Famine of One Rabbit (1454): Aztec Mexico's Great Hunger

The Famine of One Rabbit was a severe food crisis that struck the Valley of Mexico between about 1450 and 1454, at the height of the reign of the Aztec ruler Moctezuma I. Unseasonal frosts and several years of drought destroyed the maize harvests on which the cities of the valley depended. The crisis reached its worst point in 1454, the year called 1 Rabbit (Ce Tochtli) in the Aztec calendar, and it was remembered for generations as a defining disaster.

Background

By 1450 the Valley of Mexico was one of the most densely populated regions of the Americas. The cities of the Aztec Triple Alliance, led by Tenochtitlan and Texcoco, were growing quickly. Their people depended on maize, beans, squash and chillies grown in fields around the lake and on chinampas, raised beds built on reclaimed wetland.

Maize in the highlands is vulnerable to the weather. At over 2,200 m above sea level, the valley can suffer frost at the beginning and end of the growing season, and the rains that start each summer are not always reliable. A few bad years in a row could exhaust stores of grain.

What happened

Colonial chronicles, including those of Diego Durán and the native historian Chimalpahin, describe a sequence of disasters. Around 1450 heavy snow and frosts damaged crops and buildings. In the following years the rains failed, and the harvests were poor or lost entirely. By 1454 there was little food left in the valley.

People ate whatever they could find, including wild plants and lake creatures. Many fell ill or died, although no reliable figures survive. Sources describe bodies left unburied and wild animals entering settlements, images which may be partly literary but which convey the scale of the crisis.

The response of the rulers

Moctezuma I opened the granaries of Tenochtitlan, where tribute in maize had been stored, and distributed rations to the population. He also suspended tribute payments for a time. When these stores ran out, he is said to have given his people permission to leave the city and seek food wherever they could.

In Texcoco, the ruler Nezahualcoyotl took similar steps, releasing his subjects from tribute and supplying food from royal stores. The two rulers had recently worked together on the great dike across Lake Texcoco, built after the flood of 1449, and the famine tested their resources further.

Many families went east to the Gulf Coast, especially the land of the Totonacs, where rainfall was more reliable. Chronicles report that people sold themselves or their children into servitude there in exchange for maize. Some never returned.

Key people

• Moctezuma I: ruler of Tenochtitlan from 1440 to 1469, who opened the city’s granaries and suspended tribute.
• Nezahualcoyotl: ruler of Texcoco, who took similar measures for his own subjects.
• Tlacaelel: Moctezuma’s half-brother and chief minister, credited in colonial chronicles with religious responses to the crisis.

How far the rulers’ measures reduced suffering is impossible to measure. The sources were written decades later, mostly from the point of view of the ruling families, and they tend to praise the generosity of their kings. They nevertheless agree that the crisis exceeded what the stores of the valley could handle.

Consequences

According to the chronicles, good rains returned in 1455, the harvest recovered and the crisis ended. The famine left lasting effects, however. Aztec rulers expanded their storage of grain and pressed harder to secure tribute from conquered provinces with different climates, such as the warm lowlands and the Gulf Coast. This made food security a further reason for imperial expansion.

According to tradition, the famine also influenced religious thinking. Some colonial sources, notably Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, link the beginning of the so-called flower wars, regular battles fought to take captives for sacrifice, to this period, when the gods were believed to need more offerings to bring back the rains. Historians treat this explanation with caution. Some scholars also argue that the New Fire ceremony, which marked the end of each 52-year calendar cycle, was later moved from a 1 Rabbit year to the following year, 2 Reed, because 1 Rabbit had become associated with disaster.

Because the calendar repeated every 52 years, the memory of 1 Rabbit as a year of hunger was renewed with each cycle. The famine is recorded in several pictorial and written annals, which shows how deeply it marked the communities of the valley.

Timeline

• 1449: A major flood hits Tenochtitlan; the dike of Nezahualcoyotl is built.
• c. 1450: Heavy snow and frosts damage crops in the Valley of Mexico.
• 1451–1453: Repeated droughts cause failed harvests.
• 1454 (1 Rabbit): The famine reaches its height; many people leave for the Gulf Coast.
• 1455: Good rains return and the famine ends.
• 1469: Death of Moctezuma I, whose reign spanned the famine.

Why it matters

The Famine of One Rabbit showed how vulnerable even a powerful pre-industrial state was to climate. It shaped Aztec policies on food storage and tribute, and it became one of the most vivid memories in the historical traditions of central Mexico.