Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico (review)

Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico. By Ross Hassig. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. Pp. xiv+220. $40/$18.95.

Ross Hassig's newest book offers a boldly revisionist look at Aztec cosmology. Hassig asserts that "the traditional emphasis on time in Aztec culture as a cyclical phenomenon that patterns behavior is the result of a theoretical predisposition that short-circuits empirical research rather than being solidly grounded in the data, and that is fundamentally miscast" (p. xiii). He first demonstrates that all cultures encompass varying conceptions of time. We Westerners think of ourselves as linear, for example, but we love our generational notions and our repeating holidays. The Aztecs had cyclical conceptions of time consisting of two infinitely repeating series of days (one series of 260, one of 365) and because they had no "year zero," they are known for having been "numerically adrift" (p. 17). Indeed, as Hassig concedes, their calendar clearly explains the production of certain instructional codices—telling people when to get married, for instance—and of some religious monuments.

But what happens, asks Hassig, when we seek to explain Aztec actions or artifacts that do not fit so neatly within their calendrical notions? We tend to try to make them fit, because we are prepared to see Aztec cosmology as determinant of Aztec behavior. We seize on the idea that the Aztecs thought Hernando Cortés was Quetzacoatl returning from the East on an expected day and responded accordingly—even though the evidence indicates that they actually saw Cortés as a political enemy, not a god.

Perhaps in an unconscious effort to protect the traditional view that Central Mexicans always construed their universe in a certain way, scholars have tried to explain away inconsistencies between renditions of the calendar in the various city-states. Most likely, the separate polities were conducting temporal business in their own styles until the Aztec Empire sought to impose order: "In short, a strictly ideological approach to understanding Aztec behavior will not work because the calendar itself does not conform to the patterning observed. It is not the divergence of calendars that needs to be explained, but rather their convergence" (p. 35).

Hassig is the first to say that there is a connection between ideology and action on the Aztecs' part. But, he cautions, instead of taking cultural notions "as dictating actions, perhaps a stronger case could be made for taking cultural notions as patterning or justifying actions as useful—as a template for action at best and as a rationalization for acts at worst" (p. 49). Hassig documents numerous ways in which the Aztec political and religious elites—who went to the same schools and worked together throughout their lives—thought in linear fashion and manipulated the supposedly immutable calendar to achieve their worldly goals. In the case of the great pyramids, "building phases did not coincide with ritual cycles but with kingly reigns" (p. 63). All Aztec scholars know this to be true; most have not questioned what it says about the Aztecs' supposedly cyclical notions.

The official histories of the codices did not usually record royal marriages or intellectual achievements—which might be seen as being of cyclical import—but rather unique events such as coronations, conquests, comets, and insect infestations, in linear sequence. Hassig shows that the Aztecs actually shifted their history of the universe from a four-sun world to a five-sun one in order to put off the otherwise expected end of the world (and of their own reign). They moved the spiritually significant New Fire ceremony to a more socially conspicuous place and time. They made sure that some priests in every city-state were familiar with the specifics of the Aztec calendar so that there would be no question as to when tribute payments were due. In short, they behaved as other empire-builders do.

If this book has a flaw, it is...