How the Aztec Empire was Built by Spies

#Ancienthumans #ancientgiants #dwarfs
"In ancient Mesoamerica, an elite class of merchants helped build the Aztec Empire. How? By mastering the arts of spycraft, disguise, and self-sacrifice. These Pochteca acquired plenty of wealth and status and they traveled between cities to collect tribute, trade for valuables, and most importantly work undercover to gather information. But this wealth and power sometimes came at a deadly cost.

Where exactly is Aztlán located? Is it a physical place or an ideological construction? Here is what we are listening and reading.
Creating Aztlán : Chicano art, indigenous sovereignty, and lowriding across Turtle Island, by Dylan A. T. Miner
Smith, Michael E.. The Aztecs, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2011
Tales from Aztlantis (podcast)

A note from the producer: The visual representation of Indigenous peoples in this episode relies heavily on the imagery contained in The Florentine Codex which was created by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1499--1590), a Franciscan missionary who arrived in Mexico in 1529, as part of the Spanish colonial project. Sahagún purported that he worked with Indigenous community members to ensure the accuracy of the imagery and that some of it was actually created by those community members. Sahagún’s claims are accepted by some scholars and disputed by others. It cannot be independently verified."