The Mesoamerican pantheon is composed of deities whose influence extends across different aspects of life and nature. Xipe Tótec, “Our Lord the Flayed One,” held a prominent place among Nahua and Toltec peoples because of his association with warfare, ritual sacrifice, and the processes of human and vegetal regeneration. The cycles of maize, its presence and absence throughout the year, are fundamental to understanding both his cult and his complex symbolic representation.
Xipe Tótec is depicted as a man “clothed” in the flayed skin of another person, a powerful symbol that conceptually links agriculture and warfare, as evidenced in the festival of Tlacaxipehualiztli dedicated to this god. The celebration took place after the dry season, coinciding with the vernal equinox and the end of military campaigns. It included the immolation of captives, sacrifices that functioned as metaphors for the renewal of the earth and the growth of maize. The deity’s priests donned the flayed skins and received a portion of the maize ears that farmers would use in the next planting season. The offered skins were also believed to foretell the amount of rainfall to come, making warfare and sacrifice guarantees of abundant harvests.
In this sense, the milpa was equated with the battlefield, and warriors with maize, the food gifted to humans by the gods. Thus, both maize and warriors are sacrificed, flayed, and consumed in order to sustain cosmic and agricultural processes. Xipe is the protector of the seed and an agent of its regeneration, as reflected in his other attributes: a headdress of green and red feathers; a skirt made of zapote leaves; the chicahuaztli, a rattle staff connected with warfare; a jaguar on his left arm, a feline linked to fertility and regarded as the protector of warriors; and his red and yellow body paint, symbols of blood and mature maize. Like warriors, maize struggles to emerge from the earth, a process in which life depends upon death. Xipe embodies the transformation and renewal of the earth’s old skin.