Altepetl

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The altepetl, in Pre-Columbian and conquest-era Aztec society, was the local, ethnically-based political entity. The word is a combination of the Nahuatl words ā-tl, meaning "water", and tepē-tl, meaning "mountain". According to the Nahuatl scholars Lisa Sousa, Stafford Poole, and James Lockhart, "A characteristic Nahua mode was to imagine the totality of the people of a region or of the world as a collection of altepetl units and to speak of them on those terms." For this reason, the word altepetl refers not only to the polis, but also to all its inhabitants. They, like many scholars of Nahuatl, prefer the Nahuatl term over any English language approximation. They argue that in many of the documents pertaining to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the word "āltepētl" is often used as a translation of the Spanish "Ciudad de México", (Mexico City), a translation that has colored the interpretation of the texts and conceptions of Nahua society.

[edit] References

García Martínez, Bernardo (2001). "Community Kingdoms: Central Mexico (Nahua)", in Davíd Carrasco: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures: The Civilizations of Mexico and Central America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, vol. 1, pp. 238–239. ISBN 0-19-510815-9. OCLC 44019111.

Gibson, Charles [1964] (1983). The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1810. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-0912-2. OCLC 9359010.

Lockhart, James [1992] (1996). The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-2317-6. OCLC 24283718.

Noguez, Xavier (2001). "Altepetl", in Davíd Carrasco: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures: The Civilizations of Mexico and Central America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, vol. 1, pp. 12–13. ISBN 0-19-510815-9. OCLC 44019111.