By Deborah Van Hoewyk

The Aztecs are one group of Mexico’s ancient indigenous peoples; although it is a diverse group, the different peoples are connected through use of some version of Nahuatl language. They called themselves the Mexica, arrived in what is now Mexico City in the 1300s, and were conquered by Hernán Cortés in 1521. In their short two centuries of rule, however, they established an empire that stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico and had over 400 to 500 small states and 5 to 6 million people.

How Do We Know What We Know About the Aztecs?

Until recently, our knowledge of the Aztecs – not to mention the Maya, the Olmecs, the Zapotecs, the Mixtecs (there are more) – was based on “codices,” manuscript histories written by indigenous people at the request of the conquistadors. Friars who had learned the local native language then translated the manuscripts into Spanish, and they were shipped back to the European monarchs as reports on their colonies. The codices are useful resources, but they’re more than a bit iffy about “what came before.”

Recently historians and anthropologists have begun investigating earlier writings by ancient Mexicans. In a recent (2019) book, Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, Camilla Townsend from Rutgers University, notes that “the Native Americans were more intrigued by the Roman alphabet than the Spaniards ever knew. Unbeknownst to the newcomers, the Aztecs took it home and used it to write detailed histories in their own language.”

Until now, no one paid much attention to these sources, but there has been a major effort to integrate pre- and post-conquest documents to reach a better understanding of ancient Latin American civilizations. Townsend’s book – which makes the point that the Conquest was not “introductory or climactic,” but “pivotal” in the long story of Mexico – gives us a history, in their own words, of a people who lived complex, nuanced lives in a cultural context the Spanish barely attempted to understand.

In searching for a more accurate understanding of the Aztecs – were they bloodthirsty savages? Focused only on warfare? Superstitious and easily duped into surrender? – Townsend, among other historians, introduces new perspectives to understanding “these complex and often mischaracterized people.”

Gender and Sex, Polygamy and Politics

The big picture for Aztec sex is that it occurred primarily in marriage, although the upper classes practiced “polygyny,” the kind of polygamy where a man can have multiple wives; there was no such privilege for women. There was one “true” wife, presumably the first, and the others were sometimes called “weavers.” In Aztec culture, women were the weavers, textiles were very valuable, so having many weavers increased the man’s wealth – Moctezuma had hundreds of wives. Men could also keep concubines – women to whom they were not married.

Aztec historian Caroline Dodds Pennock of the University of Sheffield in the UK looked at “Gender and Aztec Life Cycles,” a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs (2017). She says our notion of Aztec life driven by “brutal warriors, glorious kings, and bloody priests” is a bit off: in reality, “women in Aztec culture were powerful and effective figures, possessing tangible rights and responsibility, and clearly recognized as indispensable to society’s collective success.” That is not to say that gender wasn’t prescribed in Aztec society – the model was “complementarity,” that is, men and women had different roles that complemented each other.

As she looks at pre-Conquest Aztec life via the role of women and gender, Townsend finds upper-class women played a political role in bringing altepetls (city states) into the empire through marriage; they exercised considerable influence during the Conquest on whether any given altepetl would side with or fight against the Spanish.

Both Dodds Pennock and Townsend used documents that focused on upper-class women. In The Flower and the Scorpion: Sexuality and Ritual in Early Nahua Culture (2011), history professor Pete Sigal of Duke University argues that the “sexual lives and imaginations” of the ordinary Aztecs included pleasure, seduction, and components of the rituals of fertility and warfare. Moreover, they resisted Spanish efforts to inculcate repressive Catholic attitudes towards sex for well over a century after the conquest.

The Specifics of Aztec Sexuality

When references to specific sexual practices come up, you might think the Aztecs were just waiting for the Catholic church to arrive and say, “Nope, that’s a no-no, not that!” There was a group of deities who ruled over sexuality, and they were much given to punishing those whose sexual behavior was outside the approved realm. A couple of these gods were associated with disease – think of STDs as a punishment for sex outside marriage.

Pre-marital sex. Punishable by death. Adult men and women not allowed to interact with each other outside of marriage. Both men and women were supposed to be virginal at marriage, but women were also required to pass a virginity test (i.e., presence of the hymen). For upper-class young men, though, this prohibition didn’t really apply – they often had small collections of concubines.

Adultery. Upper-class men, of course, couldn’t commit adultery because they were allowed multiple wives and concubines. Once adultery was claimed, a lower-class man might be beaten or have his head shaved, but a woman was sentenced to death, usually by stoning.

Homosexuality. Mentioned infrequently in contemporary documents, and was punishable by death. The gay man who took the active (penetrating) role was murdered by being impaled while his partner died when his intestines were extracted through his anus – a much harsher penalty, actually, since the “receiving” partner was perceived as being less “macho.” Lesbians were killed with a garrote.

There is a double-gendered god, Xochipilli as a male and Xochiquetzal as a female, who governs flowers, love, art, and fertility; Xochipilli is the patron/protector of homosexuality and male prostitutes. There have always been festivals to Xochipilli/Xochiquetzal, suggesting that the Aztecs might have had a “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t get caught or we’ll kill you” policy.

Sodomy (oral or anal sex). Even among heterosexual partners, punishable by hanging.

Masturbation. Forbidden – punished by rubbing hot pepper powder on the genitals.

Prostitution. Prostitution was alive and well in Aztec society. “Respectable” Aztec women wore their hair up; prostitutes let it loose. They were the only women allowed to wear perfume, jewelry, and makeup. Sometimes prostitutes and priestesses were one and the same; they rewarded young men who survived battle with their favors. Another ritualistic role was to pleasure those men who were on their way to being sacrificed.

When the Spaniards Arrived …

The conquistadors brought their sex-as-sin Catholic beliefs with them. Within two years, they had converted two men to the priesthood and within ten years, they had begun converting the upper classes to Christianity. They hoped Christianity at the top would “trickle down” to rest of society.

Christianity, of course, requires that a man have only one wife; the Spanish began to require monogamy, which created social chaos. The additional wives, not to mention the concubines, suddenly had no legal or social status. Basically, the Spanish enslaved them, many on the encomiendas they created to reward their conquering soldiers; the Spaniard who held the encomienda had the right to tribute, produced through labor, of all inhabitants in a particular area. The Spanish replaced women who had been paid to weave with men, destroying the men’s identity as warriors. The alliances that marriages had fostered, the wealth that had accumulated within allied city-states, resolved disputes between altepetls – all suddenly thrown into disarray. Starting with its stance on sex, Catholic law destroyed a culture.

Moreover, at the urging of Queen Isabella of Spain, the conquistadors intermarried with the native peoples (she called them “free vassals of the Spanish Crown”) at a great rate. This “marathon sexual activity” on the part of the Spanish began to destroy indigeneity. By January 1, 1821, when Mexico won its independence from Spain, only half the population of Mexico was indigenous; 20% was mestizo. In the 2015 census conducted by INEGI (National Institute of Statistics and Geography), only 23% of Mexicans said they were indigenous or of indigenous descent.