Aztlán
From Freepedia
Aztlán ([asˈ.tlan], from Nahuatl Aztlan [ˈas.tɬaːn]) is the legendary ancestral home of the Aztec/Mexica. It is represented as a volcano in a lake, located in what is now the north of Mexico (or possibly the southwestern United States), onto which the first Mexica emerged at the beginning of the fourth world. The word Aztec, rarely used by the Mexica to describe themselves, derives from Aztecatl, meaning "from Aztlán." The character of the place itself has less of a role in the legendary histories than the migration that was undertaken by the Mexica after they left Aztlán and before they settled in Tenochtitlan (also an island in a lake, the replica of their original home).
Image:Aztlan codex boturini.jpg
Contents |
Probable etymology
Aztlan is believed to mean "Place of Whiteness" or "Place of Herons" (Nahuatl aztatl herons/white-plumed birds + tlan(tli) rooted in (as a tooth)/the place of)).
Aztlán [asˈtlan] is the Mexican Spanish spelling and pronunciation of Nahuatl Aztlan [ˈas.tɬaːn]. The spelling Aztlán and its maching last-syllable stress cannot be Nahuatl -- words in this language being always stressed in their second-last syllable. The accent mark on the second a added in Spanish marks stress shift (from oxytone to paroxytone) typical of several Nahuatl words when loaned into Mexican Spanish.
During the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the story of Aztlán gained importance and it was reported by Fray Diego Durán (1581) and others to be a kind of Eden-like paradise, free of disease and death, which existed somewhere in the far north. These stories helped fuel Spanish expeditions to what is now the Southwestern United States.
Places identified as Aztlan
The name of Aztalan, Wisconsin (a Mississipian site) was proposed by N.F Hyer in 1837 because he thought it could have been Aztlan, following an etymology by Alexander von Humboldt.
Other uses of the name Aztlan
Aztlán also gives its name to several Hispanic political movements in the United States, such as the self-styled Revolutionary Council and Provisional Government of Aztlán and MEChA, also known as Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán). In this connection, it often refers to irredentist ambitions of independence or union with Mexico for those southwestern US states which Mexico controlled prior to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848.
