Exhibition in Templo Mayor follows the steps of a town from Aztlán to Tenochititlan

Original pieces, “almost all the product of the excavations in the Templo Mayor and the surrounding area, which are linked to the empire and the Mexica people,” make up the exhibition, along with facsimile reproductions, watercolors and textiles. Tenochtitlan: Origin and vocation of a citywhich “is explained in a historical process of 700 years.”

The temporary exhibition, which opened yesterday in the site museum of the archaeological zone, was attended by the founder of the Templo Mayor and co-curator Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, who together with other specialists, such as Antonio Saborit, Manuel A. Hermann Lejarazu, María Castañeda de la Paz, Miguel Pastrana Flores, Patricia Ledesma Bouchan and Salvador Rueda Smithers, proposed a tour through three rooms, with around 65 pieces that tell of the migration of a people, from his departure from Aztlán, to what happened after the Spanish Conquest.

The documents explain: “Aztlán, according to their chronicles, was an island located in a distant and vague north, from which they had to leave, according to some versions, due to the mistreatment they received from the local rulers known as Aztecs. Their god Huitzilopochtli ordered them to leave said place and look for a new land where they could settle.”

Miguel Pastrana Flores, researcher at the Institute of Historical Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, explained: “we wanted to frame the foundation not only in the fact itself, but in the previous history that gives it reason for being and some aspects of what the city later became, hence the subtitle of origin and vocation of a city.”

The historian specified that the pieces are not necessarily displayed in chronological order. “From the departure of Aztlán, the period of migration and the founding (of Tenochititlan) we have practically no materials, but we do have stories, chronicles, relationships, later monuments that allude to that story, because we remember that Tenochtitlan was a city devastated by the Conquest and then destroyed for 300 years, which was used as filling material for other buildings. For that reason we do not have pieces from that moment, but we do have historical traditions that tell us about the entire previous trajectory to the foundation.”

And he detailed: “all the materials in the first two rooms, reproduced or original, are before the Conquest, except, of course, for some codices, but the archaeological pieces are. The codices also suffered a lot of destruction, (so they are preserved) they are copies, recreations or reworkings of previous information. But how can we trust that they are, this (is deciphered) by the writing system, because if they were Hispanized they would be in Latin characters, but they are in Nahua signs. The form of expression is the codex, not the European book, which allows us to affirm that we are dealing with materials that collect those traditions in the closest way.”

Pastrana Flores explained that although the rooms do not have a name, it recreates “from the departure of Aztlán to the founding of Tenochtitlan, as well as what symbolic elements are manifested, while in the last part it is realized how Mesoamerican elements were recycled, reinterpreted and reused by colonial and national societies to create their own identity symbols.”

With this exhibition, the researcher pointed out, “we respond to a social need because it was a year of great concern about the issue of the foundation and we wanted to frame it in a historical process, not of observing the isolated event, but what gives meaning through the concatenation of previous and subsequent events.”

The chronological route “starts from 1325, whose oldest record is completely Mesoamerican and is the Teocalli of the Sacred War, which we have in a display, since the original could not be brought from the National Museum of Anthropology for technical and conservation reasons.”

Then he realizes the founding of Tenochtitlan, its fall in 1521, the first years of the Colony and, since 1821, “how that emblem and sign is taken up as a national shield, which permeates popular culture and identity.”

During the tour, Matos Moctezuma commented that the Mexica were a people whose livelihood was agriculture, which was highlighted in the plates or certificates: “for the Mexica, agricultural practice was fundamental, since it guaranteed the sustenance of the population. Likewise, the correct execution of the rituals was important so that the land was generous and the rains arrived on time and in an optimal manner with the aim of nourishing the crop fields. Therefore, the main pyramid had two chapels at the top, one dedicated to the god of war and the other to the deity of water. In this way, the dual Mexica worldview was condensed in the temple.

Among the pieces, a small replica of the Huitzilopochtli sculpture stands out, the original of which is in France; In addition, there is a stone carved in high relief, stuccoed and painted in the shape of a biznaga, as well as a battlement with the same appearance; a Cuauhxicalli (eagle container), the eagle knight, facsimilars of the Boturini Codex, among weapons such as the dart thrower, flint-tipped arrows, bow and net bag.