Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes

14. Eating Landscape: Human Sacrifice and Sustenance in Aztec Mexico

14 Eating Landscape: Human Sacrifice and Sustenance in Aztec Mexico Philip P. Arnold The Aztec deity Tlaloc, god of tain, earth, and vegetation, litetally embodied the Mexican landscape. Matetial atttibutes of the Aztec environment were necessities that occasioned ritual interaction between human and divine worlds. Material reality, particularly the material components that constirured rhe human body, was raken as evidence of a "hidden" reality that undergirded human existence. To explore this dimension ofAztec thought, I have recently translated the ceremony Atl Caualo from Nahuatl as recorded by Sahagun. Language used to describe the ceremony gives us some indication of an Aztec understanding of their relationship to their environment. "Eating landscape " translates an Aztec understanding oftheir life situation in the Valley ofMexico based on an active interchange between Tlaloc and the people of the valley. Child sacrifice at specific points in the Valley was a food exchange that was substantive, material, and meaningful, and the agent of Tlaloc-Aztec communication. The text indicates several "correspondences " between ritual and landscape elements. Elements ofearth, water, wood, and food are explicitly used in Atl Caualo and must be accessed in their material and rirual situations. An examination of these elements contributes ro an understanding ofAztec correspondences between physical and hidden reality. 220 Philip P. Arnold Figure 14.1. The Me« Cosmos. Abov~: In Durin's depiction of the lifty-twoyear calendar. the cast appears at the top and the years are counted in counterclockwise fashion. Reprinted from Aveni. Sltywllkhen ofA"cimtMexko (Austin, 1980), by permission ofthc publisher. B~fqlJ,l: In the Fej. by permission ofthe publisher. Eating Landscape ATL CAUALO (WATER LEFT) I. Thus, Chapter 20, For its part it tells ofit the festival day and the payment ofdebt: When they used to make it during one whole festival month: When they named ir, they called it Atl caoalo (water left), or Quauitl eoa (to raise up the staff) 2. Quauitl eoa, this day they would leave: and when this one, there they would celebrate the festival oftlalocs: 3. The debts would be paid by someone, everywhere on mountaintops. and they would be made into paper streamers. There the debts would be paid by them at Tepetzinco (honorable hill). also there from well into the middle (belly) of the water. its namesake place Pantitla (banner row); 4. There they used to leave it the paper streamers. and there they would raise up a pole. it is named cuenmantli (cultivated land), very long, only attached to it goes being three, its freshness, its sprouts, its shoots. 5. And there they would leave them the little (noble) children. which they used to be called human paper streamers: the (ones with) two cowlicks, whose day signs were good: everywhere they were being sought. they were costly: it was being said "indeed they are precious blood sacrifices (debt payments), they (the tlalocs) happily receive them, they want them, thus they are very content, thus they are well pleased." so that thus indeed rain was asked for, rain was requested. 6. And when everywhere on the house. everybody's homes: and on (each) young man's house on the calpulli. everywhere they would raise it, long thin poles, pole top, on them they would arrange paper streamers. with rubber, rubber-spattered things, the rubber-splashed thing. 7. And in many places they would be abandoned. 8. Quauhtepec (tree hill place): and with those who were dying there, the same place went being, Quauhtepetl: his paper vestments darkened . 9. Thus in two places they were dying, on top of the hill Yoaltecatl (night dweller): at the same place (time) its name goes being, the human paper streamers, Yoaltecatl: his paper vestments (were) black, (and) red-striped. 221 222 Philip P. Arnold 10. Thus (the) third place, Tepetzinco there they went dying a girl, her name Quetzalxoch (fi:ather flower), on top ofit they would seize her, the sacred hill, they would name her Quetzalxoch, her vescments were blue. I!. Thus the fourth place, Poyauhrlan (color-darkened place), only its base, only in front of the hill, Tepetzinco: its name goes being with them (who) were dying Poyauhrecarl (dark dweller), thus all were made ro go, rubber-covered, a rubber-whipped rhing. 12. Thus the fIfth place. there in water in it its namesake place Pantitlan, there at that place he would die, his name goes being, Epcoarl (shell snake): the vestments in which they would dress him...