Zultepec

Zultepec was an Aztec town which had many white-stucco temples and was the home to approximately 5,000 people, mostly priests and farmers. Today Zultepec is known as Calpulalpan which is in the state of Tlaxcala (100 miles east of Mexico City).

A recent archaeological expedition revealed that Aztec warriors captured a caravan of Spanish conquistadors as they traveled to Tenochtitlan in 1520 in response to the murder of Cacamatzin, King of Aztec city,Texcoco. This expedition reveals that the Aztecs did resist the Spanish Conquest.

The Aztecs imprisoned the Spanish caravan and over the course of six months, several hundred Spaniards were sacrificed, tortured and partially eaten. The bones found shows that about 550 victims had their hearts ripped out during ritual offerings as well as hard their bones boiled and scraped clean.

"It was a continuous sacrifice over six months. While the prisoners were listening to their companions being sacrificed, the next ones were being selected," Enrique Martinez, director of the archaeologist dig explained to a visiting reporter from the Reuters news agency.

Initially, the Aztecs welcomed the Spaniards because they believed that they were their returning gods. Montezuma suspected them to be “divine envoys” of the god Quetzalcoatl, who was prophesied to return in 1519 on the Aztec calendar. The Spaniards were led by Hernan Cortes who took advantage of the Aztecs, by taking Montezuma hostage, where he could control the empire through him. When Cortes found out what was being done to his people in Zultepec he renamed the town Tecuaque which means "where people were eaten" in the indigenous Nahuatl language. He then sent an army to destroy the town.

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