The dismembered the defeated daughters those killed by family
Symbols
Bells on the cheeksSevered headDismembered limbsWar paintEagle down
Mythology Summary
Coyolxauhqui, She Painted with Bells, is the daughter of Coatlicue who led her four hundred brothers, the Huitznahua, to kill their pregnant mother and was killed and dismembered instead by Huitzilopochtli the moment he was born. The myth is told in the Florentine Codex (Book 3) and in the Cronica Mexicayotl. The Coyolxauhqui Stone, found in 1978 at the foot of the Huitzilopochtli shrine of the Templo Mayor, shows her exactly as the story leaves her: head, arms and legs scattered, bells on her cheeks.
Modern Practice
Coyolxauhqui is worked by those who have been cut apart by their own family, and by those who refuse to let the winning side write the only account. The monolith has been taken up in Mexican feminist art precisely because the dismembered woman is displayed at the foot of the victor's stair.