Article suitable for older students

The Aztecs and disability

31st Dec 2023

Aztec statues of old and disabled people

Following two questions from readers (Tenoch and Kornél) on how the Mexica treated, respectively, deaf and disabled people, one thing seems clear: ‘Disability was not a phenomenon that was discriminated against, nor that resulted in the exclusion of people, in fact it was quite the opposite. The disabled were treated respectfully and were offered care and social protection...’ The Huehuetlatolli (Discourses of the Elders) specifically stressed ‘Do not mock the old, the sick, the blind, the cripple, the lame, the mute, the deaf, the insane...’ (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

The first quote above comes from one of the very few academic studies of this subject (Viesca & Ramos R. de Viesca, 2017). They see disability as an integral part of the mythology and cosmovision of ancient Mesoamerica. After all, they point out, it features in creation stories and even in the aspects of individual deities. Nanahuatzin, the ‘future solar star’ was himself disabled and diseased, including showing signs of advanced syphilis; yet he is the only one able to crack open the Mountain of Sustenance to obtain maize for humans and later brave enough to jump into fire to become the Sun - not without first declaring himself to be ‘poor and ill’...

The authors go on to mention several Mexica deities who in one way or another relate to the concept of disability - Tezcatlipoca, Xolotl, Tlazolteotl, Quetzalcoatl, Atlatonan...
Whilst the Inca empire in the Andes appears to have implemented a raft of measures by which the state could provide disability rights to its citizens (see Keoke and Porterfield, 2002), the Aztec empire didn’t lag far behind. Moctezuma Xocoyotzin established a rest home near Culhuacan for injured war veterans, where they were ‘decorously’ accommodated and cared for; Sahagún specifically mentions medical treatments for those with limited mobility; albinos, hunchbacks and dwarfs were given special status in royal palaces and were believed to have more immediate access to the world of the sacred (albinos, for instance, alongside those struck by lightning, being under the direct and privileged care of Tlaloc); and according to the Huehuetlatolli (Teachings of the Elders) the Aztec citizenry were taught not to poke fun at the disabled but rather to give them preferential respect and care.

As for those with hearing impediments, we can only deduce that similarly preferential care was provided. We get hints of this from the vocabulary in Nahuatl noted by Sahagún’s Nahua informants. In Book 10 of the Florentine Codex virtually an entire page is given to (over sixty) words and phrases describing individual parts of the ear, hearing problems (aches, blockages, closures...) and likely remedies such as ‘smoking’ the ear. And in the 16th century Nahuatl dictionary of Fray Alonso de Molina, there are some forty terms, ranging from deafness (nacaztapalihuiliztli), ear wax, blockages, ‘illnesses of the ears’, noises that deafen, piercings, through to ‘purge material from the ears’ (nacaztemaloa).
More (diagnostic) details appear when we break down the Nahuatl phrases. tapalihui, for instance, can mean, according to Molina, to become covered with hives, as if a connection was made between one kind of deafness and some visible wounds, sores, bruises, or hives at the level of the ears.

As to whether the Mexica-Aztecs had any kind of non-verbal language, we can only conjecture. Whilst we know that several such languages have evolved in contemporary Maya communities (Le Guen, 2019), no evidence exists to point to any pre-invasion antecedents for these (Le Guen, personal communication). At the same time, ‘The putative “signing” or hand-language for deaf folks employed by the Yucatec Maya is probably a legacy of a very old pan-Maya system of communication’ (Dillon, personal communication). What’s more, ‘If the treatment of modern Yucatec Maya deaf is any example, the deaf were accommodated and functioned well [in ancient Mesoamerica] as societal members’ (Smith, personal communication).
In conclusion, being ‘different’ - and disability played a major part in this - meant being favoured by the gods, chosen to fulfil a special mission in this life: principally, to be near rulers and lords in order to serve them as intermediaries with the divine. A good example of this would be Moctezuma Xocoyotzin sending his dwarfs to the caves of Iztaccíhuatl mountain to try to learn more of the nature and motives of the advancing Spaniards.

Redundant though the idea may be, one wonders whether in a society such as the Mexica-Aztec world, in which oral communication was paramount, it may have been harder to cope with the challenges of daily life being deaf than being blind.

Huehuetlatolli quote is abridged from Discourses of the Elders: The Aztec Huehuetlatolli - A First English Translation by Sebastian Purcell, 2023, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, p. 8.

Sources:-
• Florentine Codex Book 10 - The People (1961), trans. Charles E. Dibble & Arthur J.O. Anderson, School of American Research/University of Utah, Santa Fe
• Keoke, Emory Dean & Porterfield, Kay Marie (2002) Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World, Facts on File Inc., New York
• Le Guen, Olivier (2019) ‘Emerging Sign Languages of Mesoamerica’, Sign Language Studies, vol. 19, no. 3, Spring, pp. 375-409
• Molina, Fray Alfonso de (2013) Vocabulario en lengua Castellana/Mexicana, Editorial Porrúa, Mexico City
• Viesca, Carlos & Ramos R. de Viesca, Mariblanca (2017) ‘La discapacidad en el pensamiento y la medicina náhuatl’, Cuicuilco Revista de Ciencias Antropológicas no. 70, Sept-Dec., pp. 171-193
Thanks to Brian Dervin Dillon and Hubert Smith for their personal communications via the Aztlan e-list, and to Proyecto Hunab Ku, Puebla.

Picture sources:-
• Main, pix 3 & 5: photos by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Pic 1: illustration created for Mexicolore by Louis Fogerty
• Pic 2: image from the Florentine Codex scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994
• Pic 4: image from the Codex Mendoza (original in the Bodleian Library, Oxford) scanned from the James Cooper Clark 1938 facsimile edition, London.

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