Mexico City Dig Uncovers Traces of Aztec Resistance to Spain

[Judi Lynn]

For residents of Tenochtitlan, rebellion didn’t just happen on the battlefield


By Erin Blakemore
smithsonian.com
July 6, 2017


Soon after the Spaniards entered Tenochtitlan in November 1519, its indigenous residents rebelled. But resistance to the Spaniards in what is now Mexico City didn’t just take place on the battlefield. As the AFP reports, a recent archaeological find shows quiet resistance occurred in the home, too.

Mexican archaeologists have discovered a dwelling thought to be built by upper-class Aztecs, dated to the time of contact between the two peoples, reports the AFP. Located in the neighborhood of Colhuacatonco, it appears to have been a dwelling in which Aztecs carried out funeral rituals and other rites.


In a Spanish-language press release, INAH, the Mexican institute of anthropology and history, says that the dig provides archaeological evidence of resistance to the Spanish conquest.

That resistance was epic in scope. Though Hernán Cortés, the conquistador charged with taking over what is now Mexico, initially entered the city of Tenochtitlan without resistance, before long, violence broke out and the Spanish staged a nearly three-month-long siege of the city. As the Newberry Library notes, Cortés, “was never able to predict or understand the Aztecs’ willingness to withstand misery, starvation, and massive deaths rather than surrender.” But after rising up again and again, the people of Tenochtitlan ultimately fell, weakened by the superior weapons of the Spanish and a smallpox epidemic, until eventually they were sequestered by Spanish forces and their allies.


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