Discussion 1: Challenges to Cross-Cultural Research
Challenges to cross-cultural research are ample and significant. Pragmatic issues may preclude long term immersion in the culture due to financial issues or lack of sufficient time. Additionally, translation issues may make it difficult to achieve a oneto-one correspondence on questionnaire items used in multiple cultures and languages. Additionally, there are often delicate negotiations across gender, age, status, religious, and economic backgrounds that can involve power and privilege in ways that require careful and appropriate discussion to resolve ethically and to preserve the integrity of the research, researchers, and research participants. As you move forward in your future professional work, take the time to consider the challenges researchers face in light of growing need to further understand the diverse cultures in the world at large. You will find that this type of research will be critically important to further your professional growth and knowledge.
For this Discussion, you will examine the challenges to cross-cultural research.
To Prepare
Review this weeks Learning Resources and consider the types of challenges researchers face when conducting cross-cultural research.
Post and explain three major challenges to conducting cross-cultural research. Then, suggest one way to solve one of the challenges.
Learning Resources
Required Readings
Karasz, A., & Singelis, T. M. (2009). Qualitative and mixed methods research in cross-cultural psychology: Introduction to the special issue. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 40(6), 909916
Leech, N. L., & Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2009). A typology of mixed methods research designs. Quality and Quantity, 43(2), 265275. doi:10.1007/s11135-007-9105-3
Malda, M., Van de Vijver, F. J. R., Srinivasan, K., Transler, C., Sukumar, P., & Rao, K. (2008). Adapting a cognitive test for a different culture: An illustration of qualitative procedures. Psychology Science Quarterly, 50(4), 451468.
Miller, K. E., Omidian, P., Quraishy, A. S., Quraishy, N., Nasiry, M. N., Nasiry, S.,… & Yaqubi, A. A. (2006). The Afghan symptom checklist: A culturally grounded approach to mental health assessment in a conflict zone. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 76(4), 423433.
Rich, G., Sirikantraporn, S., & Jean-Charles, W. (2018). The concept of posttraumatic growth in an adult sample from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti: A mixed methods study. In G. Rich & S. Sirikantraporn (Eds.), Human strengths and resilience: Developmental, cross-cultural, and international Perspectives (pp. 2138).Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Credit Line: International Differences in Well-Being,by Diener, J.; Helliwell, J. ; Kahneman, D.Copyright2010 by Oxford University Press. Reprinted by permission ofOxford University Press via the Copyright Clearance Center.
Van de Vijver, F. J. R. (2009). Types of comparative studies in cross-cultural psychology. Online readings in psychology and culture, 2(2), pp.112.
Credit Line: Fons J. R. van de Vijver. (2009). Types of Comparative Studies in Cross-Cultural Psychology. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1017. Used with permission of International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology.
Van de Vijver, F. J. R., & Tanzer, N. K. (2004). Bias and equivalence in cross-cultural assessment: An overview. European Review of Applied Psychology, 54(2), 119135.
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history
discussion
written in Chicago format
all information are in attachments
Reading Questions for Lane 46-116
Instructions
Read Kris Lanes
Potos: The Silver City that Changed the World (through p. 116) then
complete these reading questions as a word document and submit it to blackboard. This assignment may be turned in at any time during Section II, but should be turned in by the end of Section II (4/1)
Guidelines
In a reading questions assignment, you read and respond to a specific prompt or prompts on assigned reading material. Responses are expected to articulate clear arguments that are supported with specific evidence from the material you have read. A vague response or a thesis that restates the prompt is not effective, avoid this. Be bold, take a stand.
All responses should be approximately 2 typed, double-spaced pages. In your responses, you may also use the textbook and notes from lecture where relevant (all readings should be cited). All quotations must be cited.
Remember,
all work that is not your own must be cited. All quotations must be cited. Whether from the documents or from somebody else, be sure to follow an approved citation method (parenthetical or footnotes). For exact citation formatting, see the
Chicago Manual of Style or Kate L. Turabian, ed.
A Manual for Writers of Term Papers,
Theses, and Dissertations.
Unacceptable documentation of sources means that the essay will not be graded. No outside sources are permitted on these assignments without instructor approval. Obviously, any essay must be spell checked and proofread.
Form, style and content as well as logic and reasoning will all contribute to the assessment of the essay.
PLEASE DO NOT COPY/PASTE THESE GUIDELINES INTO YOUR PAPER.
Questions
1. How was labor and production organized in the mines of Potos? How does Lane revise previous histories of mining in Potos? How did silver production merge European and Andean technologies?
2.
Describe the urban history of Potos. What enterprises, practices, and diversions (aside from silver) proliferated in this city? How would you describe the demographics of its population? 46 Fi f t h Su n
Nezahualcoyotl responded that it would not be an easy task to collect
loyal families to follow him into battle, as Tezozomoc, after attaining power,
had made his own grandsons (his daughters children by the old Texcocan
king) the rulers of most of the regions villages. It was even said that Tezozomoc
had his people ask local children who were no more than nine years old if
their current ruler was the rightful one. At that age, the children did not have
the circumspection necessary to edit their responses: they gave away their
families political position as it had been discussed it in the privacy of their
own homes. Some of the prattling childrens families had been brutally pun-
ished since.36 But the fear that had been engendered by such acts had also bred
anger. Nezahualcoyotl said that he was game, indeed eager, to join the alli-
ance; he would gather what followers he could.
The ensuing battles were brutal, but village by village, the supporters of
Maxtla the Azcapotzalcan were brought down. Within a year or sothe
sources vary as to dateItzcoatl was able to declare himself tlatoani of the
Mexica. He was implicitly huey tlatoani, or high chief, of all the valley. He
soon had Nezahualcoyotl ceremoniously declared tlatoani of Texcoco, and
within another year or so after that, they had between them killed all of
Nezahualcoyotls remaining Azcapotzalcan half brothers and the husbands of
his Azcapotzalcan half sisters. They recorded in their histories: Nezahualcoyotl
sought out the descendants of Tezozomoc in all the places where they were
ruling; conquests were made in as many places as they were found. Maxtla
himself fled and disappeared in 1431.37
The kings of Tenochtitlan (of the Mexica people), Texcoco (of the Acolhua
people), and Tlacopan (of the Tepanec people) now ruled the valley as an
unofficial triumvirate. There was no formal statement to that effect. Later
generations would say that they initiated a Triple Alliance, even though in a
literal sense there was no such institution. In a de facto sense, however, there
most certainly was what we might call a lowercase triple alliance. No one
moved in the central valley without at least one of these three kings being
aware of it, and beyond the mountains that surrounded them, in the lands
that they gradually conquered, they had many eyes. They worked together to
bring down their enemies; they divided the resulting tribute payments judi-
ciously between them. The Mexica, with the largest population and having
played the most important role in the war, got the largest share, but they
werecareful not to engender resentment among their closest allies by taking
too much.38
It was a complex web that they wove among them. In a certain sense, the
political lay of the land remained almost unchanged. In general, each altepetl
Townsend, Camilla. Fifth Sun : A New History of the Aztecs, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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People of the Valley 47
continued to rule itself, choosing its tlatoani as the people thought best, and
rotating tasks and responsibilities among the various segments that composed
it, in the same fair-minded way as they always had. And if several altepetls had
a tradition of governing themselves as a unit, as a greater altepetl at least in
their foreign affairs, then that tradition generally continued, too.39 A sort of
democracy continued on a local level, in the sense that people continued to
discuss local matters among themselves and arrive at solutions that pleased
most of them. The same arrangement was allowed even to the non-Nahuas
who were conquered. The central valleys triumvirate was satisfied that it
should be so, as long as these other communities fought alongside them
whencalled upon to do so, participated in public workslike the building of
roads or great pyramid templesand paid their assigned tribute on time.
This was no Rome, one historian has commented succinctly, meaning
thatthe Mexica had no interest in acculturating those they conquered, no
desire to teach them their language, or to draw them into their capital or
military hierarchy.40
Yet despite the maintenance of local tradition, in an economic sense the
region was profoundly changed. Each altepetl that fell under the sway of the
triumvirate had to pay tribute wherever it was assigned. Often the financial
exigencies were head-spinningly complex. One part of a greater altepetl might
be assigned to pay tribute, for example, to nearby Texcoco, their regional boss
town. But by the terms of the peace agreement, the next segment of the same
greater altepetl might pay their taxes to Tenochtitlan. They might pay part of
the tribute (such as a certain number of bales of cotton) once a year, and
another part (such as some bags of corn or beans) three times a year. By neces-
sity, the calendar grew increasingly consistent across more and more territory,
for Itzcoatls collectors were timely, and the people had to be ready to receive
them. Different villages had adopted the calendar at different times, so one
altepetls year One Reed might be another ones Two Rabbit. Now they were
forced to try to synchronize their time counts. The calendars were never per-
fectly aligned, but they began to come closer.41
On one level, Itzcoatl enforced the same kind of tribute collection system
that would have been in place under Tezozomoc of Azcapotzalco in the old
daysand probably others before him in the deeper past. But now the central
valleys net of power spread wider. With three altepetls working together, the
armies they could send out were larger, the roads they had been able to build
were longer. Altepetls that had been far from old Tezozomocs grasp now
came within the central valleys reach. Many resisted, but those who fought
back against the new arrangements tended to lose. Then they were faced with
Townsend, Camilla. Fifth Sun : A New History of the Aztecs, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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48 Fi f t h Su n
tribute payments in perpetuity that sent shudders down every wise chief s
spine: they were tasked not only with sending corn and beans, or chocolate
and cotton, but also with supplying people to serve as sacrifices in the reli-
gious ceremonies of the central valley. A chief knew that this tax meant he
would be forced to constantly make war against his neighbors if he were to
avoid sending his own peoples children to the cutting stone. It was enough to
make anyone think twice before resisting. And chiefs had had it inculcated in
them from an early age that a good chief was a responsible chief, one who
avoided battles he was likely to lose and preserved his peoples lives in order to
protect the future of the altepetl. An impetuous chief could be referred to
derogatively as a child.42
If a town had fought strenuously against the Mexica with any significant
degree of success, and yet ultimately lost, then its fate was even worse. The
Huaxtecs (WASH-tecs) to the northeast, for example, fought back like wild
animals; their reputation for it became fixed in local lore, together with their
sad destiny. The soldiers from all the allied provinces took many captives,
both men and women, for they and the Mexica entered the city, burned the
temple, sacked and robbed the place. They killed old and young, boys and
girls, annihilating without mercy everyone they could, with great cruelty and
with the determination to remove all traces of the Huaxtec people from the
face of the earth.43 Their story was to serve as a lesson to other potentially
recalcitrant altepetls. And so it did.
After such a battle, the long lines of captives were tied together and taken
to Tenochtitlan (or perhaps Acolhua or Tepanec country). The terrified pris-
oners first passed by other villages like theirs, with their flat-roofed adobe
houses grouped in squares opening onto courtyards, where the women chat-
ted as they worked, grinding corn and patting out tortillas, while their men
labored in nearby fields.44 As they approached the capital, the towns that were
more closely entwined with the center of power were visibly wealthier, their
buildings and religious pyramids grander, some even built of stone or wood.45
A great causeway was being constructed by the defeated people of
Xochimilco. It stretched from the island to the southern shore of the lake, and
along this the prisoners walked. Most prisoners were distributed among the
nobility after a battle, but those who had been taken by a particular warrior
were sent to their captors neighborhood temple for sacrifice at local religious
festivals, or, if they were young women whom he wanted, to his household.
Some were earmarked to be sent to the citys two central pyramid temples,
one dedicated to Huitzilopochtli (the Mexica protector god) and the other to
Tlaloc (the rain god). The ones not needed in either temple were sold in a
Townsend, Camilla. Fifth Sun : A New History of the Aztecs, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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People of the Valley 49
slave marketthere was a huge one in Azcapotzalcoand might be bought
by neighborhoods in need of ceremonial sacrifice victims, or occasionally by
men seeking concubines. Women slaves bought for sacrifice could sometimes
convince their new masters to keep them alive to work in their household.46
Horrendous misconceptions have grown around the Aztec practice of
human sacrifice. In novels, movies, and even some of the older history books,
hundreds of people at a time were made to climb the narrow steps of the pyra-
mids to the top, where their hearts were cut out and their bodies hurled
downward, while the people screamed in near ecstasy below. In reality, it
seems to have been a gravely quiet, spellbinding experience for the onlookers,
much as we suspect it was in other old worlds, like that of the ancient Celts.47
The people who watched had fasted and stood holding sacred flowers. In the
early decades of Tenochtitlans life, when the altepetl was still gathering
strength, only a few people would have been sacrificed on the monthly reli-
gious festival days, and they were always treated as a holy of holies before they
died. After a sacrifice, the warrior who had captured and presented the victim
kept the remains (the hair and ceremonial regalia) in a special reed chest in a
place of honor in his home for as long as he lived.
Most of the victims were men, classic prisoners of war. Not all were, how-
ever. In one annual festival, for instance, a young girl taken in war was brought
from a local temple to the home of her captor. She dipped her hand in blue
paint and left her print on the lintel of his door, a holy mark that would last
for years and remind people of the gift she gave of her life. Then she was taken
back to the temple to face the cutting stone. It was an ancient tradition among
native peoples not to give way before ones enemies: such stoicism brought
great honor. Sometimes those who were to die could get through their part
without letting their enemies see them sob; sometimes they could not. Some,
in truth, wept, one man remembered later.48
The Mexica, like all their Nahua neighbors, believed they owed everything
to the gods. They are the ones who taught us everything, their priests would
later explain to the Spanish. Before them, we kiss the ground, we bleed. We
pay our debts to the gods, offer incense, make sacrifices. . . . We live by the
grace of the gods.49 Each group of Nahuas had carried sacred bundles devoted
to its own deity in the long marches from Aztlan; in the case of the Mexica, it
was the relics of Huitzilopochtli that they had protected year after year, until
they were finally able to bury them beneath a permanent temple. Other alte-
petls had carried relics of the rain god Tlaloc or his water-world consort, Jade-
Skirted Woman. Others honored Quetzalcoatl, Feathered Serpent, the god of
wind, who was at home both on earth and in the sky, a crosser of boundaries,
Townsend, Camilla. Fifth Sun : A New History of the Aztecs, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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50 Fi f t h Su n
special protector of priests. Some were most dedicated to Tezcatlipoca,
Smoking Mirror, a mischievous god who led humankind in a dance by assist-
ing chiefs and warriors to bring change through conflict. Cihuacoatl, Woman-
Snake, was known by many other names as well, but she was always sacred to
midwives; she often bore a shield and spear, for she helped birthing mothers
seize a new spirit from the cosmos. There were many gods and goddesses each
of whom appeared with a range of possible traits; today, we do not always
understand their characteristics as well as we would like to, for the Nahuas did
not write freely of them in the colonial era. They could write openly of his-
tory, but it was dangerous to write of the gods. We do know, however, that just
as in ancient Greece, all the altepetls honored and believed in a pantheistic
range of gods, not just the deity who had especially protected them.50
The gods asked human beings to appreciate what had been given to them
and to make sacrifices, mostly by bleeding themselves, but sometimes even by
giving the ultimate gift, that of human life. If human beings refused to do this,
the fragile world might come to an end. Other, prior worlds had ended in
disaster; the Nahuas never forgot that they were living under Nanahuatzins
Fifth Sun. In more ancient days one of their own children was probably
offered up. This seems to have happened around the world in the earliest eras,
before writing existed to document the practice in any permanent way. In the
Hebrew Bible, for instance, Hiel the Bethelite begins to rebuild the city of
Jericho by burying his eldest son beneath the gate. Likewise, in English lore,
Geoffrey of Monmouth, in speaking of Merlin, says that he had to talk his way
out of becoming a foundation sacrifice for a kings tower.51 The notion of a
youth dying for his people was hardly unique to the Nahuas.
However, as the Mexica rose, they sacrificed not their own young people
but rather, increasing numbers of prisoners of war. They and all the other
Nahuas had sometimes sacrificed their enemies: the burning of Shield Flower
in 1299 was proof of this. But now the Mexica were nearly always the winners;
they were no longer the ones who sometimes died themselves, and the num-
bers of their victims gradually grew. They allowed politics and the outcomes
of wars to affect the numbers who died in any one year. They did this even as
they prayed devoutly, even as they wrote heartrendingly beautiful poems and
painted their walls with images of shells that looked so real one might imag-
ine oneself in an eternal sea, transcending the struggles of this earthly life.52
Did they know that the world would not shatter like jade if they did not sac-
rifice living human beings? Did they laugh cynically at the terror they inspired
and the political power they wielded as a result? Probably there were some
brilliant strategists and far-seeing, experienced people who didperhaps like
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People of the Valley 51
Itzocatl. They would not have been alone among world leaders; we know that
there were some Greek and Roman leaders, for instance, who questioned the
very existence of the gods yet did not let it shake their worldview.53 Surely
there were many more of the Mexica who simply never thought much about
itlike people in so many times and places who choose not to see the pain
inflicted on other people when it is more convenient not to. Can we blame
them? Should we blame them?
Or perhaps they did think about it, as Itzcoatl himself must have done,
and decided that whatever their philosophical views, there was no choice.
After all, they did not live in a modern, liberal state, where certain protections
are guaranteed to the majority. They simply could not afford too much gener-
osity, for the real world that they inhabited was every bit as dangerous as the
cosmos they envisioned. The Mexica themselves had been on the other side
for more years than they cared to remember. For generations, it had been their
own young warriors and maidens who faced the fire and the cutting stone.
Even now, if they began to lose their wars at any point, it would be their turn
again. They knew this, as they sent their sons to practice the arts of war and
learned to construct maces with bits of jutting obsidian glass embedded in
them. In the midst of words of love addressed to their little doves, mothers
taught their children that the world was a dangerous place. On earth we live,
we travel, along a mountain peak. Over here is an abyss, over there is an abyss.
If you go this way, or that way, you will fall in. Only in the middle do we go,
do we live.54
The image of mothers teaching their children to live with these realities is
a compelling one. Everything we know about the Mexica tells us that mothers
valued their children dearly, more than anything else in lifethey said that
they were precious, like polished gems, or iridescent feathers, treasures fit for
high kings. They warned them of dangers and begged them to be responsible,
to care for themselves and their communities so that the altepetl would go on
forever.55 And children heeded their mothers words. This was far from a
world in which maternal figures were disparaged or in which women appeared
as interchangeable sex objects. In the first place, it was generally only the men
of noble familiesthose of the pilli class, the pipiltinwho had the right to
take numerous wives and bring home captive women from the battlefield, for
one had to be rich to afford to do such a thing. Even in that situation, who
ones mother was mattered to an enormous degree to each child; but one has
to admit that from an elite mans point of view, the women may have been
somewhat interchangeable. That, however, simply was not the experience of
the majority. The majority of the people were of the macehualli class, the
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52 Fi f t h Su n
macehualtin, and in their families, one husband lived with one wife, whose
cloak had been tied to his in a formal ceremony. Sometimes a household was
multigenerational or contained several siblings, but even there, each woman
had her own hearth in her own adobe apartment facing onto the common
courtyard. A woman raised her own children, teaching them to help her in
the labor that everyone recognized was essential. In a world without day care,
restaurants, vacuum cleaners, or stores, who would have dared to think that
childcare, cooking, sweeping, and making clothes were inessential activities?
No one, it seems, for the indigenous sources leave no record of disrespect, or
even of veiled misogyny. Womens roles were complementary to those of men,
and everyone understood this to be so; the house, the four-walled calli was
symbolic of the universe itself.56
So we should take seriously whatever the women said, for their own peo-
ple did. Women comforted their children, yet in the same breath warned
them in no uncertain terms that they must learn to be ruthless in maintaining
order, to do their duty, to take lives or give lives in the eternal wars if neces-
sary. They must be willing to be like the brave but modest Nanahuatzin, who
had jumped into the fire to bring forth the Fifth Sun for his people. These
mothers would probably have been confused if someone had tried to talk to
them about good and evil. They would have said that all people had the
potential to do good or to do harm, that it wasnt possible to divide people
into two camps on that basis. To do good, a person had to suppress egotism
and do what was best calculated to keep his or her people alive and successful
in the long term. Everyone was expected to give thought to the future. It
wasnt always easy. Often ones fate involved doing just what one did not want
to do. In some ways, it was not so much gratifying as exhausting, this playing
king-of-the-mountain for life-or-death stakes.
For the system to work over the long term, Itzcoatl and, later, his heirs had
to choose their military targets carefully. They had to be relatively sure of vic-
tory, based on rational calculations, not divine promises. Fortunately, the
highest level priests were members of the leading noble families, and they
seemed to understand this, too. At least, the gods whom they prayed to never
demanded that they wage unwinnable wars. There were certain pockets of
resistance that were more formidable than most and these had to be handled
carefully. The best known was the greater altepetl of Tlaxcala, a large city-state
composed of four independent sub-divisions, with four separate but united
kings, located just to the east of the central basin. Tlaxcala was relatively
wealthyits name meant place of the tortillas, or we might say Bread Town.
It was lodged securely in its own highly defensible valley and surrounded by
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People of the Valley 53
pine woods that served as havens for deer and woodland birds and other
game. These people were Nahuas, too, having arrived about the same time as
the Mexicathey even shared some of the same myths and storiesand they
werent going to give the latter an inch if they could help it. Early on, the
Mexica did launch several attacks against them, but it became clear that they
were going to become mired in a stalemate. It was likely as a result of this that
the Mexica initiated what they called the Flower Wars, a kind of Olympic
games played every few years, in which the winners, rather than earning a
crown of laurels, saved themselves from death. It is unclear whether these
games unfolded on a ball court or a battlefield, but probably the latter.
Thesystem worked well to keep young warriors on their toes even in times
when there was no current war. And it made it unnecessary to explain to
anyone why Tlaxcala was allowed to continue to exist without paying tribute.
Theworld at large could assume that Tlaxcala was being left alone to serve as
an enemy in the ceremonial Flower Wars. No one needed to discuss the fact
that bringing down the large polity would have been far too destructive of
Mexica resources, if it was even possible. Leaving Tlaxcala as a free enemy
with a recognized role was a clever strategy. The leaders could not have fore-
seen that one day in the future it would cost them dear, when a new enemy,
stronger than they, would land on their shores and find allies ready-made.57
Even a highly successful war-based polity of necessity faced certain prob-
lems. In this world that Iztcoatl negotiated so successfully, the ongoing wars
could make it difficult for the Mexica to trade with far-off peoples. If the
question of an attack was always imminent, few people would want to
approach the Mexica or their allies even to discuss mutually beneficial busi-
ness deals. Perhaps for this reason, not just the Mexica but all the Nahuas as if
by common consent accepted the existence of certain neutral trading towns
along the coasts and along the banks of rivers that led inland from the sea.
Near to where the Olmecs had once lived, for example, there was a coastal
town called Xicallanco (Shee-ca-LAN-co), and although it was nestled
within Maya territory, numerous Nahua merchants lived there. They facili-
tated trade with the eastern realms, buying textiles and cocoa, beautiful
shells, the plumages of rare birdsand eventually, the birds themselvesas
well as other luxury goods. They sold these in exchange for the goods made
by Tenochtitlans craftsmen, as well as excess slaves from the wars launched
by theMexica and their allies, women and children who had not been sacri-
ficed but rather turned over to long distance merchants. Further along the
coast, the island of Cozumel was another such neutral zone, and several
others existed.58
Townsend, Camilla. Fifth Sun : A New History of the Aztecs, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/olemiss/detail.action?docID=5905185.
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54 Fi f t h Su n
In most of the Mesoamerican world, however, permanent truces did not
exist. Warfare and expansion were perennial, for the Mexica state needed to
grow wealthier as its polygynous noble families grew larger. And people
needed to be kept in a state of suspense in order for their old alliances to last,
rather than breaking down over minor arguments. And the battle zones
needed to be pushed outward if the inner sanctum of the valley was to know
only peace. It would have been a familiar story to any great monarch. Gone
were the days when the father of Shield Flower, the warrior maiden, could
declare war or make decisions based on his own needs and desires and those
of a few companions. Itzcoatl had won his gamble, attaining power, wealth,
and glory beyond any of his childhood dreams. But as a result, he had forged
a complex political organism, one that, for all his vaunted power, he could not
control simply by making a declaration.
One of the greatest threats to Itzcoatls control lay very close to home.
Either because he really did love them or because it would have precipitated
civil war, or both, Itzcoatl did not kill the surviving sons of his half-brother,
the late tlatoani, Huitzilihuitl, Hummingbird Feather. They, presumably for a
mixture of the same reasons, continued to support him. They were the ones
who by the law of custom should have ruled, not Itzcoatl. But he was the one
who had united the Mexica in a time of terrible crisis, found useful allies for
them, and led them all to victory. So they worked together during the four-
teen years of Itzcoatls reign. One nephew, Tlacaelel, was an active and suc-
cessful warrior who made a great name for himself as the Cihuacoatl: the
name of a goddess had become a title reserved for the man who was the sec-
ond-in-command after the tlatoani, the inside chief who governed domestic
affairs. Supporters of Huitzilihuitls old royal linemany of them Tlacaelels
own children and grandchildrenliked to say that Itzcoatl really owed every-
thing to Tlacaelel, that he was the one who had defeated the Tepanec villain
Maxtla, and that it was his savvy strategizing that helped Itzcoatl govern in
the toughest of times. When all the annals, not just those authored or orches-
trated by Tlacaelels descendants, are considered, this version of events strains
credulity. If the man were really so indomitable, he himself would have
emerged as tlatoani, rather than the bastard son of a slave girl. Still, it is clear
that he was a major force to be reckoned with. He must have been satisfied
with the power and the income he was given by Itzcoatl, for he maintained his
place and went on to become an adviser to four kings over the next several
decades. A council of four men from the extended royal family always worked
closely with the person serving as tlatoani, and Tlacaelel the Cihuacoatl was
the chief of these.59
Townsend, Camilla. Fifth Sun : A New History of the Aztecs, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/olemiss/detail.action?docID=5905185.
Created from olemiss on 2022-10-10 17:59:08.
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People of the Valley 55
In order to guarantee the continuance of the compromise, it was essential
to settle amicably the question of the succession. Years earlier, Itzcoatl had
married a woman from the then-powerful boss state of Azcapotzalco; his son
by her was named Tezozomoc, after the old godfather king whose death had
unleashed pandemonium. Itzcoatl could not