| In the 16th Century, the Aztecs were pretty | | | | Century, 500 years before Tenochtitlán, |
| much running the show in central Mesoamerica, | | | | when the Aztecs' ancestors were still eating |
| but two hundred years before, their fathers and | | | | snakes in the desert. The Tolteca society |
| mothers were warlike barbarian hunter-gatherers | | | | enjoyed a flourishing well-ordered economy |
| from around Arizona who eventually migrated all | | | | centered in Tula, the modern Mexican State of |
| the way to the high plateau that today is the | | | | Hidalgo, about a hundred miles north-east of |
| Federal District, Mexico City. At first, the men | | | | Mexico City. It was this economic model of the |
| took service as muscle for the established local | | | | Toltec civilization that the Aztecs inherited - an |
| houses and interests. Eventually, Aztec muscle | | | | attractive functional economic ordering at which |
| was deciding the important issues, and they took | | | | that hoary old soldier, Bernal Diaz was astounded. |
| over. The reign of the Aztecs had only begun | | | | The name Tolteca means "artisans" and in that |
| when the white sails of the Spanish ships' arrived | | | | time, nobody was hungry; they spent much time |
| in the blue waters off the Gulf Coast. | | | | decorating their temples and painting them with |
| The Spaniard, Hernan Cortez with his band of | | | | vivid colors and detailed drawings. They had no |
| dirty adventurers marched into the Mesoamerican | | | | use for money. The Toltecans were far too |
| civilization centered in Tenochtitlán, now | | | | well-off to bother inventing money. The Toltecas |
| the site of Mexico City. Bernal Diaz, one of | | | | had a class of servants, called pochtli, who were |
| Cortez' soldiers wrote a long and famous account | | | | the only ones whose hands touched commercial |
| of his experience. He frankly marveled at that | | | | goods. Pochtli were a ritual sect, subordinated to |
| wonderfully well-ordered economics and a city | | | | the royal women; they did not enjoy life like the |
| built on a giant lake communicated by long | | | | normal and ordinary people, who every day |
| causeways. Diaz said there was no city in Spain | | | | feasted on the fantastic variery of tasty foods |
| that compared to what he was seeing, he | | | | growing under the sun in Mexico. These common |
| described the intensive agriculture he found | | | | people in a healthy economy close to nature were |
| everywhere and the fact that there seemed to | | | | people who knew neither fear nor want. |
| be no poor people, nor miserable beggars. | | | | The people did not buy what they needed to live, |
| The Aztecs were not the authors of the very | | | | by procuring money to pay for it. Whatever the |
| successful economic system of central Mexico, | | | | people needed, the villages produced it and |
| they inherited it. The Aztecs were primitives | | | | distributed it themselves. The physical economics |
| compared to the population they had taken | | | | of the Toltec and later the Aztec societies was |
| political control over. In order to bolster their own | | | | not the product of money and trade. Money had |
| credibility and importance, the Aztecs rulers were | | | | ritual purposes, not the purpose as the ultimate |
| forever comparing themselves to the traditional | | | | arbiter of valiue. Money and trade were NOT the |
| Toltec deities. | | | | ways those societies produced and distributed |
| The Toltec civilization was around the 9th | | | | their physical requirements. |