Contact:  Raymond V. Padilla
3327 N. Dakota
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(480) 892-9173
 

Copyright © 2000 Raymond V. Padilla

By many accounts, in a historic moment called el movimiento the Mexican American population of the United States reinvented itself in terms of identity and origin (Rendón, 1971; Rosales, 1996).  The previously (sometimes) pejorative term Chicano was proclaimed as the new identity, and the otherwise presumed mythical land of Aztlán became both the place of origin and the destination of the Chicanos.  Although this ethnic transformation arose simultaneously from many places in the United States where the Mexican American population resided, there is considerable evidence showing that the incorporation of Aztlán into the Chicanos’ new consciousness can be traced directly to the Crusade for Justice movement headed by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales in Denver, Colorado.  Gonzales’s movement had strong irrendentist tendencies which were expressed in a nationalistic ideology founded on Native American, particularly mesoamerican, history and cultural symbols; strategically, it also was influenced by the Third World movements of liberation from colonial rule which followed the Second World War.  Gonzales (1971) expressed clearly his nationalistic views when he stated:  “We have to start to consider ourselves as a nation.  . . . We can understand that we are a nation of Aztlan.” (pg. 380)  This was an echo of similar thoughts expressed earlier in El Plan Espirtual de Aztlán which was proclaimed at the 1969 Denver Youth Conference organized by Gonzales.

The association between the Chicanos and Aztlán that was given prominence by el movimiento immediately gave rise to the question of Aztlán.  Was Aztlán simply a mythical place with no historical, let alone geographical, foundation?  Where might Aztlán be located, even if it only had mythical status?  Might there actually be a physical place that one could identify as Aztlán?  This paper summarizes some of the methodological issues faced by those who want to go beyond the “myth of Aztlán” and who would identify the actual physical location of the fabled land.  It also presents a conjecture that Aztlán may well be located much farther north than has been considered previously.

Although Aztlán is seen as a mythical land, it invariably is placed to the north of the central valley of Mexico, as the quotes above demonstrate.  But how far north?  Within the ideology of the Chicano movement, north means what is now the U.S. Southwest.  Acuña (1972) states:  “. . . the students affirmed that they were from Aztlán, the legendary birthplace of the Aztecs, which reputedly was in today’s Southwest.”  (pg. 229)  Anzaldúa (1998) reinforces this idea:  “In the Southwest United States archeologists have found 20,000-year-old campsites of the Indians who migrated through, or permanently occupied, the Southwest, Aztlán -- land of the herons, land of whiteness, the Edenic place of origin of the Azteca . . .”  (p. 629)  The writer Oscar “Zeta” Acosta (1998) shares the same view when he argues that: “Aztlán is the land we’re sitting on now. The land where my forefathers lived hundreds of years ago before they migrated to the valley of Mexico.  The Aztecs referred to the entire Southwest as Aztlán.”  (p. 335)  The expanse of Aztlán is described poetically by the Native American author Jack Forbes (1973) as extending  “. . . from the Gulf of Mexico on the east, across the state of Texas, through the Llano Estacado to the rich mountain highlands of Colorado.  Winding through the Colorado plateaux into the bountiful land of New Mexico, and on west through beautiful Arizona and the Nevada lowlands.  Across the burning Sonora and Borrego deserts, into California over the Sierra Nevadas to the Pacific Ocean and north along the coast, until one sees ‘the trees of the Gods’ . . . this is Aztlán!” (p. 327)  If somehow one could find with reasonable certainty “the trees of the Gods”, perhaps that would give the location of the fabled Aztlán.

The problem of layering refers to the possibility that there was more than one migration from north to south of the same or related peoples.  There is evidence that nomadic Chichimecas moved southward toward the valley of Anáhuac in repeated waves.  If this is so, it can reasonably be assumed that similar waves of migration might have occurred during earlier legs of the Aztec migration.  The problem that the waves of migration hypothesis poses is that one has to determine specifically the particular wave(s) of migration to which the legend of Aztlán can be attributed.  If the Aztecs, as late comers to Anáhuac, had merely borrowed the idea of Aztlán from other Chichimeca tribes, then their knowledge of the location of Aztlán would necessarily be second hand and possibly incomplete or confused.  Getting a clearer picture of the repeated patterns of migration over time by different but related groups into the central valley of Mexico might enhance the likelihood of identifying the “stretching” pattern already discussed in the context of layered migrations.

The folding problem is the third methodological difficulty.  Folding refers to the backward migration of Aztec people into the northern lands.  There is some evidence that precolumbian Aztec influences can be discerned in the northwestern territory of present day Mexico and the Southwestern part of the United States.  On this point, Forbes (1973) states:

The northward movement of people from the present-day area of Mexico commenced at least as early as A.D. 1000, when the Hohokam brought an advanced culture into Arizona.  As indicated earlier, it is quite possible that, prior to Spanish intrusion, other Mexican-area groups and even Mexicans themselves may have reached what is now the United States.  In any event, it is clear that Mexican-Mesoamerican influences spread far to the north, where they served as a basis for many of the cultural elaborations carried out by United States Indians.  In addition, trade routes across the present boundary were in frequent use, from the lower Colorado to the Pacific Coast and New Mexico, from Sonora to New Mexico, and from Chihuahua to the Texas coast. (pp. 70-71)

The Spanish conquest stimulated the northward migration of Mexicans, Tarascans, and other groups and . . . the northward expansion of the Spanish Empire was dependent on their aid, willing and otherwise.  Thus, colonies of Mexicans and other nonlocal natives developed throughout the north, including the suburb of Analco at Santa Fe, New Mexico (dating from the early 1600s) and the settlement of Españoles Mexicanos in the mountain valleys north of that community after 1692.  In some areas, as in California, the Mexicans (Nahuans) did not form their own communities but instead mixed with other Spanish-speaking natives to compose a heterogeneous population.  The overwhelming majority of Spanish-speaking people in the northern portions of the empire were of Mexican or other indigenous ancestry, or were mixed-bloods. ( p. 71)

What is the nature of these faint elements?  One would have to look for the most robust cultural elements; those that tend to resist change over time.  Some good candidates would be:  language, religious practices, and specialized knowledge of the world and the cosmos.  The latter includes genealogy and cosmology.  All ancient peoples around the world faced the very practical problem of passing valuable knowledge from one generation to the next.  A key problem in such knowledge transmission is to avoid error.  Modern peoples have minimized transmission errors by using written language which is more or less accurate and stable over time.  Typically, books are considered as the ideal medium for knowledge transmission.
Ancient peoples had no written language or books with which to transmit their valuable knowledge.  However, they did create what might be called “proto books”, i.e. inscriptions of knowledge in objects, actions, and practices that could be delivered to, or inculcated in, the next generation by their elders.  By maintaining strict adherence to these knowledge transmitting objects, actions, and practices, accuracy could be maintained in the transmission of knowledge.  Like ordinary books, the effectiveness of proto books for transmitting error free knowledge depends on the ability of the “reader” to decode the meanings inscribed in what otherwise might be seen simply as “traditional” artifacts, actions, or practices.

In the case of Aztlán, practices that might be read as proto books include the cults of Venus and the sun.  The manifestations of these cults can be seen through language, religion, and cosmological knowledge.  Concretely, these cults can be seen in the inscriptions placed on physical objects by the Aztecs and other Native peoples who hearken back to an Aztec lineage.  For the Aztecs, along with many other mesoamerican peoples, the cult of Venus is expressed through Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent.  Here significant cosmological knowledge is inscribed in two natural objects:  A bird and a serpent.  The point is that in proto book fashion, important knowledge is transmitted across the generations by inscribing that knowledge in physical phenomena that are relatively stable over time.  So what is the specific knowledge that is being encoded in the “feathered serpent”?  And how is the same encoded knowledge observable in the proto books of tribes located today in the Northwest region of the U. S. and western Canada?

In the case of the Aztecs, the knowledge of Venus, expressed as Quetzalcoatl, can be seen in the Aztec Sun Stone (the so-called Aztec Calendar).  In the outermost ring of the Sun Stone, Quetzalcoatl is represented as a two-headed serpent with the tails of the serpents at the apex and the heads at the bottom of the circle.  Within the maw of each serpent is a human head, one representing night and the other day.  Each serpent head has a curled panache which represents the Pleiades.  In the center of the Sun Stone is Tonatiuh, the Sun deity with the tongue sticking out and downward.  This iconography represents certain astronomical knowledge about the planet Venus and its relation to the sun and other celestial objects.  Specifically, the icons encode the two facets of Venus as both the morning and the evening star.  This dual showing of Venus follows a regular cycle that is highly predictable.  As the planet rises in the east, it is first obscured by the sun as Venus hangs low on the horizon.  Over time, Venus climbs on the horizon until it reaches a maximum point then it declines, thus forming a serpentine pattern  before the planet disappears entirely.  After a lapse of time, Venus reappears once again low on the western horizon.  Daily it climbs higher on the western horizon to a maximum before declining once again in a serpentine fashion.  The planet then disappears behind the sun only to be seen once again, after a predictable period of time, as the morning star on the eastern horizon.  The serpentine pattern traced out by Venus on the eastern horizon is shown in Figure 1.  The serpents in the Sun Stone thus encode the rising and falling of Venus; the two heads encode the eastern and western facets of the planet.  And the sun is represented as a face in the center of the stone (see Figure 6).

Similar solar-Venusian iconography is present to this very day in artifacts by Natives of the Northwest, particularly among the Kwakiutl and Haida peoples in western Canada.  The most important artifacts include totem poles, “talking sticks”, boxes, woven items such as hats, baskets, and hangings, along with various textiles, such as “button” blankets. Figure 2 shows a button blanket of recent vintage worn by a Haida Native.  The figure is an encoding of Venusian information already discussed.  The eagle represents the sun while the Venusian information is variously inscribed in the spread out figure.  At the shoulder of each wing is the symbol for Venus, drawn as a crescent.  The shape of each wing shows the serpentine pattern made by Venus as it ascends and descends first in the east and then in the west.  A similar pattern is encoded in the feet and claws of the eagle.  The sun, represented by the eagle’s head, faces toward the east, symbolic of the “eating” of Venus by the sun as it initially and finally obscures Venus with its light as Venus ascends and falls on the eastern and western horizons.  A similar icon is shown on another button blanket (see Figure 3).  This time the bird is a raven. Venus is represented again on the shoulders of the raven but here with closed ovoid figures instead of crescents as in the previous figure.  Notice the four dots on the downwardly extended feathers.  These dots highlight the fact that Venus starts low on the horizon, ascends to a maximum then descends low on the horizon.  Observe the center oval with three serpentine patterns reminiscent of the serpentine patterns traced by Venus in both the east and the west.

These drawings show that the solar-Venusian cult is present among the Northwest Natives to this very day.  Important cultural knowledge is inscribed, in proto book fashion, in the bodies of the fauna that are native to the area.  Since the morphology of these fauna are likely to be stable over long periods of time, the knowledge inscribed in their bodies can be transmitted without error over many generations.  As is true for all important knowledge across many cultures, such esoteric knowledge is only accessible to the initiated who can decode the inscribed messages.

In the Aztec iconography, Venus is represented not only by feathers, which are a synecdoche for birds, such as eagles and ravens, which can be found in the Northwest, but, importantly, Venus also is represented by the two-headed serpent, as shown in the Sun Stone (Figure 6).  The icon of the two-headed serpent, however, has roots in the Northwest.  Among the Kwakiutl, the two-headed sea serpent is known as Sisiutl. About this creature, Stewart (1993) writes:

This supernatural being could transform itself into many things, including a self-moving canoe which the owner would have to feed with seals.  The Sisiutl killed and ate the flesh of anyone who saw it, and washing in its blood turned a person to stone.  Legend tells of a man’s hands becoming petrified this way.
. . . 
Sisiutl is always portrayed with a face in the centre of its body, the two ends of the snake extending out from the sides of the face or curling around to form a circle.  The profile head on each end, and the one in the centre, have curled horn-like appendages like Thunderbird’s.  Large round nostrils, teeth with pointed canines, and a long protruding tongue complete the serpent heads.  Where Sisiutl forms a circular design, another motif usually fills the centre space. (p. 70) 

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