Story 1: Human Stew for the Rulers of Xochimilco

Both of the major sixteenth-century narrators of the Aztec empire's development from the viewpoint of its capital of Tenochtitlan—Diego Durán and Tezozomoc—relate versions of the first story. Durán, born in Spain circa 1537 but reared in Tetzcoco, the erstwhile Aztec empire's second-ranking city, was a Dominican friar who completed his Historia de las Indias de Nueva España in 1581 (Durán 1994). Tezozomoc was a Nahua historian descended from Tenochca kings (Mariscal 1994:xxi–xxxi). Born circa 1520 in Tenochtitlan, he was the maternal grandson of Moctezuma II (r. 1502–1520), under whom his father was a provincial governor, and the patrilineal great-grandson of King Axayacatl (r. 1468–1481). He completed his major historical work, Crónica mexicana, in 1598 (Tezozomoc 1980). Both Durán and Tezozomoc apparently drew on a now lost manuscript referred to by moderns as the Crónica X (Barlow 1945; Bernal 1994).

The events of interest here purportedly occurred circa 1430, following the successful 1428–1430 rebellion of the Tenochca (the people of Tenochtitlan) against the Tepaneca empire (Isaac 1983b). The Tenochca then began to assemble the Aztec empire, bringing themselves into conflict with the other major city-states of the Valley of Mexico lakes, including Xochimilco, whose leaders decided to resist absorption rather than capitulate. Hiding their intentions, the Xochimilca continued to allow free access to the Tenochca, including their market women. In the meantime, the leaders planned a dinner, at which they would decide strategy. Tezozomoc (1980:272) tells the story of the banquet this way:

Note that it was the women of Xochimilco, not those of Tenochtitlan, who did the careful washing of the food. If the latter had done it, we could infer that the washing of the izcahuitle and ducks was performed punctiliously to disguise the ritual washing of human meat (Sahagún 1970–1981:Book 2:141, 162–168, Book 9:45, 61–66) secretly placed in the pots. That not being the case, we are left with the more prosaic interpretation that the careful washing of the banquet ingredients was merely a narrative element intended to indicate that everything had been thoroughly inspected and nothing found amiss during the preparation of the meal. Thus, Tezozomoc's narrative provides no explicit mechanism for the insertion of the human parts into the stew, although we could reasonably speculate that he intended the reader to infer sorcery (Durán 1994:214–222; Sahagún 1970–81:Book 4:101–106).

Durán's version omits both the careful cleansing of the food before cooking and the suspenseful element of the diners' finding the human parts in the bottom of their bowls after having enjoyed the tasty stew. Rather, Durán has the “delicacies in the dishes” mystically turning themselves into human body parts as soon as the diners are seated, before they have eaten anything. Thus, the diners are terrified by the mysterious transubstantiation of their dinner into a pottage of recognizable human parts, not by having eaten the broth of a human stew, as implied by Tezozomoc. Overall, the surreal and picaresque in Tezozomoc's account becomes explicitly supernatural in Durán's (1994:105):

It is important to note that neither version of this story says that the Xochimilca ate human flesh as such. In Tezozomoc's version, the Xochimilca ate its broth—which, he notes sardonically, “was very tasty”—but stopped eating, “shocked and frightened,” when they encountered the human parts in the bottom of their bowls. In Durán's version, the would-be diners ate nothing at all, as they were terrified by the transubstantiation that occurred before them as soon as they were served. Accordingly, we are left to wonder about the true basis of the Xochimilca's shock and fear. Was it the discovery of human body parts in their bowls (Tezozomoc) or the transubstantiation of soup components (Durán)? In other words, was their reaction simply the equivalent of our own upon discovering, say, a mouse in our soup (or, worse, of seeing a lump of floating tofu turn into a mouse's head)? Or were they “shocked and frightened” (Tezozomoc) or terrified (Durán) that human flesh per se had been served (or made to appear) as food—that is, by the very possibility of cannibalism? For however tempting it is to privilege this latter possibility, we have no empirical basis for doing so. What we can say is that cannibalism occurs in Tezozomoc's version of this story, in which the Xochimilca enjoyed the “very tasty” broth before discovering that it had been derived, in part, from the juices of human meat.

Another important matter left unspecified is the provenience of the body parts in Tezozomoc's version. (In Durán's version, they originated by supernatural action.) Were they Xochimilca? Tenochca? Of unknown persons? Was provenience (in-group vs. out-group) even an issue here in producing the shock and terror? We cannot say.

Before moving on, we should note that the foregoing story of cannibalism by trickery from Tezozomoc's Crónica mexicana is one of only two references to human (versus godly) cannibalism in his oeuvre. It is, in fact, the only instance if we accept that the other work historically attributed to Tezozomoc, the Crónica mexicáyotl, was instead written by Chimalpahin (Schroeder 1997). Durán, in contrast, seems obsessed with cannibalism.

Story 2: Ambassador Stew for King Moquihuix

Story 2 comes to us from the indigenous historian Domingo Francisco de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Cuauhtlehuanitzin (born 1579), a descendant of the fringe nobility of Chalco at the south end of the Valley of Mexico. Chimalpahin, as he is usually known, wrote his extensive histories over the years 1608–1631. Although acquainted with the other major Nahua and Spanish/mestizo scholars of his day in the Mexico City area, Chimalpahin drew on some singular source materials, such as the Chalco histories collected by his grandfather and other Chalca elders who had lived in pre-Hispanic times (Lockhart 1992:387–388; Schroeder 1991:14–21). He was also exceptional in his day because he wrote for an indigenous, not a Spanish, audience (Schroeder 1997:10, note 20).

The incident of interest purportedly occurred in 1469 or 1473 and stemmed from an attempted coup against the Aztec King Axayacatl of Tenochtitlan by Moquihuix, ruler (tlatoani, “king”) of Tlatelolco, Tenochtitlan's next-door sister city (Garduño 1997:110–119; Isaac 1986:338–341). Hoping to enlist allies, Moquihuix sent emissaries to various cities both within and beyond the Valley of Mexico. He had reason to think that Chalco would join him, as the Aztecs had conquered it only in 1465 after a 20-year war (Isaac 1983b:123–124). The Chalca wanted no part of it, however, and Moquihuix's four ambassadors were taken prisoner (Chimalpahin 1965:207):

In a humorous retelling elsewhere, Chimalpahin (1997:2:47–49) set the banquet in Tenochtitlan and had King Axayacatl asking the Tlatelolca the next morning, “Our friends, have you eaten?” When they replied, “We have eaten, ruler,” Axayacatl informed them that they had eaten their own men. The Tlatelolca fled and “then arrayed themselves for battle.”

It is important to note that the executed messengers were “bathed in order to boil them” (emphasis mine). In other words, they were given the ritual cleansing that was preparatory to certain human sacrifices that Spanish sources say were followed by the eating of the bathed victim (e.g., Sahagún 1970–1981:Book 2:141, 162–168, Book 9:45, 61–67).

Two other aspects of this story are important to note. First, it is one of only three instances of human (versus godly) cannibalism in Chimalpahin's published writings; the other two, as we shall see, likewise fail to portray cannibalism as an institutionalized (customary, enjoined) practice. Second, I am unable to find this particular story in any other author's work. Tlatelolco's rebellion against Tenochtitlan is widely reported in the literature, but only Chimalpahin includes the cannibalism element, which must have been unique to the elders whom he or his grandfather consulted in Chalco.

Story 3: Genital Soup for Captain Tlahuicole

Story 3 is set in Tenochtitlan, and both Durán (1994:448) and Tezozomoc (1980:643–645) relate versions of it, but the only account that contains the element of cannibalism comes to us from Tlaxcala. Although the pre-Hispanic Tlaxcalteca shared most cultural features, including the Nahuatl language, with the Aztecs of the Valley of Mexico, Tlaxcala was never conquered by the Aztec empire, which adjoined it on all sides. In other words, unlike Stories 1 and 2, which were narrated by Valley of Mexico (Aztec) sources, Story 3 as a tale of cannibalism by trickery originates in territory that was still outside the Aztec empire when the Spaniards arrived in 1519. If they had arrived perhaps only 1 or 2 years later, however, Story 3 would be seen as an “Aztec” story, because the Aztec empire was clearly on the verge of conquering the whole Tlaxcala region in 1519 (Isaac 1983a). Furthermore, the story is set in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and attributes cannibalism by trickery to the Tenochca, not to the Tlaxcalteca.

The cannibalistic version of this story was written down by the sixteenth-century historian Diego Muñoz Camargo, a Tlaxcalan mestizo (Spanish father, Tlaxcalan-Nahua mother) who self-identified as a Spaniard (Acuña 1984:13). He included the story in the Tlaxcala City Relación Geográfica (Acuña 1984), completed in 1584. Much later, it was published in abridged form known as Historia de Tlaxcala (Muñoz Camargo 1892), the source more often consulted today.

The story concerns Tlahuicole, a famed Tlaxcala war captain in the second decade of the sixteenth century. He was a heroic man “of terrible and great strengths, who realized feats and deeds that seem incredible and superhuman” (Muñoz Camargo 1892:125). At last, he was captured by the army of neighboring Huexotzingo, at that moment the enemy of Tlaxcala (Isaac 1983a:423–425). Wishing to ingratiate themselves with the Aztecs—historically their dire enemies but momentarily (ca. 1517–1518) their allies—the Huexotzinca caged Tlahuicole and took him to Tenochtitlan, where they presented him to King Moctezuma “as a great trophy” (Muñoz Camargo 1892:126). The expected fate of a captured enemy soldier at the hands of the Aztecs (or of the Tlaxcalteca or Huejotzinca, for that matter) was ritual sacrifice, but Moctezuma so admired Tlahuicole that he offered him command of a large segment of the Aztec army. Tlahuicole accepted and distinguished himself greatly in a six-month war against the Tarascan empire to the west (i.e., in the opposite direction from Tlaxcala), in the present state of Michoacan (Muñoz Camargo 1892:126–127). At the end of this war, Moctezuma gave Tlahuicole the choice of remaining an Aztec army officer or returning to Tlaxcala, but Tlahuicole felt he could exercise neither option: the former would mean betrayal of his nation, because it would eventually bring him into combat against Tlaxcala; the latter would bring disgrace, not only because he had escaped heroic sacrificial death, but also because he had served already in the (enemy) Aztec army. Accordingly, he asked to be sacrificed. Muñoz Camargo (1892:127–128) continues the story thus:

Muñoz Camargo leaves us wondering about the cause of the shame: the eating of human flesh per se? The eating of one's wife? The eating of women's genitalia? The eating of the flesh of one's in-group? Alternatively, was Tlahuicole's eating of his wife's genitals shameful to the pre-Hispanic Nahua peoples or only to the Hispanicized Muñoz Camargo and his post-Conquest audience?

We receive no help with these matters from the Tenochtitlan versions of Tlahuicole's captivity and death by Durán (1994:448) and Tezozomoc (1980:643–645). As their accounts are very similar, I shall report mainly from Tezozomoc, whose difficult work will be less accessible to most readers. Tezozomoc says that Tlahuicole was captured by Tenochca (not Huexotzinca) troops on direct orders of King Moctezuma and that, when Tlahuicole was presented to him, King Moctezuma offered him consoling words and finery—but not the military command reported by Muñoz Camargo (1892:126–127). In captivity, Tlahuicole “cried every day upon remembering his wives, saying, ‘Is it possible, my women, that you shall never again see my eyes?’” (Tezozomoc 1980:645). Moctezuma was so disgusted by his trophy captive's sentimental whimpering that he sent him this message (Tezozomoc 1980:645):

Tlahuicole stopped crying, even stopped talking, but he was not offered an honorable death. Instead, he was released under a general ban against feeding him. In vain, he begged from house to house. Finally, desperate to recover his honor, he hurled himself to his death off the main temple pyramid in Tlatelolco, tumbling down the steep steps in the fashion of a sacrificial victim. In death, he was honored by the Tlatelolca, who sacrificed him (Tezozomoc 1980:646).

The Tenochtitlan sources (Durán and Tezozomoc) corroborate both the existence and the live capture of Tlahuicole, as well as the esteem in which his enemies held him, as narrated in the Tlaxcalan source (Muñoz Camargo 1892). However, they present a radically different version of the famed Tlaxcalteca's captivity and death. Most important, neither Durán (1994) nor Tezozomoc (1980) offers any hint of either feasts or cannibalism. Did none occur? Or were these events simply not recorded in the now disappeared Crónica X upon which Durán and Tezozomoc both drew heavily (Barlow 1945; Bernal 1994)?

Recently, Michel Graulich (2000) attempted a symbolic analysis that gives a positive interpretation to the cannibalism element in the Tlahuicole story. He interprets Muñoz Camargo's version as an iteration of the myth of the gods who, at the beginning of the Fifth Sun (the Aztec epoch), voluntarily sacrificed themselves to become companions of the sun. In this framework, Tlahuicole was fated to nourish eternally the masculine morning sun, while his wife was to nourish the feminine afternoon sun. “His wife is sacrificed and thus is a heroic woman…. Her husband, before dying, participates in her death and eats her feminine essence…. He acts as if he had conquered-sacrificed her himself” (Graulich 2000:93–94). But what about the Tenochtitlan versions (Durán, Tezozomoc), which do not contain the cannibalistic element? Unfazed, Graulich changes gears to concentrate on their inclusion of Tlahuicole's suicide in Tlatelolco (Tenochtitlan's subordinate sister city) and his longing for his wives (an element denoting cowardice or lack of manliness). By pining for his favorite wife, “the cowardly Tlahuicole … let himself be absorbed symbolically by his wife, but the brave [Tlahuicole], to the contrary, ate ‘la natura’ [the genitals] of his wife” (Graulich 2000:96), thereby absorbing her. In this symbolic sense, the cowardly Tlahuicole of the Tenochtitlan versions is likened to Tlatelolco's Moquihuix (of Story 2), who was given to inserting his forearm into his wife's vagina, “thusly allowing himself to be partially swallowed by her” (Graulich 2000:95–96). Tlahuicole's suicide ties him to the mythologized Toltec man-god Huemac, who also killed himself after his defeat and exile. That Tlahuicole ended his life in Tlateloco, which was subordinate to Tenochtitlan, ties him to the moon rather than the sun, to the feminine rather than the masculine—and, by implication, to the weak or cowardly rather than the strong or brave. Death in Tlatelolco also ties Tlahuicole with Moquihuix (of Story 2), “a king given to women as was Tlahuicole and as was Huemac of Tollan [Toltec Tula] … a king [Moquihuix] who made war against Mexico [Tenochtitlan], was defeated and [like Tlahuicole] killed himself by throwing himself off the great pyramid” of Tlatelolco (Graulich 2000:95; cf. Chimalpahin 1997:1:139, 2:51; Durán 1994:260; Tezozomoc 1980:393).

After all this zigzagging from one symbolic or temporal context to the next in an effort to wrap both versions of the Tlahuicole story into one or another of central Mexico's mythological shrouds—and, especially, to link symbolic feminine absorption of a man (Tenochtitlan version) with cannibalistic feminine absorption by a man (Tlaxcalan version)—Graulich (2000:97) poses the question, “Which of the two versions corresponds to the facts?” Astonishingly enough, he opts for the Tlaxcalan version (by Muñoz Camargo), finding it “less improbable because it was less reshaped [menos remodelada] by mythological thinking” (Graulich 2000:97).

The Three Stories Compared

The three stories—the only such Nahua narratives of which I am aware—share several basic elements. First, they involve cannibalism by trickery. Second, the trickery is originated by the Tenochca rulership against their political enemies. Third, the purpose of the trickery is humiliation and/or provocation of the enemy. Fourth, the stories seem intended to shock or amuse their audience by posing the consumption of human flesh as horrifying or incongruous. In other words, the clearly institutionalized custom portrayed in these stories is political trickery, not cannibalism.

The political content of all three stories deserves emphasis, because Aztec cannibalism is usually presented almost entirely in terms of its religious meanings (Carrasco 1999). In Story 1, the Xochimilca elders were goaded into armed resistance—“Let us do our best against them: Prepare and equip yourselves, Lords of Xochimilco, as the time has come” (Tezozomoc 1980:272)—rather than allowed the chance to incorporate peaceably into the new Aztec empire, as was sometimes done (Smith 1986). Defeating and subduing a bellicose Xochimilco justified the Tenochca expropriation and distribution among their own nobles of large amounts of that city-state's highly productive chinampas, or raised fields (Durán 1994:112–115; Monjarás-Ruiz 1980:117–118, 134–138, 144, 156; Tezozomoc 1980:276). In Story 2, cannibalism by trickery brought into the open the smoldering Tlatelolca plot, forcing the Tlatelolca to begin the uprising prematurely (and disastrously for them). Finally, the enveloping political context of Story 3 is the long and costly “flowery war” between the Aztecs and the Tlaxcala area (Isaac 1983a).

Their similarities notwithstanding, the three stories also display important differences that complicate their interpretation in terms of the larger and controversial subject of the empirical existence or nature of Aztec cannibalism. For instance, if we had only Story 2 and Story 3, we could conclude that the horrifying or incongruous element was simply the eating of the flesh of persons of the in-group. In Story 2, the Tlatelolca were tricked into eating their own ambassadors; in Story 3, Tlahuicole was tricked into eating his own wife's genitals. Story 1, however, is problematical for that interpretation, as the provenience of the human parts in the stew at the banquet in Xochimilco is left unspecified. Nevertheless, those human parts almost certainly were not derived from sacrificed captive Xochimilca, because the eventual war between Xochimilco and Tenochtitlan had not yet begun.

Similarly, if we had only Story 2 (Moquihuix) and Story 3 (Tlahuicole), we might conclude at first blush that they would be shocking or incongruous only to a post-Conquest audience, as neither of those two accounts reports shocked reactions by the alleged victims of the trick. Furthermore, as we have seen, Graulich (2000) has argued that Tlahuicole's eating his wife's genitals in the Tlaxcalan version of Story 3 was a positive element in the pre-Hispanic context. However, a close reading of Story 2 reveals that shock or humiliation is implied, because the victims of the trick were moved to declare war: “[t]his incident determined that, during [the next] 5 years, the Tenochcas and Tlatelolcas made war” (Chimalpahin 1965:207). In both versions of Story 1 (Xochimilca rulers), in contrast, the shock of the victims is explicitly related; also, Tezozomoc's version has this incident provoking the Xochimilca to initiate war: “[p]repare and equip yourselves, Lords of Xochimilco, as the time has come” (Tezozomoc 1980:272).

Turning to another dimension, if we had only Story 1 (Xochimilca rulers) and Story 3 (Tlahuicole), we could conclude that the trickery's shock value lay in the lack of ritual preparation of the human flesh for consumption. Although Tezozomoc's version of Story One includes the punctilious washing of the banquet ingredients purchased from the Tenochca market women, we have seen that we cannot reasonably construe that element as signifying the ritual bathing of human flesh. In Muñoz Camargo's version of Story 3 (Tlahuicole), we are told that the “great festivities, dances, and banquets” preceding Tlahuicole's death were performed “according to their ancient rites” (Muñoz Camargo 1892:127), but these “rites” are not explicitly connected with the preparation of his dead wife's genitalia for inclusion in the banquet soup. In Story 2 (Moquihuix), however, the ritual preparation of the human flesh is explicit: “[o]nce they were dead, they were bathed in order to boil them in a pot” (Chimalpahin 1965:207). In other words, even though the flesh was to be eaten unknowingly by a man the Aztec king wished to humiliate, the bodies from which the flesh was to be cut were ritually bathed (Sahagún 1970–81:Book 2:141, 162–168, Book 9:45, 61–67). This is an extremely important passage, as it means that the trick's shocking or repulsive character did not reside in the victim's eating unconsecrated human flesh. Rather, the crux of the matter would seem to be that he ate the flesh of his in-group or even of his own kinsmen or courtiers.

Finally, these stories enable us to say unambiguously that, under some circumstances, the eating of human flesh was unacceptable. It was this quality that enabled the Aztecs to humiliate their enemies and even goad them into launching war by tricking them into eating human flesh (or its broth, as in Story 1). Of special interest is that even ritual preparation (as in Story 2) did not always remove the stigma from the eating of human flesh. Also, the eating of the flesh of the in-group—or, at least, of known associates—was apparently repulsive (as in Story 2 and perhaps in Story 3), even if it had been ritually washed. Furthermore, simply the unexpected appearance of human flesh (as in Story 1) in an alimentary context could be shocking and frightening. This last aspect, especially, should put to rest any notion that the Aztecs were gustatory cannibals who lusted for human flesh as a delicacy (Durán 1994:141, 233, 272, 407, 474; cf. Muñoz Camargo 1892:141–142).