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American History

These Times History Took a Turn for the Batty

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Coatlicue. National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City

37. The Aztec Gods Are Back, folks!

Santos and Cayetano Hernandez took advantage of the gullibility of Yerba Buena’s residents, who bought the crooked brothers’ claims to be prophets of the Aztec gods. The conman siblings established a religious sect whose members met in nearby caves, and they reduced their followers, male and female, to sex slaves whom they abused in drug-fueled orgies.

Eventually, some of the victims grew impatient at constantly getting screwed – figuratively and literally – by the Hernandez brothers, who were taking their sweet time in revealing hidden Aztec treasures like they had promised. So the siblings decided to up the ante by recruiting some help to help keep the con alive. They found it in Magdalena Solis, a Monterrey prostitute whom they coached into pretending to be a reincarnation of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue, and Magdalena’s pimp/brother, Eleazar Solis.

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A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.

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