Details Showing the Brutality of the Aztec Empire in Mesoamerica

Details Showing the Brutality of the Aztec Empire in Mesoamerica

Larry Holzwarth - December 13, 2018

Details Showing the Brutality of the Aztec Empire in Mesoamerica
This page from the Codex Mendoza indicates the tribute owed to the empire by one town. Wikimedia

2. The Aztec Empire was an alliance of tribes with differing political and religious views

The Aztec Empire encountered and eventually destroyed by the Spanish was actually an alliance of primarily three groups centered in city-states; Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. The groups operated as city-states with Tenochtitlan dominant, though there were significant differences among them. The Aztec Empire featured a state religion, though it allowed the conquered territories within it to continue their own religious traditions, as long as they added to their pantheon of gods and goddesses the patron god of the Empire, Huitzilopochtli, a war god. This added further gods and rituals throughout an empire which was already polytheistic, with some gods and their feasts of greater importance in some provinces than in others.

Throughout the Aztec Empire there was an underlying religious theme, which was that the earth and humanity existed as a result of the sacrifices of the gods and that the need for humanity to make sacrifices to them was paramount for its survival. The Aztec religion was based on the need to repay the sacrifices of the gods with sacrifices of their own. Human sacrifice was viewed as the repayment of a debt. Failure to make repayments would result in the gods no longer providing sustenance to humanity. In such manner, the religious beliefs reflected the structure of the Aztec Empire, which was one of the conquered provinces paying tribute to central authority in return for military protection and needed trade. As the god’s sacrifices were often violent and bloody, so needed to be the sacrifices of the people.

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