Teotihuacan and Cholula: The History of the Most Important

Mesoamerican Cities of the Preclassic Era

By Charles River Editors

Alejandro Garcia’s picture of the Great Pyramid of Cholula

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 Introduction

A picture of Teotihuacan’s Avenue of the Dead and the Pyramid of

the Sun, taken from Pyramid of the Moon
On January 31, 378 CE, a massive army arrived at the gates of the city of
Tikal, one of the Ancient Maya’s most important settlements in the Yucatan
Peninsula. The events that transpired became known by the Spanish name
"Entrada" (“Entry”), referring to "the entry of Teotihuacan". While there is
no clear record of the events due to the sheer scale of destruction that took
place, it’s clear that neither Tikal nor the Maya as a whole had ever seen
anything like it because these foreign soldiers not only conquered but also
subsequently ruled Tikal despite the fact they had come from Teotihuacan,
located about 630 miles (1,013 kilometers) away. In the process, the
Teotihuacanos not only changed Tikal but the direction of the Mayan
civilization for centuries to come.
At the time, Teotihuacan was the biggest city in South America and was
located in the Valley of Mexico near today's Mexico City. Thriving between
100-750 CE, it was one of the largest cities in the ancient world, with a
population estimated at upwards of 150,000-250,000, over three times the
size of contemporary Mayan capitals. Furthermore, Teotihuacan was a
supremely well-planned and efficient city that was able to field massive
armies and extend its power far beyond its home base to create a unified
empire unlike anything in the region before it. In fact, the city’s residents
seemed so sure of its power that there were apparently no walls or military
fortifications around Teotihuacan. Thanks to that power, Teotihuacan not
only served as a vital center for trade in Ancient Mesoamerica but also
spread its architecture, art, religion, and culture, all of which subsequently
influenced the famous Mesoamerican civilizations that followed, including
the Aztec and Maya.
Although Teotihuacan reached the height of its power and influence about
1500 years ago, the city is still an endless topic of fascination and debate, in
addition to being Mexico’s most toured archaeological site. The origins of
the city remain mysterious (as do the city’s founders), and scholars are still
coming up with theories to explain the city’s demise. All the while, later
Mesoamerican civilizations remembered Teotihuacan, and the Aztec even
considered the city’s ruins a site of worship.
Cholula is one of the most interesting, enigmatic, and forgotten cities in
ancient Mesoamerica, and few people are aware that it is the oldest
continuously-occupied settlement in the entire Western hemisphere. The
current city is known for the Great Pyramid, which has the largest base of
all pyramids in the world, as well as its many colonial churches and
constant religious celebrations. All of these things ensure that Cholula is
heavily visited, but the tremendous importance of Prehispanic Cholula has
mostly been lost in the historical accounts of Puebla and even Mexico as a
whole.
Located in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley within a very fertile area, the
Prehispanic city of Cholula was founded around 500 BCE. It soon
developed into an important city and the construction of its Great Pyramid
began around 200 BCE. During the height of Teotihuacan’s influence in the
Classic period and the expansion of the Aztecs in the Postclassic, Cholula
managed to maintain its independence and grew to become the greatest
religious center in central Mesoamerica. As the main site for the cult of the
god Quetzalcoatl, Cholula received pilgrims from many Prehispanic cities,
and the two high priests of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl were charged with
confirming the legitimacy of these foreign rulers, making their role one of
the most important in the region.
In addition to its religious influence, Cholula was also a very important
commercial center. Many lavish and exotic goods were traded at its market,
and the city’s merchant class also exported a variety of luxury crafts
produced in Cholula, such as richly adorned textiles and very fine
polychrome pottery.
Cholula has been mentioned on some level in modern works concerning
Mesoamerica, but in most cases it is simply named alongside a list of other
Prehispanic sites. Most sources note that Cholula was a great religious
center with a large pyramid, and that it was the site of a terrible massacre
perpetrated by the Spanish, but other than that those details, the impressive
city remains mostly unknown. As one writer put it, “It is paradoxical that in
Cholula, that which the conquistadores set out to accomplish in 1519
persists till this day: that no one would know or value its past.”[1]

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Teotihuacan and Cholula: The History of the Most Important Mesoamerican
Cities of the Preclassic Era
About Charles River Editors
Introduction
The Establishment of Teotihuacan
A Sacred City
The Rise and Fall of Teotihuacan
Prehispanic Cholula
The Arrival of the Conquistadores
Further Reading

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 The Establishment of Teotihuacan

A map of the region with Teotihuacan’s location.

Mesoamerica refers to an area that featured a cultural development lasting
around 2,000 years (from approximately 600 BCE - 1521 CE), and the
territory comprised in this culture area includes the center and south of
Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador. The
history of Mesoamerica has been divided by modern historians into three
main chronological periods: the Preclassic (1500 BCE – 300 CE), the
Classic (300 – 950), and the Postclassic (950 – 1521). In some areas,
including the center of Mexico, an additional period has been added and is
called the Epiclassic (700 – 900), corresponding with the collapse of
Teotihuacan.
 Like much of what is known about the ancient city, the name
"Teotihuacan" comes from the Nahuatl peoples of Central Mexico. These
people, who would eventually found the Aztec Empire, held the ancient
Teotihuacanos with deep reverence, but they were as distant in time from
Teotihuacan as modern society is from them, so their history was
understandably muddled. Their name for the city, "Teotihuacan", is typically
translated as the "City of the Gods," but this is rough and imprecise; a better
version would be "The Place Where the Gods are Sent." In other words, the
Nahuatl believed that the current incarnation of the world was created at the
summit of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, and that it was a city of
divine beings - not humans.[2]

The Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan.

While the ancient ruins of Mesoamerica have frequently fired the
misdirected imaginations of those who wish to see extraterrestrial influence
at the heart of even the most prosaic of archaeological questions,
archaeologists are (not surprisingly) unsatisfied with the Nahuatl’s
explanation for the city's origin, but everyone can agree that Teotihuacan was
the most impressive and important of a large number of Mesoamerican cities
during its time. While there are many ongoing areas of investigation about
the city's history and social development, it is not a fundamentally
mysterious place, and certainly not a supernatural one.
Traditional understandings of Mesoamerican history date the origins of
"civilization" in the region to the Olmec peoples based around the city of La
Venta on the Veracruz coast. These people, who are most famous for
constructing and moving giant stone heads, also built small cities, including
impressive stone buildings and sculptures. They organized themselves
around a strictly hierarchical system - probably related to god-kings - and
created a number of Mesoamerica-wide traditions such as sacrifices to gods
of water and rain, as well as the "ball game", a sport played with rubber balls
in a stone court.[3]
 A mural at Teotihuacan depicts a ballgame. Photos taken by Daniel
Lobo.
The Teotihuacanos themselves were quite distant in time and space from
La Venta and the Olmecs, so they probably inherited this legacy through
intermediaries, most notably the Cholula to the south (founded around
roughly 1,000 BCE) and Monte Albán among the Zapotecs of Oaxaca
(approximately 500 BCE). While these cities never reached the glories of
Teotihuacan at its height, they were impressive cities by any standard of the
day and undoubtedly served as templates and lessons for the builders of
Teotihuacan.[4]
The Olmecs themselves did not invent the most important originator of
their society: domesticated plants. These came from earlier societies that
were likely located in the interior of today's Mexico, close to what would
eventually become Teotihuacan. Without question, the most important crop
to be domesticated was corn (maize), and thanks to its impressive ability to
produce large amounts of grain in relatively small amounts of land, it has
remained a staple of human sustenance for millennia. Along with maize, the
Mesoamericans also domesticated squash, amaranth, chilies, and beans of
many varieties. This was made all the more essential by the fact that the
Mesoamericans did not domesticate animals aside from dogs and turkeys,
mostly due to the fact that there weren’t wild mammals in their area (such as
camels, horses, cattle, pigs or donkeys) that could be domesticated.[5]
What did Teotihuacan look like in this Pre-Classic period before 150 BCE?
The region around what would become the city was probably sparsely
populated, since the people of that time left few obvious marks of their
presence for archaeologists to find. The landscape was relatively dry and
rough compared to other parts of the Valley, so it is probable that as long as
the population remained low, the people would have combined agriculture
with hunting for wild game and foraging for wild plants, all while living in
small, politically independent villages.
To understand the origins of Teotihuacan, it is important to understand why
it emerged where it did. Teotihuacan is located in the Valley of Mexico, one
of the heartlands of human civilization and a place with a unique
geographical structure that influenced all of the societies that developed
within it. In Spanish, the Valley of Mexico is often referred to as the
"Cuenca," a word that is perhaps better translated as "Bowl." The image that
this elicits, with high walls encircling a broad, relatively flat central space, is
a better image than one of a valley, and a fitting one at that.
The "Valley" is a broad upland plain surrounded by volcanic peaks, and
like the Great Salt Lake in Utah, the Valley was a closed drainage basin, so
all of the water that flowed into it collected in the center and eventually
evaporated, leaving behind salt deposits. On the floor of the Valley were a
complex series of interconnected wetlands and lakes, including Lake
Texcoco (the largest), Chalco and Xochimilco[6]. This area provided a
uniquely suitable landscape for the agricultural practices of Pre-Columbian
Mesoamerica, but the Teotihuacanos were not blessed with the presence of
domesticated draft animals for plowing, so they used simple digging sticks
to plant corn, beans, squash, and amaranth. This meant that the soil had to be
relatively soft and, because of the demands that corn makes upon the soil,
fertile. The soft muds of the lakeshores and wetlands provided both ease and
fertility, along with close access to water for both irrigation and transport on
canoes though channels. While the Valley would occasionally experience
disastrous frosts, its relatively low altitude in comparison to the surrounding
landscape meant that it was also a warm environment for the crops to grow.
As it turned out, however, the first settlements in the vicinity of
Teotihuacan did not utilize the rich lakeshore lands, because Teotihuacan is
located in a relatively infertile, dry and saline (salt-infused) area of Lake
Texcoco, especially compared to the southern and western regions that
would eventually give rise to the mighty Aztec Empire centuries later.
Instead, it was the presence of a supply of local obsidian rock that inspired
these early settlers, and the fact that Teotihuacan was founded upon the
existence of trade - the Teotihuacanos would need foodstuffs from their
neighbors in return for their precious stones - demonstrates that inter-
community trade was already well developed enough to be considered a
reliable source of sustenance by the earliest days of the city. While
Teotihuacan would eventually become a conqueror, it always remained at its
heart a trading city, and as it grew in the centuries to come, and its ever-
larger population placed new demands upon the parched landscape, trade
would become even more important for the city's survival.
The exact boundary line between a "city" and smaller forms of political
and social organization is always fuzzy, but this reliance upon trade for basic
needs is a good one within the context of the Valley of Mexico. Around the
globe, even the most technologically-simple foraging groups trade with their
neighbors for some tools and luxury goods,[7] but the need to trade for
survival places new pressures upon a society. It leads to the development of a
military to seize resources or defend precious stores from raiders, it
necessitates more elaborate (and conflict-prone) systems of resource
distribution, and it requires the development of specialized professions
needed to create trade goods and carry on merchant journeys. At some point,
probably around 1 CE, Teotihuacan reached a tipping point where the
inhabitants were no longer able to maintain their standard of living and
population levels without trade.
At the heart of Teotihuacan's survival was its control of obsidian, a
precious material of immense importance in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. A
hard black volcanic glass, obsidian could be shaped with relative ease into
tools of remarkable sharpness due to the chemical makeup of the glass; the
edge of a finely-made obsidian tool exceeds that of even surgical steel, and
some modern eye surgeons have experimented with the use of industrially-
produced obsidian surgical implements[8]. Importantly for early Teotihuacan,
this obsidian was widely used in the making of spears, arrows and other
sharpened implements of war, meaning that the city dominated the martial
industry in the Valley of Mexico.[9]

Picture of an obsidian blade at Teotihuacan taken by Wolfgang

Sauber.
In the earliest archaeological period that scholars can identify Teotihuacan
as a distinct entity, the Tzacualli - Teotihuacan I Phase (1-150 CE), the city
had already asserted this control, but it was not yet the unquestioned master
of the Valley. The city had a rival in the city-state of Cuicuilco, which
existed on the southwestern shores of Lake Texcoco in what would
eventually become the heartland of the Aztec Empire. Cuicuilco was similar
to Teotihuacan in its size (about 20,000 people at this time), form and social
structure, but the two had a major difference, as Cuicuilco controlled some
of the richest agricultural lands in the entire Valley.
The relationship between the two cities is a bit vague. They may very well
have been vigorous trading partners, with Cuicuilco’s food being exchanged
for Teotihuacan’s obsidian, but at the same time, they may have been rivals
for the control of the Valley. If they were rivals, they might have fought
outwardly or possibly through smaller proxies, a common technique in
Mesoamerican inter-cities rivalries. Of course, it’s altogether possible that
they were both trade partners and rivals, performing a nuanced dance of
mutual need and antagonism.
Both cities appear to have engaged each other since their mutual
emergence around 150 BCE, but everything changed abruptly in 100 CE
when Cuicuilco was completely and permanently obliterated by the eruption
of Mount Xictli, which engulfed Cuicuilco in lava and ash.[10] The
destruction of Cuicuilco forever changed the trajectory of Teotihuacan's
history, because whether or not they had dreamed of their rival's collapse, the
Teotihuacanos suddenly inherited the other city's lands, trade routes, and
potentially much of Cuicuilco’s surviving population, all without the cost of
a single Teotihuacano life. Teotihuacan could now establish a stable source
of foodstuffs within easy access by boat across Lake Texcoco, and the city
now had a broader hinterland - one potentially containing other ethnicities
and languages - for which Teotihuacanos had to develop systems of
administration and control.
 Ruins of a pyramid at Cuicuilco.
While these changes were undoubtedly massive, the eventual overall effect
upon Teotihuacan was still stunning. What emerged by 150 CE was a
massive imperial city constructed upon a carefully planned and rigidly
administered central plan, and it possessed phenomenal monuments like the
Avenue of the Dead, the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, and the Ciudadela,
that all remain famous and largely intact today.
While planned cities are not unknown, and there are modern examples like
Washington D.C. and ancient ones like Beijing, most planned cities are
almost always associated with previously existing powerful states. In the
case of Teotihuacan, however, there is no strong archaeological evidence to
suggest that such a state existed before the growth of the city. In situations
where a previously existing city develops into a mighty empire, as with
London or Paris, the cities typically have more haphazard growth.
 The layout of Teotihuacan.
One of the great benefits of examining an intact planned city is that
archaeologists and historians can study the plan in order to gain insights into
the governing principals of its creators, and since Teotihuacan was built
according to a master plan from its earliest incarnations, it’s possible to
understand the belief systems of its leadership, information that is
particularly precious in this case because Teotihuacanos didn’t write down
anything.
Like other Mesoamerican cities during this period, the builders of
Teotihuacan planned their city and placed its primary structures based on a
number of phenomena, including (1) celestial events (especially the
movements of the Pleiades and Venus; (2) sources of underground fresh
water, which were viewed as "portals to the aqueous underworld"[11]; and (3)
the annual calendrical cycle. The city's plan was aligned to points on the
horizon and was oriented to 15°21' north of west and 15°28' east of north,
with the slight deviation probably part of the plan.[12] The city was laid out
on a rigid grid plan and based around a central axis, the Avenue of the Dead,
and even the San Juan River was channelized where it ran through the city in
order to conform to the lines of the overall grid[13]. As discussed further
below, the power of the city's elites was connected to their mastery over
water, so their ability to demonstrate that the river was under their control
may have had immense political utility.
One of the central ideas behind the layout was the concept of an axis
mundi, or world axis. It appears from the archaeology of the site, as well as
history and contemporary ethnography, that the Teotihuacanos viewed their
sacred sites - perhaps one of the main pyramids or perhaps the Avenue of the
Dead - as the center of the universe. For example, the Aztecs believed that
their Templo Mayor was directly under the spiritual center of the universe,
the home of the dual gods they believed were the creators of the world.
Moreover, the Aztec believed that the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan
was located under the spot where the current incarnation of the universe was
created[14]. There is also some evidence that the Great Pyramid of Cholula,
which predates the one in Teotihuacan, also appears to have been an axis
mundi[15].
One element of a pre-modern city master plan that is surprisingly missing
is in the area of defense. Teotihuacan did not live in an era of peace, nor was
it a pacifist state, but even from the earliest plans of the city there didn’t
seem to be any great interest placed upon the city's defenses. Some of this
may be endemic to Mesoamerica, since the first truly walled city was
Mayapán almost 1,000 years later,[16] but Teotihuacan's contemporary
neighbor, Monte Albán, was in easily defensible territory, while the much
later (but geographically close) city of Tenochtitlan had an elaborate system
of watery defenses[17].
The most plausible argument for the lack of defensive fortifications was
that from its earliest days until its final decline, the residents of Teotihuacan
felt secure from outside threats. With the decline of Cuicuilco, they became
masters of the Valley of Mexico and were able to push the boundaries of
conflict far from the city itself. Teotihuacanos may have figured that if an
enemy made it to the gates of Teotihuacan, there was little that could be done
and the city was already lost. Still, the lack of fortifications indicates a
supreme sense of confidence on the part of the Teotihuacanos and says
something about the unique status of the city.
While this absence of fortifications is certainly interesting, it is not what
has captured the imaginations of generations of Toltecs, Aztecs and
Mexicans. What makes the city so incredible is its apparent geometric
perfection, the mastery of its layout, and the peerless scope of its
monumental buildings.
The central element of Teotihuacan is a thoroughfare which has been
known since Aztec times as the "Avenue of the Dead." 2.5 miles (4
kilometers) long, it is the central axis of the entire city, and in addition to
serving as a processional space, according to historian Philip Arnold, it is
"probably better thought of as a series of ascending ceremonial plazas" than
a road in the traditional sense[18]. The Avenue is 145 foot (45 meter) wide, a
huge open space at the heart of the city, and the use of staircases between the
sections of the Avenue is not as strange for Mesoamerican city planners as it
would be for their European counterparts since they had no wheeled vehicles
nor draft animals that might have trouble navigating the steps.

Photo of the Avenue of the Dead taken by Diego Delso.

 A photo of the Avenue of the Dead taken from the Pyramid of the
Moon.
Along this space are the three main structures of the city: the Pyramid of
the Sun, the Pyramid of the Moon, and the Ciudadela. Moreover, this main
artery is joined by avenues arriving perpendicular to the road from the
outlying neighborhoods. At the junction between the Avenue and these
boulevards were staircases and two-tiered temples which may have held clan
relics. While these temples are often overlooked in the shadow of their great
neighbors, many are beautiful in their own right, such as the so-called
"Viking Group", which is known for its shimmering mica floors[19]. However,
it is those main buildings, the great monuments of the city, that draw the
most interest, starting with the legendary Pyramid of the Sun.
 Roads connecting to the Avenue of the Dead. Photo taken by Michael
Wassmer.
The element of the city's master plan that has long captured the
imaginations of observers is the mighty Pyramid of the Sun. At its base, the
Pyramid is 640 feet (200 meters) on each of its four sides, and its height
reaches 208 feet (65 meters). This means that while it is roughly the same
breadth as the famous Great Pyramid of Giza (755.75 feet or 230 meters a
side) in Egypt, it is much lower (the Great Pyramid tops out at 481 feet)[20].
The Pyramid of the Sun seems to cut a squat figure in comparison, and its
multi-tiered form means that it resembles more of a broad layer cake than a
conical pyramid. That said, comparisons to Giza, the largest structure in the
Ancient World, are in many ways unfair.
Photos of the Pyramid of the Sun
 View from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun.
The Pyramid of the Sun is a spectacular, awe-inspiring structure that rises
up out of the floor of the Valley of Mexico and dominates all of the
surrounding landscape. There was no rival in terms of height in the Valley
until the skyscrapers of the 20th century, and the only Pyramid to challenge
its architectural dominance of Mesoamerica was the Great Temple of
Cholula, which was shorter at 180 feet (55 meters tall) but much broader at
1,300 feet (400 meters) on a side[21]. Just as impressively, unlike the vast
majority of other Mesoamerican pyramids, the Pyramid of the Sun was built
in a single burst of construction around 150 CE. Other grand Mesoamerican
pyramids, such as the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan or the Castillo at
Chichen Itzá, were built in stages; in an early period in the city's history, the
inhabitants built a relatively modest pyramid and then added new layers like
an onion on top of the original construction as the city became wealthier and
more powerful. In 1905, archaeologist Leopoldo Batres, believing that the
Pyramid of the Sun was built in a similar way, attempted to remove the outer
layer to reveal the presumably well-preserved earlier pyramid below. To their
shock, the team realized that underneath the surface layer lay nothing but
rubble fill, and they had to scramble to reconstruct the exterior before the
revealed fill was washed away by the yearly rains. The rough, worn, and
detail-less exterior of the pyramid today (especially compared to one like the
Castillo) is due to this hasty reconstruction[22].

Picture of the pyramid and its stairway taken by Mario Roberto

Durán Ortiz.
Like so much of the city's design, the Pyramid of the Sun appears to be
connected to both the surrounding landscape and larger celestial patterns.
The Pyramid's shape directly echoes the form of the hill that is seen behind it
when one looks upon the Pyramid from the Avenue of the Dead. More
profoundly, archaeologists in 1971 discovered that the center of the
Pyramid's grand staircase was built over a 320 foot (100 meter) deep cave.
This cave was enlarged by excavation (as were similar caves in the hillside
that the Pyramid echoes)[23]. In Mesoamerica, widespread mythology likens
caves to wombs and viewed caves as sources of life and the home of rain
gods. Modern anthropologists have found that Nahuatl shamans living near
the ruins still view caves in this way and use them as divine oracles and the
sites of rituals related to both water and fertility[24]. For instance, the Aztecs
claimed to have migrated to the Valley of Mexico from a place called Aztlan,
and specifically from a series of seven water-filled caves called
Chicomoztoc[25].
These concrete connections to the landscape are complemented by a
further set of cosmic linkages. Archaeologist Anthony Aveni has asserted
that the eastern orientation of the Pyramid - a line that runs up the Central
Staircase and through the middle of the temple on the top - marks the spot on
the horizon where the Pleiades (a cluster of stars also known as the Seven
Sisters) make their first predawn appearance each year. This date, May 18th,
is considered the traditional start of the rainy season, a crucially important
date for the agricultural calendar[26].
While the considerably larger Pyramid of the Sun tends to outshine the
Pyramid of the Moon, the latter is also a remarkable building in its own
right, standing 147 feet (46 meters) tall and possessing four terraces. Unlike
the Pyramid of the Sun, which sits on the east side of the Avenue of the
Dead, the Pyramid of the Moon lies at the northern terminus of the Avenue,
and in front of the Pyramid is a broad open space called the Plaza of the
Moon, which is flanked by rows of six smaller pyramids (12 in total). In
front of the main Pyramid is a smaller pyramid whose presence adds
dramatic perspective to the main structure, and all of the 14 pyramids look
inward to the Plaza[27].
Picture of the Pyramid of the Moon taken by Marina Padilla.
 A picture of the base of the Pyramid of the Moon taken by Diego
Delso.
If the use of this complex was similar to that of pyramid-plaza
combinations during the period of the Spanish Conquest, then an elite group
of priests performed rituals on the top of the pyramids out of sight while the
residents performed dances and ceremonies in the plaza below. The
mysterious sounds and sights (primarily smoke) from the temple would have
added to the sense of drama. While the rituals likely changed considerably
over the centuries between the fall of Teotihuacan and the Spanish Conquest,
it is probable that the basic form remained unchanged.
Like the Pyramid of the Sun, the Pyramid of the Moon was also linked to
both landscape and the heavens. Both the Pyramid and the Avenue of the
Dead are aligned to the Cerro Gordo ("Fat Peak"), which is located on the
edge of the Valley of Mexico. Cerro Gordo is a peak of remarkable
importance to locals, and to this day, it is called Tenantzin ("Our Mother") by
Nahuatl farmers in the area because it is the source of all of the freshwater
springs in the area[28].
 View of the Pyramid of the Moon taken from the Pyramid of the Sun.
Photo taken by Mike Sharp.
The final element of the monumental center of the city is a structure called
the Ciudadela ("Citadel" in Spanish), and it is a more complex structure than
the other two. The Ciudadela was probably the administrative heart of the
city and may have housed its elite rulers, but it was not merely a palace in
the traditional sense because it also included a major temple complex as
well. The entire structure is bounded on three sides by an embankment that
runs for 1280 feet (400 meters), enclosing the area. This does not appear to
have been for protection but instead perhaps for privacy or to symbolically
separate it from the wider world. This is because its third side was
completely open to the Avenue of the Dead and regularly-spaced staircases
ran up the embankment's sides to 15 mostly-ruined shrines.
 View of the Ciudadela taken from the pyramid in the inner courtyard.
Photo taken by Wolfgang Sauber.
On the east side of the complex facing the Avenue is a large, four-tiered
pyramid whose sides are built in a cantilevered style called "talud-tablero"
that would eventually become one of the hallmarks of Teotihuacano
architecture. This pyramid has traditionally been called the Temple of
Queztalcoatl because of the imagery of a plumed serpent found in the
building which harkens to that famous Mesoamerican god. However, it
appears that the name Queztalcoatl was created by the later Toltec people, so
it is probable that the god had a different name here. Regardless, this deity is
obviously an antecedent to the later one, and this makes sense since
Quetzalcoatl was seen as a god of civilization who gave corn to humanity.
The fact that his predecessor would be associated with the administration of
the city is a sensible interpretation, similar to the way that the temple of
Athena was associated with the administration of Athens.[29]
The Temple of the Feathered Serpent, part of the Ciudadela.
 Sculptures adorning the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.

Depiction of the feathered serpent along the stairway. Picture taken by

Diego Delso.
The temple appears to have been associated with a warrior cult, and 18
sacrificial war victims have been found in the south end of the foundation
along with spearpoints, presumably the ones used to kill them. The remains
of around 200 other people have been found in the surrounding areas, and
radiocarbon dates have placed their deaths at around 200 CE, perhaps
marking the completion of the temple’s construction. These remains are not
unique, as more bodies have been found near tombs elsewhere in the city[30].
A Sacred City
Cholula, located in central Mesoamerica, is one of the few Prehispanic
sites that has an occupation that lasted from the Preclassic period all the way
to the Postclassic. In Prehispanic times, Cholula was known by several
names, but the most common one was Tlachihualtepetl which means “hand-
made hill,” a direct reference to the Great Pyramid. It is believed that it was
the Tolteca-Chichimeca who first used the name Cholula, although in the
Nahuatl language the city was called Tollan Cholollan Tlachihualtepetl. In
the codex Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, the pyramid is shown as a hill with a
large toad on top. Another one of its names, Chalchiutepec, or “jade hill,”
derives from a legend that asserted a jade stone fell from the sky and landed
in the shape of a toad. The Nahuatl term for jade is chalchihuitl, and it was
one of the most valuable stones, associated to corn, water, and fertility. A
third name was Cholollan-Tamazol-Xamiltepec, in which Tamazol means
toad and Xamiltepec means hill made out of adobe.
The etymology of Cholula can also be interpreted in several ways.
Cholollan means “the place where water springs up,” but the verb choloa
means “to flee or run,” and Cholo-yan means “place where you run.” This is
consistent with an image in the codex Lienzo de Tlaxcala that shows Cholula
represented by three men running, a road, and a pyramid.
Very little is known about the first inhabitants of Cholula in the Preclassic
period, but during the Classic, it grew into a large ceremonial center that was
contemporary with the great Teotihuacan. On January 31, 378 CE, a massive
army arrived at the gates of the city of Tikal, one of the ancient Maya’s most
important settlements in the Yucatan Peninsula. The events that transpired
became known by the Spanish name Entrada (“Entry”), referring to "the
entry of Teotihuacan". While there is no clear record of the events due to the
sheer scale of destruction that took place, it’s clear that neither Tikal nor the
Maya as a whole had ever seen anything like it because these foreign
soldiers not only conquered but also subsequently ruled Tikal despite the fact
they had come from Teotihuacan, located about 630 miles (1,013 kilometers)
away. In the process, the Teotihuacanos not only changed Tikal but the
direction of the Mayan civilization for centuries to come.
At the time, Teotihuacan was the biggest city in South America and was
located in the Valley of Mexico near today's Mexico City. Thriving between
100-750 CE, it was one of the largest cities in the ancient world, with a
population estimated at upwards of 150,000-250,000, over three times the
size of contemporary Mayan capitals. Furthermore, Teotihuacan was a
supremely well-planned and efficient city that was able to field massive
armies and extend its power far beyond its home base to create a unified
empire unlike anything in the region before it. In fact, the city’s residents
seemed so sure of its power that there were apparently no walls or military
fortifications around Teotihuacan. Thanks to that power, Teotihuacan not
only served as a vital center for trade in ancient Mesoamerica but also spread
its architecture, art, religion, and culture, all of which subsequently
influenced the famous Mesoamerican civilizations that followed, including
the Aztec and Maya. The origins of the city remain mysterious (as do the
city’s founders), and scholars are still coming up with theories to explain the
city’s demise, but later Mesoamerican civilizations remembered
Teotihuacan, and the Aztec even considered the city’s ruins a site of worship.
By 800 CE, 80% of Teotihuacan’s population had moved to the south and
west of Lake Texcoco, and a number of small towns sprung up around the
Valley of Mexico that probably vied for the scraps of Teotihuacan's legacy.
Ultimately, by 950, these towns had also declined, and the entire region was
absorbed into the growing Toltec Empire as an agricultural hinterland and a
buffer zone from more dangerous enemies further abroad.[31]
Luckily for Teotihuacan’s legacy, the Toltecs proved to be curious students
of the city. Flourishing from their own capital city of Tula (near today's
Hidalgo, Mexico), they created a rich trade and religious network between
850 and 1150, and they saw themselves as inheritors of the mantle of
Teotihuacan, elaborating the earlier city's cult of Quetzalcoatl and
maintaining tales of its greatness.
Archaeological evidence indicates that there was a strong connection
between Teotihuacan and Cholula, but the nature of this relationship remains
unclear. Some consider Cholula to have been a secondary center, while
others believe the two to have been sister cities, and still others suggest that
Cholula was the greater city that influenced Teotihuacan. Given the
evidence, the latter seems unlikely, but the connection between the two sites
can be clearly demonstrated by architecture and pottery.
It is important to note that after the collapse of Teotihuacan, Cholula
maintained its status as a great religious and political center, continuing its
influence well into the Postclassic period. After the downfall of the great
metropolis, Cholula flourished due to its role as a commercial center and
sacred sanctuary. It has been suggested that after the fall of Teotihuacan, a
considerable amount of the metropolis’ population migrated to Cholula,
giving the sacred city a multiethnic composition. In the 8th century, a new
group emerged in the region, the enigmatic Olmeca-Xicalanca, who
established their capital at Cacaxtla but conquered and took over Cholula.
During the Postclassic, a new wave of migrations brought the Tolteca-
Chichimeca into the region. They fought against the Olmeca-Xicalanca and
took Cholula from them.
Cholula seems to have evolved into a large regional center during the
Classic period, but its true moment of growth began with the arrival of the
Olmeca-Xicalanca between 750 and 950 CE. The power vacuum left by the
collapse of Teotihuacan allowed many new regional centers to emerge as the
political and economic structures reorganized throughout Mesoamerica. The
Sacred City “thrived along with its (…) contemporaries Cacaxtla,
Xochicalco, and El Tajín until a new ceremonial center was constructed
under the direction of Tolteca-Chichimeca peoples who moved into the
region from Tula around 1100. Cholula then became, in the words of one
Spanish chronicler, a New World Mecca, the largest pilgrimage center in
highland Mesoamerica and the nucleus of a Nahua commercial exchange
network that extended from the Basin of México to El Salvador.”[32]
During the Postclassic, Cholula once again presents close ties to another
great Mesoamerican city: Tula. The exact relationship is, once again, not
fully known, but there are some who claim that the former became the
heiress to the Toltec capital. This is supported by the fact that after the fall of
Tula, at least a faction of Toltecas arrived at Cholula and conquered it. This
is recorded in the codex Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca.
In the centuries leading up to the Spanish conquest, Cholula became the
main economic and political center in central Mesoamerica. “Its authority
was derived from the cult of Quetzalcoatl, in whose name two priests
entitled the nobility of all Toltec kingdoms by conferring them with the title
Tecuhtli or “Lineage Head.”[33] The other part of Cholula’s importance came
from the fact that it controlled the trade routes that crossed through the
Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley.
According to the archaeological data, during the Preclassic period, Cholula
occupied around two square kilometers, and it expanded to four square
kilometers during the Classic and up to eight square kilometers in the
Postclassic. It is estimated that the population was between 30,000 and
50,000 people, though some sources say it might have reached 100,000
based on the ethnohistorical information. The layout of Postclassic Cholula,
as seen in the Codex of Cholula, was set up around a central market called
Tianquizco.
The information available for Cholula comes from two main types of
sources: archaeological evidence and ethnohistorical documents that include
indigenous codices and texts written by Spanish chroniclers.
The archaeological explorations in Cholula began in the 1930s, but the
findings were seemingly insufficient to grant the once sacred city an
important place among the greatest sites in Mesoamerica. The first
excavations started in 1931 under the supervision of Ignacio Marquina, and
the work done at the time aimed to identify the different construction phases
of the pyramid and establish a chronology based on ceramic styles. “The
Acropolis, even larger than Teotihuacán’s Pyramid of the Sun, is a
confounding mass of Preclassic to Early Postclassic brick and masonry that
defies conventional stratigraphic excavation, while a Late Postclassic city is
buried beneath the ever expanding urban growth of the modern
community.”[34] During this season, two main tunnels were dug that crossed
through the base of the Great Pyramid in a north-south axis and an east-west
one. From there, more tunnels were dug in different directions, uncovering a
series of structures underneath the last construction phase. In total, eight
kilometers of tunnels were dug. The initial excavations discovered 31 burials
and several structures with adobe walls and floors made out of stucco.
 Diego Delso’s picture of part of the Great Pyramid

Alejandro Garcia’s picture of a model of the Great Pyramid

During the 1960s, the Proyecto Cholula or “Cholula Project” was launched
with the intention of carrying out a detailed study of the site and its
surrounding areas from an archaeological, ethnohistorical, and
anthropological perspective. Miguel Messmacher and Eduardo Matos carried
out a second field season in 1966, during which several more structures were
uncovered. A third season in 1967, once again led by Ignacio Marquina,
finished exposing the remaining structures that are now visible at the exterior
part of the site.
One of the main flaws of the Proyecto Cholula was that it set the
boundaries of the region to be studied based on the modern geographical
delimitation of Cholula and Puebla, which did not quite correspond to
Cholula’s Prehispanic sphere of influence. This was mainly due to the fact
that most of the research was simply centered on the Great Pyramid.
Furthermore, a lot of the information recovered was never published, leaving
a large gap in the historical record that persists until this day. It is important
to note that the most serious research about Cholula since then continues to
focus on the pyramid or on ceramics, a fact that still generates very partial
findings.
After the two seasons of the Proyecto Cholula, a few more explorations
were carried out. Between 1967 and 1970, 341 skeletal remains were
recovered beneath the floors of houses and plazas at a residential area
located near the Great Pyramid. Ceremonial burials consisting of sacrificial
victims were also recovered during excavations at Cholula.
The skull of a female individual dating back to the Classic period was
found during the field seasons of the Cholula Project. The skull was located
in the ceremonial center, to the south of the structure presenting talud-tablero
architecture from Teotihuacan. The interesting thing about the skull is that it
was found without the jawbone and showed evidence of intentional cranial
modification, so archaeologists believe that it corresponded to a secondary
burial. The practice of cranial modification was common in many
Mesoamerican regions, but it seemed to be linked to status, and in the case
of this particular burial, it can be suggested that the individual was a member
of an important class. Social stratification can be further seen in Cholula by
the presence of other status markers, such as ear, nose, and lip plugs.
During the 1970s and 1980s, some minor archaeological work was done by
the Universidad de las Americas, Puebla (UDLAP) along with several
salvage projects that provided limited data concerning the extension of the
ancient city and human remains.
 The most important codex is the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, which
details the role Cholula had during the Postclassic period. Among the
Spanish documents, the most relevant information comes from Gabriel de
Rojas, the colonial governor of Cholula, and letters written by
conquistadores like Hernan Cortés and Bernal Díaz del Castillo.
The Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca is a 16th century codex that tells the story
of the migrations of the Tolteca and Chichimeca peoples. As previously
mentioned, this group arrived at Cholula during the Postclassic period and
took over the city. On leaf [7 v] (fig. 1) of the codex, the name glyph of
Cholula appears represented in the following way: in the center there is a hill
representing the pyramid or Tlachihualtepetl, and on top of it there is a large
green toad. The toad is associated to water, jade, fertility, and maize. The hill
has six red flowers and, from the base of the pyramid, two undulating bands
emerge. These bands represent the sacred spring that ran beneath the
structure which was considered a portal to the underworld. To the left of
these bands there is a conch shell and to the right there is a bird. The shell is
another symbol associated to water and the underworld and, in addition, to
the planet Venus. On each side of the hill there is a person standing; these
two figures represent the rulers of Cholula.
 Figure 1. Leaf [7 v] of the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca[35]
On leaf [14 r] (fig. 2) of the same codex, there is another depiction of the
glyph of Cholula which contains many of the same elements. Once again,
there is a hill with a toad on top, a conch shell to the left, and the two
characters that represent the Lords of Cholula. This image, however, shows
seven red flowers instead of six.
 Figure 2. Leaf [14 r] of the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca[36]
It is well known that Cholula was an important religious center that
worshipped the god Quetzalcoatl. In Mesoamerican mythology, Quetzalcoatl
is one of the two aspects of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli or Venus (the other being
Xolotl). The location of the Tlachihualtepetl corresponds to several
important symbolic concepts. On the one hand, the presence of the sacred
spring below the pyramid allowed them to have direct access to the
underworld, while, at the same time, building an elevated platform that
connected the celestial realm with the earth and underworld. This symbolism
can also be seen in Quetzalcoatl, who is half quetzal bird and half serpent.
As a bird he could reach the celestial realm, and as a serpent he could be on
earth and water, thus giving him access to the underworld. Part of the
importance of Quetzalcoatl lies in his ability to reach all three realms.
The expedition led by Hernan Cortés was recorded by several Spaniards,
including Cortés himself. Many of these documents contain descriptions of
Prehispanic Cholula, providing an interesting perspective regarding what the
sacred city looked like at its height. Bernal Díaz del Castillo was one of the
men who traveled with Cortés, and he wrote a book called The True History
of the Conquest of New Spain narrating his journey. He described Cholula as
being located in a plain near many inhabited areas, and that it was a very
fertile land with an abundance of corn and other legumes, as well as maguey
from which pulque, a sacred fermented beverage, was made. He noted that
Cholula also produced very fine pottery that was painted in several colors,
and that it had high towers and places of worship where the Prehispanic gods
were placed.
Cortés’ description was even more detailed: “This city of Churultecal is
situated in a plain, and has up to twenty thousand houses in the body of the
city, and as many more in the outskirts. It is an independent state, and has its
recognized boundaries, and they do not obey any chiefs, but govern
themselves like the Tascaltecas. The people are better clothed in some ways
than the Tascaltecas, becaused their honoured citizens all wear albornoces[37]
above their other clothing (…) This city has very fertile fields, for they have
much land, the greater part is irrigated; and the city seen from the outside is
more beautiful than the cities of Spain, because it is very level, and contains
many towers, for I certify to Your Highness that I counted from a mosque
four hundred and odd towers in the city…”[38]
 Cortés
Two 16th century historians, Antonio de Solis and Francisco Lopez de
Gomara, also dedicated a few lines to the Sacred City. Antonio de Solis also
describes Cholula as a beautiful city that resembled Valladolid. He mentions
that there were 20,000 houses within the city limits and more on the outskirts
and the streets were wide and well distributed. Many travelers and merchants
went to the city. Cholula’s temples and buildings were larger and better made
than those of its neighbors in Tlaxcala, and Solis counted 400 pyramids. One
of the most interesting things he includes in the description is that there were
few individuals who possessed a high status in contrast to a large population
of commoners. This seems consistent with the archaeological finds at the site
since only a small amount of status markers were recovered.
 Francisco Lopez de Gomara also gave a description of Cholula in his
chronicles, once again making mention of it having 20,000 houses and 400
towers (or temples). He adds that the population in Cholula was better
dressed than in most other towns. The soil was fertile, but, despite that, the
city’s large population had a high percentage of poverty. He noted that
Cholula was the most religious town of the region and its main sanctuary
was the largest in all New Spain. The main god worshipped was
Quetzalcoatl, god of wind, who was considered to be the founder of the city,
and sacrifices of birds were made in his honor. He also noted that in the
city’s market, there was a great variety of pottery of different shapes and
colors.
Gabriel de Rojas was the corregidor or governor of Cholula during the
second half of the 16th century, and he was charged with writing the
Relacion geografica de Cholula, a geographical description of the city dated
to 1581. In this work, he detailed many aspects of daily life for the
indigenous inhabitants of the city. In contrast to his peers, Rojas worked
alone on the Relacion de Cholula and was fluent in Nahuatl, so he did not
need an interpreter to carry out his investigation. His records were based on
his personal observation and on indigenous testimonies. He even interviewed
indigenous elders to learn more about Prehispanic religion and culture.
Rojas wrote that during Prehispanic times, the city was called Tullam
Cholullam Tlachihualtepetl, and it was an independent entity ruled by two
lords called Aquiach and Tlalchiach. The main temple was dedicated to their
patron god, Quetzalcoatl, and sacrifices were carried out in his honor. The
people of Cholula also worshipped 80 minor gods, and each one had a small
pyramid. Corn, beans, chili, squash, and chia were grown in the fields
surrounding the city. There was also a large, hand-made hill, built out of
adobe consecrated to one of their gods called Chiconauhquiauitl, whose
name means 9 Rain. This corresponds to the calendar day of Ehecatl-
Quetzalcoatl.
One of the topics that particularly interested Rojas was the massacre that
had occurred in 1519, which will be discussed further below. His research
led him to conclude that the event was surrounded by controversy and that
the different versions of what had happened made it difficult to reach a
consensus on the matter. Despite the fact that he was himself a Spaniard,
Rojas wrote about both sides of the story in his document.
The Rise and Fall of Teotihuacan
The third stage of Teotihuacan's history, the "Miccaotli" or "Teotihuacan
II" phase, lasted from 150-450 CE and was a time period when the primary
ceremonial structures at the city's heart were complete. During this time,
Teotihuacan it took the basic form that it has today, but it had not yet reached
its peak in terms of population or influence. The city rose amongst its rivals
- Xochicalco in Morleos, Cholula to the south, and Monte Albán in Oaxaca -
but it was still primarily a trading city, not the conquering empire it would
later become. Even at this early time, however, its importance as a trading
hub meant it was a multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan metropolis whose financial
and mercantile might made it comparable in its era to New York City or
London today.
When determining what life was like for the typical inhabitant of
Teotihuacan during this era, the best place to start is with their homes. Most
of the city lived in one-story apartment compounds which were surrounded
by high walls without exterior-facing windows. These compounds were
often of considerable size and may have included over five households
apiece. The largest (presumably the homes of the elite) were essentially
massive mazes of rooms, many of which were elaborately decorated with
iconographic frescoes on plaster. The buildings themselves were made of a
form of locally-produced concrete which was then covered in lime plaster on
both the floors and the walls, and some show signs of continuous occupation
for several centuries, perhaps by a single lineage. This depth of time for a
family in a home may seem extreme today, but there are many similar
examples from around the world, such as clan homes in Hong Kong or the
homes of nobility in Britain.
All of the compounds had small temples, where it is presumed that rituals
were held for extended kin groups, and these ubiquitous house shrines may
have served as a major form of social cohesion for the city. There were three
major tiers of religious worship in the city, consisting of the shrines at home,
the small temples along the Avenue of the Dead for neighborhoods, and the
great central Pyramids for the city as a whole. In the process, the gods of the
city's many ethnic groups could be incorporated into an overarching system
that minimized conflicts. In this way, a diverse population is given a
religious stake in the community; a similar process can be seen in modern
India, where householders perform rituals at their own caste-based
household shrines but also in larger, more formal central temples[39].
The household compounds were also the major sites of craft production for
the city. Archaeologists have found over 600 distinct craft workshops
among the ruins, and roughly half of these were for the processing of
obsidian, indicating that even at the city's height, this was still a crucially
important export industry. However, they have identified a number of other
distinct crafts as well, including ceramics, shell (brought along trade routes
from the sea), textiles and paper[40].
An effigy jar from Teotihuacan that dates back to 250-650 CE.
Photo of a mask taken by Walters Art Museum.
 A four-petaled flower mirror, with a feathered rim.
One of the elements of Teotihuacan that most frustrates scholars studying it
today was the remarkable lack of writing in the city, which is strange for two
reasons. Most prominently, writing systems around the globe emerged
because of the creation of sophisticated, bureaucratically-complex states, a
phenomenon that took place in Mesopotamia, China, Egypt and among the
Maya. In fact, one of the only major world empires to not use writing was
the Inca, who instead managed their vast territories using complex
mnemonic devices called "quipus.[41]" However, despite the fact that the
Teotihuacano elite obviously ended up governing a huge population in their
core areas and potentially in conquered lands, they never seemed to adopt
writing. Moreover, what is particularly baffling is that, unlike the Inca, the
Teotihuacanos had regular contact rivals, neighbors and trade partners that
did use writing, including both the Zapotecs and the Maya. In other words,
the Teotihuacanos didn’t have to invent the writing system but merely adopt
it, leaving researchers puzzled as to why they didn’t.
 To understand why there was no writing in Teotihuacan, it is necessary to
understand what the Teotihuacanos did use and also examine how writing
was being used by their neighbors. To begin with, while there is no sign of
writing in the city, the city did have a rich iconographic tradition, and the
Teotihuacanos invented numerous glyphs which appear to be symbols that
conflate a number of concepts simultaneously, including body parts,
ceremonial objects, ritual ornaments, place-names ("toponyms"), titles and
roles. In some ways, these glyphs functioned like Chinese characters by
representing a complete concept in a simple written form, but on the other
hand, they were not true writing because they did not represent human
speech and were not organized according to the rules of grammar.
Furthermore, they did not represent single ideas but instead a cloud of
concepts[42].

Reproduction of a mural found at Teotihuacan.

 A mural that seems to depict a headdress.

A mural depicting a puma found along the Avenue of the Dead.

 So how did this arrangement differ from what was going on amongst the
city's contemporaries who did have writing? To begin with, Mesoamerican
writing has always been more image-based than its European and Asian
counterparts, and surviving Mayan and Aztec books have much in common
with modern comics and graphic art, as they thoroughly integrate images
into the text and require extensive interpretation[43]. More importantly, the
writing that survives (especially from the Mayan areas) is overwhelmingly
dedicated to royal propaganda describing the deeds and ancestry of the king
and his immediate family. The lack of this type of writing is indicative of a
larger difference between Teotihuacan and its script-using contemporaries,
namely a lack of a prominent ruling dynasty. Civic rituals amongst the Maya
involved the central participation of the ruling dynasty, but rituals in
Teotihuacan apparently focused upon the anonymous dead, a reflection of
the importance placed upon collective identity in the city. This may have
been tied to a general rejection of vanities and the public display of personal
wealth in the city; for instance, while the interiors of houses were often
lavishly decorated, their exteriors were plain and did not demonstrate the
owner's status[44].
Another potentially compelling reason that might explain why the
Teotihuacanos did not use a grammatically-correct writing system is that the
city may not have had a single dominant tongue but may instead have been
founded by groups using up to 10 different languages. This diversity is
reflected in the ethnic neighborhoods that have been found by
archaeologists. While much of the city is similar in its architecture and the
origin of the goods inside, there have been two distinct "barrios"
("neighborhoods" in Spanish) found at the site, and both of these
neighborhoods show direct archaeological links to other areas of
Mesoamerica, as well as offering further proof of the city's cosmopolitan
character.
The first of these neighborhoods is the Oaxaca Barrio (also called
Tlailotlacan), which was located in the northwestern quadrant of the city.
This area is named for the region of southern Mexico which was at that time
home to the mighty city of Monte Albán and the Zapotec people. A major
power in this era, it was an important trade partner for Teotihuacan. This
neighborhood was a remarkably stable part of city life that endured for
centuries, and one of the notable factors of this continuity is the ongoing use
of Zapotec-style pottery, as well as the discovery of images of Zapotec gods
and writing[45]. There are even some tombs in the area that show the distinct
influence of Zapotec religion. It has been argued that the use of pottery was
potentially one of the most important markers of identity amongst this
community over time[46].
Another ethnic enclave within the larger city was the "Merchant's Barrio"
in the northeastern district. This area was strongly influenced by the
Huaxtec people of the Gulf Coast, as well as possibly the Lowland Maya.
The area is rich with Huaxtec-style ceramic, as well as the foundations of
distinctive round houses, which were common in the Veracruz region of
Mexico in that period[47].
All told, the presence of these two neighborhoods, as well as telling
remnants of other long-distance trade links (such as Mayan-style images and
glyphs), offer proof that Teotihuacan was a remarkably diverse city that
included a broad jumble of people, drawn together by trade and perhaps also
by conquest. Given these demographics, one of the most important unifiers
for this complex metropolis appears to have been the worship of the dual
gods: Tlaloc and the Great Goddess. Both of these gods were important
throughout Central Mexico, especially after Teotihuacan reached its height
of influence, and both were connected to the importance of water.
Tlaloc was (and still is) an important deity for the people of the Valley of
Mexico. The god of rain, storms and water, he sustained bodies in the harsh
landscape, and over time, he came to be seen not simply as a god of water
and rain but as "an embodiment of the Valley of Mexico rather than as a
discrete anthropomorphic projection." He is, in fact, still revered as "Tlalo"
by the Nahuatl people living in the environs of the Valley today.[48] The god
was typically depicted as a squat anthropomorphic figure with goggle-like
eyes (often thought of as mirrors) and fang-like teeth. It appears that this
rain-god motif was widespread in ancient Mesoamerica, as researchers have
found roots of it in the coastal Olmec people's "baby jaguar" motif, which is
known for its exaggerated mouth and teeth, as early as 1500 BCE. The
relationship between the Olmec and the Teotihuacano gods should not be
viewed as a direct relationship but perhaps something more akin to the
Christians’ Yahweh and the Caananites’ El, deities which have similar
attributes and were worshipped in similar ways but have had radically
different trajectories.

A 16th century codex’s depiction of Tlaloc.

In the case of Tlaloc, the god eventually became central to worship in
Teotihuacan, and it is believed that he was venerated on the top of the
Pyramid of the Sun due to its relationship to the rainy season and water-
filled caves, both of which are associated with him. He is also a dominant
figure in the city's iconography. Furthermore, thanks to Tlaloc’s ascendency
at Teotihuacan, his influence was extended as far as the Mayan city of Tikal,
where he became known as Chaak (or Chaac), and he was the primary deity
of the Puuc region (where Chichen Itzá and Mayapán were founded) and is
still venerated by local shamans as the god of rain[49].
It was through the writings of the Maya that historians learned the name
Tlaloc, unlike the second member of the partnership: the Great Goddess.
While the Pyramid of the Sun was probably dedicated to Tlaloc, the Pyramid
of the Moon appears to have been the center of a cult dedicated to a water
goddess. Early archaeologists have argued that this figure an earlier form of
the Aztec goddess Chalchiutlicue, who was the patroness of lakes, rivers and
streams. The first major clue of this connection was the discovery of a
massive 3 meter tall, 22 ton statue. The statue has been interpreted as a
"Cubist" female goddess decorated with a scroll design on her skirt with a
glyph marked with a symbol of flowing water[50].
 This statue, believed to depict the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan, was
located near the Pyramid of the Moon. Picture taken by Wolfgang
Sauber.
Most of the evidence for this deity, who is simply referred to as the Great
Goddess of Teotihuacan, has been found in fresco art. Fresco paintings were
a major form of art in the city, and many murals have survived the centuries
due to the dry conditions at the city's location. Today, Teotihuacan is known
as one of the world's richest collections of frescoes, and one of the more
important collections is at a housing complex called Tepantitla Palace, which
is festooned with elaborate narrative scenes of the goddess presiding over a
host of smaller figures. Water or perhaps rain pours from her fingers and
priests surround her to make offerings. Around her are fish and abundant
fruits[51]. While this is perhaps the most dramatic surviving fresco scene, she
was common to many frescoes in the city, along with other themes like
singing felines with quetzal bird feathers, heraldic owls, Tlalocs with
spearthrowers, and the executions of war captives[52].
 Murals depicting the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan. The latter picture
was taken by Thomas Aleto.
While there were other gods and goddesses worshipped in Teotihuacan,
including the Feathered Serpent god later known as Quetzalcoatl, these two
reigned supreme. This idea of a dual god-goddess pair associated with water
and existing at the heart of the universe was common throughout Central
Mexico, and it is known that the Aztecs also worshiped a distant set of dual
gods who were believed to have created the world at the Pyramid of the Sun
and to reside directly above their Great Temple in Tenochtitlan[53].
While quite a bit is known about the religion in the city, very little is
known about how Teotihuacan was governed. That said, it seems the city
was probably not governed by an all-powerful god-king but instead by some
sort of collective. Both the ceremonial art and the architecture of the city's
buildings served to legitimize the Teotihuacano state by emphasizing
communal or collective identities, rather than focusing upon the identity of a
singular king, as was done by their contemporaries in the Mayan city states.
For example, the art of the city had standardized blank faces and decoration,
and there were no elite tombs in either Cholula or Teotihuacan[54].
Moreover, there were only minor differences in the housing complexes,
including their blank exteriors and the fact that the size and layout of the
apartment compounds were relatively standard. While there were major
differences in the use of luxury goods (especially the use of imported Mayan
pottery by elites compared to drab local pottery used by the commoners),
Teotihuacan’s relative homogeneity and egalitarianism is dramatically
different than the contemporary city of Tikal, where almost all surviving
writing refers to the doings of the dynasty and where the city's rulers lived in
spectacular palaces[55].
In Teotihuacan, the elites controlled the city's vast and diverse population
by maintaining a strong hand over its water resources, as noted by Pohl:
"while it is known primarily for its large pyramids of the Sun and the Moon,
water was the central element of the bureaucratic structure of Teotihuacan"
[56]
. This makes sense in a dry environment where the management of
irrigation water is often one of the state's primary roles (something still seen
in the arid western regions of the United States). Moreover, the ancient
peoples also placed a premium on irrigation, to the extent that some theorists
have argued that the management of water is one of the principal causes for
the development of Mesoamerican cities, as well as their bureaucracies and
centralized military might[57]. Some of the complexity of these systems,
intertwined as they were with religious ritual and the everyday needs of
farmers scattered across a broad landscape, can be seen in the surviving
ancient irrigation systems on the island of Bali[58].
While centuries separate them, it is possible to compare Teotihuacan's
governance to that of Tenochtitlan, which was founded in the same valley
and became the center of the Aztec empire. Tenochtitlan was governed by
an individual called the Tlatoani, usually translated as “emperor”, but while
the Tlatoani had to come from a particular noble family, he did not inherit by
birthright alone. Instead, he was chosen by an electoral college made up of
numerous key figures in the bureaucracy. Additionally, he did not govern
alone but shared his authority with powerful councils. In fact, there were
occasionally periods of time where the Cihuacoatl, a type of prime minister
figure, had greater power than the Tlatoani[59]. While they certainly placed
greater importance on their ruler than the Teotihuacanos, the Aztecs also
favored elements of a collective style of governance, so there may have been
Teotihuacano echoes in their system.
 The 5th phase of Teotihuacan’s history marked the zenith of its power and
majesty, as well as the greatest extent of its political and economic
hegemony over Mesoamerica. During this period, the city reached an extent
of roughly 19 square kilometers (12 square miles) and had a population that
may have been as high as 200,000 people. In addition to their frescoes,
Teotihuacanos had the ability to carve and move stones of up to 200 metric
tons in order to construct buildings and monuments.[60]
One of the most interesting and highly studied elements of this supremacy
was Teotihuacan’s intensive role in the Mayan lands far to the south. During
the 4th century CE, Teotihuacan apparently enjoyed a rich series of trade and
cultural links with the Mayan heartlands in what is today northern
Guatemala. In Teotihuacan, this manifested itself in the form of Mayan
pottery, which was apparently favored by the city's upper class, but there
were undoubtedly numerous other linkages as well, even if those did not
survive as well through the centuries. On the Mayan side, Teotihuacano
goods arrived through the western city of Kaminaljuyu and included not only
pottery but also talud-tablero architecture on pyramids[61] and the worship of
the god Tlaloc[62].
There is a long-standing debate over exactly how much influence
Teotihuacán (and Central Mexico in general) had over the development of
the Mayan heartland, as Mayanists have long been protective of their region
and have tended to downplay Mexican influence and emphasize Mayan
creativity. Before the decipherment of the Mayan script, they argued that
Mayan leaders emulated styles from Teotihuacán but had no direct contact or
rule[63]. In this interpretation, what happened in 378 was that Great Jaguar
Paw, who had initiated trade with Teotihuacán, died and was replaced by his
son, Lord Curl Snout, who formalized the trade relationship and began a
period of stylistic emulation of their trade partners[64]. However, over time,
archaeologists and historians have found evidence that the transfer of power
in 378 from Great Jaguar Paw to Curl Snout was anything but peaceful.
Today, there is a general consensus that Tikal was conquered by a mighty
army that came from Teotihuacán, and the rumors of the conquering army’s
march must have preceded it, as such a force could not move quickly without
horses (which arrived with the Europeans). The first record historians have
of its movements comes from a smaller city called El Perú, roughly 49 miles
(78 kilometers) to the west of Tikal. El Perú fell on January 23rd, and the
armies arrived at Tikal eight days later after traveling up the San Pedro
Martir River.[65]
At the head of this army was a figure called Siyaj K'ak' ("Fire Born"), who
appears to have been a general. The surviving writing says that Siyaj K'ak'
was sent at the head of the army at the behest of a mysterious figure called
"Spearthrower Owl." This name is not written out using Mayan script but is
instead an image of an owl bearing an atlatl (a device for throwing spears).
The owl may have been a symbol of a warrior god or caste in the city, but the
name "Spearthrower Owl" appears more likely to be a title than the actual
name of the person. Traditionally, Spearthrower Owl has been thought of as
an elite inhabitant of Teotihuacán who sponsored the expedition, based on
some monuments that appear to place the date of his ascension to a throne
(which throne is not certain, but it's not Tikal’s) on May 4th, 374 and his
death on June 10th, 439. The records also suggest he took a Mayan wife[66].
However, recently there has been a debate over whether the title actually
refers to a god, because some murals found at Teotihuacán refer to a site
called "Spearthrower Owl Hill", and these murals are roughly
contemporaneous with the Entrada of 378. In this understanding,
Spearthrower Owl is a martial god similar to the later Aztec god
Huitzilopochtli. The archaeologists and historians will have to find further
evidence (including a search for Spearthrower Owl Hill) before a more
definitive statement on the subject can be made.[67]
Either way, when this army arrived, the Maya likely resisted, but Tikal had
no walls, a defensive feature that would not appear in Mayan cities until
centuries later. It also seems that the resistance didn’t do much harm to the
armies of Teotihuacán, which quickly conquered other cities as well. Images
found on pottery depict the arrival of the Mexican warriors and ambassadors
and the death of Great Jaguar Paw on January 31st, 378. More direct
evidence of conquest comes from Uaxactun, where a mural image depicts a
submissive Maya and a dominant Teotihuacano from the time period[68].
There is also archaeological evidence for a change in the nature of the
Mexican-Mayan contact at this point as well. For example, Tikal became
home to considerably more Teotihuacano objects after 378, especially lidded
tripods coated in painted stucco. Even more notable is the fact that there was
a systematic destruction of monuments from before 378, and the use of the
broken stone as either fill for new construction projects or their exportation
to other, less important cities. Since the legitimacy of Tikal’s royal system
was tied to a connection to the past, the destruction of these past records
indicate a major political break occurred on that year[69].
It’s also known that during the same year, an army marching out of Tikal
finally conquered Uaxactun and eliminated its ruling line. In its place, the
brother of the lord of Tikal, a man named Lord Smoking Frog, was put on
the throne and founded his own cadet dynasty that would rule in the shadow
of Tikal[70]. The last date scholars have for the fall of a surrounding city was
381. The Teotihuacanos would put up their own dynasties at all of these
sites, but it’s unclear what the relationship between all of these conquests
was, or if there was an effective central coordination. If there was, it would
eventually break down in the wars that would emerge a few generations
later[71].
While Curl Snout would not live to a ripe old age (if Spearthrower Owl
was a man, he apparently outlived his son by 35 years), his reign was notable
as the high watermark of Teotihucano imperialism in the region. This was
when the monuments dating before 378 were destroyed, and the regime
aimed to re-create the royal imagery of Central Mexico in its monuments and
murals. This first generation of conquerors had no connections to the land
they ruled and derived their legitimacy from their distant patron
Spearthrower Owl, but Curl Snout did marry a wife with Mayan royal titles,
so there was at least a nominal attempt to associate with the previous power
structure.[72]
What inspired the triumphant Teotihuacanos to "nativize" and emphasize
the Mayan culture and dynastic tradition that they had previously scorned?
The written and archaeological records are mostly silent on this, but it’s
possible to make comparisons to similar cases around the world where an
invading warrior elite conquers a wide swath of territory. Examples would
include the French Normans in Britain, the Hellenic Greeks in much of their
post-Alexander empire, the Turkic Safavid Dynasty in Persia, and the
Manchus in China. In all of these cases, the elite established not only a
dominant dynasty but also installed smaller lines throughout the new
territory, and in the process, they spread themselves quite thin. The
conquering Teotihuacanos must have needed to learn to speak the local
language to communicate not only with the peasantry but with Tikal’s local
administrators and bureaucrats, and over time, subsequent generations of the
elite who grew up communicating with the locals likely had no direct
experience or emotional ties to their native homeland. Moreover, they may
have resented having to send tribute back “home” and may have further
assimilated in efforts to legitimize themselves to avoid local uprisings.
By 450 CE, the Teotihuacanos appear to have presided over an empire of
sorts, probably a mix of conquered lands like Tikal and trading partners like
the Zapotecs. Until roughly 700, this was a period of relative stability and
cultural homogeneity, with the numerous smaller cities in the region
emulating (or being forced to take up) Teotihuacano symbolism and styles.
This was also a time of unprecedented links of trade that crisscrossed
modern-day Mexico and Guatemala[73].
By the middle of the 7th century, Teotihuacan’s political and economic
influence started to wane. In the Mayan lands, the unity enforced by the
conquest broke apart as the various Teotihuacano-originated dynasties began
to squabble and increasingly “nativize”. Teotihuacano imagery gradually
began to be replaced with its Mayan equivalents, and there was a resurgence
in the building of royal monuments and commemorations[74]. Teotihuacan
was never fully eclipsed by its main rivals - Cholula and Monte Albán -
during this period, but its hegemonic power declined as it reverted to being
just one powerful city amongst several. The city may have suffered setbacks
on the battlefield, but there is no evidence that Teotihuacan was ever
conquered by any rivals during its entire existence.
One argument for the city's long-term decline is ecological in nature.
Archaeologically, it’s clear that during the later phases of the city's history,
there was a steady movement of people out of the urban core and into the
fertile agricultural regions to the southwest of Lake Texcoco, including near
the former site of Cuilcuilco and the future site of Tenochtitlan. This was
exacerbated by a 30 year cycle of droughts that devastated all of
Mesoamerica and the Andes between 563 and 594 CE. While the history of
Teotihuacan is long, the inhabited history of the Valley of Mexico is much
longer, and if anything, the Teotihuacanos’ rise was something of an
anomaly. After all, it was the destruction of Cuicuilco and the large refugee
population created by that devastation that allowed Teotihuacan to utilize its
position as the regional supplier of military hardware and bring the richer
southwestern lands under its control.
It’s also possible that the immense size of the population at Teotihuacan
was unsustainable regardless of the city’s policies and trade networks,
especially since Lake Texcoco had become increasingly more saline in its
northern reaches during this period. The lack of large domesticated animals
among the Mesoamericans meant that it was difficult to carry food long
distances, which also limited the city’s growth.
Was this demographic change and slow-motion abandonment of the city-
center recognized by the rulers at the time? Not only is it likely the rulers
recognized this, the decentralization of the city’s population may actually
have been a planned policy to attempt to bolster food production in areas
firmly under their control, especially if more distant regions were
increasingly out of their control. There is also a very real possibility that
they were blinded to their own decline by arrogance, an understandable
mindset after centuries of ruling over the mightiest city their world had ever
seen.
The pressures that cause the slow-motion decline during the 7th century
began to accelerate during the 8th century. The city’s infrastructure and
community collapsed under the pressures of overpopulation, lack of space
for farming, and a declining subsistence base. There is evidence of
increasing amounts of malnutrition, especially amongst children, during this
period. The drop in production from the droughts of the late 500s were
never made up for, and it appears that the Teotihuacanos struggled to feed
themselves for over a century.
That said, droughts rarely bring about societal collapse on their own, and
this was probably true in Teotihuacan as well, because it seems that the end
of the city occurred very rapidly. At some point around the early 8th century,
there was a period of strife that engulfed the city, and while some initially
argued that it may have been looted by invaders, recent archaeological work
has instead pointed to an internal conflict. In particular, there was a period of
intense violence focused upon the Ciudadela and the buildings along the
Avenue of the Dead, including arson attacks on ancient monuments and the
wholesale demolition of structures. Assaults upon these temple structures
can also be interpreted as attacks upon the Teotihuacano state itself because
of the close interweaving of church and state. This suggests that in addition
to suffering from prolonged hunger, a considerable portion of the city had
become so disenchanted with Teotihuacan’s leaders and governing ideology
that they did not fear temporal or divine retribution for their attacks.
Either way, the city never recovered from this period of chaos, and there is
some evidence that monuments may have been ritually defaced after the
main period of looting had ended. Throughout Mesoamerica, priestly elites
would purposefully deface temples that they no longer used when a city was
abandoned, but this type of action is distinguishable from the more
destructive violence of the earlier strife, which seems to have been aimed at
obliteration. In essence, this might have been a situation where the governing
elite were driven from the city by a popular revolution, only to return quietly
once life had settled down again in order to perform last rites for the
buildings they had so long worshiped at[75].
In the wake of these events, the trade routes and tributary states of the city
fell away, and with that, the previously difficult task of feeding the
population became impossible. By 800 CE, 80% of the surviving population
had moved to the south and west of Lake Texcoco, and a number of small
towns sprung up around the Valley of Mexico that probably vied for the
scraps of Teotihuacan's legacy. Ultimately, by 950 CE, these towns had also
declined, and the entire region was absorbed into the growing Toltec Empire
as an agricultural hinterland and a buffer zone from more dangerous enemies
further abroad[76].
Luckily for Teotihuacan’s legacy, the Toltecs proved to be curious students
of the city. Flourishing from their own capital city of Tula (near today's
Hidalgo, Mexico), they created a rich trade and religious network between
850 and 1150 CE, and they saw themselves as inheritors of the mantle of
Teotihuacan, elaborating the earlier city's cult of Quetzalcoatl and
maintaining tales of its greatness[77].
Eventually, the Toltecs themselves were eclipsed, and their capital, Tula,
was apparently sacked by semi-nomadic groups called Chichimecs from the
northern deserts (today's northern Mexico and the American Southwest). A
raucous collection of city-states emerged in the wake of Tula, with power
returning to the Valley of Mexico, and out of this chaos emerged a
Chichimec group called the Mexica. From their base on Lake Texcoco, the
Mexica forged the mighty Aztec empire, and the Aztecs, like their neighbors,
were in awe of the ruins of Teotihuacan. They gave the modern names to
many of the city's sites - the Avenue of the Dead and the Pyramids of the Sun
and Moon - as well as the city itself. They saw Teotihuacan as a place where
the world of the divine and the everyday connected. They believed that the
world in its current incarnation was created on the summit of its pyramids, as
they detailed in the surviving religious text called the Florentine Codex[78].
As a result, Teotihuacan has never been "lost" like Machu Picchu, since it
was well-known to the Aztecs and was regularly visited by the Spanish. It
has remained a popular destination for visitors to Mexico City, since it is
only 20 miles (30 kilometers) away, including famous people like Mexican
artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, as well as their infamous companion
Leon Trotsky, whose 1928 jaunt through the ruins was commemorated in the
2002 film Frida. Over time, the site has come to be viewed by Mexicans not
simply as an impressive ruin of a pagan past but a symbol of national
identity and pride. After the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution, the newly
installed Partido Revolucionario Institucional refashioned Mexican national
identity away from a Eurocentric position and towards one that celebrated
the nation's indigenous heritage. Ruins were given greater legal and physical
protection, money was set aside for restorations, and museums like the
National Museum of Anthropology were founded.
In conjunction with these legal and political developments, Teotihuacan
has also played host to many of the world's finest archaeologists, and they
have sought to tease more knowledge out of its enigmatic ruins. These
efforts have contributed not only to the knowledge of the site but to the
discipline of archaeology more generally. One example was René Millon's
"Teotihuacan Mapping Project", which ran from 1962-1967. Using remote
sensing via aerial photography, cleverly combined with small-scale on the
ground testing, the project created a map of over 2,000 structures. At the
time, this represented the finest map of an archaeological site ever produced,
and it helped to pioneer the now widespread use of remote sensing
throughout the discipline[79].
 In 1987, the Mexican government signed the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) World Heritage Site
convention, and it subsequently nominated Teotihuacan, along with the ruins
of Monte Albán and Palenque and the historic centers of Mexico City and
Puebla, as their first world heritage sites. This award gives recognition to
the site as a "masterpiece of human creative genius", which bears "a
unique…testimony to... a civilization which has disappeared."[80]
Prehispanic Cholula
Cholula is the site with the longest history of occupation in the Americas.
The archaeological evidence confirms that a permanent settlement existed
there since the Preclassic, and the city continued to evolve until the arrival of
the Spanish in 1519.
The chronology of Cholula has been reconstructed mainly by using
ceramic samples. The fertile land in the area is also rich with clay deposits,
giving the city’s inhabitants abundant raw materials to develop a very
complex ceramic tradition, but archaeologists faced several problems when
attempting to reconstruct Cholula’s timeline since many of the test pits
contained mixed materials corresponding to different periods. This made the
separation of styles by period very complicated, but the comparison between
ceramic styles from contemporary sites like Teotihuacan helped shed some
light. Vessel forms and decoration types were additional characteristics taken
into account to separate pottery pieces across time.
The ceramic chronology has been used to date buildings, structures, and
other remains since they all contained pottery associated with them, but
archaeologists have not been able to uncover much about the first inhabitants
of Cholula. They are simply referred to as Cholultecas, and the evidence
shows that by 300 BCE, they had already built a major settlement. During its
initial stages, Cholula grew from a small hamlet into a bustling regional
ceremonial center. It is difficult to determine the population density for this
period due to the continuous occupation of the site, but the evidence points
to the existence of a lake located where the campus of the Universidad de las
Americas (UDLAP) is now. Excavations carried out there discovered
ceramics consistent with the Preclassic period, as well as other materials like
obsidian blades, and other archaeological deposits from the same period also
contained similar artifacts.
During the Classic period, Cholula grew into a major religious center, and
three construction stages of the Great Pyramid correspond to this time. The
last one measured 350 meters per side and 66 meters in height, and ceramics,
figurines, and obsidian have been found in archaeological contexts dating
from this time. The influence of Teotihuacan can be seen in Cholula’s
architecture since a few of its buildings were constructed in the typical talud-
tablero style present all over the great metropolis. In addition, Teotihuacan-
style ceramics have also been found - the presence of thin orange ware from
Teotihuacan confirms the connection between both sites. Ceramic vessels
like the ones depicted in the Mural of the Drinkers also correspond to the
Classic period.
Around 750 CE, Cholula was conquered by the Olmeca Xicalanca people,
a multiethnic group originating in the Gulf Coast that had established their
capital city, Cacaxtla, less than 20 miles away. Several structures within the
archaeological complex date to this time. An abundance of ceramic shards
can be found on the surface of the Great Pyramid and its surroundings. The
continuity in the ceramic tradition confirms that there was no abrupt
disruption at the site when the new ruling group took over.
During the Postclassic, Cholula continued to be an important religious
center and was probably the main one in central Mesoamerica. It also
developed as an important trade center where exotic goods were sold and
traded by local and foreign pochtecas or merchants. Cholula became
renowned for its beautiful polychrome pottery that was said to be the
preferred ware of Moctezuma. Highly elaborate designs in red, orange, white
(or cream) and black form the characteristic decorative style of this ceramic
style. During the Middle Postclassic (900-1325), Cholula saw an increased
expansion, and by the Late Postclassic (1325-1500), the city reached its
maximum size with an estimated population between 30,000 and 50,000
people. As a religious and commercial center, much of the urban population
would have been comprised of occupational specialists dedicated to a
number of trades, such as potters and weavers.
 Currently, the archaeological site at Cholula is made up of the Great
Pyramid and the open ceremonial complex associated with it, but in addition
to these areas, there are remains for a few other buildings that were part of
the Prehispanic city. The following is a general description of all the main
archaeological elements that can still be found in Cholula:
The archaeological data places the beginning of the construction of
Cholula’s ceremonial complex around 500 BCE, lasting all the way to
around 1200 CE, when it was abandoned and the city’s capital was moved
slightly. It reached the status of one of the great cities in Mesoamerica during
the Classic period, and the Great Pyramid is the most representative feature
of the ceremonial complex
The Great Pyramid’s size and degree of decay make it look like a natural
hill, which is why it’s easy for people to not even realize it was man-made.
The building is currently located along the border of San Pedro Cholula and
San Andres Cholula, and the base of the Great Pyramid measures 400 meters
per side and over 65 meters in height. The last construction phase took place
during the rule of the Olmeca-Xicalanca and was made out of adobe, which
is not a common material found in other Prehispanic temples. It is possible
that the structure was never finished due to the arrival of the Tolteca-
Chichimeca.
Underneath the last building, archaeologists discovered at least seven other
structures. Moreover, the geographical orientation of the Great Pyramid is
not random, as studies have confirmed that it is oriented 26˚ from north.
With this orientation, the pyramid would have been aligned with the rising
sun on the winter solstice, which was linked to their agricultural calendar.
The information recorded by the Proyecto Cholula concluded that the
Great Pyramid contained five main construction stages, and it is sort of like a
Russian doll with several smaller buildings underneath the last one built. The
reason this was done in Cholula was to maintain the sacred lineage and
power already held by the current structure. In the Mesoamerican worldview,
there was a belief that every 52 years, a new cycle began, and it has been
suggested that many of these new constructions corresponded to the
beginning of a new cycle.
 According to the data provided by Ignacio Marquina, the first structure had
an almost square base, measuring 113 meters by 107 meters. The talud-
tablero architectural style and the presence of mural paintings indicates that
it dates to approximately 250 CE. The second building, measuring 190
meters per side and 34 meters high, has a rare architectural style, being made
up of nine levels that all contain stairs across their entire length. The third
stage corresponds to a series of platforms, not pyramids like the other ones.
It is important to note that not all the construction stages included a new
temple, and on some occasions there was only partial remodeling done, such
as in this case. The fourth phase consisted of a large building that covered
the previous three constructions. During this stage, the largest part of the
final pyramid was built, reaching a width of 400 meters per side. Adobe was
used in the construction, which, when the pyramid was abandoned,
deteriorated and became what now looks like a hill. The fifth construction
stage corresponds to the Postclassic period and includes structures like the
Altar of Skulls, which contained the remains of a male and female.
Recent research carried out in the pyramid’s tunnels used new technology
to generate a virtual map of the different structures located beneath the
Tlachihualtepetl and discovered three additional construction stages. The
first surprise was that there was an older building below the first one
Marquina documented. This small platform, called La Olla, dates to the 1st
century CE and measured approximately 34 meters on its east-west side.
Another new structure found was the Building of the Plain Pannels, which
would correspond to the third construction stage. It measured 145 meters by
178 meters. Over this, a new building was also found which seems to be an
earlier version of the second building registered by Marquina.
The Patio of the Altars is part of the ceremonial center associated to the
Great Pyramid. The patio formed a plaza with an area of 3,780 m2 and could
fit up to 7,500 people. Its initial stages can be traced back to the Preclassic
period, “the ceremonial precinct was built up over a 1700-year period
between approximately 500 BCE and 1200 CE.”[81]
This area of the ceremonial center was rebuilt six times throughout its
history. It was flanked in the beginning by long buildings that were
decorated with murals depicting colored bars and seashells. The consecutive
constructions elevated the level of the floors and reduced the overall length
of the structures. The Mural of the Drinkers was found on the façade of one
of the earlier buildings.
The main square has two altars/thrones located on the east and west sides.
Altar 1, located to the east, is made up of two large stones, one placed
horizontally and the other vertically. Both stones are decorated with carvings
on its borders that represent the body of Quetzalcoatl. Altar 2, on the west,
only has a large horizontal stone with carvings of snakes on its sides. There
is a large vertical stone (Altar 3) that was found face down. It was placed on
the north side of the patio, but more recent research suggests that it is
probably the vertical stone that corresponds to Altar 2. While the stones were
initially considered altars, the dual government present at Cholula could
indicate that they were more likely thrones. The Nahuatl term for these altars
is teoicpallin, which means “sacred seat.” Both Altar 2 and Altar 3 were
broken into several pieces, probably the result of the overthrow of the
Olmeca-Xicalanca by the Tolteca-Chichimeca, the literal destruction of the
seat of power.
The red building is a small pyramid located at the northwest corner of the
Great Pyramid. According to the archaeological evidence, this structure was
apparently covered by the last layer of the Tlachichualtepetl. It has two
construction stages, the first one dating to the Preclassic period and the last
one dating to the Classic period, and it has a rectangular shape that measures
108 meters by 76 meters. Its southern facade, which was explored by
archaeologists in the 1960s, has a border on top that was seemingly
decorated with red arrows. The central staircase has a protruding stepped
platform in the center on which a priest probably stood to carry out religious
rituals. The most interesting thing about this building, however, is its
orientation, which projects a shadow on the winter solstice that looks like the
head of serpent.
The ceremonial and administrative center of Cholula was located in the
Great Plaza. According to the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, the square was
surrounded by walls and had three entrances, one to the north, one to the
east, and one to the south. On the west side of the Great Plaza was a long
building called xiuhcalli, which means “house of turquoise.” On the inside of
the building were three thrones on the north wall and three thrones on the
south. This image is consistent with a council of six nobles forming the
second level of government in Cholula. In addition to the Temple of
Quetzalcoatl, there were three other buildings in the Great Plaza, consisting
of two offices for the high priests and a school for nobles.
One of Cholula’s most important structures was the Temple of
Quetzalcoatl, built by the Tolteca-Chichimeca in the Postclassic period.
There are almost no actual remains of the building, and all that is known
about it comes from ethnohistorical sources. In the Historia Tolteca-
Chichimeca and the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, there are descriptions and pictorial
representations of the building. According to these sources, the temple was
located in the space that is now occupied by the Saint Gabriel Complex.
The temple would have been oriented towards the main plaza which is now
the Zocalo of San Pedro. Remains of stucco were found below the zocalo,
indicating that this area was used as a great public space in Prehispanic
times. Below the Church of Saint Gabriel, archaeologists uncovered part of
one of the pyramid’s original steps, information that confirms the location of
the Temple of Quetzalcoatl. The temple was taller than the Templo Mayor in
Tenochtitlan according to Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who actually climbed up
both pyramids.
To the west of the Great Pyramid is a pyramid that now looks like a small
hill. It is known as Cerro Cocoyo or Acozoc, and it was probably part of the
larger ceremonial complex. Currently, only a plaza separates this structure
from the archaeological site. There is another similar structure located to the
southwest which preserves a bit of the original adobe façade, but its degree
of deterioration is high.
Mural paintings have been found in sites across Mesoamerica, and Cholula
is no exception. In addition to its huge pyramid and ceremonial complex, the
sacred city contained at least five murals. Sadly, there has been no
restoration work carried out to preserve them, and the information available
on them is rather limited since no serious research has focused on them. The
five known murals are: The Mural of the Drinkers (Mural de los Bebedores),
the Mural of the Black Niches (Mural de los Nichos Negros), Mural of the
Grasshoppers (Mural de los Chapulines), Mural of the Tiger between
Serpents (Mural del Tigre entre Serpientes), and the Mural of the Stars
(Mural de las Estrellas).
 The Mural of the Grasshoppers is the oldest, dating back to the 2nd or 3rd
century CE. There is a clear influence from Teotihuacan, both in the
architectural talud-tablero style and the colors used. The Mural of the Black
Niches probably dates to the Middle Classic period since its style is
reminiscent of the niches found at El Tajin in the Gulf Coast. The Mural of
the Stars is the only one that can be clearly seen at the site, and it is
composed of a series of colored bands and stars with five points that
represent the planet Venus. The importance of Venus in the Mesoamerican
worldview has been established by researchers. In Cholula, the presence of
the planet may have been associated to the importance of Quetzalcoatl at the
site since the deity was considered to be one of the twin aspects of Venus
(the other being Xolotl).
The Mural of the Drinkers is, without a doubt, the most important one in
the ceremonial complex. It is considered to be the oldest representation of
the ritual consumption of pulque in Mesoamerica. Dating back to the 3rd or
4th century CE, the mural depicts a scene in which a series of men and
women are holding glasses and bowls containing pulque. Ceramic glasses
and bowls just like the ones in the painting have been found
archaeologically, and their use in the consumption of pulque has been
confirmed. Scholars believe this to be a ceremony related to fertility since
pulque was considered a sacred and precious liquid that served as an analogy
for water. The characters shown are nobles, warriors, and elders.
The Mural of the Drinkers is one of the largest in Mesoamerica, measuring
56 meters long, and it contains one of the most important ritual depictions
found to date. It is curious; however, that no detailed studies of the mural
exist, and that most people have never heard of it. The mural was discovered
by archaeologist Ponciano Salazar in 1969 during the excavations of the
Patio of the Altars in the ceremonial center. The building on which it was
painted is located seven meters below the patio, so the excavation had to be
done through the system of tunnels that had been dug at the site. The
painting decorated one of the sides of the building with bright colors
including yellow, white, red, and blue.
Cholula has always presented a paradox in Mesoamerican studies, because
while most studies on Postclassic sites are based on the Aztes, it is likely that
the Aztec Empire was not the predominant form of social and political
organization found at Cholula. Recent studies suggest that a rotating power
structure was likely present at Cholula. “Cholula offers a more sophisticated
understanding of the diversity of social, political, and economic strategies in
Mesoamerica.”[82]
The diversity of activities and relations in Cholula, combined with the
city’s multiethnic composition, surely required a more complex system of
power. “Rotating power structures have a far greater inherent stability than
simple linear hierarchies. They involve far greater numbers of individuals in
the power structure and each individual has far more social capital invested
in maintaining such power structures. Making multiple individuals into
stakeholders, each with the potential for increased position and power,
means that few will abandon their position and that all will actively promote
the maintenance of such a system.”[83] The existence of rotating power
structures in Cholula can be inferred from the city’s social dynamics,
economic activities, system of government, and religious role.
The social interactions in Cholula were shaped by the arrival of numerous
groups throughout the city’s long occupation. After the collapse of
Teotihuacan and the immigration of new ethnic groups to Cholula, the
division of land was made according to the city’s new multiethnic
composition. One of the meanings of Cholula is “to flee” and it was
probably used to reference all the migrant population that arrived in the
Sacred City that had fled from other parts of Mesoamerica. Each ethnic
group that settled in Cholula and its surrounding areas possessed a patron
deity that determined their people’s profession, language, and cultural
identity. Calpultin or neighborhoods were established that corresponded to
these different groups; each one had its own leader, but they were all
governed by two supreme priests.
By 1168 CE, a migrant group from the north settled in Cholula. For five
years, the Tolteca-Chichimeca lived under the rule of the Olmeca-Xicalanca
until they finally became strong enough to take over the city. This change in
the power structure did not mean the complete demise of the Olmeca-
Xicalanca - they were simply displaced to the southern part of the city and
allowed to retain certain autonomy. Instead of a harsh break between the
cultural traditions that existed at Cholula, the new lords incorporated many
of the existing dynamics, thus allowing a cultural continuity that is clearly
visible in the archaeological and historical record. “Coexistence between
both groups led to a gradual process of acculturation, with its most notable
evidence being the adoption of the dual political-religious system of the two
priests (Tezacoque and Amapane) by the Tolteca people.”[84] After the
Tolteca-Chichimeca, Cholula was seemingly invaded by other groups, like
the Huejotzincas in 1359 and the Tenocha a century later, yet when the
Spanish arrived, the Tolteca-Chichimeca and the Olmeca-Xicalanca were
still the two predominant groups in the city.
The Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca mentioned that Cholula was divided into
calpuleque, and it is interesting that this division during the Postclassic
period carried on into the colonial era and still remains to some extent in the
present (although there is no longer an ethnic component). The multiethnic
composition of Cholula can be traced back to the end of the Classic period.
After the collapse of Teotihuacan, which was already a multiethnic city, a
large percentage of its population seems to have migrated to Cholula. In
addition, other groups like the Olmeca-Xicalanca and the Tolteca-
Chichimeca arrived. The presence of these last two groups generated a
strong social division during colonial times that eventually led to the
political separation of San Andres Cholula, which used to be one of the
barrios of San Pedro. Once the Tolteca-Chichimeca took over Cholula, the
Olmeca-Xicalanca were displaced to the area which became San Andres.
Over time, both San Andres and San Pedro began to compete for power and
resources, and eventually, San Andres managed to become an independent
municipal district. A slight rivalry persists between the two cities to this day.
In Prehispanic times, part of Cholula’s importance as a trade center had to
do with its strategic location as an obligatory point of passage between the
Valley of Mexico and the southern and eastern regions of Mesoamerica.
Thus, the commercial focus of Cholula continued well into the colonial
period, as was documented by several ethnohistorical sources.
Cholula is known for its polychrome pottery, which is considered one of
the most beautiful kinds in the Americas. When the Spanish arrived, Cholula
had a thriving ceramic industry characterized by this polychrome pottery, but
it is interesting to note that this style was not characteristic of the site in its
early periods. The style developed towards the end of the Epiclassic period,
as corroborated by the following observation from the renowned
anthropologist Edward B. Tyler in 1856: “Though there was plenty of
colored pottery to be found in the neighborhood of the Great Pyramid, the
pyramid itself had only fragments of uncoloured ware imbedded in its
structure; which seem to prove that it was built before the art of colouring
pottery was invented.”[85]
Pochteca merchants belonging to the Tianguiznahuac calpulli traded exotic
objects at the market and abroad, spreading ideologically-charged objects,
such as the special polychrome pottery found at Cholula. The polychrome
pottery found at Cholula corresponds to the Mixteca-Puebla style, and in
addition to being highly decorated, it has been suggested that the designs
functioned as a type of writing that transmitted important messages related to
religious affairs. The information recorded by chronicler Diego Duran
concerning the calendar of celebrations held by the merchant barrio in
Cholula seems to indicate that a rotating power system was in place.
“Rotating power systems concentrate social capital at each level within the
system guaranteeing at each level that individuals with sufficient resources
and social capital are available to take on complex tasks such as organizing
long-distance trade.”[86]
The decoration of Cholula’s polychrome pottery has been described as
codex-like in its representations of gods, sacred animals, and glyphs. Its use
was mainly ritual, and the finely crafted pieces were considered luxury
items. The merchants of Cholula sold it alongside quetzal feathers, jade,
jaguar skins, onyx, and rock crystal. The images found on this kind of
pottery correspond to the pictorial style of the Borgia Codex and other
codices from the Mixteca region. Many of the images are actually symbols
associated with the sun, the moon, warriors, death, day, and night, and these
important symbols typically found in bands around the borders of pots,
plates, and bowls. “Cholula was a hub of religious and economic activity,
with high quality craft production used to communicate ideological
messages relating to religion, ethnicity, and status.”[87]
The ethnohistorical sources also mention that there was an important
textile industry in Cholula in which only high-quality clothing was made.
Cloths were dyed in many colors, but the cochinilla,[88] used to obtain a red
color, was one of the items that the pochtecas exported. Gabriel de Rojas
wrote that “they were particularly good dyers of whatever color, and they
had much business dying wool thread in diverse colors to make rich huipiles
and valuable tilmas; they make thread from rabbit and hare fur and wool that
maintains its color perfectly until worn out.”[89]
Large numbers of spindle whorls have been found during archaeological
excavations that are consistent with large-scale textile production. Rojas
included a detailed description of the type of clothing worn by the people of
Cholula in his document: “[Men’s] costume in peace time was a tilmatl, or
square white cotton cloth knotted at the right shoulder, and a narrow [loin]
cloth, and shoes like the canvas sandals used by the ancients. . . the women
wore a highly painted cotton underskirt down to the foot, and on this were
diverse square borders and paintings that they call nahua, and over the
petticoat [the women wore] huipiles similar to a sleeveless surplice [long
clerical outer garment] with its hems or borders embroidered in colored
cotton with a fringe of rabbit fur and embellished with duck feathers for
effect. These huipiles have two square “shields” [escudos], one on the breast
and the other one on the back, that were colorfully embroidered with diverse
motifs such as birds, fish, and animals.”[90]
As in most of Mesoamerica, Cholula had a theocratic government, which
means that politics and religion were intimately linked and functioned as one
unified system. The government in Cholula had two levels, with the first
headed by two high priests, the Tlalchiach Tizacozque, possessor of chalk
beads, and the Aquiach Amapame, possessor of paper flags. The Tlalchiach
was associated with the jaguar and the underworld, while the Aquiach was
associated with the eagle and the celestial realm, including rain. This
political and religious duality formed the base of Cholula’s theocratic
government, which was furthered by the participation of the nobles of each
calpulli. The second level of government was thus made up of a council of
nobles. The sources indicate that this council was formed by six men who
represented the six calpultin of Cholula: “A huey tlatoani, together with the
tetecuhtin (lineage heads- kings), administered the lands of the city as a
polity regionally, but confederations of kingdoms throughout the Mexican
highlands submitted to the authority of two high priests in matters of alliance
and factional dispute. The Spaniards compared Cholula to Rome in this
regard and considering how much of the ecclesiastical authority in the
Vatican was dominated by Roman families at this time, one can envision a
system in which hegemony over much of southern Mexico could have been
managed through the same Cholula families, noble houses or lineages,
generation after generation.”[91]
Postclassic Cholula was the main center for the cult of Quetzalcoatl, Venus
(Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli), and sacred knowledge. The site’s importance was
such that nobles from across central Mesoamerica made pilgrimages to
Cholula so that their authority could be confirmed at the main temple. Rojas
explained that the degree of devotion in Cholula was comparable to that of
Rome for Christians and Mecca for the Muslims: “The appeal of the cult of
Quezalcoatl centered at Cholula and the cult ceremonies associated with
becoming a tecuhtli, or lineage head – essentially a king – transcended all
local religious customs and bound ethnically diverse peoples together into
similar social and political units, facilitating elite alliances and economic
exchange throughout the central and southern Mexican highlands. As the
‘Rome’ of New Spain, Cholula then continued to fulfill its role in supplying
a centralizing ideology without the military dominance of an imperial capital
as Tenochtitlan had been.”[92]
As a religious center, Cholula received visitors from throughout the Valley
of Mexico, and they attended religious ceremonies in honor of Quetzalcoatl.
There was a well-organized hierarchy of priests in charge of the different
ceremonies and rituals. According to Rojas, the priests of Quetzalcoatl wore
black capes trimmed in different colors depending on their rank. The figure
representing Quetzalcoatl was also dressed with an “elaborate feather mantle
done in black, red, and white, designed like the jewel—a butterfly wing. His
splendid breechcloth was of the same hues and pattern, and it ended below
his knees.”[93] On certain occasions, the figure wore a “white cotton robe,
narrow and long, over it a cloak strewn with red crosses.”[94]
In his description of the religious practices carried out by the people of
Cholula, Rojas referenced the Temple of Quetzalcoatl and mentions that the
god was worshipped by people from many lands. Offerings were made to
him to ensure good crops, health, and peace. He also speaks of the two high
priests and says that they were accompanied by 26 noble men in the form of
a procession when they travelled. The two high priests, Tlalchiach and
Aquiach, had the power to confirm the Divine Right to rule of the foreign
governors who came to Cholula. After making lavish offerings to
Quetzalcoatl, the foreign lords would join the priests in a special room where
their noses, earlobes, or lips would be pierced. This act symbolized the
confirmation of the lord's power.
The special room was located north of the Temple and had four entrances,
one on each side. The name in Nahuatl for this room is unknown, but the
sources do mention that the lords fasted for four days and four nights before
the ceremony. When these newly-confirmed kings returned to their cities,
they were accompanied by five priests of Quetzalcoatl as proof of their
confirmation. Every 52 years, the cities that had confirmed kings participated
in a great pilgrimage to Cholula to deliver offerings of exotic feathers, rich
textiles, silver, gold, and precious stones. The duties of the high priests also
included mediating disputes between foreign kings. The most common type
of dispute had to do with land boundaries.
The inhabitants of Cholula claimed that the city’s founders had come from
an ancient place called Tullam, located 12 leagues from modern Mexico
City. Once in Cholula, they built a temple to Quetzalcoatl of which nothing
remains since it was completely destroyed and a large convent was built over
the site. The indigenous temple had been founded in honor of a captain
named Quetzalcoatl who had come through Cholula in the past. The two
high priests who ruled Cholula received visitors from all over who would
come to make offerings to the god and render their obedience. The Lords of
Cholula would then proceed to confirm the titles of the visitors by piercing
their nasal septums or lower lips, for only nobles were allowed to wear such
adornments and they were visual displays of their status.
The importance of Quetzalcoatl at Cholula stems from two different
conceptions associated with the same name. There is Quetzalcoatl the god,
characterized as a plumed serpent, and Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl the man, who
ruled in Tula and then fled to the east. One of the legends says that Cholula
was founded by Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl; however, this cannot be taken as a
literal event since this narrative corresponds to the Postclassic arrival of the
Tolteca-Chichimeca.
Rojas’ account noted, “Quetzalcoatl being named as a leader who founded
Cholollan, afterwards revered as a god. However, it is possible that
Quetzalcoatl as founder of the historic Tollan has been confused with
Quetzalcoatl as founder of Tollan Chollolan. The circumstances surrounding
the establishment of the former center might well have been transferred to
the latter, to enhance the prestige and antiquity of the new Toltec
headquarters. Alternatively, this ‘founding’ may only refer to the coming of
Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl to Cholollan during his ‘flight’ to the Gulf Coast.”[95]
Notwithstanding this confusion, the fact that Quetzalcoatl held a great
importance in Cholula remains, and the power of the two priests to invest
rulers as official kings is also noteworthy.
The Quetzalcoatl worshipped by the Tolteca-Chichimeca during the
Postclassic period was not quite the same as the one worshipped in earlier
times. The former can be considered to be the ideological expression of the
city’s power that expanded outwards as a pilgrimage center. At this time, the
cult of Quetzalcoatl had become a widespread tradition throughout
Mesoamerica, instituting an almost monotheistic religious practice. In
contrast, the version of Quetzalcoatl worshipped by previous groups had a
stronger association to rain and agriculture.
The worship of Quetzalcoatl seems to have continued after the Spanish
conquest, as is described by Duran in the following passage: “I wish to give
warning that there is a diabolical custom among the natives, especially in
Cholula, where the god [Quetzalcoatl] was worshiped; peddlers will traffic
for ten twelve and even twenty years, earning and saving up two or three
hundred pesos. And after their toil, wretched eating and sleeping– they offer
a most lavish banquet. There they spend all their savings. What I most regret
is that they follow the ancient custom of holding that memorial feast in order
to celebrate their [ancient] titles and set themselves on high. This would not
be wrong except that for their celebration they await the day on which the
god [Quetzalcoatl] was honored.”[96]
The connection between Cholula and Quetzalcoatl can be further seen in
an ancient Aztec song. In the song’s lyrics, Quetzalcoatl is described as a
merchant that reigns in Cholula, a region with abundant water, humidity, and
fog. This corresponds to a symbolic representation of the Tlalocan, which
was the paradise of Tlaloc, the rain god.
Rojas mentioned that the patron god worshipped in Cholula was
Chiconauhquiauitl, a deity associated with merchants and whose name
means “9 Rain.” This corresponds to the calendar day of Ehecatl-
Quetzalcoatl. Rojas noted that when there was a scarcity of rain, children
between 6 and 10 years of age would be sacrificed in honor of
Chiconautiquiantl atop the Great Pyramid. The evidence indicates that since
the Preclassic period, there was an ancient practice of worshipping rain gods
in Cholula. Rain was, in turn, connected to agricultural fertility which was
commonly represented by pulque. This system of beliefs continued into the
Classic period and was somehow fused with Ehecatl, god of wind, and
Quetzalcoatl. By the Postclassic, Cholula had become the sacred capital of a
pan-Mesoamerican religious tradition that was further strengthened by the
arrival of the Tolteca-Chichimeca who reinforced the image of Quetzalcoatl.
A celebration known as tepeihuitl, described by Spanish chronicler
Bernardino de Sahagun, was intimately linked with Cholula. Sahagun wrote
that Cholula was the sacred city of the gods of rain and of the patron god of
the merchants. The celebration included the veneration of mountains since
they draw rain and are often places under which springs surge. In the case of
Cholula, the Tlachihualtepetl, symbolized the mountains where the rain gods
lived. Among the sacred mountains listed by Sahagun are three that surround
Cholula: the Popocatepetl, the Ixtacihuatl, and the Matlacuetl (now known as
Malinche). A fourth mountain called Mayahuel has not been located
geographically, but it is noteworthy that Mayahuel is also the goddess of
pulque, the sacred beverage that is also strongly tied to Cholula.
As has been mentioned, Cholula had a strong connection to rain deities,
and pulque, a sacred ancestral fermented beverage, was also associated to
rain and the agricultural cycle. Codices narrate that the gods gave men
pulque through the tlacuache, a kind of opossum native to Mexico. This
animal was venerated since ancient times and held an important role in
rituals related to the earth and agriculture.
In the case of pulque, there were also several gods associated with it. A
ritual burial found in Cholula dating back to the Postclassic period contained
a ceremonial plate decorated with the image of one of these gods of pulque
that was identified by his facial paint. The importance of pulque at Cholula
can be further seen in one of the mural paintings found at the site. The Mural
de los bebedores or “Mural of the drinkers” depicts men and women
participating in a ceremony in which the connection between the human and
sacred realms is established through the consumption of the sacred beverage.
Through the evidence it can be concluded that the inhabitants of Cholula
worshipped the gods of water through a series of rituals associated to the
cycles of agriculture – in turn related to pulque – and since the Early Classic
period these rites began to meld with the figure of Ehecatl, god of wind, and
then Quetzalcoatl. The link between wind and rain is evident since the
former brings the latter.
The Arrival of the Conquistadores
Naturally, the arrival in 1492 of Christopher Columbus on the leeward
islands of the Bahamas triggered the first of the great permutations that
would reshape South America and Mesoamerica forever. Though he was
Italian, Columbus sailed as an agent of Spain’s Catholic Monarchs,
Ferdinand and Isabella, and he “discovered” the New World in the name of
the Kingdoms of Aragon and Castile.
Columbus’ log and his early letter to his financier, Luis de Santángel,
which are the earliest accounts of the “discovery,” project a politically
expedient confidence and optimism since he did not wish to lose his contract
with Ferdinand and Isabella, but Columbus was likely very confused by
what he found. The people and their way of life clashed with what he
expected, and the disposition of the many small islands he found was
difficult to reconcile with the maps of the East Asian coast he had so avidly
studied. His most important goal was to reach terra firma, since it was there
that he would find the great trading empires whose wealth he wished to tap
into. Thus, the early accounts contain a number of strategies of interpretation
that attempt to fit what he has found into his preconceived framework.
First of all, he attempted to map the territories he found in the Caribbean,
however improbably, onto Asian geography as he understood it. The
northern islands of the Bahamas, he imagined, may be part of the island
empire of Cipango (Japan); the long coast of Cuba, where he arrived next by
heading to the southwest, must be part of China. Second, in his repeated
emphasis on the gentleness and peacefulness of the natives, he is also
insisting on their status as “natural slaves,” an intellectual category used in
the ancient world to justify slavery. More specifically, he concluded, they
must be among the peoples from whom the Great Khan drew his many
slaves. At the same time, he set the stage for the slavery-based colonization
that would soon overtake the Caribbean islands and, within a few decades,
wipe out their entire indigenous population. In fact, Columbus began this
trend by essentially kidnapping six Guanahaní natives, in his words, “so that
they will learn to speak,” i.e. become interpreters for the expedition.
For reasons that are not entirely clear, Columbus decided within a few
months to proceed with great haste back to Spain, as he announced in his log
on January 8, 1493. Since he believed that he had ultimately come close to a
source of great wealth, he may have wished to return with reinforcements in
the instance of any hostilities. After all, Columbus believed the great armies
of the Khan could have been nearby. Furthermore, he may have sought to
reassure the Spanish Crown of his success and guarantee his share of the
wealth that he now felt confident about extracting from the lands he had
encountered. On top of that, the crew had thus far spent over five months at
sea and three months exploring with no major setbacks, no mutinies, and no
hostile encounters with the natives.
All of this was about to change, however, as the early idyll of friendly
encounters with generous “Indians” would come to an end abruptly on
January 13, 1493 on the eastern end of La Española, in what is now the
Dominican Republic. The Spaniards, as was their habit, had come ashore to
barter with a group of natives, but the barter did not go as planned, and a
miscommunication led to an outbreak of hostilities in which two natives
were injured. Subsequently, Columbus theorized that there were two
different groups of natives: the peaceful Taínos with whom he had met
previously, and the hostile and violent Caribs, whom he claimed other
natives had told him were man-eaters or “cannibals” (the term, coined in
Columbus’ diary, comes from the same uncertain indigenous lexeme as
“Caribbean”).
By the time Columbus started setting east from the New World, he had
explored San Salvador in the Bahamas (which he thought was Japan), Cuba
(which he thought was China), and Hispaniola, the source of gold. As the
common story goes, Columbus, en route back to Spain from his first journey,
called in at Lisbon as a courtesy to brief the Portuguese King John II of his
discovery of the New World. King John subsequently protested that
according to the 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas, which divided the Atlantic
Ocean between Spanish and Portuguese spheres of influence, the newly
discovered lands rightly belonged to Portugal. To make clear the point, a
Portuguese fleet was authorized and dispatched west from the Tagus to lay
claim to the “Indies,” which prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity in the
court of Ferdinand and Isabella. At the time, Spain lacked the naval power to
prevent Portugal from acting on this threat, and the result was the hugely
influential 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas.
The Treaty of Tordesillas was one of the most important documents of its
kind of the age, for it established the essential parameters of the two
competing empires, the first of the major European imperial entities. The
Treaty of Tordesillas drew an imaginary line from pole to pole, running 100
leagues west of the westernmost islands of the Azores. According to the
terms of a supporting papal bull, all the lands to the west of that belonged to
Spain, and all of those to the east belonged to Portugal. What this meant in
practical terms was that Portugal was given Africa and the Indian Ocean
while Spain was granted all the lands to the west, including the Americas
and the Caribbean, all collectively known as the “Indies,” or the New World.

A map depicting the line drawn by the Treaty of Tordesillas

The Treaty of Tordesillas, however, contained an anomaly. Unknown at the
time to its drafters, the treaty’s line cut across the westernmost brow of
South America, more or less from the mouth of the Amazon to Porto Alegre,
both in modern Brazil, meaning that everything to the east of that legally
belonged to Portugal. This fact was only revealed in 1500 thanks to an
expedition by the Portuguese mariner Pedro Álvares Cabral. While en route
to India, his expedition sailed in a wide arc in the mid-Atlantic searching for
the trade winds and unexpectedly landed off the coast of the South American
mainland. There was little the Spanish could do about it, and as a
consequence, the vast Portuguese colony of Brazil was established in a
region nominally claimed by Spain.
Meanwhile, the rapid spread of Spanish influence across the Caribbean and
onto the mainland began almost immediately after Columbus made landfall.
On the heels of his apparent success and the approval of the Spanish crown,
Columbus managed to assemble a much larger fleet for his second trip across
the Atlantic, which began on September 24, 1492. His expeditionary force
now consisted of 17 ships, including the Niña but neither of the other two
vessels from the previous voyage. It is clear from the number of men and
quantity of supplies carried over that Columbus now intended to establish
more permanent settlements and pave the way for the establishment of full-
scale colonies. He also brought with him a contingent of friars, who would
be entrusted with the evangelization of the natives.
When they returned to Hispaniola on November 28, 1493, Columbus
discovered that the natives of the islands were not quite as passive and
accommodating as he first imagined. The 39 men who he had left behind to
garrison La Navidad, the first European settlement in the Americas since
Leif Ericsson’s Norse colony in Newfoundland, had been wiped out. The
men, presumably as a result of their rapacious desire for gold and probable
abuse of local women, eventually became unwelcome among the nearby
tribes, who likely exterminated them. The consensual and peaceful
colonization that Columbus had promised to undertake had been little more
than a brief illusion.
The urge to spread Christianity, in particular Catholicism, formed part of
the royal obligation to the papacy that was written into the informal charter
of every European monarchy at the time. The Muslim conquest of Europe
and the Reconquista all tended to add urgency to the need to spread the true
faith before it could be adulterated by Jews, Muslims, and later Protestants.
At the time, during the reign of the Holy Roman Empire, the popes wielded
as much power as the kings, and the intertwining of church and state was in
many respects absolute.
At the same time, Spain commanded a rapidly expanding mercantile
empire, so while most of these early journeys of exploration were publicly
authorized and sponsored, they were also privately organized and usually led
by individual adventurers, or adelantado, acting loosely on contract for the
Crown. An essential element of these expeditions, of course, was local labor
and resources, so early explorers tended to confine their interest to well-
populated regions. They were not interested in geographic exploration for its
own sake, but to evangelize and plunder, which meant the primary regions of
the pre-Columbian empires and their capital cities became the targets of the
Spanish Empire in the New World.
When Hernan Cortés departed for the island of Hispaniola in 1504, the
memory of Columbus’ discoveries was still fresh in the minds of the Spanish
public. Columbus himself was still alive, but as a result of his disastrous stint
as governor of Hispaniola, he had been relieved of his title of Viceroy of the
Indies, and the Spanish Crown had moved to centralize control over the new
colonies and ensure their profitability. Though Columbus’s voyage to the
New World is now remembered as one of the seminal events of the last
millennium, at the time it still represented a bit of a disappointment - after
all, Columbus’s goal had been to reach Asia and ensure Spain’s access to the
trade in luxurious commodities such as spices and silk, and he had also
hoped, later in his career, to reach the legendary gold mines of King
Solomon. Instead, what he had actually achieved was now uncertain, but it
was becoming clear that rather than reaching the eastern edge of Asia,
Columbus had arrived at a different land mass altogether. Justifying himself
by the claim that the natives were barbaric heathens who needed to be
civilized and converted to Christianity, Columbus had initiated a treatment of
the native inhabitants that was at best paternalistic and at worst horrifically
brutal and exploitative.
Making matters worse, Columbus had attempted to exploit the islands of
Hispaniola and Cuba for gold only to find that the deposits were scarce. In
the meantime, a system of thinly disguised slave labor came into being under
the name of the encomienda, or “entrustment.” The notion was that Spanish
settlers would be granted a piece of land and power over the natives who
inhabited it; their responsibility would be to instruct the natives in religion,
in return for which “service” they could exact tributes of gold or other
valuables, or labor in extractive or agricultural activities. The system laid the
ground for the plantation-slave economy that would later become prevalent
in the Caribbean.
It was into this environment that Cortés arrived in 1504, still not yet 20.
Although Columbus had met with a friendly reception from the inhabitants
of the islands he first visited, the conflict between Spanish settlers and
natives had now become implacable. Understandably, the natives were not
fond of the encomienda system or of the extreme savagery and cruelty of
many Spaniards, and some had taken up arms against the new arrivals. One
of Cortés’ first experiences in the New World was to participate in
expeditions against the remaining groups of Indians who had not yet been
subjugated. It was here that he got his first taste of the casual brutality of the
colonial frontier culture, as well as of the rewards that military exploits could
bring. Through his military involvement, Cortés was granted a large
encomienda in Hispaniola, including control over several hundred
subjugated natives. In the meantime, he also offered his services as a notary
and clerk to other settlers, establishing a fruitful set of relationships with the
colonial authorities. Just over five years after arriving in the Indies, Cortés
would move on from Hispaniola and take part in an expedition to Cuba, a
larger island with far more as yet unconquered land.
Once he had gained his commission in 1518, Cortés wasted no time in
gathering a fleet of ships and an army of ambitious followers, to whom he
promised riches and land. In addition to permanently defraying his debts,
Cortés now aimed to establish a permanent presence on the terra firma,
which no Spaniard had yet accomplished since Columbus’s failed attempt to
colonize what is now Panama nearly 20 years earlier.
Cortés had little clear sense of what he would find, but rumors had long
circulated about the existence of great empires with enormous treasures of
gold. A previous expedition to the coastal Yucatán region of what is now
Mexico had ended in failure, with the Spanish ambushed by local Mayans
and the leader of the Spanish group injured. Certainly never averse to risk,
Cortés was happy to take his chances with re-attempting the same
expedition. Governor Velázquez, uneasy about Cortés’s ambitions, attempted
to restrict the newly minted Captain General from actually conquering and
settling any territory, mandating that he should establish trade relations with
the local inhabitants instead.
Velázquez apparently had an inkling of the fame and wealth that Cortés
would achieve if he did manage to colonize the mainland and certainly did
not trust Cortés to follow the orders he was given. When the fleet was nearly
organized and ready to depart, the governor attempted twice to intervene and
relieve Cortés of his leadership. Velázquez first sent a messenger whom
Cortés promptly ordered killed, showing perhaps for the first time the full
extent of his ruthlessness, and by the time Velázquez intervened a second
time, Cortés was already just about to set sail and simply departed in direct
defiance of his superior. Thus, when his 11 ships departed with a crew of
over 500 men, they did so in open mutiny, taking advantage of the automatic
delay that would be required for the governor to gather another expedition to
go after them. Given that Cortés had invested a great deal of his personal
wealth and gone into considerable debt to finance his excursion, it is not
entirely surprising that he would behave with this degree of audacity. He
likely sensed that he had lost the good will of Velázquez and would not be
given another opportunity after this. Had he remained, he would have been at
the mercy of his creditors and without any obvious way of turning his
situation around, since he had already risen about as high as he was likely to
in Cuba. His future was by no means guaranteed at this point, but he could
be sure that he had few other options than to stake everything on success.
Sailing from the southeastern end of the island of Cuba in early 1519, the
closest stretch of coast Cortés and his crew would find on the mainland was
the Yucatán peninsula, once home to the large and wealthy Mayan empire.
The Maya had in recent centuries fragmented into smaller sub-groups and
city states, and their wealth was now diminished. Previous Spaniards had
found little success in the region, and Cortés probably set his sights
somewhere else even before he landed, but he did spend some time on the
island of Cozumel, just off the Yucatán coast. Although he did not send a
large land expedition into the peninsula, he acquired some of his most
valuable assets there. First, he came across a Spaniard, survivor of a 1511
shipwreck, who had been living among the Maya ever since. This man,
Gerónimo de Aguilar, was now fluent in the Yucatec Mayan language, but he
was also eager to return to his own people. Cortés took Aguilar in, and with
that he had something that other conquistadores had lacked: a fully bilingual
translator.
Aguilar’s language skills would have been of little use among the Nahuatl-
speaking peoples further to the west had it not been for a second key
encounter. On the other side of the Yucatán peninsula, Cortés was given
possession of a young woman by the chief of another group of Mayas. This
woman, it turned out, was a native of central Mexico and a fluent speaker of
Nahuatl, as well as of Mayan and other languages. Cortés called her Doña
Marina, but her original name was probably Malinalli, and she would later
become known as Malintzin or Malinche to Mexicans. With the combined
services of Aguilar and Doña Marina, Cortés now had the ability to
communicate fluently with most of the peoples of Mexico, a capacity that
gave him a crucial advantage in information gathering over earlier explorers
such as Columbus, who proceeded with at-best rudimentary translation
services, even in his later travels. Through the communicative chain he was
able to establish, Cortés was able to find out not only the location of the
great and wealthy Aztec Empire, but also the resentment many neighboring
tribes felt towards the Aztecs, a hostility he would make use of for his own
purposes.
Religion provided another fruitful area for Cortés’s manipulations. While
still on the Gulf Coast, he began attempting to evangelize the native
inhabitants – essentially demanding that they accept Christianity or face the
consequences. Given what is known of his unscrupulous character, it is
difficult to imagine that the conquistador earnestly wished to bring these
people to the true faith. But religion proved useful to him in several ways.
For one, it allowed him to sanctify a mission that otherwise seemed
transparently motivated by greed and egotism. This would prove particularly
helpful in gaining royal support back in Spain, since the most widely
accepted justification for conquests was that they were a way of spreading
the faith. After all, this principle was at the basis of the encomienda system,
since the holder of an encomienda was charged with instructing his
subordinates in religion. Second, the natives understood from their own
belief system that to accept a conqueror’s rule also included accepting the
conqueror’s god. When Cortés and his men destroyed the native idols in a
temple and replaced them with crucifixes and virgins, it was above all a
gesture of power. Third, and even more cynically, religion provided a pretext
for unleashing violence. When natives refused to accept the gospel and
persisted in their allegedly satanic practices, Cortés used this recalcitrance as
a justification for attacking and killing them, since rejection of Christ could
be presented as an act of aggression equivalent to war. Several of the most
brutal massacres against unarmed people he and his men carried out were
performed in the midst of rituals, so that they could claim that they had used
force to prevent their victims from carrying out their pagan rites. Cortés was
adept at rhetorical displays of piety, but his behavior in war was so craven
and so blatantly un-Christian that many contemporaries, including the king
himself, had some trouble swallowing his protestations.
Having established alliances with several of the coastal peoples, while still
remaining in contact with Aztec emissaries and holding out for a requested
meeting with Moctezuma, Cortés eventually marched inland toward
Tenochtitlán. He departed with about three hundred of his own men, plus
several hundred Totonac allies, leaving another hundred or so Spaniards
behind in Veracruz. Along the way he encountered another people which had
long rejected the legitimacy of Aztec rule: the Tlaxcalans or Tlaxcaltecas.
They were a particularly warlike people, as the Spaniards discovered in a
series of skirmishes with them. It appears that both groups concluded, after a
series of meetings between Spanish and Tlaxcalan emissaries, that each
could make use of the other in a common war against the Aztecs.
It seems rather evident that the people of Tlaxcala were simply waiting for
an opportunity to attack their rivals, and the conquistadores were giving
them just that. During the Postclassic period, there were several important
settlements in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley aside from Cholula, such as
Tlaxcala and Huexotzinco. Other sites in the region, like Tepeaca, had
already fallen under the domain of the Aztec Empire, while the rest fought to
maintain their independence. Cholula always kept its sovereignty and had an
alliance with the Aztecs, a situation that created conflict with Tlaxcala. This
issue became a crucial factor when the Spanish arrived because the
Tlaxcaltecas formed an alliance with Cortés and were directly or indirectly
involved in the Cholula massacre.
 Although it is not clear at this point that Cortés already intended to
undertake an immediate war against Moctezuma and his people, the
Tlaxcalan alliance would prove crucial in everything that followed. Indeed,
by the time the Spaniards left Tlaxcala, they were accompanied by about
3,000 Tlaxcalan warriors, approximately three times the size of the Spanish
force itself. This fact, as historian Matthew Restall has argued, puts to rest
the myth of a tiny army of Spaniards defeating a great empire; in reality, the
Spanish expedition would have almost certainly been routed without a
massive contingent of allies.
When Cortés began his journey to Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, he was
fully aware of the importance of Cholula and the rivalry between the sacred
city and its neighbors in Tlaxcala and Huejotzingo. Bernal Díaz del Castillo
detailed how Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II’s envoys insisted that they pass
through the sacred city: “There was some discussion about the road we
should take to go to Mexico. Montezuma’s ambassadors, who had stayed
with us and were to be our guides, said that the best and smoothest way was
through the town of Cholula, since its people were vassals of the great
Montezuma and we should be well looked after. We all agreed, therefore,
that we should go through Cholula. But when the Tlascalan chiefs heard that
we intended to follow the way the Mexicans recommended they grew very
gloomy and said once more that at all costs we ought to go by Huexotzinco,
where the people were their relations and our friends, rather than by way
of Cholula, where Montezuma always kept concealed ambushes.”[97]
Cortés also wrote of this in his letters sent to King Ferdinand: “I had been
in the city [of Tlaxcala] twenty days or more, when those lords,
Montezuma’s messengers, who had always remained with me, told me that I
ought to go to a city (…) called Churultecal…When the Tascaltecas saw my
determination [to go to Cholula], they were much grieved, and told me
repeatedly that I erred, but inasmuch as they had given themselves as vassals
to Your Sacred Majesty, and my friends, they wished to go with me, and help
me in any emergency.”[98]
Cortés and his army of 200 Spaniards and 5,000 Tlaxcaltecas began their
march to Cholula in October 1519. As they neared the city, the Great
Pyramid came into view. Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote that “everyone
agreed that it was a large town with many towers and great, high cues and
was situated on a fine plain — indeed at that time it looked from the distance
like our own city of Valladolid in Old Castile — and secondly because it had
other large towns all round it and could provide ample supplies, and our
friends the Tlascalans were near at hand. So we decided to stay
at Cholula until we could see how to get to Mexico without having to fight,
for the great Mexican army was something to be feared.”[99]
An ancient and lost codex called Lienzo de Quauhtlancingo, of which only
a Spanish translation made in the 19th century survives, claims that some
nobles from Cholula had already met up with Cortés’ party as it departed
from Veracruz.[100] Since there is no other mention of this in any of the
sources, it is generally considered that the first contact between the
Spaniards and the Cholultecas occurred outside the city. According to
Cortés, there was no welcoming party waiting for him, so he sent emissaries
to summon the leaders of the city who reluctantly went out to meet the
foreigners.
Cortés spent several days in Cholula, during which he later claimed that he
determined the Cholultecas were planning to betray him. There are several
versions of the story, and historians will probably never know exactly what
occurred, but the end result remains the same. On the 18th of October, a huge
massacre took place in the city’s center during which thousands of
Cholultecas were brutally murdered. The episode is now known as the
Cholula Massacre, and several colonial manuscripts recorded the event in
great detail.
Among the different narratives, there is one that claims that there were
different factions within Cholula, some were in favor of the Aztecs and
others were not. It was apparently one of these groups that organized the
supposed ambush, but Cortés and his men were warned and decided to strike
first.
Another version suggested that the entire thing may have been a
conspiracy orchestrated by the Tlaxcaltecas due to their growing rivalry with
Cholula: “During the three days which I remained there I was ill provided
for, and every day was worse, and the lords and chiefs of the city came rarely
to see and speak to me. I was somewhat perplexed by this, but the interpreter
whom I have, an Indian woman of this country whom I obtained in
Putunchan, the great river I have already mentioned in the first letter to Your
Majesty, was told by another woman native of this city, that many of
Montezuma's people had gathered close by, and that those of the city had
sent away their wives, and children, and all their goods, intending to fall
upon us and kill us all; and that, if she wished to escape, she should go with
her, as she would hide her. The female interpreter told it to that Geronimo de
Aguilar, the interpreter whom I obtained in Yucatan, and of whom I have
written to Your Highness, who reported it to me. I captured one of the
natives of the said city, who was walking about there, and took him secretly
apart so that no one saw it and questioned him; and he confirmed all that the
Indian woman and the natives of Tascaltecal had told me. As well on account
of this information as from the signs I had observed, I determined to
anticipate them, rather than be surprised.”[101]
According to the chronicler Torquemada, Cholula was divided into six
neighborhoods, three of which supported Moctezuma and the Aztecs and
three that did not. “These differences influenced the fact that Cholula
inhabitants were incapable of offering a firm, solid and homogenous stance
against Spanish conquistadores.”[102] The arrival of Cortés and his army in
Cholula, combined with the disagreements between the people of Cholula
and Tlaxcala (the latter had allied with the Spanish), generated a tense and
confusing environment that led to the massacre unleashed by the
conquistadores.
When the massacre began, it became obvious that the people of Cholula
had little military experience. They were craftsmen, merchants, and religious
advocates, not soldiers. Furthermore, as future events demonstrated, not even
the Aztec capital could withstand the bloody slaughter brought on by the
conquistadores and their allies. They attacked the people of Cholula and set
fire to many of their buildings while the Cholultecas fought back as best they
could. Cortés wrote, “I scoured the city fighting during five hours, leaving
our dwelling place which was very strong, well guarded, until I had forced
all the people out of the city at various points, in which those five thousand
natives of Tascaltecal and the four hundred of Cempoal gave me good
assistance.”[103]
This massacre is considered one of the bloodiest in Mexican history, so it
has generated plenty of debate. For example, Las Casas judged Cortés and
claimed it was all part of his plan and agenda to instill fear in the indigenous
population. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who traveled with Cortés, defended his
actions and claimed that after the deed, some of the nobles of Cholula
confessed that there had, in fact, been a plan to attack the Spaniards. A third
theory suggests that the Tlaxcaltecas made up the whole conspiracy to push
Cortés into slaughtering their enemies. Regardless of which version is true,
the sources suggest that anywhere from 6,000-50,000 people were killed,
and given that Cholula’s population was somewhere between 30,000 and
50,000, it is clear that a considerable percentage of the population did not
survive.
Cortés submitted the surviving people of Cholula to his will and used
horrific tactics to ensure compliance. A manuscript called the Manuscrito del
aperreamiento (“Manuscript of the dogging”) shows a cruel punishment
being exacted on one of the high priests while the six nobles of the council
wait their turn. The priest is being attacked by a savage dog that is tied to a
chain being held by a Spanish soldier. The six nobles are bound and seem to
be watching the spectacle while Cortés and his indigenous translator, Doña
Marina, hold a rosary and make Catholic signs in an attempt to rid the evil
from their souls.
Even decades after the event, the indigenous population of Cholula was
still outraged, a fact made clear in the Codex of Cholula, drawn 70 years
after the deed. In that codex, the Cholultecas show dismembered bodies
scattered around the city’s center and Spanish soldiers armed with swords
and shields.
Cholula’s colonial chapter began with the Hispanicization of the Nahuatl
name of the ancient city. The six Prehispanic ethnic groups that resided there
were ascribed into six Spanish barrios or neighborhoods. Indigenous nobles
were allowed to govern temporarily with certain restrictions, but their
political power began to dwindle with the arrival of the corregidor and the
creation of the first indigenous municipal council in 1537 which allowed
commoners to be able to climb up the social hierarchy. Many of the
indigenous elites that survived the Conquest continued to hold important
roles in their neighborhoods. The evidence claims that there were some who
opposed the new system, while others co-operated fully. Some were able to
recover their influence and even gain certain standing with the Spanish, but
their power only lasted as long as they were useful.
During the first years of the colonial regime, Cholula was an encomienda,
but, in 1531, it became a corregimiento[105] that encompassed less than
[104]

half of what the Prehispanic territory had been. On October 27, 1537,
Cholula was granted the title of city and officially named San Pedro Cholula.
The founding of the city of Puebla in 1531 caused Cholula to lose 30% of its
territory. Cholula received the title of Republica de Indios or Republic of
Indians in 1537 and became a subordinate of Puebla. Despite the fact that
Cholula was meant to be a city for indigenous people only, many Spaniards
saw economic opportunities and began to settle there. In contrast, Puebla
remained exclusively a Spanish city.
The Relaciones geograficas were detailed descriptions of important cities
across New Spain. Each corregidor was in charge of collecting information
to respond to the questionnaire that consisted of 50 questions. The document
compiled by Gabriel de Rojas included a map of San Gabriel Cholula, now
San Pedro Cholula. The map was likely drawn by an indigenous tlacuilo[106]
and shows the main streets and buildings in the city. A few elements stand
out in the drawing. The first is the Convento de San Gabriel, a large religious
complex that was built over the Prehispanic Temple of Quetzalcoatl. This
convent was the first Catholic building in Cholula and its construction began
in 1531. The main church was clearly built using the stones from the
pyramid, and it is the only building in the city that preserves the original
Prehispanic orientation; everything else was lined up with the Spanish grid
that basically forms a Cartesian plane.
 Convento de San Gabriel
The Spanish administration opted to maintain the Prehispanic calpultin to
maintain order in Cholula. They simply decided to name patron saints for
each one and place their name before the Indigenous place names. In Gabriel
de Rojas’ map, there are six such neighborhoods: San Miguel
Tianguiznahuac, Santiago Mizquitla, San Juan Texpolco, Santa Maria
Quauhtlan, San Pablo Tecama, and San Andres Colomoxco.
The indigenous barrios or neighborhoods were marked on the map with a
church and a hill or tepetl, which indicated the location of the ancient
pyramids. It is well known that many churches were built on top of
Prehispanic temples. The old Tlachihualtepetl is also drawn on the map,
shown with water coming out from under it, in a very similar way than in the
Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca. The Great Pyramid was abandoned centuries
before the arrival of the Spanish, and its state of decay was probably so
advanced that the first Spaniards confused it with a natural hill. The active
temple at the time of the Spanish arrival was located to the northwest of the
pyramid. It was destroyed soon after and three Franciscan structures were
built in its place. The Tlachihualtepetl was not torn down, but a church
dedicated to the Virgen de los Remedios was erected on top of it. Most of the
other Prehispanic structures were destroyed during the colonial period.
 A map of Cholula from the Relacion de Cholula[107]
Further Reading
Ashwell, Anamaria. “Cholula: su herencia es una red de agujeros, Parte
II.” Elementos, 55-56, 2004, pp. 3-11.
Berrin, Kathleen; and Esther Pasztory (1993). Teotihuacan: Art from the
City of the Gods. New York: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-23653-4.
OCLC 28423003.
Boornazian Diel, Lori. “El Manuscrito del Aperreamiento. Castigos
abominables.” Arqueología Mexicana, núm. 115, 2012, pp. 66-70.
Braswell, Geoffrey E. (2003). "Introduction: Reinterpreting Early Classic
Interaction". In Geoffrey E. Braswell (Ed.). The Maya and Teotihuacan:
Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction. Austin: University of Texas Press.
pp. 1–44. ISBN 0-292-70587-5. OCLC 49936017.
Coe, Michael D.; and Rex Koontz (1994) [1962]. Mexico: From the
Olmecs to the Aztecs. New York: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-27722-2.
OCLC 50131575.
Cortés, Hernan. Letters of Cortés. Translated by Francis Augustus
MacNutt. G. P. Putnam’s Sons: New York, 1908.
Cortés, Hernan. Cartas de Relación de la Conquista de México, Segunda
carta de relación. ESPASA-CALPE, Madrid, 1942.
Davies, Nigel (1982). The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico. England:
Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-013587-1.
De Rojas, Gabriel. Descripción de Cholula (1581). Revista Mexicana de
Estudios Históricos, Tomo 1, 1927, pp. 158-170, México.
Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. The Conquest of New Spain, translated by John
Michael Cohen. Penguin Books, 1963. Retrieved from:
https://archive.org/details/conquestofnewspa00diaz/page/200/mode/2up?
q=cholula.
Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. La verdadera historia de la conquista de Nueva
España. Ediciones Casa de las Américas, México, D.F., 1984.
Famsi. Major Archaeological Sites: PreClassic to PostClassic.
Cholula (circa A.D. 100-1521). Foundation for the Advancement of
Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., n.d. Retrieved from:
http://www.famsi.org/research/pohl/sites/cholula.html.
González Hermosillo, Francisco. El gobierno indio en la Cholula Colonial.
Gobierno del Estado de Puebla, Secretaría de Cultura, 1992.
Grunberg, Bernard. “La Relación Geográfica de Cholula o la mirada
realista de un investigador sobre el mundo indígena.” Estudios de Cultura
Nahuatl, 40, 2009, pp. 281-298.
Hermosillo, F. G. “Cholula o el desplome de un asentamiento étnico
ancestral.” Historias, (10), 1985, pp. 17–50. Recuperado de:
https://revistas.inah.gob.mx/index.php/historias/article/view/15257.
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[1]
Ashwell (2004, p. 8), translation mine.
[2]
Eating Landscape: Aztec and European Occupation of Tlalocan by Philip P. Arnold (2001).
University of Colorado Press. Pg 40
[3]
"La Venta" in Exploring Mesoamerica by John M.D. Pohl (1999). Oxford University Press. Pgs
20 - 30
[4]
The Atlas of World Archaeology by Paul G. Bahn (2000). Brown Reference Group. Pg 168
[5]
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"Surgeons use Stone Age technology for delicate surgery" in The University Record Sept 10,
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Arnold (2001). pg 9
[10]
"Teotihuacan" in Exploring Mesoamerica by John M.D. Pohl (1999). Oxford University Press. Pg
65
[11]
Bahn (2000). Pg 169
[12]
Arnold (2001). Pg 41
[13]
Ibid Pg 168
[14]
The Aztecs of Central Mexico: An Imperial Society (2nd Ed.) by Frances F. Berdan (2005).
Cengage Learning. Pg 127-131
[15]
Bahn (2000). Pg 169
[16]
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[17]
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[18]
Arnold (2001). Pg 41.
[19]
Pohl (1999). Pg 55.
[20]
"Pyramids of Giza" at the Encyclopedia Britannica Online accessed online at:
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[21]
"Cholula Pyramid" at Aztec-History.com accessed online at: http://www.aztec-
history.com/cholula-pyramid.html
[22]
Pohl (1999). pg 56
[23]
Bahn (2000). Pg 168
[24]
Pohl (1999) pg 62
[25]
The Myths of Mexico and Peru by Lewis Spence (2005 [1913]). Barnes and Noble Books. Pg 203-
205.
[26]
Pohl (1999) pg 62
[27]
Ibid pg 58
[28]
Ibid 59
[29]
Athena: The Origins and History of the Greek Goddess by Jesse Harasta (2013). Charles Rivers
Editors.
[30]
Pohl (1999) pgs 53 - 54
[31]
Pohl (1999) Pgs 64-65
[32]
Famsi (n.d.), retrieved from: http://www.famsi.org/research/pohl/sites/cholula.html
[33]
Idem.
[34]
Famsi (n.d.), retrieved from: http://www.famsi.org/research/pohl/sites/cholula.html
[35]
Kirchhoff et al. (1989).
[36]
Kirchhoff et al. (1989).
[37]
Spanish term used to designate a garment in the form of a robe.
[38]
Cortés (1908, p. 220).
[39]
Fierce Gods: Inequality, Ritual and the Politics of Dignity in a South Indian Village by Diane P.
Mines (2005). Indiana University Press
[40]
Pohl (1999). Pg 60.
[41]
For more on Quipus, read The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village by
Frank Saloman (2004). Duke University Press.
[42]
"Teotihuacan" at Ancient Scripts: A compendium of world-wide writing systems from prehistory to
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[43]
Breaking the Maya Code Revised by Michael D. Coe (1999). Thames and Hudson.
[44]
Pohl (1999) pg 64
[45]
"Tlailotlacan: A Zapotec Enclave in Teotihuacan" by Mark Spence in Art, Ideology and the City
of Teotihuacan, Janet C. Berlo (ed.). Pg 59-88
[46]
"Pottery and Ethnic Identity in the Oaxaca Barrio, Teotihuacan" by Kevin T. Gibbs (2008). In The
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[47]
Pohl (1999) pg 60
[48]
Arnold (2001). Pg 33
[49]
Chichen Itzá: The History and Mystery of the Maya's Most Famous City by Jesse Harasta (2013),
Charles Rivers Editors and Mayapán: The History of the Mayan Capital by Jesse Harasta (2013),
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[50]
Pohl (1999). Pg 58
[51]
"The Tepantitla Frescoes. Paradise of Tlaloc." Accessed online at
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[52]
Pohl (1999). Pg 62
[53]
Berdan (2005)
[54]
Bahn (2000). Pg 169
[55]
Tikal: The History of the Ancient Maya's Famous Capital by Jesse Harasta (2013). Charles
Rivers Editors.
[56]
1999. Pg 41
[57]
"Chapter 17: Ancient Irrigation" from Exploiting the Earth by Richard Cowen. Accessed online
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[58]
Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali by
Stephen Lansing (1991). Princeton University Press
[59]
Berdan (2005).
[60]
Pohl (1999). Pg 52
[61]
"Architectural Aspects of Interaction between Tikal and Teotihuacan" by Juan Pedro Laporte in
The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction (2003) by Geoffrey E.
Braswell (ed.). University of Austin Press. pg 200
[62]
"Understanding Early Classic Interaction Between Kaminaljuyu and Central Mexico" by
Geoffrey E. Braswell in The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction
(2003) by Geoffrey E. Braswell (ed.). University of Austin Press. pgs 105-142
[63]
"Forward" in The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction (2003) by
Geoffrey E. Braswell (ed.). University of Austin Press. pgs xiii-xvi
[64]
Pohl (1999) pg 72
[65]
Martin and Grube (2000), Pg 29
[66]
Martin and Grube (2000), Pg 30
[67]
"Spearthrower Owl Hill: A Toponym at Atatelco, Teotihuacan" by Jesper Nielsen and Christopher
Helmke (2008) in the journal Latin American Antiquity 19(4), pgs. 459-474.
[68]
Ibid
[69]
Martin and Grube (2000), Pg 30
[70]
Pohl (1999) pg 71
[71]
Martin and Grube (2000), Pg 39
[72]
Martin and Grube (2000), Pgs 32-33
[73]
Bahn (2000). Pg 168
[74]
Tikal: The History of the Ancient Maya's Famous Capital by Jesse Harasta (2013). Charles
Rivers Editors.
[75]
"The Decline and Fall of Teotihuacan" by Mary Gindling (2009). Accessed online at:
http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/the-decline-and-fall-of-teotihuacan-37105/
[76]
Pohl (1999) Pgs 64-65
[77]
Pohl (1999). Pgs 150 - 161
[78]
Berdan (2005) Pg 129 and Pohl (1999). Pg 57
[79]
Pohl (1999). Pg 52
[80]
"Prehispanic City of Teotihuacan" at the UNESCO World Heritage Site Portal, accessed online at
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/414
[81]
McCafferty (2000, p. 345).
[82]
Knab & Pohl (2019, p. 293).
[83]
Idem (p. 294).
[84]
Hernandez-Flores & Martinez-Corona (2011, p. 284).
[85]
Edward B. Tyler cited in McCafferty (1996, p.299).
[86]
Knab & Pohl (2019, p. 292).
[87]
McCafferty & McCafferty (2000, p. 39).
[88]
Cochinilla is an insect that is typically found on the nopal or prickly-pear cactus. It is used to obtain
red dye.
[89]
Gabriel de Rojas cited in McCafferty & McCafferty (2000, p. 41).
[90]
Idem (p. 40).
[91]
Knab & Pohl (2019, p. 301).
[92]
Idem (p. 294).
[93]
Diego Duran cited in McCafferty & McCafferty (2000, p. 40).
[94]
Lopez de Gomara cited in McCafferty & McCafferty (2000, p. 40).
[95]
Nicholson (2001, p. 160).
[96]
Diego Duran cited in Knab & Pohl (2019, p. 302).
[97]
Díaz del Castillo (1963, p. 185).
[98]
Idem (p. 218).
[99]
Díaz del Castillo (1963, p. 185).
[100]
See Hermosillo (1985).
[101]
Cortés (1908, pp. 217-218).
[102]
Hernandez-Flores & Martinez-Corona (2011, p. 285).
[103]
Cortés (1908, p. 218).
[104]
The encomienda was a system of land ownership in which large pieces of land were granted to
conquistadores.
[105]
A corregimiento was an administrative division of land that placed districts under the control of a
Corregidor or governor who responded directly to the crown.
[106]
A tlacuilo (tlacuiloque pl.) was an indigenous scribe and artist. These tlacuiloque were an
important class in Mesoamerica and their work consisted in creating codices to record Prehispanic
history.
[107]
Rojas (1927).

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