Word: ixcateopan
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When the National Museum's greying Eulalia Guzmán announced in the backwoods village of Ixcateopan that "the remains of the last emperor of the Aztecs have been found" (TIME, Oct. 10), all Mexico went wild. Nearly every town in the country held a special fiesta; on Columbus Day, Dia de la Raza, the discoverer was nearly forgotten in the flowery eulogies of Cuauhtemoc, last chief of the discovered...
...documents which led to the unearthing of Cuauhtemoc's bones were indeed 400 years old, and that the ink, writing and signature on them appeared genuine. Leading archaeologists agreed. Crowds of tourists began to make the five-hour trip over rock-strewn roads from Taxco to the Ixcateopan church, where they goggled at a few shoe boxes full of bone fragments and the copper disc found under the altar bearing the inscription: "Señor y Rey, Coatemo...
Proclaiming her unshaken belief that the bones actually were those of the last Aztec ruler, Eulalia Guzman packed up for another trip to Ixcateopan. The red-faced Bank of Mexico kept its own counsel. One question remained unsolved: Was the hoax the work of a 20th Century man, or had it been perpetrated by some long-forgotten 16th Century prankster...
...document told how Motolinia and a group of Aztec warriors cut the Emperor's corpse down from a tree, smeared it with a paste of herbs and took it hundreds of miles to Ixcateopan, Cuauhtemoc's birthplace. There they buried the Emperor and erected a church above the crypt...
After deciphering the document and verifying its authenticity, Dr. Eulalia Guzman, the National Museum's chief of historical research, led an expedition to Ixcateopan. There, beneath the altar of Santa Maria de Asuncion, diggers uncovered a huge stone slab with a large oval copper disc. Under a small cross at the top were the words Senor y Rey. Beneath them was the name Coatemo (one of the alternate spellings of Cuauhtemoc...