How many veintenas does the Mexica year have?

Eighteen of twenty days, which make 360, plus five added at the end — the nemontemi — to complete 365. That is the solar count, the xiuhpohualli, and it is distinct from the 260-day count that gives the day-signs. Huey Tozoztli is the 4 of the eighteen.

Is a veintena the same as a trecena?

No, and it is the commonest confusion. A veintena is twenty days of the solar year, of which there are eighteen — Huey Tozoztli among them. A trecena is thirteen days of the divinatory count, of which there are twenty. Both run at once and do not cross the same way twice for fifty-two years.

Why is the full entry on Huey Tozoztli only in Spanish?

Because it rests on the accounts of Sahagún and Durán in their own sixteenth-century words. A quotation carried across stops being a quotation. The Spanish entry is linked.

The eighteen veintenas

Veintena 4 of 18

Huey Tozoztli

Q: What is the veintena of Huey Tozoztli?

Huey Tozoztli means «The Great Vigil». It is veintena 4 of the eighteen twenty-day stretches of the Mexica solar year. It is dedicated to chicomecóatl and Cintéotl.

«The Great Vigil»

Still from the animated background of the veintena of Huey Tozoztli — The background of Huey Tozoztli, held still. In the app it moves through the twenty days of its veintena.

What a veintena is

One of the eighteen twenty-day stretches of the Mexica solar year. Eighteen of them make 360 days; five more — the nemontemi — close the 365. This is a different count from the 260-day one that gives the day-signs, and the two run at the same time.

What this one asks of you

To tend the young maize and close the wait by putting the seed in the ground.

The energy it is dedicated to is Chicomecóatl and Cintéotl.

The full entry is in Spanish, and here is why

What you have read above is this project's own summary of the veintena of Huey Tozoztli. The full entry — the part that rests on the sixteenth-century sources — has not been translated, and that is a decision rather than an omission.

We chose not to touch the primary text. Those sections quote Sahagún, Durán and the codices in their own words, often in sixteenth-century Castilian. A quotation carried across stops being a quotation: it loses the register, the ambiguity and the exact wording someone might want to check against a facsimile.

In Spanish the entry carries:

Etimología
Energías
Rituales
Sociedad
Simbolismo
Códices
Ecología
Vigencia hoy
Interpretaciones modernas

Read the full entry in the original Spanish → Nahuatl names and terms are identical in both versions.

Ecology

Empirical evidence: the Regmaíz Network (Guerrero, 2013–2020)

The Network of Peasant Guardians of Native Maize of Coyuca de Benítez applied milpa-system principles with local agroecology. Over seven years, yields went from 2 to 3.8 tonnes per hectare.

A farming that does not work against the environment, against life itself, that does not pollute, and that uses sustainable practices instead of agrochemicals.

Rituals

Literally cinteoanaloyan, «when the energy Cinteotl was taken». The whole community went out to the plots to gather a tender maize plant (toctli) or, failing that, a maguey root (mecoatl) — both living manifestations of the energy Cinteotl. They decked them with flowers and offered them tortillas, toasted maize mixed with beans, atoles and roasted frogs: a feast that was also a declaration of interdependence.

In the afternoon the plants standing for Cinteotl were carried to the Cinteopan, along with the grain set aside for sowing. Seven ears wrapped in red paper became the heart of the granary, and at sowing time it was their grain that was scattered.

How to cite this page

Alma Mexica, «Huey Tozoztli», The eighteen veintenas. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/veintena/huey-tozoztli/