940 - 1550 - Mixtec
The Mixtecs were one of the most influential ethnic groups to emerge in Mesoamerica during the Post-Classic period after 900 AD. In the Mixteca Alta region, urbanism developed early (about 300 BC) and independently, just as it did in neighboring Central Mexico and the Valley of Oaxaca. In this region, no single urban center dominated the sociopolitical landscape; instead, polities were headed by hilltop cities that had smaller satellite communities in their hinterlands. Urban communities included complex systems of contour terraces (terraces following the natural contour of the slope) and lama-bordo terraces (check-dam terraces in adjoining drainages). Given the monumental investment in terracing, scholars have posited that Mixtec cities were centers of agricultural administration and production.
Pre-Columbian Mixtec documents are mainly concerned with histories, they record historical events such as royal births, wars and battles, royal marriages, forging of alliances, pilgrimages, and death of rulers. Only eight deerskin manuscripts have survived. Nevertheless, these manuscripts trace Mixtec history from 940 AD up to 1550 AD, deeper in time than any other Mesoamerican culture except the Maya. Outside of the places where once stood the palaces of the principal chiefs of the Mixtec and the residence and temples of their priests, namely, Tilantonge and Achiutla, little is known of the many other ruins found in the Mixtec country. Among these are the ruins of Yucu-Tichiyo. Even here little is now left of what at one time must have been an important center.
The Mixtecs, whose territory adjoined that of the Zapotecs on the northwest, extending partly into what is now the State of Guerrero, have been considered as related linguistically to the latter, and are placed in the Zapotecan stock. Although this assignment has been generally accepted, the correctness of the conclusion is somewhat doubtful. The differences linguistically and otherwise are wide. The importance of this question in this connection is in the bearing it has upon the origin of these tribes, a precisely similar case being found in the relation of the Totonacs to the Huastecas, though in this instance the two have been placed in different linguistic families.
The relation of the Zapotecs to the Mixtecs appears to have been that of long association rather than that of origin, and there is but little doubt that they must be classed among the earliest inhabitants of southern Mexico. It is possible, as already suggested, that the oldest evidences of the native civilization of Mexico and Central America are to be found here. It is true that the absence of the triangular arch in the architectural remains of this region is not absolute proof of great antiquity, nevertheless, it strongly corroborates that view so long as no other explanation is presented.
In culture the Mixtecs appear to have been the equals of the Zapotecs, though very few important architectural remains have been attributed to them. Nevertheless, it is said that they had a form of picture or hieroglyphic writing, and, in fact, some of the more recently discovered imperfect codices or manuscripts counted as Mexican, should probably be ascribed to them. The origin of these tribes must remain a subject of conjecture, as their traditional history is virtually a blank.
The Aztec civilization was at its height at the time of the Spanish conquest in the early 16th century. They arrived in the Valley of Mexico from the north toward the end of the 12th cent. and until the founding of their capital, Tenochtitlán (c.1325) were a poor, nomadic tribe absorbing the culture of nearby states. For the next century they maintained a precarious political autonomy while paying tribute to neighboring tribes, but by alliance, treachery, and conquest during the 15th and early 16th cent. they became a powerful political and cultural group. To the north they established hegemony over the Huastec, to the south over the Mixtec and Zapotec and even ventured as far as Guatemala.
After a series of long and arduous battles, the forces of the Aztec Emperor Moctezuma Ilhuicamina triumphed over the Mixtecs in 1458. Their subjugation of the people of Tlaxcala in the mountains to the east was bloody but only intermittent, and the Tlaxcala people later became allies of the Spanish against the Aztec. Only in the west, where the Tarascan Indians severely defeated them, did the Aztec completely fail to conquer.
Mixtec and Mije are two aboriginal nations of Oajaca, Southern Mexico, which have retained their Indian languages in a comparatively pure condition up to the present epoch. Mixtec is spoken in the western and northern parts of Oajaca, and also in the adjoining portions of the state of Guerrero, and is closely related to the Chuchon, Amusgo, Cuitlatec, and other idiomatic forms of speech heard in these parts. The Mixtec proper is divided into upper and lower Mixtec, the majority of the Pueblos speaking the upper Mixtec, or Mixteco alto. In former times the Pueblos of Tanguitian and of Tepuzculula were considered to speak the typical and purest form of the upper Mixtec.
Oaxaca is - by and large - the most ethnically complex of Mexico's thirty-one states. The two largest linguistic groups in this large collection are the Zapotec and Mixtec Indians, whose roots stretch very deeply into the early Mesoamerican era of Oaxaca. There are an estimated 500,000 Mixteco speakers today. Mixtecs are a minority indigenous non-Spanish-speaking group from the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, who entered the United States in the early 1980's. Because of their lack of education, inability to speak Spanish well, and their ethnic minority status in Mexico, they have come to occupy the bottom rung of the employment ladder in western U.S. agriculture. Estimates put them at about 10 percent of California farmworkers. The Mixtec tended to enter at the lowest rung of the job ladder and many remain there.
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