Tzompantli, horca y picota. Sacrificio o pena capital

Abstract

This article focuses on one aspect of the acculturation process in ancient Mexico —the public manifestation of corporal violence associated with punishment, the death penalty and the exhibition of human body parts—, as represented by maps contained in the Relaciones geográficas del siglo XVI, in which the division between places used for punishment and sacrificial purposes disappears. Studying this feature of colonial society enables us to understand the process through which indigenous sacrificial practices have been misinterpreted, while the divergent concepts of punishment and torture applied to each group have been overlooked.