Why a centuries-old Mexica myth became Mexico’s enduring symbol

MEXICO CITY -- The almighty eagle perched connected a cactus portion devouring a serpent connected Mexico’s emblem hints astatine the story down the foundation of the country’s capital.

It's a divine motion successful an past legend, according to which the deity Huitzilopochtli asked a radical called the Mexica — who founded what was aboriginal known arsenic the Aztec Empire — to permission their homeland successful hunt of a spot to found a caller city.

It took immoderate 175 years earlier they spotted the ineffable omen and established the metropolis of Tenochtitlan successful 1325 wherever Mexico City stands today.

How the eagle, the cactus and the serpent became an emblem and endured done the European conquest is the absorption of a caller exhibition. “A overgarment of arms, an emblem, a awesome of identity,” runs done Dec. 15 astatine the Old City Hall successful downtown Mexico City.

The grounds is among the government’s activities marking the 700th day of the founding of the Mexica capital.

“Recognizing Tenochtitlan doesn’t mean recalling a dormant past, but alternatively the living heartbeat that inactive beats beneath our city,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said during an official ceremony successful July. “It was the halfway of an Indigenous satellite that built its ain exemplary of civilization — 1 successful harmony with the Earth, the stars, and its gods and goddesses.”

Fragments of that civilization prevarication underneath the Old City Hall, the existent spot of Mexico City’s government.

Built by bid of Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés successful 1522, its operation utilized stones from past Mexica ineffable sites. The gathering has been renewed implicit time, but its halls person witnessed centuries of governance and symbolism.

“Holding the accumulation successful this City Hall, a spot of decisions and memory, is simply a mode to admit the past of those who erstwhile inhabited it and however its transformations inactive echo successful Mexico City’s identity,” said Mariana Gómez Godoy, Director of Mexico City’s Cultural Heritage, during the exhibit’s inauguration successful November.

The Mexica themselves recorded their communicative aft Tenochtitlan fell to the Europeans. Several codices picture the way that led them to fulfill their deity’s task.

Eduardo Matos Moctezuma — an acclaimed archaeologist from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History — has argued that the fable is simply a symbolic retelling of humanities events, alternatively than a literal assertion astir divine prophecy.

Still, according to the Templo Mayor Museum, the region's pre-Hispanic people preserved the root communicative of a agelong travel that led to the founding of Tenochtitlan arsenic a cornerstone of their traditions.

They honored a tiny land successful Lake Texcoco, present cardinal Mexico City, arsenic the spot wherever the Mexica recovered the eagle foretold by Huitzilopochtli.

The caller grounds offers a humanities overview of however the representation evolved — from its constitution arsenic the city’s overgarment of arms successful 1523 nether Emperor Charles V to its translation into an emblem of Mexico arsenic an autarkic nation.

Curated by researcher Guadalupe Lozada, it besides displays images portraying however it was adopted by the spiritual orders successful complaint of converting the Indigenous radical to Catholicism.

While the eagle and cactus were already adopted by Europeans successful the mid-16th century, the Jesuits introduced the serpent decades later. “From past on, it would stay a awesome of the city’s individuality — 1 that would besides dispersed passim the remainder of New Spain,” Lozada said.

According to her, plentifulness of monasteries dating backmost to the 17th period attest to however friars displayed the eagle and cactus successful their sanctuaries. Even today, the emblem tin inactive beryllium seen supra the façade of Mexico City’s cathedral and wrong 1 of its chapels.

“Such was the spot of Mexica civilization that the evangelizers sought to follow it alternatively than exclude it,” she said. “It was similar saying, ‘I admit your history.’”

The aforesaid logic applied with the European conquerors. Even arsenic they ordered the demolition of the Mexica spiritual complexes, the practice of the foundational story was not erased from history.

“For them, conquering a metropolis similar Tenochtitlan was a substance of pridefulness and truthful they ne'er intended to contradict its existence,” Lozada said. “This meant that the spot of the metropolis buried beneath the caller 1 underlies it and resurfaces — arsenic if it had ne'er disappeared.”

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