On the way from Mexico City to Veracruz, at km. 33, there are traces of an ancient prehistoric settlement: Zultepec-Tecoaque, one of the first bastions of indigenous resistance against the Spaniards in 1520.
Surrounded by agave and corn fields, a team led by archaeologist Enrique Martínez Vargas has excavated the area. The skeletal remains recovered at the site have revealed details about the first contacts between Spaniards and indigenous people and how 550 people who accompanied Hernán Cortés on his way to conquer Tenochtitlan were captured and sacrificed between 1520 and 1521.
"Seeing completely different people upset them a lot, it was a cultural shock for them," said Bertha Flores Hernández, who also collaborates on the project.
The skeletal remains recovered at that site revealed that there were people of different races, such as Spaniards, blacks, “zambos” (people of mixed African and Amerindian ancestry) and mulattos (a person born from one black parent and one white parent).
"So far we have identified 70 women, eight black, seven women of color, six inhabitants of the Caribbean islands (tainas), four zambos and several children,” Martínez explained.
"They also brought cattle, goats, horses, chickens, cats, dogs and pigs with them. All were eaten at the site, including humans," the INAH researcher added.
Once captured, these people remained in captivity for six months and were killed in different festivities of the Nahua ritual calendar, in order to "seek protection from the gods against the arrival of foreigners," Martínez said.
For example, while women were sacrificed in fertility rituals, some men were offered to Huitzilopochtli, the Mesoamerican deity of war and sun and patron of Tenochtitlan. Blacks were burned alive in honor of Xocotl Huetzi, god of fire. The archaeologist explained that people who were sacrificed in this ritual were painted black, so when they say black people in the caravan, they were immediately selected for the ceremony.
Hernández says that their fate can be known through the cuts and alterations of the skulls and bones found at the site. She added that a black woman was bled to death with punches as part of a fertility ritual.
According to the archaeologist some of the skulls were placed on a tzompantli, a wooden rack or palisade used for the public display of human skulls in several Mesoamerican civilizations, while others were used to make trophies, some of which have been found in the living quarters of the area.