Coatepec means "hill of the serpent" in Nahuatl. It's home to Coatlicue ("Serpent Skirt"), the Earth Goddess in traditional Nahua (a group which included the Mexica, a.k.a "Aztecs") cosmology. As well to her daughter, Coyolxauhqui ("face adorned with bells"), the moon goddess, and sons, the Centzonhuitznahua ("400 southerners" - the stars of the southern hemisphere).
And it's the birthplace of Huitzilopochtli, the God of War, who killed his siblings when they tried to kill their mother, once he was born - as a fully armed adult. Coatepec is one of the places in which, according to some narratives, the ancestors of the Mexica passed through, after leaving Aztlán.
Huitzilopochtli's birth and brutal murder of his siblings represents both the daily natural phenomena of the sunrise, when the sun banishes the stars and moon from the night sky, and the arrival of the Mexica into the valley of the Texcoco, where in a short time, despite a smaller and more young group, they would overcome their neighbors.
1600 X 1200 gif pixellated rework / animated version of a digital painting from 2015
