Article suitable for older students

Human sacrifice or debt payment to the gods?

31st Mar 2024

A child’s model of blood on an Aztec temple-pyramid

Without doubt the most controversial aspect of Mexica-Aztec society is the concept of ‘human sacrifice’. Leaving aside the polemics surrounding the practice - our position is that it took place, but not remotely on the scale claimed by the Spanish - what is the best term to use to describe it? What, for instance, did the Nahua themselves call it...? (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

Book 2 of the Florentine Codex - titled ‘The Ceremonies’ - contains 38 chapters, spelling out the 18 ‘feasts’ in the Mexica agricultural calendar followed by a description of each festival in turn. In the majority of them the opening sentence speaks of the ‘debt-payment’ that the people ‘celebrated’ in honour of the respective deity or deities. The Nahuatl word is nextlaoaliztli, or nextlahualiztli, plural nextlahualtin. One of the roots of this word is ixtlahua meaning ‘to pay off a debt’.
In Alfonso de Molina’s classic 16th century Nahuatl dictionary nextlahualli is translated as sacrificio de sangre (blood sacrifice).

Centuries later, Cecilio Robelo proposed a caveat: that the initial Nahuatl root is nextli (ashes), followed by tlahua, to pay, recalling that Sahagún mentions offerings of paper sprinkled with rubber, burnt and ritually buried to seek release from certain illnesses. This is confirmed by López Austin, in connection with rituals dedicated to the gods of rain. In his masterful work The Human Body and Ideology, the eminent Mexican historian explains this practice in the context of Mexica (self-)sacrifice:-
’The object of flesh piercing and bloodletting was to cause physical pain and to obtain the vital fluid to offer to the gods. Although every man was obliged to give some of his own blood to the gods, the donation of blood did not have to be accompanied by suffering. Although adults had to pierce their tongues to obtain blood, infants still in the cradle had their ears pierced, a part of the body where the wound is more tolerable.

‘A donation could be made in return for some benefit, and this was called a “payment” (nextlahualli), the same term that was used for sacrifices offered in exchange for rain, security, or health.’
It’s important to recall that, in Mexica mythology, the gods had long ago sacrificed themselves in order to kick-start our (fifth) world - in return they demanded, and needed, a constant supply of blood offerings from humans to fuel the divine engine maintaining cosmic balance. ‘Human sacrifices’ thus ‘originated in the concept of gods in need, starving, desirous of vital force. Man, dependent on divine gifts, must restore vigour to his benefactors by surrendering energy from the different components of his own organism’ - the most precious and valuable, of course, being the human heart itself.
In summary, ‘Payment is made with the ritual [of sacrifice] and requests are made. Ritual aids and feeds the ever-hungry gods... The festival is the culmination of the dialogue or the interchange [with the gods]’ (López Austin 1993: 153).

Sources:-
• López Austin, Alfredo (1988) The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas, vol. 1, trans. Thelma Ortiz de Montellano & Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, University of Utah Press (esp. chapter ‘The Body in the Universe’)
• ------ (1993) The Myths of the Opossum: Pathways of Mesoamerican Mythology, trans. Bernard R. & Thelma Ortiz de Montellano, University of New Mexico Press
• Molina, Fray Alfonso de (2013) Vocabulario en lengua Castellana/Mexicana, Editorial Porrúa, Mexico City
• Robelo, Cecilio A. (1951) Diccionario de Mitología Nahuatl, 2nd. ed., Ediciones Fuente Cultural, Mexico City
• Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de (1981) Florentine Codex Book 2 - The Ceremonies, trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson & Charles E. Dibble, School of American Research & University of Utah, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
• Siméon, Rémi (1991) Diccionario de la lengua nahuatl o mexicana, Siglo Veintiuno, Mexico City.

Pictures from the Mexicolore archives (photos taken at an English primary school c. 1990).