Kara & Nate are wrong

People celebrate the Day of the Dead in Aztec/Mayan tradition

“We always skip the history stuff….It’s boring”

Kara & Nate (YouTube Travel VLOG’ers with over 100,000 followers)

Oh rubbish. Just rubbish. How can you know what you are looking at if you have no idea how it got there? Every great story has a beginning. Without context there is no understanding, It is from understanding how things came to be that you appreciate the beauty of the world more deeply. Otherwise it’s just tacos, They are good tacos mind you, but that is it.

We went for a walk this morning. Our hotel is next to Plaza del la Constitucion (Zolaco district). This square is one of the largest in the world, second only to Red Square in Moscow. This is the heart of the city and many of the momentous events in the history of this country took place on these stones. In one corner of the square there are ruins of an ancient Aztec temple. Piles of rock, long buried, now exposed for all to see.

Plaza del la Constitucion

Mexico City is old; very old. It is one of two cities in the Western Hemisphere founded by Native Americans. It sits in the middle of an enormous volcanic caldera at 7400 feet above sea level. Today it covers 570 square miles and is home to over 20 million people.

Thousands of years ago almost the entire area was a lake. Some of the earliest inhabitants, the later Aztecs, settled a small fishing village near the edge. As the story goes, the early Aztec god, Huitzilopochtli, had a vision and saw an eagle landing on a cactus with a rattle snake it’s mouth. So the people decided to build a city here, in the middle of a lake. The year was 1325. The Pilgrims would not arrive in Massachusetts for another 295 years.

A statue commemorating the vision of the eagle and the rattlesnake. (Was the eagle just having lunch? We will never know for sure)

The Flag of Mexico celebrates the vision of the founding of Tenochtitlán (What would later become Mexico City)

During that time, in a feat of extraordinary engineering, they drained a large portion of the lake and built a city larger than London in the middle of an old volcano. It featured huge pyramids and a complex system of life and worship that is still studied today.

This is what the city looked like at the height of it’s glory. It was called Tenochtitlán.

Everything went swimmingly for around 200 years. Until on the afternoon of November 8th 1519 when a 34 year old Hernan Cortes arrived at the coast of Veracruz. He was there for one purpose, conquest and plunder. He was filled with stories of temples of gold that were in the Mexican hinterland beyond. Cortes, along with around 600 men, marched inland and by June 1520 came over the lip of the caldera to see Tenochtitlán for the first time.

The center of the Aztec city with Temple Major on the left.

Can you imagine what they must of thought? A huge city in the middle of a lake with tall pyramids that were brightly painted and rose high into the hot sun. The Aztecs were by all accounts also filled with wonder.

At first they welcomed the visitors and showered them with gifts. However, Spanish appetites were not easily satiated. Conflict erupted and the Spanish were driven off. But not before they left a gift. The Europeans brought small pox with them and the Aztecs and no immunity. Thousands died. The Spanish laid siege to Tenochtitlán. It was on a lake and easily surrounded.

Eventually the Aztecs were overcome. The city was overrun and the Spanish did what every good European would do, they razed the city to the ground. Below are pictures of all that remains of the once formidable Temple Major.

This is what the temple looked like with it's bright colors at the time of Cortes. The cut away shows the many times it had new layers added on

So the story continues. What did the Spanish do? Well they dedicated their victory to God and destroyed the Aztec temple and used the stones to build the magnificent Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary into Heavens. This beautiful church still stands there today and despite many earthquakes and shifting soil it has yet to fall down. Despite the fact that it is built on a volcano and a lake. Here are some images of this splendid old building.

Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary into Heavens

Next to the church lies the archeological remains of the Templo Mayor - the temple and glory of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán - on whose bones this beautiful square was built.

The church took over 250 years to build which is longer than the entire span of the Aztec empire.

The ruins of Temple Major with the cathedral in the distance

It’s a good story. These stones we were walking on have a lot to say. Kara and Nate are foolish to leave this part of traveling out.

We had tacos for lunch. They were very good.