The Broken Spears by Miguel Leon-Portilla

737 Words2 Pages

The People of the Sun

The Aztecs, the people of the sun, people of reason and the people of knowledge. The Aztecs knew the land; they were one with the earth using the stars for direction and time telling and the earth as a producer of life. The universe was sacred, it was to be preserved, treated and used as a source of life because for the Aztecs the sun was life, they are the people of the sun. Conquering was very important to the Aztecs; they were warriors, strong ones who trained their men at a young age to protect what they have constructed. The Aztecs were led by a king, the king loved his people and was a divine ruler who was sent by their gods, one of which is Huitzilopochtli who is mentioned numerous times throughout the story. The kings lived at the palace in Tenochtitlan, the Aztec and Mexican capital.

The wars the Aztecs fought in before the arrival of the Spanish were called mystical conceptions of warfare, which was conquering all of the other surrounding indigenous nations. Conquering was very important to the Aztecs, their motive was simply to expand the rule of Tenochtitlan; they expanded from Mexico to as far south as Nicaragua. The major purpose of war was to capture victims for sacrifice, because the source of life, the sun, would die unless it was fed human blood. There is evidence that human sacrifices occurred before the Aztec arrival but no other tribe did it as consistently as the Aztecas.

The Spanish or the army of greed came to México with one goal in mind and that was to find gold. The Spanish immediately became allies with the Tlaxcaltecas, who feared the Aztecs and the Cholultecas; they envied and cursed them and were filled with not only fear but hatred towards them. The Tlaxcal...

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...ul metropolis of Tenochtitlan, brothers and sisters due to the war and the small pox. As the Aztecs evacuated what was left of their land, they were searched for gold; the women dressed in rags and put mud on their faces hoping no to be searched but there was no hope, the Spaniards made their searches anyway undressing them and touching them allover form their breasts to their toes.

The Aztecs, the people of the sun, my people, and my pride still live in our hearts, our souls and our languages. This book reflects a lot on what this world has lost and how the Aztecs were an asset to the earth and one with the earth. Even then the Spaniards were superficial like today's society and came only in search for gold and wiped out the Aztec race for no logical reason. The Spaniards thought that gold was their treasure but the real treasure was the Aztec civilization.

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