Education Commons^™

More Than Human Sacrifice: Teaching About The Aztecs In The New Latino South, Timothy Monreal

Middle Grades Review

This essay details an extended lesson I created to teach about Aztec/Mexica resistance to Spanish conquest in a sixth grade classroom within the context of the New Latino South. Rather than concentrate on the familiar tropes of human sacrifice and European exploration, I centered Aztec/Mexica philosophy, arts, and resistance in order to disrupt majoritarian narratives reified in Social Studies courses. Decentering and complicating the dominant narrative about Aztec/Mexica culture is one way educators can challenge dominant, and negative, discourse about burgeoning Latinx communities. I argue that in order for schools to help remedy deficit perspectives of Latinx people, especially in …