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TULA DE ALLENTE |
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The modern city of TULA DE ALLENDE lies on the edge of the Valley of
México, 85km north of Mexico City. A pleasant enough regional centre
it's worth taking a few minutes to look over the impressive, fortress-like
Franciscan monastery and church (built around 1550), but most likely
you'll want to grab a meal and move on, most notably to the wonderful
pre-Hispanic pyramid site of Tula , 2km north of the centre on a small
hill.
In legend at least, the mantle of Teotihuacán fell on Tollan, or Tula,
as the next great power to dominate Mexico. History, legend and
archeological evidence, however, are here almost impossible to
disentangle and often flatly contradictory. The Aztecs regarded their
city as the descendant of Tula and hence embellished its reputation -
the streets, they said, had been paved with gold and the buildings
constructed from precious metals and stones; the Toltecs, who founded
Tula, were the inventors of every science and art. In reality it seems
unlikely that this was ever as large or as powerful a city as
Teotihuacán had been - or as Tenochtitlán was to become - and its period
of dominance (about 950-1150 AD) was relatively short. Yet all sorts of
puzzles remain about the Toltec era, and in particular the extent of
their influence in the Yucatán - at Chichén Itzá much of the
architecture appears to have been influenced by the Toltecs. Few people
believe that the Toltecs could actually have had an empire, or an
influence, that stretched so far: however warlike (and the artistic
evidence is that Tula was a grimly militaristic society, heavily into
human sacrifice), they would have lacked the manpower, resources or any
logical justification for such expansion. Nevertheless, they were there.
The answer lies, perhaps, in the legends of Quetzalcoatl that surround
the city. Adopted from Teotihuacán, the plumed serpent attained far more
importance here in Tula, where he is depicted everywhere. Again the
facts and legends are almost impossible to extricate, but at some stage
Tula certainly had a ruler regarded as Quetzalcoatl who was driven from
the city by the machinations of the evil god Texcatlipoca. In legend,
Quetzalcoatl fled to the east where he either burnt himself to become
the morning star or sailed across the ocean on a raft of snakes,
promising one day to return (a prophecy that Cortés turned skilfully to
his advantage). What may actually have happened is that the ruler was
defeated in factional struggles within Tula and, in exile with his
followers, eventually reached Maya territory where they established a
new Toltec regime.
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