Word: aztec
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Every year thousands of pre-Hispanic objects-Mayan stelae, Aztec jewelry, Incan pottery, Olmec figurines-are smuggled out of Mexico, Central America and the Andean nations of South America. The illicit trade easily reaches millions of dollars annually and involves characters so bizarre they might have stepped out of an old Humphrey Bogart film: shrewd peasants, soldiers of fortune, venal archaeologists, dealers, diplomats and collectors who are ready to pay-or do-almost anything to satisfy their greed...
When public utility repair crews digging at a busy Mexico City street corner in February made their find, it created an instant sensation. Rumors arose that the long-lost treasure of Montezuma II, the Aztec emperor at the time of the Spanish conquest, had finally been located. As archaeologists roped off the site, indignant Mexicans protested: "We have a right to the gold. We pay our taxes...
What the workmen found was not gold, but a treasure nonetheless. It has now been identified as a huge pre-Columbian bas-relief of the Aztec moon goddess Coyolxauhqui. Probably sculpted in the early 15th century, the circular stone, 3.3 meters (11 ft.) across and weighing some 20 tons, has relief images of the dismembered goddess's limbs, torso and head scattered all over its surface. The carnage depicts a well-known episode from Aztec mythology. When the mother of the gods was pregnant for the last time, so the story goes, her other offspring-the moon, planets...
...dandy of American art is a woman, Louise Nevelson. Nobody is more recognizable: the fine, blade-nosed Aztec face with its monstrous false eyelashes, like clumps of mink, is as manifestly the property of an artist as Picasso's monkey mask. The sight of Nevelson under full sail-mole-colored hunting cap, peasant flounces, Chinese brocade and wolfskin, bronze pendants clanking, boar's teeth rattling-is one of the few spectacles of complete self-possession in American life; the 19th century poet who walked his live lobster on a ribbon outside the Ritz could not have looked more...
Then, following a ritual as intricate as an Aztec sacrificial rite -and only slightly less colorful -CBS Chairman William Paley met with his top aides. At "Black Rock," CBS'S somber, granite headquarters on Manhattan's Sixth Avenue, the troops were told to expect an announcement of executive changes at 3:30 p.m. At 3:30 they were told to wait until 4 -coincidentally when the stock market closed and it would be too late for investors to be react...