction of religion and war in their embracing and active vision of the cosmos.Ĭantares Mexicanos, mid-sixteenth century. They framed themselves as warriors, not only in tangible terms, but historically, mythically and metaphorically. For the Aztecs, warfare was a sacred act performed in the service of the gods. One did not go to war solely for religious reasons, but the process of reasoning, of decision making, occurred within a universe in which the physical and metaphysical were interwoven. For the Indigenous peoples of Mexico, religion was rational: it provided explanations, motivations, structures and identities. But any attempt to disentangle religion from practice deprives Aztec structures of the very logic scholars seek to instil. Attempts to ‘rationalize’ Mesoamerican approaches to warfare often stem from a laudable desire to demystify Indigenous cultures, to recognize their sophistication, and to refute accusations of superstition and savagery. This was also a culture in which religion and the supernatural were so deeply embedded in belief and behaviour that it is almost impossible to distinguish religious practice from everyday activities. The values of war were dramatized and re-enacted at every level of society, and their shared warrior identity was widely understood by both men and women. The Aztec-Mexica people of Tenochtitlan were, by their own definition, a ‘warlike’ culture, their collective identity closely tied to military ideals and behaviours.
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