Mexica, Order, and Dialogues.

It is clear that the Mexica value an ordered society. This is clear not only from their beliefs concerning the perpetuation of the state, but between interactions with each other. In Nahuatl Speeches and Dialogues one can see how the culture tries to create stability and hierarchy for the people. This document was written by nobles in the Tetzcoco valley, which means it is immediately suspect to the anti-elitists who think they would just use this document to try and oppress the poor. However, what is more important is that the nobles tried to create an ordered society of greetings and salutations. When a specific type of person responds to another specific type of person then they are to say certain things. For example, there are dialogues for everything from a female seeing her relatives to two noble boys greeting their grandmother to advice for eating with good breeding. This advice is almost organic in nature because it affects so many parts of people’s lives.

The authors in doing this were clearly trying to create order in society, as previously said. If there are pre-prescribed answers and formalities to everyday events, then everyone knows what to say and do. This is important for a society based on a cosmology where they are constantly waging war against chaos. A structured response will allow order to be imposed on what could habe been perceived as disorder among people. People’s interactions are chaotic, but by writing this order will prevail in the contest between the two sides.

From the document, one can also determine that this is post Catholic interactions with the indigenous peoples of Meso-America. The reader can see this because of the constant reference to “Our Lord,” and the fact there are described interactions between people and priests and friars. It is difficult to quantify how much this affects the document. The Catholic Church, and especially European Catholics, preferred and loved an ordered society. However, the Mexica also loved an ordered society. This convergence of the two civilizations could have to create the need for this document because of how much the two preferred regulation to chaos.

What is most important concerning the Nuahtl dialogues is that who read it can now see the importance and need for order in a collectivist society. Where the individual must be subverted for the people as a whole, it is only logical that even an individual’s responses to conversation could be subverted for order of society. Every part of these people’s lives was made to fit in certain responses and actions, which is an alien concept for modern Americans who believe the individual is sacrosanct. It appears that no part of the Mexica society granted such privacy to not be affected by the need for order.