The Aztec religion before the plague and the establishment of that awful island empire might have been very different - imagine what would happen of American Christianity if 90% of the population died and a bloodthirsty militant faction took over the remnants. Maybe some of it will turn up over the next century of archeology.
Probably not so different. There were numerous dialogues and debates between Mexica priests and Jesuits, as many priests survived the collapse of Tenochtitlan so there's good second hand evidence about their beliefs. Nahuas were writing their language using the Spanish alphabet by 1528 and there are accounts written by Mexica that remembered the time prior to the arrival of the Spanish. There's also a lot of archeological evidence that's turned up in the lat decade including in 2020 a skull tower that scholars had previously thought was an invention of Spanish writers.
That's not the apocalypse I meant, I was talking about the one that Produced Tenochtitlan. The deaths from smallpox and the vanishing of the cities they're now finding evidence of happened before the Spanish conquests.
The first know case of smallpox in Mexico was in 1520. It's REALLY unlikely that small pox reached anywhere near Tenochtitlan before Cortés, after all he arrived there in 1521, a mere 29 years after Columbus' initial landing. Cortés was part of the first wave of explorers in Mexico. Tenochtitlan was founded in the 1320, a full 500 years after the collapse of the Mayan city states. Teotihuacan which was near Tenochtitlan also collapsed during that period. When the Mexica arrived at lake Texcoco, there were already several thriving city states, that didn't collapse and two of them became part of the Triple Alliance with the Mexica.
I've never seen evidence of smallpox preceding the Spanish in Mexico, as it did above the RIo Grande.
This period is well recorded. Cortes made it to Tenochtitlan the first time before small pox. Cortes and company were driven from the city and nearly killed. The Spaniards regrouped and were reinforced while small pox devastated the Aztec population - including Tenochtitlan.
As brutal as it may be, I wonder if we have strong sense of the extent to which people 'believed' in all of it, and even the parents would have been 'proud' to offer their offspring as sacrifice.
At very minimum, there must have been a very desperate cognitive dissonance at the image of one's child wreathing in desperation and pain.
But the Conquistadors brought a lot of unsavoury and brutal authoritarian measures along with them.
So I truly wonder what the locals might have thought about the New Religion, among all the other changes afoot.
It must have been a weird time, like aliens who are a 'bit like us but different' landing in spaceships.
