New research suggests that the Spanish conquerors slaughtered at least a dozen women and their children in an Allied Aztec city where the inhabitants sacrificed and ate a detachment of Spaniards they had captured months earlier.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History on Monday published findings from years of excavation work in the city of Tecoaque, which means “the place where they ate” in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs.
Residents of Tecoaque, also known as Zultepec, captured a convoy of about 15 Spanish men, 50 women and 10 children, 45 foot soldiers that included Cubans of African and indigenous descent, and about 350 allies from indigenous groups. in 1520. All were apparently sacrificed. over the months.
When he learned of this, the conqueror Hernán Cortés ordered Gonzalo de Sandoval to destroy the city in revenge in early 1521.
Archaeologist Enrique Martínez Vargas said the excavations suggested that Tecoaque residents knew there was a retaliatory attack and threw the bones of the Spaniards – some of whom had been carved into trophies – and other evidence into shallow wells.
The townspeople also tried to build several primitive defense works along the city’s main section, none of which worked when De Sandoval and his punitive expedition entered.
“Some of the remaining warriors in the city managed to escape, but the women and children remained and were the main victims,” the institute said in a statement. “We were able to demonstrate this on a 120-meter stretch of the main road, where the skeletons of a dozen women were found who appeared to be ‘protecting’ the bones of 10 children between the ages of five and six.”
Photographs of the excavations show the bones of children in addition to those of adult females, with some of the skulls or bones of women’s arms aimed at young people.
“The location of the funerals suggests that these people were fleeing, were massacred and buried in a hurry,” the institute said. “The women and children who were sheltered inside the rooms were mutilated, which proves the discovery of broken bones on the floors. The temples were burned and the statues were beheaded. “
Cruelty was exposed on both sides in Tecoaque, the site of one of the worst defeats of the Spanish conquest of 1519-21.
The heads of captive Spanish women were lined up on skull racks, along with those of men. An analysis of the bones showed that the women were pregnant and, in pre-Hispanic practice, who could have described them as “warriors.” Another sacrificial offering included the body of a woman who was cut in half next to the remains of a dismembered three- or four-year-old child.
A Spanish man was dismembered and burned to reproduce the mythical fate of the Aztec gods, according to a myth known as “El Quinto Sol”, or the fifth sun.
The convoy consisted of people sent from Cuba on a second expedition a year after Cortés’ initial landing in 1519 and headed for the Aztec capital with supplies and possessions from the conquerors. Cortés was forced to leave the convoy alone while trying to save his troops from an uprising in what is now Mexico City.
Members of the captured convoy were held captive in doorless cells, where they were fed for six months, experts said. Little by little, the city sacrificed and apparently ate horses, men and women. But the pigs brought by the Spaniards for food were viewed with such suspicion that they were killed whole and left uneaten.
Instead, the skeletons of captured Europeans were torn and had cut marks indicating that the meat had been removed from the bones.
Cortes continued to conquer the Aztec capital later in 1521.
Mexico marks the 500th anniversary of its conquest this year with a special round of research and scientific conferences.