27 October 2021
The Mexica Empire existed between 1375 and 1521. Although there were towns that refused to submit to the Mexica, Tenochtitlan was the strongest state in this part of central Mexico; they had several allies and a complex education and way of living.
Among the information obtained about the Mexica culture, it is known that it was Hernán Cortés who met the ninth ruler of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, which was Moctezuma Xocoyotzin. Moctezuma was a Tenochca ruler, born in 1468; he was trained from a very young age for all the military campaigns he had to learn as part of that caste. He was highly educated in the sciences and the warrior arts, and it was he who further expanded the empire, consolidating the triple alliance, where 3 independent groups – Tlacopan, Texcoco and Tenochtitlan – make it up and go out to dominate the world. Xocoyotzin was assassinated, precisely by Cortés, at the age of 52.
The Legend of the Suns appears constantly in indigenous culture, and is recorded in the Codex Chimalpopoca, giving us the following order of appearance of the suns. The First Sun was called 4 Jaguar and lasted 676 years. The second sun, which is 4 Wind, lasted 364 years. Then we have the Third Sun which is 4 Rain, lived 312 years. The Fourth Sun, who was 4 Water, lasted 676 years, and the Fifth Sun, which was called 4 Movement, or Nahui-Ollin. In the data we find about the myths, there is constancy about the suns. The suns represent eras. The first era lasts 676, then 312, then 364, then 676 years again, but if we add 312 and 364 we get 676 years again. Apparently, every sun has its day and night, according to what we are reading in the stories of The Legend of the Suns, there is always that change between day and night, on the levels of the sky and on the levels of the underworld. In the same legend it is mentioned that the sky is composed of 13 levels and the underworld of 9 levels. We are in the Tlaltícpac, in the middle, on earth. Adding up the day and night that make up an era, in total we have that a sun has a length of 1144 years. If we were at the time when Montezuma Xocoyotzin was there, at the time when Hernán Cortés and his troops arrived with the other allies, then we were in the Fifth Sun.
Each Sun or era had its day and night, and according to oral tradition, the Consigna de Anahuac, which is also said to be given by Cuauhtemoc – the leader of the Mexican resistance – mentions that on the night of August 12 in 1521 a message was sent so that all of his allies would have it on August 13. At the height of Tlatelolco – it was by then the last place where the Mexica were resisting, together with the Tlatelolcas – there was a sort of cove on the northern side, and on the edge of Lake Texcoco they had thousands of canoes, where they could have escaped months before and thus managed to save themselves, but the date they were scheduled to move was 13 August, since the Anahuac slogan had been given.