A warlike culture? Religion and war in the Aztec world

ABSTRACT

The Aztec-Mexica people of Tenochtitlan were, by their own definition, a ‘warlike’ culture, their collective identity closely tied to military ideals and behaviours. 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. 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. 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. But any attempt to disentangle religion from practice deprives Aztec structures of the very logic scholars seek to instil. For the Indigenous peoples of Mexico, religion was rational: it provided explanations, motivations, structures and identities. 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 Aztecs, warfare was a sacred act performed in the service of the gods. They framed themselves as warriors, not only in tangible terms, but historically, mythically and metaphorically. 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.

KEYWORDS:

• Aztec
• Mexico
• warfare
• religion
• gender

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at Premodern Religions and War in Comparative Perspective at the University of Vienna in May 2017. My thanks are due to the organizations who supported and funded the workshop, as well as to all the participants for their collegial and thought-provoking discussion. I am especially grateful to Philippe Buc for his kind invitation to this event and ongoing enthusiasm for my work, which has led to such exciting opportunities for collaboration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The ‘Woman of Discord’, a disruptive female figure, is a recurring trope in the foundation stories: a woman who provides an opportunity for the assertion or stabilisation of state power. See Gillespie (1989, especially 3–120) and Dodds Pennock (2018).

2 After their settlement at Tenochtitlan – seeking to balance savagery and authority – the Mexica deliberately emphasized their dual origins as children (spiritually, if not literally) of both the ‘warlike’ nomadic Chichimec hunters and the ‘civilized’ Toltecs (Berdan 2014, 37–42).

3 I do not have time or space here to elaborate fully on the extraordinarily complex nature of the Aztec sources. For a short summary of the issues and my approach to them see Dodds Pennock (2008, 3–10). On Sahagún, see also Edmonson (1974), Klor de Alva, Nicholson, and Keber (1988) and León-Portilla (2002). For Anglophone readers’ convenience, I have referenced English translations of sources where they exist unless there is specific a reason to cite the original.

4 Graham’s work (which unhelpfully elides Aztec and Maya practices) argues that capturing elite warriors in battle, ‘opened the door to accessing tribute – or to trade via tribute’ (Graham 2008, 116). There is, however, no evidence that tribute obligations, which were highly localized, were directly transferable in the Mexica world. On tribute (although he would prefer I call it ‘taxation’) see Smith (2015).

5 This is only a small selection of the ways in which religious imperatives influenced the practice of war. See for example Brumfiel (2001).

6 Diego Durán claims that the coateocalli was founded under Moctezuma II as part of the process of consolidating the empire and reinforcing Aztec authority against rebellious groups (1994, 431).

7 I have elsewhere argued that, for the Aztecs, the term ‘domestic’ should be understood in the political sense, as suggesting an opposition to ‘foreign’ rather than ‘public’, spaces (Dodds Pennock 2011, especially 530).

8 Cihuacoatl had multiple aspects (Read 2000), including an association with the ‘war woman’ Yaocihuatl (Dodds Pennock 2018, 7).

9 For more on the multifaceted nature of female power and its profound creative/destructive potential, see Clendinnen (1991, especially 216–297); Dodds (2007); Klein (1988).

10 I am indebted to Geoff McCafferty for sending me a copy of his 1995 paper and for his permission to cite it.

11 It is obviously important to be aware of cultural distinctions, but the Indigenous cultures of Postclassic Mexico originated in a shared cultural tradition and so such evidence can provide a valuable complement to our sparse sources if carefully handled.

12 For an excellent summary of the evidence for human sacrifice, and a rebuttal of recent ‘revisionist’ works which deny mass sacrifice was practised among the Aztecs, see Mendoza (2007).

13 For more on the parallel with Coatepec, as well as a hypothesis regarding its geographical location, see Gelo (2014).

14 On the conjunction of religious and political significance in the Xiuhmolpilli rituals see Smart (2018, 142–208).