It is a divine sign in an ancient legend, according to which the god Huitzilopochtli asked a group called the Mexica, who founded what later became known as the Aztec Empire, to leave their homeland in search of a place to establish a new city.
It was about 175 years before they discovered the sacred omen and established the city of Tenochtitlán in 1325, where Mexico City is located today.
How the eagle, cactus and snake became emblems and endured during the European conquest is the focus of a new exhibition. “A shield, an emblem, a symbol of identity” will be in effect until December 15 at the Old Town Hall in the center of Mexico City.
The exhibition is part of the government’s activities on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the founding of the Mexican capital.
“Recognizing Tenochtitlán does not mean remembering a dead past, but rather the living heartbeat that still beats beneath our city,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said during an official ceremony in July. “It was the center of an indigenous world that built its own model of civilization, one in harmony with the Earth, the stars and its gods and goddesses.”
Fragments of that civilization are found beneath the Old City Hall, the current seat of Mexico City’s government.
Built by order of the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés in 1522, stones from ancient sacred Mexica sites were used in its construction. The building has been renovated over time, but its rooms have witnessed centuries of government and symbolism.
“Holding the exhibition in this City Hall, a place of decisions and memory, is a way to recognize the history of those who once inhabited it and how their transformations still resonate in the identity of Mexico City,” said Mariana Gómez Godoy, Director of Cultural Heritage of Mexico City, during the opening of the exhibition in November.
The Mexica themselves recorded their history after Tenochtitlán fell into the hands of the Europeans. Several codices describe the path that led them to fulfill the task of their deity.
Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, an acclaimed archaeologist at Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, has argued that the legend is a symbolic retelling of historical events, rather than a literal statement about divine prophecy.
Still, according to the Templo Mayor Museum, the pre-Hispanic peoples of the region preserved the origin story of a long journey that led to the founding of Tenochtitlán as a cornerstone of their traditions.
They honored a small island in Lake Texcoco, now in the center of Mexico City, as the place where the Mexica found the eagle predicted by Huitzilopochtli.
The new exhibit offers a historical overview of how the image evolved, from its establishment as the city’s coat of arms in 1523 under Emperor Charles V to its transformation into an emblem of Mexico as an independent nation.
Curated by researcher Guadalupe Lozada, it also shows images that portray how it was adopted by the religious orders in charge of converting the indigenous people to Catholicism.
While Europeans already adopted the eagle and the cactus in the mid-16th century, the Jesuits introduced the snake decades later. “From then on, it would continue to be a symbol of the city’s identity, which would also spread throughout the rest of New Spain,” Lozada said.
According to her, numerous monasteries dating back to the 17th century bear witness to how the friars displayed the eagle and the cactus in their sanctuaries. Even today, the emblem can still be seen on the facade of the Mexico City cathedral and inside one of its chapels.
“Such was the strength of Mexica culture that evangelizers sought to adopt it rather than exclude it,” he said. “It was like saying, ‘I recognize your story.’”
The same logic was applied with the European conquerors. Even when they ordered the destruction of the Mexica religious complexes, the representation of the founding myth was not erased from history.
“For them, conquering a city like Tenochtitlán was a source of pride and that is why they never tried to deny its existence,” said Lozada. “This meant that the strength of the city buried beneath the new one underlies it and resurfaces, as if it had never disappeared.”