LEGACY OF THE AZTECS
There is a story once told by Bernardino de Sahagún, the Franciscan friar, missionary priest and pioneering ethnographer who participated in the Spanish colonisation of Mexico.
It may be apocryphal, a retrofitted fiction crafted by the Spaniards to facilitate their conquest but, given the prevalence of the returning god, demi-god or king in different mythologies around the world, it carries the ring of truth. It stated that King Moctezuma II, who ruled the Aztec kingdom during the arrival of Hernán Cortés, welcomed the conquistador’s appearance, recalling an indigenous belief and proclaiming the Spaniard to be an incarnation of Quetzalcóatl, the feathered serpent deity who was destined to return and restore his sacred kingdom of Tollan.
It is said that in Mexico today, and even among some Latinos living in the US, there are people who still hold onto this belief, hoping that one day a great Aztec deity might return in a symbolic or political context. For Aztec culture still holds a prominent place in modern Mexico, in its national identity and within the hearts of so many of those who call it home. In 1964, the then-Mexican president dedicated a plaque at Tlatelolco, which, alongside the ancient capital of Tenochtitlán, stands as. Veneration for the Aztec past is palpable at every level in Mexico, including the administrative: the central government funds archaeology, while the native archaeologists themselves unearth the past in honour of the national heritage. Many of the funds come from the federally backed National Institute of Anthropology and History, and it seems to have poured a small fortune into the excavation of the Templo Mayor at Tenochtitlán, the great symbol of the Aztec city. When the excavation was underway between 1978 and 1982, the aptly named archaeological leader Eduardo Matos Moctezuma became something of a national celebrity.
