The return of Coatlicue: Mexican nationalism and the Aztec past

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Notes

Esther Pastorzy (1983) believes it may have been carved around the year 1506, possibly in imitation of an earlier sculpture.

Letter of Bishop Benito María Moxó y Francoly, published in l805 and cited by Eduardo Matos Moctezuma in the introduction to the facsimile edition (no page numbers).

‘When Coatlicue came to know/she was so shocked/she was so sad./But her son Huitzilipochtli, lying in her breast/comforted her, saying/–Do not fear,/I know what must be done./The four hundred Surians (‘surianos') readied themselves…/They were well‐dressed/decorated for war./They shared their paper dresses,/their anecúyotl, their nettles,/their bunches of painted paper/and tied bells to their calves.’

‘And when Huitzilipochtli had slain them,/when he had vented his rage/he took their clothes, their decorations, their anecúyotl,/he put them on, taking them/he icorporated them into his destiny/and made emblems of them.’

See for example, ‘Personaje mitológico’, in Risking the abstract: Mexican modernism and the art of Gunther Gerzso (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2003).

Thanks to Dawn Addis for pointing this out.

On the probably irrecoverable web page, serpiente.dgsca, that includes a mind‐blowing variety of topics from Antonio Skármeta to Windows 95.