2.2. Each city-state (tlatocayotl) had one or more rulers (tlatoani – ‘speaker’) belonging to the leading aristocratic families. The legitimacy of a tlatoani was determined by the merits of his forefathers in founding the state, and the ability to trace back one’s lineage (through marriages) to the women of the ruling family of the earlier Toltec civilization. The order of succession depended on the practice of the aristocratic family who was in power. The ruler fulfilled the highest religious, administrative and judicial functions of state. Judges, higher and medium ranking officials and the top ranks of the religious hierarchy also came from hereditary aristocratic families. 3.2.3. The majority of the population were commoners (macehualtin – ‘workers’), either farmers or craftsmen, whereas in most cases sons took over the trade of their fathers. Some of the commoners lived in the holdings of the nobility as retainers, others in caste-like corporative groups formed on the basis of kinship and profession (calpulli – ‘big house’), working collectively on the lands belonging to temples, schools for young men or public institutions, and paying taxes. Such an extended family had common ownership of land, from which a plot was allocated for livelihood to each family unit. The other duty of each macehualtin was to fight in a war. Commoners could be rewarded for courage in war and thus make their way up on the social ladder. Ranking even lower than the workers was a group of free people who were despised for some reason, who had no right to own land and worked as a paid workforce on the land owned by their kinsmen. 3.2.4. There were also two kinds of slaves in Mexican city-states: some were cast into slavery as a punishment for a crime they had committed, others had sold themselves into slavery because of poverty. One could be freed from the status of a slave either by buying oneself out, or where the widow of the slave’s owner decided to marry the slave. Prisoners of war were usually not kept as slaves – they were sacrificed to the gods.
Posted on: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 21:58:00 +0000
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