What's Aztlan?

Question

Is it a place? A group?

Answer 1

Aztlan is a native Mexican or Aztec word, which means "azt" whiteness and "lan" means land. It is related to the heroic migration of the first Mexicans from a place some scholars believe is Utah, near Salt Lake City. Their leader was called Mexica, who took led them to the valley of Mexico.

Today's Mexicans claim to have come from a place called Aztlan, which is really in the United States. The Ute indians of Utah spoke a language similar to Aztec. Some scholars call the language group Uto-Aztecan.

Answer 2

Aztlán is the legendary ancestral home of the Nahua peoples, one of the main cultural groups in Mesoamerica. "Azteca" is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlan".

The legend
Nahuatl legends relates that seven tribes lived in Chicomoztoc, or "the place of the seven caves". Each cave represented a different Nahua group: the Xochimilca, Tlahuica, Acolhua, Tlaxcalan, Tepaneca, Chalca, and Mexica. Because of a common linguistic origin, those groups also are called "Nahuatlaca" (Nahua people). These tribes subsequently left the caves and settled in Aztlán.

The various descriptions of Aztlán are contradictory. While some legends describe Aztlan as a paradise, Aubin Codex says that they were subject to a tyrant elite called the Azteca Chicomoztoca. Guided by their priest, the Aztec fled, and on the road, their god Huitzilopochtli forbid them to call themselves Azteca, telling them that they should be known as Mexica (pronounced "meshica"). Ironically, the scholars of the 19th century would name them Aztec.

The role of the homeland of Aztlan is slightly less important to Aztec legendary histories than the migration to Tenochtitlan itself. According to the legend, the southward migration began around 830 CE. Each of the seven groups is credited with founding a different major city-state in Central Mexico. The city-states reputed to have an Aztec foundation were:

- Xochimilco,
- Tlahuica (in the modern-day state of Morelos),
- Acolhua,
- Tlaxcala,
- bHuexotzinca (the modern-day city of Puebla, Puebla),
- Tepaneca (now Azcapotzalco, a delegación of the Mexican Federal District),and
- Matlatzinca (whose language was otomian and not of the Uto-Aztecan family).
These city states formed during the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerica (1300-1521 CE).

According to Aztec legends, the Mexica were the last tribe to emigrate and they took 302 years to reach their destination. When they arrived at the Anahuac Valley, the present-day Valley of Mexico, all available land had been taken, and they were forced to squat on the edge of the Lake Texcoco.

While Aztlán has many trappings of myth, similar to Tamoanchan, Chicomoztoc, Tollan and Cibola, archaeologists have nonetheless attempted to identify the geographic place of origin for the Mexica.-

Answer 3

It's the legendary ancestral home of the Nahua peoples, one of the main cultural groups in Mesoamerica. "Azteca" is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlan"

Answer 4

A group called MECHA that was started by the communist back in the 60's coined the term. It to represent the lands that the U.S. of A. conquered from Spain, Mexico and indigenous people. It means Aztec Land. Of course the Aztecs were never indigenous to North America. It's supposed to represent all the lands conquered from indigenous peoples. It was part of the divide and conquer strategy of the time. It's a movement still popular in west coast campus'. unheard of in Mexico or anywhere else in Latin American. Believe me when I say "Mexico will never give anything back to the indigenous people still living in that country."

Answer 5

Hi.

Aztlan was a mythic place where the Aztecs found an eagle eating a snake. In that place they built Tenochtitlan
It was in Mexico.

Answer 6

A place in the southwest.