Totonacs, Zapotecs and Mixtecs

The Totonacs. In central Veracruz the center of Tajin continued to thrive after the collapse of Teotihuacan and lasted into the early post classic period, as is evident from Plumbate and Fine Orange trade wares found in the upper most occupation phase of that site. When it was abandoned, Cempoala, near modern Veracruz, became the major Gulf Coast center, and the Totonacs inhabited this town. The ruins of Cempoala, which date from early to late postclassic, consist of a great central enclosure and four subsidiary enclosures within which are mounds and plazas.

When Cortez passed through on his way to the Aztec capital, it was described as a city of 30,000 people. South of the Totonacs, in the region of Cerro de las Mesas, Tres Zapotes, and La Venta, the Chronicler Sahagun has described a sixteenth-century tribe, the “Olmecas”.

These were the wealthy people of the rubber country who possessed jade, gold, jaguar, skins, cacao, feathers, and cotton cloth. Their linguistic affiliation is uncertain, and their name, as applied to the old great preclassic style, has no significance in linking those ancient remains with this ethno historic people.>

Zapotecs and Mixtecs
During the Postclassic Period two nations struggled for control of Oaxaca – the Zapotecs, whose ancestors had held the site of Monte Alban for centuries, and the Mixtecs, who were expanding eastward and southward from the Mixteca Alta of northwestern Oaxaca. Monte Alban had been abandoned as a great center at the close of the IIIB phase of that site’s history, and the “Monte Alban IV” phase is represented by burials that date from the Toltec horizon. In “Monte AlbanV”, the Mixtecs took over the sacred city, or its ruins, and re-used old Zapotecan tombs for burying their great dead. The most famous of these burials “tomb 7”, contained nine males – probably a dignitary with immolated retainers – accompanied by a richness of gold and silver ornaments, copper objects, lapidary work, and animal bones carved with hieroglyphic and calendric inscriptions. The characteristic ceramics of “Monte Alban V” were black wares, of local tradition, plus the brightly painted Mixteca-Puebla polychromes from the vicinity of Postclassic Cholula.

About 40 kilometers southeast of Monte Alban is the famous centers of Mitla, which probably was constructed in the early Postclassic Period but continued as an important religious and political center through the Late Postclassic as well. The architectural style of Mitla derived from Zapotec traditions and, according to native histories retold by Spanish chroniclers, it was the residence of the high priest of the Zapotecs. The principal buildings were arranged in groups of four around paved plazas. Made of rubble and concrete, they were faced with cut stone and stone mosaic relief. The ceilings of these buildings were flat rather than vaulted. Cruciform tombs under the plazas at the front of some of the buildings bore interior wall mosaics similar in their geometric designs to the building facades. Frescoes on interior walls of the temples or palaces were painted in a style quite different from that of the rigidly geometric mosaic relief, being more reminiscent of the Mixteca-Puebla polychrome designs and Aztec codices.

Mixtec genealogies have been traced back to the seventh century A.D. The early Mixtec dynasties were centered in Tilantongo. Mixtec invasions of the valley of Oaxaca and Monte Alban date to the fourteenth century or the Late Postclassic Period, and the Aztecs began their campaigns in Oaxaca about 100 years later. They defeated the Mixtecs in the northwest, but the Mixtecs and Zapotecs were never fully subdued and continued their resistance against the Aztec state up until the time of the arrival of the Spaniards.