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The Azatatlan culture was especially significant in areas near Puerto Vallarta.
It is characterized by its polychrome ceramics with many symbolic motifs: “hearts,
feather tassels, semi-precious stones usually green, solar rays, and sacrificial
knifes. There were also presentations of animals, deities and human beings.”
Metal was probably used in West Mexico as early as 650 A.D. Its use became
widespread during the Azatatlan tradition (800-1200). They used mostly gold,
silver and copper. A later culture that was prominent for its use of metal
was the Purepechas (1300-1521). They used it both for personal adornments
and for practical purposes. In some places they made ‘axe money” which were
too thin for practical use; instead they were currency in trade.
The ceramics found with red, cream and black geometric motifs applied in
strict symmetry are from the Chupicuaro people, who lived in 400 B.C. to 200 A.D.
The first people who lived here (from 5000 to 2000 B.C.) were nomadic.
They were hunter-gatherers as indicated by what they have left behind:
“projectile points, scrapers, percussion tools and grounding stones.
the Museum was not so much about Puerto Vallarta as about the much bigger
area called West Mexico, which in a map was defined as covering the
territory between the states of Sonora in the north and Guerrero in the
south and going inland from the ocean quite far in some places.
Almost opposite of the Naval History Museum, at the entrance to Cuale Island
there was the Archaeological Museum to provide a glimpse into those pre-Columbian
cultures of the Puerto Vallarta area. In this Museo del Cuale also had only a
few artifacts.
“With the conquests the long lasting cultures of this area disappeared
almost in their entirety either by death of the individuals who sustained
them or by Spanish prohibition of observing certain customs,” the book said.
“But yet many manifestations of these continue to survive.”
The Museum’s few artifacts and pictures are described in Spanish signs,
but the Navy officer in charge gave me a book in English which translated
the descriptions. Accordingly, it was Captain Nuno Beltran de Guzman.
Captain Nuno Beltran de Guzman conquered this area which was then
named New Galicia by the Queen of Spain in 1531.
I learned these historical details in the Naval History Museum
(Museo historico Naval) in Malecon on the other side of the bridge
over the Cuale Island.
Before the Spaniards the people who lived closest to this region
were the “coca tribes (Cuyutecos).” When Francisco Cortes de San
Buenaventura in 1520 “confronted” them in a valley, these local
tribes came armed with “arches, truncheons and spears,” each man
bearing “a color feather flag in hand.” Thus the Bay received its
name, after the Valley of the Flags (Valle de Banderas).
Under the bridge on the Malecon where I was
now standing, at the tip of what has since
become Cuale Island.
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