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001375 Visit since
| TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY, a History
of The Mexican people (Chapter 1) |
by Prof. German Estrada
April, 2004 |
THE FOREFATHERS continues
part 9
..... But Aztec males, whatever
their status in society, employed a double standard.
The men, according to one anthropologist, wanted their
women "tied to her metate ,
the comal , and the preparation of the tortilla." It
was the duty of women to bear children, to care for
them, and, most important, to transmit Aztec culture
and traditions to them. Men frowned upon talkative
women, desiring, one Spanish chronicler remarked, both
their "ears and nose stopped up." At mealtime, women
fed their men and did not talk; at other times, they
stayed in the houses men had built. Only marriages
between brothers and sisters or between fathers and
daughters were frowned upon. Men of the elite prized
virginity in their women, equating it with honor, but
were polygamists; Moctezuma II, for example, had two
wives and a household of concubines, the daughters
of nobles. While elite men often chose their wives
on political or economic grounds, love or erotic fantasies,
the evidence seems to show, played a more significant
part in how macehuales picked their partners.
Women wore makeup and decorated themselves with tattoos.
Diego Rivera, the noted Mexican painter, later captured
beautifully this use of cosmetics in his mural of the
women of Tlatelolco, where he depicted a tall prostitute
wearing a white cotton tunic and displaying shapely
legs covered with tattoos.
The Aztecs placed schooling on a pedestal, declaring
it public and obligatory. All children from the age
of six had to attend. Coeducation, however, was unknown,
the sexes were segregated. Social status determined
what schools boys attended, the sons of the nobility
enrolling in the calmécac and those
of plebeians in the telpochcalli . Boys from
well-off families were prepared for high political
office and to lead troops; the sons of the common folk
learned moral citizenship and got ready to be foot
soldiers. In both telpochcall i and calméca c ,
soldier-priests made up the faculty. The schools for
girls, run by priestesses, taught the domestic arts
and offered religious training. Daughters of the elite
who did nor marry, a tiny handful, were the priestesses.
The Aztecs were hardly artistically innovative. They
were imitators, but still painted splendid murals and
codices. They left a resplendent legacy of stone sculpturing,
of huge figures grotesque in character but carved with
skill and imagination. As the terrifying Coatlicue,
a thing of skeletal heads and protruding tusks, demonstrates,
art served as the instrument of religion, voicing the
Aztecs' preoccupation with death and gods. The Aztecs
also built stone temples, maybe forty thousand of them.
Music, like art, was the hand-maiden of religion.
The pre-Hispanic world, in retrospect, appears both
old and complex. Diverse cultures, from the Olmecs
on, had their day in the sun. Tongues spoken by Mazatecs,
Mixe, Chinantecs, Yaquis, and Tarahumaras, to name
just a few, added linguistic diversity. The habit of
obedience to priests and military lords, as well as
religious orthodoxy and social distinctions, was deeply
ingrained in ancient Anahuac. The Aztecs, although
one of the principal tribes, created merely one of
many cultures. It is also clear, however, that the
Spaniards did not introduced civilization to the New
World; it was there already and, even measured by European
standards of the time, culturally alive and well. Source: From the book Triumphs
and Tragedy, a History of the Mexican People by his
author Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, and with his authorization.
(W.W. Norton & Company. New York-London). We'll continue with this fascinating
book.
gestrada@pvnet.com.mx
Prof. Germán Estrada is the author of the best selling book, México Mágico: Everything You Wanted To Know About... But Nobody Told You..." available in Puerto Vallarta at The Net House, Mail Boxes, Etc., Books, Books as well as directly from his website.
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