Editing Aztecs (section)

===The Aztecs and Mexico's national identity===
[[File:Flag of Mexico.svg|thumb|Modern Mexico flag, depicting a [[Mexican golden eagle|Mexican eagle]] perched on a [[Opuntia|prickly pear cactus]] devouring a [[rattlesnake]]. The design is rooted in the legend of the Aztec people.<ref name="Minahan">{{cite book |last=Minahan |first=James B. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jfrWCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA718 |title=The Complete Guide to National Symbols and Emblems |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2009 |isbn=9780313344978 |page=718 |access-date=2020-09-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230421070239/https://books.google.com/books?id=jfrWCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA718 |archive-date=2023-04-21 |url-status=live}}</ref>]]
Aztec culture and history have been central to the formation of a Mexican national identity after Mexican independence in 1821. In 17th and 18th century Europe, the Aztecs were generally described as barbaric, gruesome, and culturally inferior.{{sfn|Keen|1971|pp=260–270}} Even before [[New Spain|Mexico]] achieved its independence, American-born Spaniards (''criollos'') drew on Aztec history to ground their search for symbols of local pride, separate from that of Spain. Intellectuals used [[Aztec codices|Aztec writings]], such as those collected by [[Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl|Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl]], and writings of [[Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc]], and [[Chimalpahin]] to understand Mexico's indigenous past in texts by indigenous writers. This search became the basis for what historian [[David Brading|D.A. Brading]] calls "creole patriotism". Seventeenth-century cleric and scientist, [[Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora]] acquired the manuscript collection of Texcocan nobleman Alva Ixtlilxochitl. Creole Jesuit [[Francisco Javier Clavijero]] published ''La Historia Antigua de México'' (1780–1781) in his Italian exile following the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, in which he traces the history of the Aztecs from their migration to the last Aztec ruler, Cuauhtemoc. He wrote it expressly to defend Mexico's indigenous past against the slanders of contemporary writers, such as Pauw, Buffon, Raynal, and [[William Robertson (historian)|William Robertson]].{{sfn|Brading|1991|pp=450–455}} Archeological excavations in 1790 in the capital's main square uncovered two massive stone sculptures, buried immediately after the fall of Tenochtitlan in the conquest. Unearthed were the famous calendar stone, as well as a statue of Coatlicue. [[Antonio de León y Gama]]'s 1792 ''Descripción histórico y cronológico de las dos piedras'' examines the two stone monoliths. A decade later, German scientist [[Alexander von Humboldt]] spent a year in Mexico, during his four-year expedition to Spanish America. One of his early publications from that period was ''Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas''.{{sfn|Humboldt|2014}} Humboldt was important in disseminating images of the Aztecs to scientists and general readers in the Western world.{{sfn|Quiñones Keber|1996}}
[[File:Grabado_de_la_Fundación_de_México.svg|thumb|[[Motecuhzoma II]]'s [[Teocalli of the Sacred War]] emblem, which depicts an eagle on a cactus holding the [[Aztec writing|glyph]] for war, ''atl-tlachinolli'' in the middle of a lake, the mythical symbol which the Aztecs were said to have seen at the site where the city of Mexica was founded.{{sfn|Berdan|Anawalt|1997|p=3}}]]
In the realm of religion, late colonial paintings of the [[Virgin of Guadalupe]] have examples of her depicted floating above the iconic nopal cactus of the Aztecs. [[Juan Diego]], the Nahua to whom the apparition was said to appear, links the dark Virgin to Mexico's Aztec past.{{sfn|Peterson|2014|pp=176, 227}}

When [[New Spain]] achieved independence in 1821 and became a monarchy, the [[First Mexican Empire]], its [[Flag of Mexico|flag]] had the traditional Aztec eagle on a nopal cactus. The eagle had a crown, symbolizing the new Mexican monarchy. When Mexico became a republic after the overthrow of the first monarch [[Agustín de Iturbide]] in 1822, the flag was revised to show the eagle with no crown. In the 1860s, when the French established the [[Second Mexican Empire]] under [[Maximilian I of Mexico|Maximilian of Habsburg]], the Mexican flag retained the emblematic eagle and cactus, with elaborate symbols of monarchy. After the defeat of the French and their Mexican collaborators, the Mexican Republic was re-established, and the flag returned to its republican simplicity.<!--<ref>Natividad Gutierrez. Nationalist Myths and Ethnic Identities: Indigenous Intellectuals and the Mexican State. U of Nebraska Press, 1999 {{page needed|date=April 2018}}</ref>-->{{sfn|Galindo Leal|Sarukhán Kermez|Wright|Carr|2017}} This emblem has also been adopted as Mexico's national [[Coat of arms of Mexico|coat of arms]], and is emblazoned on official buildings, seals, and signs.{{sfn|Berdan|Anawalt|1997|p=3}}

Tensions within post-independence Mexico pitted those rejecting the ancient civilizations of Mexico as a source of national pride, the ''Hispanistas'', mostly politically conservative Mexican elites, and those who saw them as a source of pride, the ''Indigenistas'', who were mostly liberal Mexican elites. Although the flag of the Mexican Republic had the symbol of the Aztecs as its central element, conservative elites were generally hostile to the current indigenous populations of Mexico or crediting them with a glorious pre-Hispanic history. Under Mexican President [[Antonio López de Santa Anna]], pro-indigenist Mexican intellectuals did not find a wide audience. With Santa Anna's overthrow in 1854, Mexican liberals and scholars interested in the indigenous past became more active. Liberals were more favorably inclined toward the Indigenous populations and their history, but considered a pressing matter being the "Indian Problem". Liberals' commitment to equality before the law meant that for upwardly mobile Indigenous, such as Zapotec [[Benito Juárez]], who rose in the ranks of the liberals to become Mexico's first president of Indigenous origins, and Nahua intellectual and politician [[Ignacio Manuel Altamirano|Ignacio Altamirano]], a disciple of [[Ignacio Ramírez (politician)|Ignacio Ramírez]], a defender of the rights of the indigenous, liberalism presented a way forward in that era. For investigations of Mexico's indigenous past, however, the role of moderate liberal [[José Fernando Ramírez]] is important, serving as director of the National Museum and doing research utilizing codices, while staying out of the fierce conflicts between liberals and conservatives that led to a decade of civil war. Mexican scholars who pursued research on the Aztecs in the late 19th century were [[:es:Francisco Pimentel|Francisco Pimentel]], [[:es:Antonio García Cubas|Antonio García Cubas]], [[Manuel Orozco y Berra]], [[Joaquín García Icazbalceta]], and [[Francisco del Paso y Troncoso]] contributing significantly to the 19th-century development of Mexican scholarship on the Aztecs.{{sfn|Cline|1973}}
[[File:MonumentCuauhtemocPaseo2.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.8|[[Monument to Cuauhtémoc]], inaugurated 1887 by [[Porfirio Díaz]] in Mexico City]]
The late 19th century in Mexico was a period in which Aztec civilization became a point of national pride. The era was dominated by liberal military hero, [[Porfirio Díaz]], a [[mestizo]] from Oaxaca who was president of Mexico from 1876 to 1911. His policies opening Mexico to foreign investors and modernizing the country under a firm hand controlling unrest, "Order and Progress", undermined Mexico's indigenous populations and their communities. However, for investigations of Mexico's ancient civilizations, his was a benevolent regime, with funds supporting archeological research and for protecting monuments.{{sfn|Bueno|2016}} "Scholars found it more profitable to confine their attention to Indians who had been dead for a number of centuries."{{sfn|Keen|1971|p=417}} His benevolence saw the placement of a [[Monument to Cuauhtémoc|monument to Cuauhtemoc]] in a major traffic roundabout (''glorieta'') of the wide [[Paseo de la Reforma]], which he inaugurated in 1887. In world fairs of the late 19th century, Mexico's pavilions included a major focus on its indigenous past, especially the Aztecs. Mexican scholars such as [[Alfredo Chavero]] helped shape the cultural image of Mexico at these exhibitions.{{sfn|Tenorio-Trillo|1996}} 
[[File:La Gran Tenochtitlan.JPG|upright=1.5<!--fmt for very low image-->|thumb|Detail of Diego Rivera's mural depicting the Aztec market of Tlatelolco at the [[National Palace (Mexico)|Mexican National palace]]]]
The [[Mexican Revolution]] (1910–1920) and the significant participation of Indigenous people in the struggle in many regions, ignited a broad government-sponsored political and cultural movement of ''[[Indigenismo in Mexico|indigenismo]]'', with symbols of Mexico's Aztec past becoming ubiquitous, most especially in [[Mexican muralism]] of [[Diego Rivera]].{{sfn|Helland|1990}}{{sfn|Wolfe|2000|p=147}}

In their works, Mexican authors such as [[Octavio Paz]] and [[Agustin Fuentes]] have analyzed the use of Aztec symbols by the modern Mexican state, critiquing the way it adopts and adapts indigenous culture to political ends, yet they have also in their works made use of the symbolic idiom themselves. Paz for example critiqued the architectural layout of the [[National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico)|National Museum of Anthropology]], which constructs a view of Mexican history as culminating with the Aztecs, as an expression of a nationalist appropriation of Aztec culture.{{sfn|Franco|2004}}