Aztlán is the legendary ancestral home of the Aztec/Mexica. It is represented as an island 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 Aztek, rarely used by the Mexica to describe themselves, derives from Aztekatl, 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).
The meaning of the word is "Place of Whiteness" or "Place of Herons" (Nahuatl azta herons/white-plumed birds + tlan(tli) rooted in (as a tooth)/the place of).
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.
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.
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Last updated: 08-17-2005 06:28:16
