Free Republic

As leftists look to cancel Christopher Columbus and today’s annual holiday commemorating him — that is, the man who discovered this land that is the United States of America — they’re also looking to replace the great explorer with a day of their own. That new day for these cultural revolutionaries, celebrated all the way up to the level of their president, one Joseph Robinette Biden, is something called Indigenous Peoples’ Day.How ironic this is.Among the sins that leftists try to peg on Columbus is slavery. And yet, many of their indigenous peoples, including the so-called “civilized” among them, in...

NATIONAL PUMPKIN SEED DAY The first Wednesday in October offers up the seasonal delight, National Pumpkin Seed Day! As the temperatures cool and the leaves turn, snack on these delicious tidbits. #NationalPumpkinSeedDay Many of us have fond memories of roasting these delicious nuggets after carving the Jack o' lantern. However, we never realized just how good (and good for us) they were. Surprisingly, pumpkin seeds have been valued for their dietary and medicinal properties for thousands of years. In fact, pumpkin seeds have been traced back as far as 7000 BC, according to archeologists excavating a tomb in central Mexico....

Spanish conquerors did not themselves bring inequality to the Aztec lands they invaded, they merely built on the socio-economic structure that was already in place, adapting it as it suited their plans. This is the subject of an article by Guido Alfani of Bocconi's Department of Social and Political Sciences and Alfonso Carballo of NEOMA Business School in France. Their article, "Income and inequality in the Aztec Empire on the eve of the Spanish conquest," has just been published in Nature Human Behaviour...The primary social distinctions in the Aztec Empire were between the nobility, the commoners and the slaves. The...

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS), archaeologists have found that a straight stone causeway on Mount Ttlaloc aligns with the rising sun on February 23rd/24th.Mount Ttlaloc is an eroded stratovolcano, located in the State of Mexico, in the municipalities of Ixtapaluca and Texcoco.The mountain was worshiped by the Aztecs, who associated it with the rain god Tlaloc as one of his earthly dwelling places, called Tlalocan...The researchers found that if an observer stands in the lower part of the stone causeway on Mount Tlaloc, looking upwards on the 23rd/24th of February, they...

[Catholic Caucus] Protector of the IndiansAbove: the old and new basilicas of Our Lady of Guadalupe.In the year 1527 King Charles V of Spain spent Holy Week at the Franciscan Monastery of Barajo near the city of Burgo in northern Spain. Friar Juan de Zumarraga was the prior of the monastery at this time. So impressed was the King by Friar Zumarraga’s holiness and capabilities that a year later, in 1528, he recommended that he become the first bishop of Mexico. His official title would be “Protector of the Indians.”Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowOne might wonder why a Franciscan would...

A group of Russian archaeologists and historians was invited to Mexico to examine the famous collection of El Toro artifacts. As a rule, these are stone and clay products, which depict various motifs of ancient Indian culture. However, among the numerous objects found, images that clearly point to paleocontact are of the greatest interest. Academic science at the beginning of the 21st century proclaimed all artifacts related to such topics as falsifications. And, by the way, about 20 thousand items have already been discovered, and their number is increasing. It was the latest artifacts from the collection that ended up...

In most religions, fertility goddesses are depicted as the culture's epitome of beauty, like Aphrodite of ancient Greece or Venus of ancient Rome. The Aztecs took a different approach, however. Tlaltecuhtli was a terrible monster that was responsible for all life, but paradoxically, could only be satiated by human sacrifice. In Aztec mythology , four worlds had existed before ours, each wiped out by a great flood . Tlaltecuhtli was a great sea monster deity that lived in the oceans created by the fourth great flood. She was described as having the skin of a crocodile, huge sharp fangs, and...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Bills rookie punter Matt Araiza and two others have been accused of gang raping a 17-year-old girl last year in a lawsuit filed in San Diego County Superior Court on Thursday. The lawsuit, obtained by ESPN, involves allegations against Araiza and two of his former San Diego State teammates. The other men named in the complaint are Zavier Leonard, a redshirt freshman with the Aztecs, and Nowlin Ewaliko, who was a freshman last season but is no longer on the listed roster. All three are accused of rape, gender violence and false imprisonment.

Archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of a dwelling that was built up to 800 years ago during the Aztec Empire in the Centro neighborhood of Mexico City, Mexico, during works to modernize the area.The centuries-old abode was discovered by archaeologists and construction workers ahead of an initiative to update electrical power substations.The dwelling is believed to date from the late Postclassic period (A.D. 1200 to 1521) and would have been located on the border of two neighborhoods in the city of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, according to a statement from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History...

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they were looking at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital. It turns out it was a very cold case. It took a decade of tests and analysis to determine the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday. Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico usually show a hole bashed...

Disturbing Ancient Rituals | April 14, 2022 | Sideprojects

[Photo above: Pages 136 and 137 of the Salinas Union High School District Ethnic Studies Curriculum. Credit: Kelly Schenkoske]. The good news is that California education authorities have agreed to drop part of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) that encouraged public school students to pray to bloodthirsty Aztec deities. The quaint religious practices of Mesoamericans about 700 years ago included slicing out human hearts along with flaying victims and wearing their skin. The ESMC is needed, the devoutest left-wingers insist, to help teach children about the systemic racism that supposedly defines America. “We are reminded daily that racism is...

California’s long-running descent into madness continues as its bizarre Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) now encourages public school students to pray to bloodthirsty Aztec deities. The California State Board of Education approved the almost 900-page ESMC in March 2021, saying teaching children about the systemic racism that supposedly plagues America has never been more urgent, as Fox News reported at the time. “The curriculum’s unequivocal promotion of five Aztec gods or deities through repetitive chanting and affirmation of their symbolic principles constitutes an unlawful government preference toward a particular religious practice,” Frank Xu, president of Californians for Equal Rights...

It seems some traditions are more cherished than others. Pagan Aztec dance ritual recently performed in St Mary of the Lake church in Chicago’s Uptown. ...

Parents of students in the California public school system have filed a lawsuit against the state's Department of Education in an attempt to remove a chant to Aztec gods that's part of a new ethnic studies curriculum. The lawsuit was filed Friday by the conservative legal firm Thomas More Society on behalf of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, individual taxpayers and parents of current and former students after their Aug. 26 letter to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction demanding withdraw of the Aztec prayer from the curriculum went unanswered. The lawsuit says the “Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum” has...

On the 500th anniversary of the Spanish conquest, people from Mexico’s smallest state Tlaxcala say their ancestors were liberators When people from the Mexican state of Tlaxcala travel to other parts of the country, they are sometimes insulted as traitors by their compatriots. Tlaxcala is Mexico’s smallest state in size, but it played an outsized role in Mexico’s early history, not least when indigenous Tlaxcalans allied with Hernán Cortés’ tiny band of invaders to bring down the Aztec empire. Now, as Mexico marks the 500th anniversary of the fall of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán on Friday, the role of the...

Was the 1521 surrender of the great Indigenous empire to the Spanish crown a triumphant conquest, an existential tragedy—or even a genocide? The remains of a massive cypress tree sits inside a small plaza in Mexico City, surrounded by fencing and illuminated by four spotlights at night. An old sign explains its significance: “This is the tree where Hernán Cortés wept after being defeated by the Aztec defenders.” We Mexicans call it El Árbol de la Noche Triste, or The Tree of the Sad Night, and learn about it since grade school from government-issued history textbooks. The story goes something...

MEXICO CITY, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Mexico is building a towering replica of the Templo Mayor, the Aztec civilisation's most sacred site, in the downtown of Mexico City to mark 500 years since the Spanish conquest of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. The mostly white mock temple will be on show in Mexico City's bustling main square, the Zocalo, close to the ruins of the real Templo Mayor, where the Aztecs venerated two main deities with elaborate pageantry and sacrificial offerings. The temple was destroyed by Spanish forces after their 1521 conquest and subsequent razing of Tenochtitlan, which became Mexico City....

From Washington to Hollywood, the left thumbed its nose at the United States on its 245th birthday. Stolen. Racist. Unfree. Unfair. From Hollywood to Washington, liberals used the occasion of America's 245th birthday to continue their relentless assault on the greatest democracy the world has ever created. "Reminder: The United States was founded on the unjust treatment of Native Americans, Africans and other people of color," actress Alyssa Milano crowed in a TikTok video. Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat from Missouri, challenged the notion of the land of the free. "When they say that the 4th of July is about...

Next week, the California Department of Education will vote on a new statewide ethnic studies curriculum that advocates for the “decolonization” of American society and elevates Aztec religious symbolism—all in the service of a left-wing political ideology. The new program, called the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, seeks to extend the Left’s cultural dominance of California’s public university system, 50 years in the making, to the state’s entire primary and secondary education system, which consists of 10,000 public schools serving a total of 6 million students. In theoretical terms, the new ethnic studies curriculum is based on the “pedagogy of the...