BY JOHN ROSS

MEXICO CITY (Jan) - Following last October's discovery of an enormous (four meters by three) monolith during excavation on a lot wedged between the Templo Mayor or Great Temple, the refurbished citadel of the Aztec gods, and the Metropolitan Cathedral just off the great Zocalo plaza in the heart of the old quarter here, tens of thousands of Mexicans descended upon the site determined to catch a glimpse of what the press had dubbed "La Diosa" (the Goddess.) Police had to be summoned to contain the onlookers.

The unearthing of the monolith, said to represent Tlatehcutli, the goddess of the earth, came at a particularly portentous moment of social upheaval here with anger surging in the wake of the stealing of the presidential election from wildly popular ex-mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and insurrection threatening on the barricades of Oaxaca. Even the day of the discovery - October 2nd, the anniversary of the massacre of hundreds of students in 1968 under the guns of the military and a despotic president - conspired to stir bad old memories.

For Martin Ibarra, a young (23) "conchero" whose Aztec troupe "Pre-Cuauhtemoc Movement and Culture" dances in the Zocalo in the afternoons, the emergence of "La Diosa" from the underground was a sign that the old gods were returning and the time of the Sixth Sun and the resurgence of the Mexica was near. "We've known it was coming for a while."

Indeed, the discovery is the most significant Mexica find since the Coyoxauhqui, the Goddess of the Moon, a humongous eight-ton wheel engraved with rattlesnake-festooned likenesses of the lunar deity which was found by electricity workers who stumbled upon the enormous moon wheel while laying line under the Metropolitan Cathedral in February of 1979 - the wheel is now the centerpiece of the Museum of the Templo Mayor across the street from the Cathedral.

Although still only partially excavated, Tlatehcutli may prove to be an even more impressive find. La Diosa was unearthed about 25 feet deep in the Ajarraca lot on the corner of Guatemala Street beneath the rubble of a once-boisterous cantina.

In 1997, the city bought the property with the intention of building an official residence for the Mexican capitol's first elected mayor or "jefe de gobierno" (chief of government), the leftist Cuauhtemoc Cardenas - the new mayor proudly bore the name of the last Aztec emperor. But budgets were cut and the project languished and when Lopez Obrador took over he killed the project, reasoning the mayor didn’t need an "official" residence - AMLO chose to live in a small apartment near the university throughout his years in office.

The lot was then turned over to the National Institute of History and Anthropology (INAH) to sift through. Several "ofrendas" and "tzompales", offerings to the gods - mostly small boxes containing figures of the deities wrapped in woven cloth - were found in the rubble of the demolished cantina. The October 2nd 2006 find of La Diosa came after four years of on and off digging.

Mexico City is always remaking itself, tearing down buildings and ripping up streets to expose Mexica outcroppings. The digging of Line 1 of the Metro, which runs under the Centro Historico, historically the island of Tenochtitlan from which the Aztec emperors dispatched, yielded a treasure trove of artifacts, some of which have been left in place at the Pino Suarez station.

Discoveries in the old quarter date back centuries. Many, like the Coyoxauhqui, were made by workers exploring the bowels of the sinking Metropolitan Cathedral, itself sincretically constructed upon the ruins of the Great Temple.

In 1790, during the last years of colonial domination, a great stone Coatlicue, the Mother of the Gods, with her girdle of skulls and snakes, was dug up from the Zocalo. The Templo Mayor, the twin temples of Huitzilopochtli, the humming bird warrior and god of the sun at mid-day, and Tlahuac, the rain deity, emerged at the zenith of the Mexican revolution in 1913.

After the unearthing of the moon wheel in 1979 under the direction of the legendary anthropologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma (no relation to the Aztec emperor), important new finds surfaced almost yearly. Even while Tlatehcutli was being dug out, a new pyramid and pre-conquest cistern were emerging from beneath the floor of the former College of Santa Cruz ten blocks north in Tlatelolco, one the Mexica market island, and now a decaying, high-rise housing complex.

The origins of La Diosa remain uncertain. At first, she (if she is a she) was identified by INAH anthropologists as being the rain god Tlahuac. Even the sex of the God(dess) is blurred. In some representations, Tlatehcutli took shape as a huge frog-like creature with
impressive fangs and claws as observed by anthropologist Alfonso Caso in his 1957 tome "Peoples of the Sun" - a lizard-like apparition, noted Caso, that resembled a Caribbean gulf coast fish known as the "Pejelagarto" (ironically Lopez Obrador's nickname.)

As a frog, La Diosa was a male figure but other representations depict her as female with medusa-like tresses.

The discovery of the bi-sexual Tlatehcutli both delights and perplexes anthropologist Juan Alberto Roman, the director of the Museum of the Templo Mayor, which abuts the Ajarraca lot. The narrow streets around the two sites are jammed daily by a torrent of "ambulantes" or street venders. The pedestrian and motor traffic is noisy and clotted. High decibel vibrations must be unsettling for La Diosa after 500 years of being deep beneath the ground. The figure already suffers from four large fractures and how to move the 12-ton Tlatehcutli without further damaging her to find out what lies beneath will be a daunting engineering feat.

The museum director complains that the ambulantes bring crime and drugs, rats, scorpions, and mounds of garbage to these sacred sites and urges the left-wing Mexico City government to uproot the street venders, a demand seemingly out of sync with Roman's profession - the Zocalo itself was a great "tianguis" or Aztec bazaar in pre-conquest times.

But Roman has another vision for the old neighborhood: an expanded archeological enclave with the Tlatehcutli as the gate keeper to an ambulante-free complex, the focal point of which would be the Templo Mayor and his museum, now the city's third most popular with a half million tourist visits annually.

In a recent interview with the national daily La Jornada, Roman predicted that exhibition of La Diosa would bring coveys of tourists to the dingy backstreets of the old quarter and has even hired a public relations team - "Con Vision" - to film the excavation and burnish the Goddess's image.

Both Coyoxauhqui and Tlatehcutli were found at the foot of the Temple of Huitzilopochtli from which many sacrificial victims were once bled to feed the hunger of the sun. Coyoxauhqui came to a bad end when she flew into a jealous rage and tried to kill Coatlicue, her mother, after learning she was pregnant with her brother Huitzilopochtli. Still in Coatlicue's womb, the god of the sun at mid-day sent a serpent of fire out into the world to decapitate his sister and her body was flung from a high hill and broke into thousands of pieces, the pieces of the moon. Each year, the devotees of Huitzilopochtli celebrated this triumph of the sun over the moon with copious blood sacrifice.

Why Tlatehcutli was installed here remains a mystery - the figure appears to date from 1420-40, approximately the reign of Moctezuma II when the Mexica Empire had begun to crumble.

The foot traffic around the dig had slowed by spring. A few disappointed souls peered through a gap in the plywood fence but La Diosa is not on public view yet. The digging takes place in private, under a white tent in the pit below. There is 24-hour surveillance around the site "so some drunk doesn't get in here and piss on La Diosa" cackles an aging security guard. A few years ago, a drunken driver flipped his car on top of the Templo Mayor.

Under the tent, the 12-ton Goddess is drying out. Buried for 500 years in the cool muddy soils (the Mexican capital is built on a lakebed), the dampness has eaten into the porous volcanic rock of her flesh and it may be years before La Diosa will be put on public display. Meantime, moist towels protect her from corrosive dust and this monster megalopolis's venomous air.

Whether the emergence of La Diosa from the underground is a sign of the coming of the sixth sun as Martin the Conchero prognosticates or a big dollar sign sucking in the tourist bucks at Roman's dream archeological zone, perhaps only the gods can foretell.

********************************
John Ross is winding up his travels in America del Norte and will soon return to Mexico. Write him at johnross@igc.org to learn of future odysseys