As the Harvard professor DavĂd Carrasco put it, â[n]o topics have inflamed more argument and confusion about Aztec and Maya cultures than âhuman sacrificeâ and âcannibalismââ (440).
These topics formed the central theme of my Junior Research Project, as I was fascinated by both the complex ceremonial world of Aztec human sacrifice and the ways in which it has been misrepresented and exaggerated from the Spanish conquest of Mexico onward.
As I read about the ways various Spanish conquistadors and friars described human sacrifice, the irony of the situation became more and more obvious. Here, agents of the Spanish empire were using a practice that took several thousand lives annually to justify a colonial project which led to the deaths of many millions through disease and violent conquest. Although sacrifice was objectionable, clearly the priorities of the Spanish were not really altruistic.
Why did the Aztecs sacrifice? Although in the past, Aztec (and Maya) human sacrificial practices have been characterized as bloodthirsty and uncontrolledâ as Rutgers professor Camilla Townsend puts it, âorgies of violenceââ we now know that sacrificial rituals were regulated by highly specific traditions, performed on certain days and usually involving the sacrifice of about one to five victims, excepting special occasions. Sheffield historian Caroline Dodds Pennock calculates that about 500 victims were sacrificed annually according to the Florentine Codex, a post-contact manuscript written by a Franciscan friar, Bernardino de SahagĂșn, who drew his information from the indigenous Mexicans he lived with (282).
More importantly, Aztec sacrifice was highly political. Both the priest and the victim held symbolically charged roles. The priest represented the Aztecs and their patron god, Huitzilopochtli. The victim represented the enemies of the Aztecs, as well as Huitzilopochtliâs sister, Coyolxauhqui, who he had defeated in battle according to Aztec myth. Sacrifice was practiced publicly to enforce a nationalist idea of Aztec dominance upon the spectators, who were common folk but sometimes included the visiting nobility of other nations. Wars were fought by the Aztecs with this ideal in mind, and with the motive of expansion as well as the capture of warriors for later sacrifice. Casualties were more likely to take the form of sacrifices than battlefield losses.
I created this poster to represent the parallel between the Aztecsâ religious conquest of their neighborsâ often pointed out by those who wish to dispel the ânoble savageâ myth that the Aztecs were purely victims and not in any way aggressors, which indeed is as misguided as the myth of âorgies of violenceââ and the Spaniardsâ religious conquest of the Americas.
"The habit those papas wore were dark robes, like priestsâ cassocks, and long gowns down to the feet with something like hoods that looked like the ones canons wear, and others wore smaller hoods like the Dominicans. They wore their hair very long, to the waist, some even to their feet, and the hair was covered with caked blood and so very tangled that it could not be pulled apart. Their ears were cut to pieces, the result of sacrifices, and they reeked of brimstone, and they had another very bad odor, like dead meat. From what they said and what we came to understand, those papas were sons of the chieftains and did not have wives, but they engaged in the cursed practice of sodomy, and they fasted certain days. What I saw them eat were certain kernels or seeds of cotton when they were separating the bolls from the seeds, but they may have been eating other things I could not see" (DĂaz del Castillo, 95).
My depiction of the Aztec priests, with long matted hair and bodies covered in scars, is taken from this account.
