Aztec Business Practices and Trade Culture Explained

The Mesoamerican Environment and Its Role in Aztec Commerce

In order to fully understand the business practices and trade culture of the Aztecs, one must first address the environment in which the Aztecs lived, worked, and raised their families. The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican civilization, an anthropological term for a distinctive area extending from north-central Mexico to Costa Rica along the rim of the Pacific Ocean. As Francis Berdan relates, Mesoamerica (i.e., middle America) "first took form with the initial spread of farming villages sometime around 2,000 B.C.E." (56) and by 1519 A.D. was made up of a large variety of peoples whose cultures greatly resembled one another compared to other cultures then found in the New World. Despite the impact of the Spanish Conquest and later colonization, these groups of Mesoamericans, which included the Aztecs, "managed to maintain numerous fundamental beliefs and practices" related to internal business affairs and trade — something which Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a soldier in Hernando Cortez's conquering army, described as "far richer and more grandiose than any community we have ever beheld in our own home country" of Spain (Berdan, 57).

The natural environment of Mesoamerica is quite unique compared with the rest of Mexico and upper Central America, and its qualities go a long way toward explaining how the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican Indian tribes managed to create and maintain such a remarkable civilization for almost two thousand years. As Ross Hassig points out, the close proximity "of many diverse environmental zones encouraged communication and much trade and exchange among various groups," which made it possible for many settlements to obtain and utilize a wide variety of goods and materials (156). For the Aztecs, these environmental zones allowed them to create innovations in farming that came about as a result of two important developments before the Spanish Conquest: first, an explosion in population, and second, the expansion of the Aztec city-state and empire itself. These two major changes resulted in new agricultural methods that filtered down and affected Aztec demographics, politics, business, and trade. By the time the Spanish arrived in 1519, central Mexico and the Aztecs themselves "had been transformed into a social and cultural landscape filled with villages, towns and cities" — a transformation that set the path toward Aztec business practices and related trading systems (Berdan, 78).

Aztec Marketplaces: Structure and Scale

Like many other Mesoamerican civilizations, the Aztecs relied heavily upon a variety of markets and merchants to transport goods and commodities from producer to consumer. In this context, the word "markets" does not connote what we today refer to as global or national markets. Rather, it refers to a physical space — a marketplace or agora, as found in ancient Greece — where buyers and sellers came together to exchange goods and services under the auspices of the reigning king or emperor.

Almost every single Aztec settlement, whether a small village or a large, densely populated city like Tenochtitlan, possessed a marketplace where buying and selling took place on a weekly basis, much like our contemporary work week (Hassig, 143). The sheer volume of goods and commodities that moved through these markets was tremendous. Unlike today's markets, which are closely monitored by economists and governments, the "efficiency and success of the Aztec market system related to distributing goods and commodities saved the state from having to monitor exchange activities," allowing the state to focus instead on more pressing issues such as crime, punishment, and religious affairs (Hassig, 159).

By far the largest marketplace in Aztec Mesoamerica was located in the city of Tlatelolco, the so-called "twin city of Tenochtitlan." According to Richard Hooker, this city "consisted of a large number of priests and craftspeople" and the "bulk of the economy rested on extensive trade of both necessary and luxury items." Tenochtitlan was also "a true urban center" with a permanent population and a huge, bustling market estimated by the Spanish conquerors of 1519 to have included at least 60,000 people — a place that undoubtedly symbolized "the beginnings of a true economic class" in Mesoamerica (Hooker, "Civilizations in America"). The best description of this market comes from Cortez himself:

"The city has many open squares in which markets are continuously run and held and the general business of buying and selling proceeds without cessation. Every kind of merchandise such as may be met with in every land is for sale there, whether food, ornaments of gold and silver and lead, brass, copper, precious stones, snails and feathers. All kinds of vegetables may also be found there… Many different sorts of fruit… all kinds of cotton thread in various colors… There is nothing to be found in all the land which is not sold in these markets…" (Van Tuerenhout, 139).

Merchants of the Aztec Empire: Pochteca and Tlanecuilo

Where markets exist, so do merchants, and for the Aztecs the occupation of merchant was very important — not only from a social perspective but also from a business perspective (Berdan, 197). These merchants have often been described as "non-guild merchant middlemen," or tlanecuilo, which can be translated as retailer or merchant — those who brought in the necessities of life rather than luxury items for the wealthy (Berdan, 196). In terms of social standing, the pochteca were full-time professional merchants who occupied a special status in Aztec society: lower than the Aztec nobility but higher than most ordinary commoners. Their business activities included trade expeditions both inside and outside of the Aztec Empire, as well as foreign service on behalf of the Aztec emperor.

Although some of the activities of these high-standing merchants were performed directly for the Aztec state, "the bulk of their transactions were privately motivated and financed," much like a business owner in today's modern world who operates an independent enterprise (Hassig, 186). The pochteca were also members of guilds with closely controlled hereditary memberships and were located in a small number of city-states — major political and social capitals like Tenochtitlan and Texcoco, and active economic centers like Otumba and Xochimilco. Some of the goods and commodities they traded included elaborate clothing for religious purposes, tropical birds and feathers, objects of gold, necklaces, bowls, obsidian blades and knives, animal furs and skins, and even slaves — most of whom were either captured in war, had committed crimes against the state, or had been sold into slavery by their parents (Hooker, "Civilizations in America").

As to the regional merchants, the tlanecuilo, far less information survives about their everyday practices compared to the pochteca. As Hassig relates, these middlemen merchants could be found at every marketplace in the Aztec Empire and traded a wide variety of goods and commodities, mostly foodstuffs and utilitarian items. These included cacao, maize, tortillas, fish, salt, cotton, bowls, baskets, and various types of wood (165). Most of these merchants specialized in specific kinds of goods and commodities, much like a modern business owner who sells clothing, furniture, or household goods.

Conclusion: The Legacy of Aztec Economic Life

The various economic systems and business practices of the Aztec civilization seem to have worked together "in a dynamic and complex economy that brought the Aztec Empire into a single economic, social and cultural unit" (Hassig, 234), despite the fact that Aztec society was comparatively primitive relative to what was occurring in Spain during the early sixteenth century. From an economic standpoint, the growing Aztec population made increased food production mandatory, and the craftsmen who produced goods for the marketplace required merchants like the pochteca to sell their wares — much as today's business owners rely upon a steady customer base.

This market system, although primitive by modern standards, was the primary link that allowed the various market sectors and regions to come together and create an extraordinarily dynamic economy. An added benefit was that the system made it possible for average consumers to get ahead economically — perhaps an early example of entrepreneurship. As Francis Berdan observes, the Aztec economy, with its merchants and businesspeople, was highly commercialized and dynamic; however, it was not what we now call a capitalist economy, for there was no paid labor and land was not bought and sold as a commodity (256). In essence, the Aztecs — despite living and working in some of the harshest environments of Mesoamerica, both before and after the Spanish Conquest — managed to prosper under a system rooted in fairness and shared necessity, built around commonly needed goods such as food, clothing, and household items, even within the constraints of a rigid hierarchical social structure.

Works Cited

Berdan, Francis. The Aztecs of Central Mexico: An Imperial Society. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982.

Hassig, Ross. Trade, Tribute and Transportation: The Sixteenth Century Political Economy of the Ancient Aztecs. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.

Hooker, Richard. "Civilizations in America: The Mexica Aztecs." 1996. Internet. Retrieved October 5, 2008 at http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/CIVAMRCA/AZTECS.HTM.

Van Tuerenhout, Dirk R. The Aztecs: New Perspectives. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005.