Entre a cosmopolítica e a cosmohistória: Tempos fabricados e deuses xamãs entre os astecas

Abstract

This article proposes a new interpretation of the mythology and religion of the Aztecs (or Mexicas), together with their politics. Although the Mexicas were a hierarchical society with a centralized power structure, they practiced a cosmopolitics that can be likened to that of the Amazonian peoples. In this sense, their stories about the creation of the world show how human and non-human beings with shamanic powers were transformed into gods, and how they in turn created mankind in a relation of constant transformation and exchange. Also analyzed are the ways in which Mexica cosmopolitics sought to maintain the workings of a stratified society together with the workings of a cosmos in which deities and humans were hierarchically related. Their aim was to construct verticality in a pluriverse which always tended to revert to horizontal transformations, and to manage the relations between different beings and realities through cosmohistory.