Page:Historia Verdadera del Mexico profundo.djvu/36

 The Tollan concept which has been translated as city or metropolis was a daily reality in the Anahuac cultures. Whether in the Maya area, Nahuatl, Zapotec, Mixtec and Totonac, Tarascan or any other, the large human concentrations of the classical and postclassical period were impressive. As far as the city of Tenochtitlan, the most conservative estimates a population of half a million inhabitants, but surely that in the classical period human concentrations exceeded these figures. The Tlatócan, Calpulli, Hueytlahtocáyotl, Tequíyotl, Tetlatzontequilíca concepts, are intimately linked to the formidable social organization which was the fruit of wisdom accumulated and systematized by centuries and centuries of work in partnership to achieve human development. Ancient Mexicans would have never been able to achieve the civilizing prodigies, both tangible and intangible, without a complex network of values, attitudes, principles, institutions, laws and authorities that would make them possible, not only to maintain its social order, but its development. Each pyramid, every work of art, each Codex, or Stele, could not exist without the backing and support of the social organization system and legal regime that sustained them. "They established a type of federal and interstate superstructure in political, educational, scientific and cultural matters with a tax system, mentioned earlier, appropriate to the needs of both the Government and the various Federation entities, to cater for public expenditure or for production redistribution from some regions to others in combination with a special commercial organization.

Given these fundamental concepts, two classes of organizations can be distinguished:

A.- Territorial, which were: 1.- The rural calpulli (autonomous and disperse); 2.- Urban calpulli (autonomous and concentrated in sorts of neighborhoods); 3.- The region or calpótin icniúhtli, brotherhood, fraternity, housing groups (autonomous regional entities) called Tlatocáyotl, government; 4.- State Territories or Lordships ____________________