The Mixtecs (since -5000), who call themselves the Ñudzahui, are the fourth largest Indian (Native American) ethnic group in Mexico, the largest after the Aztecs, Maya and Zapotecs. Like them, they were part of the Mesoamerican civilization founded by the Olmecs.
By -5000 they were living in Mixteca, their present homeland in southern Mexico. The heart of it is made up of dozens of valleys high in the mountains of western Oaxaca state. Each valley is almost a world unto itself.
By -1500 they had become settled farmers.
By +650 the Mixtecs had irrigation, towns, nobles, craftsmen and peasants. They were ruled by the Zapotecs to the east.
By the 900s the Zapotec empire had fallen. That led to the War That Came From Heaven (963-969) and, in time, the rise of 8-Deer Jaguar Claw (1063-1115), who brought all of Mixteca under his rule.
In 1100:
- Size: maybe 1.5 million people.
- Location: Mixteca.
- Language: Mixtec languages, written in pictographs.
- Religion: priests talked to the gods and the dead. The highest priest was the Sun made flesh. Everything, living or dead, had a spirit. Sweat lodges. War was a human sacrifice to the earth, sun and rain.
- Dress: heavily class-coded. Nobles dressed in cotton, peasants in ixtle (maguey fibre).
- Food: maize, beans, squash. Tamales. Turkey with spicy chocolate sauce. Rabbit. They grew avocados, tomatoes, chili peppers, etc.
- Drugs: tobacco, ololiuqui (from Turbina corymbosa, which produces LSA, a weak cousin of LSD).
- Family: patriarchal: the father is the main breadwinner and decision maker.
- Land: communal.
- Technology: writing, calendar, farming, irrigation, terraced fields, use of copper, gold, silver, turquoise, jade. By the 1400s, they made some of the best pots, books and jewellery of Mesoamerica. No beasts of burden and therefore no wheels! Spears, atlatls (spear throwers), shields and axes used in warfare.
In the 1400s the Aztecs took over, but did not force their culture on them. In the 1500s the Spanish took over. They used massacres to cow them, but did not wipe them out to take their land (the Anglo American practice). The Spanish burned all but eight of their books, among them:
- Codex Colombino-Becker
- Codex Bodley
- Codex Selden I
- Codex Vindobensis
- Codex Nuttall-Zouche (pictured below)
In the 1800s the land was becoming worn out. Many left Mixteca seeking work, in Mexico City (late 1800s), north-west Mexico (early 1900s) and the US (late 1900s). Most are farm workers.
They face racism from Mexicans because they are Indian and from Anglo Americans because they are Mexican!
In 2016 (latest figures):
- Size: 1 million
- Location: Mexico and US, especially Mixteca (67%) and California (13%).
- Language: Mixtec languages (50%), written in Latin letters; Spanish, English.
- Religion: Catholicism, laid on top of older beliefs and practices.
- Dress: mainly Western.
- Food: both Mixtec and “mestizo”. Also beer, soft drinks, junk food – and grasshoppers!
- Drugs: some grow marijuana and opium poppies.
- Family: less patriarchal since many men are away for months or years at a time working.
- Land: Mexican government land titles, which the Mixtec interpret as communal farming rights.
- Technology: trucks, television, wheelbarrow, donkey.
– Abagond, 2016.
Sources: especially Mixtec.org; “The Legend of Lord Eight Deer” (2002) by John M.D. Pohl; and “The Song of Oaxaca” in National Geographic (November 1994).
See also:
- Welcome to Hispanic Heritage Month 2106
- The term Hispanic
- The term Indian
- Mexico
- Mexican Americans
- Mesomerica
- Filipino Americans
- Catholic
- immigrants
- The Spanish
- Anglo Americans
663
Very cool! Can you imagine how amazing it would be to discover a cache of well-preserved books the Spanish didn’t find and burn? A literary Machu Picchu!
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I know an Oaxacan who still speaks wistfully of his mother’s chapulines (grasshoppers or crickets) fried with chiles and sprinkled with lime juice. Some local Mexican restaurants will serve chapulines on request.
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Amazing, I have never heard of the Mixtecs before now. Like Hark said it is so sad that their books have been destroyed,
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Enlightening post do more of these.
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I live in California and I’ve never even seen a museum with a Mixtec book!
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@ Glenn
There’s a reason for that. Almost all the survivng Mixtec codices were taken to Europe centuries ago.
According to Wikpedia, the Codex Colombino-Becker was divided in two.
“Half is at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. It is the only Mesoamerican codex that remains in Mexican territory.” The Becker half is in Vienna (apparently under private ownership).
Codex Bodley and Codex Selden I are at the Bodleian Library of Oxford University, England.
Codex Nuttall-Zouche and Codex Egerton are at the British Museum in London.
Codex Vindobensis is at the Austrian National Library in Vienna.
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One interesting recent development, according to Wikipedia:
“In the 1950s, an accidental scratch revealed that the Selden Codex might overlay an earlier document later covered over with a layer of gypsum and chalk, a palimpsest. But given the fragility of the Codex, the faint tracings seen through the scratch could not be further revealed. Traditional x-ray techniques would not be effective since the tracings were organic in composition. In 2016, researchers reported that they had successfully unveiled the underlying pre-Columbian writing using a newer scanning technique. Early analysis of the writing suggests that the original writing includes a history of the Mixtec culture with hitherto unknown details.”
So researchers right now are working on translating this “new” Mixtec book!
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More on the high-tech imaging of Codex Selden:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-08/e-hir081816.php
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@Solitaire
Thanks for that link.
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@ Solitaire
Wow! That’s wonderful.
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@ Abagond
Isn’t it?!
I did a little more research and found out that two of the Maya codices only resurfaced in Europe in the mid-1800s, so it’s possible that others may yet be discovered hidden away in attics.
Archaeologists have found some other Maya codices that have solidified into lumps which currently cannot be opened or read but have been saved in the hope that future technological advances may allow them to be restored or deciphered. There is also the Grolier Codex, which supposedly was discovered in a cave in the 1960s and is partially legible, but its authenticity is still debated.
However, it is depressing that only half of one Mixtec codex and no Maya codices except the possibly fraudulent Grolier Codex are still located in Mexico instead of across the Atlantic.
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As an aside, there is similarity between ancient Mexican temples and those of India, and also between some of the food of both these countries.
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