Chapter 10

Round and Round We Go

Cholula, Rotating Power Structures, Social Stability, and Trade in Mesoamerica

Timothy J. Knab and John M. D. Pohl

Cholula has always presented a paradox in Mesoamerican Studies, both synchronically and diachronically. It is, and has been, a major Mesoamerican urban entity, which does not follow the patterns and processes many researchers have taken for granted. Perhaps researchers have viewed Mesoamerica through not rose-colored glasses, but Aztec-colored glasses for too long. Here we will present a model of the rotating power structures that we believe are, and always were, far more common in Mesoamerica than the Aztec imperial model of a single hierarchical power structure stretching from the emperor to the calpultin, lineage-based territorial units.

Rotating power structures are probably more common in Mesoamerica than the Aztec imperial model, as they are far more stable and far more resilient in the face of radical change. The Pochteca, the merchants, of the Cholula barrio of San Miguel Tianguisnahuac (see figure 10.1) in the sixteenth century, and the present-day residents of the barrio of San Miguel Tianguisnahuac all require stable and resilient systems to carry out their activities, be they long-distance trade, or the complex fiesta cycle of Cholula. Diego Durán’s ([1546] 1971:137) comments on fiestas in the barrio of San Miguel Tianguisnahuac clearly indicate the role of the merchants in rotating power systems. Rotating power systems concentrate social capital at each level within the system guaranteeing at each level that individuals with sufficient resources and social capital are available to take on complex tasks such as organizing long-distance trade or orchestrating the fiesta of the Virgin of the Remedies, which brings over a hundred thousand people into Cholula every year (Knab 2013). This is no different now than it was in the sixteenth century, or the Late Postclassic period.

Cholula offers a more sophisticated understanding of the diversity of social, political, and economic strategies in Mesoamerica and challenges the idea that indigenous traditions associated with governance by urban states had ceased with the fall of the Aztec empire in 1521. Recent scholarship demonstrates that a confederacy of city-states throughout southern Mexico successfully resisted both Aztec and Spanish subjugation. A ruling class of nobles commonly referred to as caciques resurrected themselves on a new colonial foundation and continued to play an important role in cultural developments in Mesoamerica. This dramatic period of social transformation is better characterized in terms of a “Late Antiquity” as it is understood in other parts of the world that experienced comparable developments (Brown 1971). Essential characteristics include governance through decentralized political systems, the maintenance of a field of common values through an investment in pilgrimage and commercial centers such as Rome and Cholula; the initiation of a pagan nobility through the missionizing efforts of orders of mendicant friars; and the development of international styles, Nahua-Mixtec and Gothic-Renaissance, that bridged differences in ethnicity and language (Pohl et al. 2012).

Late Antiquity recognizes the fact that many of the agendas that powered indigenous agency during the sixteenth century had already been introduced in the Late Postclassic period and continued through the colonial period to the present day. The appeal of the cult of Quetzalcoatl centered at Cholula and the cult ceremonies associated with becoming a tecuhtli, or lineage head—essentially a king—transcended all local religious customs and bound ethnically diverse peoples together into similar social and political units, facilitating elite alliances and economic exchange throughout the central and southern Mexican highlands. As the “Rome” of New Spain, Cholula then continued to fulfill its role in supplying a centralizing ideology without the military dominance of an imperial capital as Tenochtitlán had been.

We will start with the contemporary system, which is quite clearly not simply an extension of earlier systems (Knab 2013), though it does share specific and fundamental structural features with past systems, which makes it a far better model for Mesoamerican urban social organization than the Aztec imperial model. What we propose to show is rather astounding. Despite the fact that social systems have changed radically through time and have virtually no direct links to the pre-Columbian, or colonial, meanings and symbols, structurally they have remained quite constant through time. Rotating power structures achieve this remarkable stability because large amounts of social capital are invested in such systems and all stakeholders share potential power within the system.

Cholula is arguably the oldest living city in the Americas, but that is not why its rotating power structures are so important (Kobayashi 2013). Rotating power structures have a far greater inherent stability than simple linear hierarchies. They involve far greater numbers of individuals in the power structure and each individual has far more social capital (Putnam 1995) invested in maintaining such power structures. Making multiple individuals into stakeholders, each with the potential for increased position and power, means that few will abandon their position and that all will actively promote the maintenance of such a system (figure 10.2).

Both ethnohistorical and archeological evidence support the rotating model of power structures in Mesoamerica. We will argue that such structures are, and were, far more common in Mesoamerica than the imperial model. Despite the imposition of Spanish rule and Spanish systems of governance nearly 500 years ago, rotating power structures are still well represented today in traditional Mesoamerican cargo systems. Based on evidence from Cholula’s baroquely complex ritual system (Bonfil 1973), we will build our model pointing out basic features that distinguish it from other models of urban power structures in Mesoamerica. Given our focus on the barrio of the merchants, San Miguel Tianguisnahuac, we will also show how such rotating power systems support individuals in carrying out complex tasks (figure 10.3).

Cholula

Cholula is a tale of two cities, San Pedro and San Andrés, which both have similar, yet different, rotating power structures. The two Cholulas have not probably seen eye to eye since the twelfth century when the Toltecs arrived, and to this day the two Cholulas cannot agree on the direction of one-way streets or to which municipality the Great Cholula Pyramid belongs. The systems of social organization in San Pedro Cholula are far better documented (Bonfil 1973; Knab 2012, 2013; Kobayashi 2013; Reyes 2000) than those of San Andrés, thus we will rely on them for our model far more heavily. Both Cholulas, though, have complicated ritual systems that are becoming even more complex as the two municipalities are rapidly becoming a part of the Puebla suburbs. It is in fact the complex system of ritual activity that distinguishes traditional members of cholanteco society from both outsiders and secular cholantecos.

There are today over 500 organized ritual celebrations in San Pedro Cholula alone, and the number increases as Cholula becomes more prosperous. This is the paradox that Guillermo Bonfil Batalla (1973:250–290) meditated upon, with help from Paul Kirchhoff (see Bonfil 1973:22), his professor, in the groundbreaking ethnography Cholula: La ciudad sagrada en la era industrial. Traditional celebrations, rather than disappearing as Cholula becomes part of the industrial age and is consumed by the suburbs of Puebla, are becoming ever more complex and ubiquitous. The bells and exploding fireworks of Cholula’s churches never seem to quit (Knab 2012).

If we were to follow the standard Mesoamerican literature on cargo systems (Cancian 1972; DeWalt 1975; Magazine 2012; Redfield 1956; Sandstrom 1991; Wasserstrom 1978, 1983), we would assume to find traditionalists in Cholula desperately impoverished but with very high status. That is not the case. Many are quite well off, pillars of bourgeois society and active in dozens of community organizations.

Unfortunately, much of the literature in the last century on cargo systems never took into account the changing political and legal landscape of Mexican municipalities, an absence that seriously distorted the way in which cargo systems function in Mesoamerica. The picture we have in the anthropological literature based on twentieth-century studies is seriously skewed. When civil and religious administrations were divorced from each other in the radically anticlerical period shortly after the Mexican Revolution, religious hierarchies were separated from some of their basic financing. Individuals were forced to take on the devastating expense of traditional fiestas on their own.

Cholula had established systems of rotating mayordomías, which meant that each cargo holder, as he ascended in the system, developed an ever-larger network of individuals to assist in defraying the expenses of vast festivities. These systems tend to concentrate social capital in the hands of such individuals and qualify them for ever more prestigious cargos. Some cargo holders actually make money on their cargos, or at least have enough ritual goods left over that they can donate to other cargo holders in stark contrast to the impoverishment reported in most studies of cargo systems.

There are ten barrios in San Pedro Cholula and eight in San Andrés. In addition to the barrio celebrations, there are innumerable comisiones, cofradías, hermandades, and Catholic Associations, which also sponsor celebrations, pilgrimages, and processions throughout the ritual year in Cholula. As Chance and Taylor (1985) have noted, hierarchical organizations were well established under canon law in the colonial period, but in Cholula they were part of an ongoing dialogue among members of the crown’s government: the church and the nobles of Cholula. It is far beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the whole range of ritual activity in Cholula, but there is one particular system that is fundamental to understanding ritual activity in Cholula and rotating power systems in general. This is the system that sponsors the circulares, the three major city-wide celebrations every year: the celebration of the Virgin of the Remedies, the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and the celebration of Saint Peter of the Souls, the patron Saint of San Pedro Cholula (figure 10.4).

Each of the circulares is the responsibility of a different barrio each year (Kobayashi 2013). The way the system works is that once an individual has served as the mayordomo of his or her own barrio’s patron saint, which may well take serving the barrio in dozens of other positions, the individual is then a potential candidate for one of the circulares. Given that there are ten barrios, each barrio is responsible for the same celebration only once every ten years; thus there are ten candidates to choose from each time a barrio must take on one of the circulares.

Once an individual has served as the mayordomo of his or her own barrio, that individual becomes a principal or teachca, elder brother, or official, of the barrio. The principales are in charge of selecting future officials within the system and are authorities within the barrio. Once a principal has successfully fulfilled the role of mayordomo, she or he then has the power to select, with the other principals, the next candidate for mayordomo within her or his own barrio and to be selected as the mayordomo in charge of one of the circulares.

Once an individual has served as mayordomo for one of the circulares, he or she then becomes a principal or teachca for the city of Cholula. The principales then have the responsibility of selecting from the candidates of each barrio the next mayordomo from each barrio. This system guarantees that candidates have sufficient experience in organizing the immense and complicated celebrations first of all at the level of the barrio and then citywide. The system also guarantees a stable transition among qualified candidates capable of administering and carrying out the duties of office on the basis of carefully nurtured social capital.

The notion of social capital is essential to understanding this system. Social capital is the set of relationships that an individual or organization can rely on in carrying out the tasks of everyday life. The system itself builds social capital at each distinct level. Within the barrio system, the role of the principales is to guarantee that individuals selected as mayordomos are capable of carrying out that duty, that they have sufficient social capital as well as the financial means to take on the cargo. The role of the mayordomo is not simply the celebration of the patron saint but to assure that all of the hijos del barrio, or barrio members, can participate fully in the annual celebration. The mayordomías function as a social safety net for the hijos del barrio. The fundamental reason for participating in the traditional system is that it acts as a type of social security, which Mexico does not provide its population. Each organization in which a potential mayordomo participates adds to his or her reserves of social capital, which can be called on in times of hardship. Most traditionalists in Cholula participate in at least six, and sometimes up to a dozen, traditional organizations before being selected as mayordomos. Once they have become principales, they may well participate in twenty or more organizations before being appointed to one of the rotating circulares. The sheer number of traditional organizations in Cholula is rather astounding. By our count, there are more than a hundred different organizations and over 500 traditional celebrations per year in San Pedro Cholula alone.

The circular nature of this system also guarantees that both individuals and organizations are imbued with enough social capital that the system works and that it grows as an individual passes from one level to the next. Not only are individuals part of multiple organizations as they pass from one level to the next in circular power arrangements, but at each level the individual must consolidate social networks necessary to the success at the next level. In this way the social organizations that an individual becomes part of increase his, or her, attractiveness as a candidate for the next level of the hierarchy. In this way circular systems build up large amounts of social capital, both for the individual and for the community as a whole. With large amounts of social capital invested in the system, the system becomes extremely stable and in a very real sense is a self-perpetuating entity. All stakeholders have an interest in the perpetuation of the system.

In the case of San Pedro Cholula, the rotating power structure produces each year ten potential leadership candidates for the rotating mayordomías, and since each barrio only takes charge of a rotating mayordomía once every ten years each barrio can offer ten potential candidates for the principales to select among when the barrio becomes responsible for the celebration. Candidates are weighed on the basis of many factors such as kinship, past performance, social networks, and organizational ability. Because of the investment of such large amounts of social capital in terms of individual qualifications in a rotating power system, the system itself becomes extremely stable, selecting by consensus individuals who can carry out the goals of the system. Everyone involved in the system has a clear stake in seeing that the system functions efficiently.

For individuals who participate in this traditional system, the networks that they develop along the way through the system provide a solid basis for support in case of hard times in a nation with virtually no social safety net for the poor. This is social capital (Baron et al. 2000) in Bourdieu’s (1985:724) sense of the term. But it is not just the support that the system provides individuals; it is the network of individuals that each person builds up who can be trusted to reciprocate when called upon (Magazine 2012) in arranging the lavish celebrations of the saints, which are necessary for advancement, and the network of organizations that an individual can call on when arranging such a celebration. This is also a solid form of social capital (Putnam et al. 1993:35–36) that is built into circular rotating power systems. These systems build the social capital that benefits all participants. They also build the trust that is essential for such systems to function smoothly in what has been until very recently an impoverished peasant society where trust was at a premium.

Structurally, rotating power systems are extremely stable, as individuals invest great amounts of social capital in them and reap concrete benefits from that investment of social capital. In Cholula, at least, this implies that the baroque system of celebrations for the saints will not disappear with modernization. Now the important question to ask is just how long have such power systems existed in Cholula? It is safe to say that they have existed at least since the construction of the present sanctuary on top of the Great Pyramid of Cholula in the latter part of the nineteenth century. There is also evidence that such rotating power systems have existed since the time of the conquest and probably back through the Postclassic.

According to legend, Cholula was founded by Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl (Nicholson 2001). This culture hero had come to the Plain of Puebla from Tula, Hidalgo, where he was credited with founding the original Toltec capital administered by a dual priesthood, much like that documented for Cholula at the time of the conquest. The priesthood in Cholula sponsored the cult and thereby the international trade by the city’s merchant elite. Although bound through mutual social, political, religious, and economic obligations, Tula’s governing authorities were clearly subject to violent expressions of internal political factionalism, and by 1150 the city had been destroyed, ostensibly a conflict between Quetzalcoatl and a rival named Tezcatlipoca. There is considerable evidence for historicity in the recorded events (Kristan-Graham 1999). Carved pillar reliefs at Temple B not only depict portraits of warriors named for the rival priests, but ofrendas and mesas built into the columned hallways of the associated Palacio Quemado depict the titles of Quetzalcoatl and his father Mixcoatl (Cobean et al. 2012:162). Processions of ranking lords, on the other hand, bear the accoutrements of long-distance merchants (Kristan-Graham 1999). Considering that Temple B in turn is believed to be inspired by the great Temple of the Plumed Serpent at Teotihuacan, it is likely that at some level the Cholula model we present here had its roots in the great Classic period metropolis itself, especially when we consider the obvious evidence for a corporate elite at that metropolis that used these structures to convey the essential symbolic context for their political and economic agendas (Cowgill 2015; Sugiyama 2003).

Cholula through Time

Excavations at Cholula together with colonial historical sources confirm that between 1100 and 1200 the Tolteca-Chichimeca, the Toltecs coming from the north, established a new cult center dedicated to Quetzalcoatl at what is today the Convent of San Gabriel in Cholula’s main plaza (Lind 2012:89; Uruñela and Plunkett 2012:164–165). Using descriptions of the pre-Columbian city and colonial maps, and field-checking the sources, one can reconstruct the complex nature of the city’s pre-Columbian administration. The veneration of Quetzalcoatl, Cholula’s merchant god and patron of the city’s largest religious festival, reveals a path to power (Durán [1546] 1971:138) in Postclassic society through competitive feast sponsorship by groups of merchant-lords, who invested vast resources from trading ventures as far south as Guatemala in return for royal titles, insignia, and positions of power as civic administrators (Pohl 2003). A huey tlatoani, together with the tetecuhtin (lineage heads-kings), administered the lands of the city as a polity regionally, but confederations of kingdoms throughout the Mexican highlands submitted to the authority of two high priests in matters of alliance and factional dispute. The Spaniards compared Cholula to Rome in this regard and considering how much of the ecclesiastical authority in the Vatican was dominated by Roman families at this time, one can envision a system in which hegemony over much of southern Mexico could have been managed through the same Cholula families, noble houses or lineages, generation after generation.

By the mid-sixteenth century, the Cholula’s administration had formed a close relationship with the Franciscan order headquartered there while continuing to dominate trade in textiles and cacao among other high-value goods with Central America. In fact Viceroy Mendoza revived the native order of tecuhtli so that the indigenous nobility could hold titles as “knights” that would be equivalent to those of Spanish administrators (Bancroft 1883:755). The Dominican chronicler Durán ([1546] 1971:129, 139) expressed much concern about Cholula. His qualms were not just based in the rivalry among different orders, but a sincere distrust of the Franciscan’s syncretic acceptance of native traditions. He maintained that the city’s merchants continued to compete with one another over the sponsorship of a major feast, but that it was held on the day that it had been traditionally celebrated in honor of Quetzalcoatl and that they profited greatly from the feast’s patronage.

I wish to give warning that there is a diabolical custom among the natives, especially in Cholula, where the god [Quetzalcoatl] was worshiped; peddlers will traffic for ten twelve and even twenty years, earning and saving up two or three hundred pesos. And after their toil, wretched eating and sleeping–they offer a most lavish banquet. There they spend all their savings. What I most regret is that they follow the ancient custom of holding that memorial feast in order to celebrate their [ancient] titles and set themselves on high. This would not be wrong except that for their celebration they await the day on which the god [Quetzalcoatl] was honored. (Durán [1546] 1971:139)

Durán had much to be concerned about, for the feast of Quetzalcoatl was the largest for the Plain of Puebla and held annually in the plaza before the Cholula’s main temple. Forty days prior to the celebration, a slave was purchased by the merchants and dressed to impersonate Quetzalcoatl (Durán [1546] 1971:129). The slave sang and danced through the streets daily collecting contributions for the feast from the homes of people throughout the city. Then, at the appointed time, he was sacrificed to the god he represented. The feast itself featured many days of dances, singing, dramas, and farces in and around a 30 ft.² central platform that was adorned with arbors of flowers. The general populace who attended contributed vast quantities of food. After dining on specially prepared dishes of bird and rabbit, the merchants then danced in their finest ritual dress together with actors pretending to be victims of disease and blindness performing at the same time that solemn prayers were sung to Quetzalcoatl imploring him to protect the Cholula people from disease.

Durán’s ([1546] 1971:138–140) description of a rotating system of power among Cholula’s dominant merchant families through an investment in feast sponsorship is in fact the basis for a continuing system of rotational power in Cholula today. Although we recognize that Cholula has undergone significant social and political transformations from the late colonial period through independence, the reform period, and the revolution, much of its basic political and religious hierarchical structures appear to have remained intact, or have been intentionally revitalized by successive generations of the city’s population to the present day.

San Miguel Tianguisnahuac

The present-day barrio of San Miguel Tianguisnahuac is generally recognized as the oldest barrio in San Pedro Cholula (Reyes 2000). It was the barrio of the merchants, and there are families who today maintain kinship ties through marriage with families in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Long-distance trade has been a mainstay of the barrio probably up to the postrevolutionary period. Although trade is no longer a significant activity in the barrio, the status of the barrio as the first barrio in the rotational system of the circular mayordomías maintains its position in the system (figure 10.5).

Bonfil Batalla (1973:183) lists only six mayordomías and two ritual organizations within the barrio. The most important of the mayordomías is that of San Miguel the patron saint of the barrio. There are also mayordomías of the Santísima Cruz, Virgin of the Rosary, Virgin of Guadalupe, Niño Dios, and San Rafael. Today there many more organized fiestas in the barrio than there were in the time of Bonfil. There are ritual observations for San Francisco, the Santo Entierro, San Gabriel, San Luís, and many others. In 2015, the barrio of San Miguel was in charge of the commission for the Holy Week festivities. San Miguel also coordinates the participation of the town of Tlaxcalantzingo in the fiestas of the Virgin of the Remedies, serves on the commission for the festival of the Ploughmen and the Poor, Labradores y Pobres. In addition to serving on the Hermandad de Cargadores and the Asociación de la Vela Perpetua, members of the barrio serve on the commission del Santo Entierro, the Pro María Asociación, and dozens of other organizations. Ritual activity in the barrio is constant.

Generally, individuals must serve in the barrio on the minor mayordomías before taking over the most important cargo, which is that of San Miguel. This system allows the individual to build a network of associates both within the barrio and outside who will help defray the costs and organize the events of ritual celebrations. With each cargo the individual is building the social capital necessary to coordinate major ritual observances. These systems are hierarchically organized and very important in testing the ability of an individual to coordinate complex rituals. The more people an individual can coordinate to assist in these celebrations, the greater the social capital that is available for these individuals. These people can be counted on to assist in further cargos (figure 10.6).

In early cargos for the barrio, individuals will first use kinship-based networks, but as the cargos become more important and complex people begin to rely on members of other organizations they belong to, people they work with, migrants, and many others. Thus, by the time an individual becomes the mayordomo of the patron saint, he or she has already accumulated considerable social capital, and once someone has served as the mayordomo of the patron saint the individual will continue with an active participation in ritual organizations to increase his or her possibility of being selected for one of the circulares, thus continuing to build social capital.

Once an individual has served as the mayordomo of one of the circulares of the community, he or she becomes a principal for all the barrios of San Pedro Cholula with power over selection future candidates. Within the ritual system of Cholula, such individuals command great respect and status. The constant participation of people with increasing responsibility, and the people they rely upon to help, contributes to the stability of a rotating system. They are all stakeholders in the system and have invested great amounts of social capital. Although they may not be selected for cargos, stakeholders have the ability to serve and know that in stressful times their social capital will assist them.

Trade and Traders

One of the fundamental requirements of long-distance trade is stability. For long-distance traders to embark on multiyear-long trading expeditions, they have to know that the goods acquired can be disposed of at a profit and their position within the community will be recognized. Individual traders and families of traders in this sense are not unlike the mayordomos of the barrio of San Miguel building social capital, alongside economic capital, with ever more extensive trading expeditions. The extensive banquets sponsored by traders build social capital in the same way that mayordomos build social capital. This social capital in a rotating power structure maintains and augments social capital. The system itself is thus maintained as the elimination of one or more elements of the system will not eliminate the system. In a simple hierarchical system, the elimination of the head or a significant number of the members of the hierarchy results in the dissolution of the system. Traders especially are thus assured that no matter how long their journeys, are they will return to the same functioning system (figure 10.7).

There is a fundamental relationship between long-distance trade and rotating systems of power. This relationship is to be found not merely in the extreme stability of such systems, but in the relationships between trade, traders, and their communities. The social capital that is essential for long-distance trade goes far beyond supply and demand, profit and loss. In an era before the commoditization of goods, the relationships between traders and suppliers and the relationships between traders and clients were essential elements in the process of trading.

The social networks necessary for long-distance trade, just as the social networks necessary for carrying out complex celebrations typical of Cholula’s baroquely complicated ritual system, are fundamental for success. With each cargo the social networks of the mayordomo are expanded, just as with each trading expedition the trader’s social networks are expanded. These relationships are the social capital necessary for the system to function. In building social capital, both mayordomos and traders have a major investment in the organizations in their communities. Once they have reached the point at which they begin to participate in the rotating power structures that organize the most complex and highly valued celebrations, individuals have an investment in social capital that is so great that they are the most highly valued individuals in the community. The traders of the barrio of San Miguel Tianguisnahuac continued to play a major role in long-distance trade throughout the colonial period, and their networks are as important today as they were in the Postclassic. Today migrants play an essential role in maintaining the complex ritual system of Cholula.

Rotating systems of power over long periods of time will maintain the stability of social networks that are necessary for long-distance trade in Mesoamerica. Such rotating systems have been perhaps much more important in maintaining coherent social structure than we have given them credit for. The elders of the Pochteca had vast social networks spanning great distances that allowed them to build up extensive expertise in locating transporting and disposing of elite goods within the system. The mayordomos of San Miguel who become principales of the barrio, and then the city, control vast networks necessary for coordinating massive rituals and feasts. These networks constitute the social capital, which maintains such systems. Trade and traders in Mesoamerica relied on the same types of rotating power structures to maintain stable systems over time (figure 10.8).

The accumulation of social capital (Putnam 1995), in addition to creating social stability, functions as a type of social safety net for individual in hard times. In Cholula mayordomos assure that the welfare of their members, the hijos del barrio, in a very concrete way. This is especially important in rural Mexico, where the government does not provide a social safety net. Here it should be noted that the same situation applied to the Pochteca at the time of the conquest and that the social capital accumulated along with the economic capital, in the process of long-distance trade, made such endeavors viable. In fact, social and economic capital go hand in hand for traders, each augmenting the other for a successful trader.

Thus, not only do rotating power systems provide the stability necessary for long-distance trade, but the social capital invested in rotating systems in hard times will pay off for individuals who have made that investment. These systems train and incorporate effective and competent individuals into a system making them stakeholders for the perpetuation of that system. The system is thus greater than any one individual and more stable that the life and death of any one individual.

Conclusion

While we tend to view Tenochtitlán’s Templo Mayor as a testament to the ideology of military dominance by a class of elites who made their war god Huitzilopochtli the primary focus of veneration (Brumfiel 1987), the cult of Quetzalcoatl at Cholula shows us an alternative path to power in Postclassic society through the competitive manipulation of temple and feast sponsorship by a ruling merchant elite. The rotating power systems typified by Cholula’s complex ritual system were a major factor in Mesoamerican social organization. They build social capital into a circulating system that makes all participants stakeholders in the perpetuation of that system. Rotating power systems also show extreme stability over time, funneling competent effective individuals into the system in which they become stakeholders. Such systems are inherently more stable than hierarchically organized systems such as the Aztec system, where eliminating the head of the system effectively cripples the system. Although the nobility of Cholula was decimated by Cortés, and the city lost 90 percent of its population, Cholula remained a cohesive urban entity through the colonial period and into the twenty-first century. Rotating power systems played a big role in this. Rotating power systems in Cholula were never a single continuous system. They were reconstituted over and over due to their inherent stability and their ability to incorporate great amounts of social capital for stakeholders while offering potentially great social benefits. We therefore recognize that there were major breaks in social, political, and economic continuity in Cholula over the course of the last five centuries. But it is clear that shared memory, traditional knowledge of barrio identity, and continuity from of Late Antiquity have empowered Cholula’s population to transcend calamitous setbacks and to continually rebuild their fundamental institutions.

Rotating power systems at the same time provide stability to social institutions and maintain the social capital built up over time. For this reason they were probably far more ubiquitous in Mesoamerica than the hierarchical Aztec model that fell so quickly to the onslaught of a marauding band of Spaniards. Rotating power systems have features that are fundamental to maintaining stability over time in carrying out complex endeavors, be they long-distance trade, or maintaining a complex ritual system.

Such systems were probably far more common in Mesoamerica than the Aztec or Maya hierarchical lineage systems, which were easily and effectively eliminated by decapitating, sometimes literally, the head of the power structure. Rotating power structures can suffer major losses without paralyzing the system. In specific cases in which no lineage-based hierarchical system is clearly indicated, rotating power systems should be taken into account. We propose that the specific examples of Tula and Teotihuacan should be reexamined in terms of rotating power systems, which maintained a complex multiethnic multicultural city of traders and artisans through generation after generation. Rotating power structures are at the heart of many urban systems throughout Mesoamerica (figure 10.9).

References