Aachanecalco

Aachanecalco 𐐂𐐰𐐽𐐰𐑌𐐯𐐿𐐰𐑊𐐿𐐬 (Nahuatl)
Capital city
The Metropolis of Aachanecalco
Clockwise from top: Aachanecalco cityscape, Park Calli Tzinquizco, City Hall, Aachane Mariner's Temple, Itzcoatl Monument
Nicknames:  Aachaco, Boa'achane
Country	Pulacan
Tlatocayotl	Topocueyoco
Atlepetl	Cenaachanecalco
Founded	1492 CE
Tlayacame	7 Ateopanco Tlapixtepec Tliltapoyec Xochitechan Ocelotepec Yancuicalli Tluahatoyac
Government
• Altepepixqui	Zolin Kotzatino
• Huealtepehuaque	Yaquin Yaotzin
• Chief Magistrate	Oatleng Ramokwena
Area
• Total	2,261 km2 (873 sq mi)
Population  (2022)
• Total	3,722,041
• Density	1,600/km2 (4,300/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+4 (Pulacan Standard Time)
Area code	010 to 070

Aachanecalco (Nahuatl: 𐐂𐐰𐐽𐐰𐑌𐐯𐐿𐐰𐑊𐐿𐐬, The Place of Aachane's Abode) is a major city in southern Malaio. The city serves as one of the four capitals of the Union State of Pulacan, housing much of the nation's executive governmental apparatus. Aachanecalco serves as the de facto seat of the Topocueyoco Department, though some suburban settlements extend into neighboring Mexochico Department. It is also one of Pulacan's largest, playing host to over 3.7 million people across 2,261 square kilometers of land divided into 7 tlayacame, or districts. The nearby landscape is defined by a distinctive harbor and spit, including the famous Guardian Rock (Nahuatl Tlapixtletl) which dominates the skyline. The other substantial natural feature in the area is the Tliltamaitl (Nahuatl for "Black Bay,") the largest such inlet in Pulacan and one of the nation's busiest areas of maritime traffic.

Aachanecalco serves as an economic, financial, governmental, and cultural hub in southern Pulacan, and is the largest city on the Vespanian coast. The population is plurality coyotec, or the descendants of mixing between Nahuatl settlers and Tswana peoples. Numerous other communities exist, however; the city was the first point of arrival for immigrants from western Scipia, Oxidentale, and Norumbia. Following independence from Zacapican, Aachanecalco saw additional growth from numerous coyotec and Tswana populations migrating from rural areas into the city to find work, especially after the devastation following the Hanaki War.

History

The settlement of Aachanecalco was first established as an alternative to the city of Cuicatepec for oceangoing traffic from Aztapamatlan in the late 15th century. A major Tlaloc Cozauist temple to the patron deity of the sea, Aachane, had existed in the area since the 12th century and was expanded as the central anchor point for the new city. The fortified harbor and port facilities quickly evolved into the main Malaioan gateway for the Heron Fleet and civilian trade ships.

From the late 19th century onwards and intensifying after the Hanaki War, Aachanecalco became a destination for immigrants. Rapid industrialization, breakdown of family clans in the south and the significant economic reconstruction needed to recover from the war incentivized large waves of industrial laborers to move to Pulacan. Countries with the largest emigrant presence in Aachanecalco included Phansi Uhlanga, Ludvosiya, and the Mutul, among others. Aachanecalco competed heavily for these immigrants with its neighboring rival Tliltapoyec, which had once rivaled Aachanecalco in size and economic power but had been permanently hobbled by the Tliltapoyec Harbor Disaster of 1928. Though its size had diminished, Tliltapoyec still attracted significant numbers of laborers postwar as it sought to rebuild its former strength. Despite this, the city could never outpace Aachanecalco's growth, and was finally subsumed into the metropolis as its seventh tlacayatl in 1974.

Organization

The city of Aachanecalco proper falls under the supervision of the altepetl of Cenaachanecalco or Greater Aachanecalco. Within this are sorted seven tlacayame, often translated as "wards" or "districts." Such districts sit in between the local altepetl government and the local calpolleh, an arrangement only present in Aachanecalco and two other large cities in Pulacan. They perform many of the basic functions of a typical altepetl government, such as tax collection and municipal services. Within the tlacayame there exist numerous named neighborhoods, often without specific local government but with distinct identities, often utilized informally by municipal governments for demographic survey reasons. Due to Aachanecalco's size and prominence in Pulatec culture, many of these neighborhoods have gained notoriety outside of the city itself.

The tlacayatl of Tluahatoyac is home to the Tzetzetzitzicatzinco area, so named due to the large presence of tsetse flies. The swamp-turned-working-class-neighborhood has gained international notoriety for its long name. Mictlampatzetzetzitzicatzinco Station (also rendered as North Tzetzetzitzicatzinco Station) is often cited as having the longest name for a public transit station in the world. The area grew up along the wetlands surrounding the Tluah River near the north of the city.

Transportation

An ATA PY-500 EMU on the Tepepulco Line in Xochitechan Ward.

Aachanecalco possesses a vast array of developed transportation networks. With the introduction of the steam locomotive in the late 19th century, the first transportation networks came with the construction of industrial spur lines connecting the nascent industrial sector of the region with port facilities. Later, this network would branch out to other industrial centers in southern Pulacan and expand to allow intercity passenger network. Until the turn of the 20th century, however, passenger transit within Aachanecalco was limited; what services did exist involved private corporations with blessings by the city government running horse-drawn omnibuses along major thoroughfares.

With industrialization, Aachanecalco expanded rapidly, and the transit network grew to accommodate the new influx of residents. The nature of the industrial calpolleh system as it manifested in Pulacan meant that, when it could afford to do so, a new calpolli would choose to live far from its place of work to avoid the poor environmental conditions and slums near industrial areas. When being founded, these calpolleh would often work either with new or existing transit lines to design a so-called "A—B—C" transit system. This had the advantage of putting home, work, and recreation access all on the same line, as well as promoting rapid line expansion with a guaranteed ridership, but came with the drawback of creating an extremely radial transit network with little opportunity to transit between services except in the center, where lines would meet at popular termini like Teponaztlan Station in Xochitechan Ward. Additionally, as many lines were run by singular calpolleh group, they would operate under propriety fare, ticketing, and scheduling schemes which would create difficulties for passengers attempting to visit other parts of the city outside of their routine. In the beginning of this rail-building boom, these were primarily streetcars; following the Hanaki War, and with the introduction of automobiles on Pulatec roads and the growing sprawl of Aachanecalco, many of these services were changed to heavy rail to maximize capacity and avoid traffic. Currently, streetcars and trolleybuses operate as feeder services, designed to bring passengers to and from less-dense areas to the nearest rail station node.

Today, bus, rail, and ferry transit within Aachanecalco is organized under Altepeyacanaliztli Tlacazazaciztli Aachanecalco, TCTl (Nahuatl: Aachanecalco Municipal Transportation Authority), usually transliterated by its initials, ATA. This calpolleh group was formed by forcible merger in 1966 under the tenure of Pulatec Chief Minister Atlahua Motsepe, and placed under the direct supervision of the Aachanecalco municipal government, one of its few direct responsibilities not delegated to the tlayacame. This merger simplified the complex network of competing rail services, and allowed for the creation of services like the Molebatsi Circle Line to serve as ring services, allowing for easier transfers both around the city center and further in the suburbs. Previously, these services fell to city-owned buses and streetcars, which lacked the capacity or revenue to meet the demand for transfers. Currently, ATA maintains the previously privately-owned rail services under a unified livery, pay scheme and fare service. Integrated-chip transit cards were introduced on all ATA services in December of 2013 and are known as TLA cards. Currently, the ATA network possesses X named train and streetcar lines, with a total of X kilometers (Y miles) of trackage, in addition to fleets of trolleybuses. Since 1968, ATA has owned and operated the cross-Tliltamaitl ferry service, carrying freight trucks, passenger automobiles, and passengers from the east to the west ends of the Black Bay.

International communities

A Chaan-styled public pavilion in Nalil Ch’uuyob, Ateopanco Ward.

Prior to the mass migrations of the 20th century, the city was largely divided between Nahua, coyotec and Tswana populations. These populations often lived in geographically distinct areas in a holdover from colonial times; Nahua calpolleh were typically located in the affluent foothills of the Tlapixtetl, while coyotec peoples found themselves along the southern shores and Tswana groups to the north and interior. This demography was mostly erased through the twin forces of migratory and industrial upheaval, which brought about mass movements of people both within Pulacan and across the globe. Upon arriving to Aachanecalco, immigrant groups would often band together by nationality, ethnicity, or religion, creating distinct "ethnic neighborhoods" within Aachanecalco. Their locations within the city reflect the relative wealth that each community achieved and the types of jobs they came to fill. Often, the locations of their neighborhoods were induced by discriminatory government policies or hostile reactions from would-be neighboring communities, forcing many immigrants to live in undesirable locales, usually either on the outskirts of town or in urban slums.

Mutulese-Pulateh make up a significant proportion of the immigrant-descended population in Aachanecalco. Two main groups migrated from the Mutul to Pulacan from the late-19th to mid-20th century. The first, typically self-identifying as Chaan, typically Ch'olti or Ch'orti-speaking populations that supported reform and communal organization. The Chaan were drawn to Pulacan for its open policies on immigration, its calpolleh method of economic organization, and freedom from oppression by Royalist security forces back in the Mutul. These groups primarily settled in Aachanecalco and cities on the southern coast, where they established archetypal ethnic communities and organized fraternal organizations known as popob (singular pop). These groups kept up connections between immigrants, helped organize remittance payments to the Mutul, arranged for funeral expenses, paid charity for struggling members, and in some cases acted as left-wing political organizations advocating for change both in the Mutul and, at times, in Pulacan. The Chaanob popob were harnessed by the Juwa Party political machine as key bloc voters during the first half of the 20th century. A neighborhood that the Chaanob pops formed was known as a nalil, which closely approximates the meaning of calpolli in the Chaanic languages. As the Chaan communities became more established in Pulatec society, their descendants raised in the new country began to form their own identity, under the ethnonym of pooltek (singular: pool), a linguistic deformation of Pulacan.

The end of the Third Uhlangan Civil War in 1971 saw millions of refugees crossing from modern-day Phansi Uhlanga into Pulacan. These refugees came in two distinct groups—the predominantly-Komontu stream of refugees from Iqozi fleeing the genocidal Hasanya, and the later stream of settler-colonial coyotec and Nahuatec citizens of the losing state of Cuhonhico, many of whom were involved in executing the Hasanya. Settlements of both groups in Aachanecalco were limited; Iqozi refugees typically congregated in the center of the country, with many incentivized to return to Phansi Uhlanga, while the Cuhonhicah refugees underwent extensive re-education, deprogramming and in some cases criminal punishment for their part in crimes against humanity. Those that ended up in the city were either those that had prematurely slipped through the cracks of the chaos of the early 1970s or those who had completed their reeducation and penal service. Even after deprogramming, many retained their Olochtist political views, and were through many ways barred from citizenship or suffrage by successive Pulatec governments. Often ostracized in largely-progressive Aachanecalco neighborhoods, many Cuhonhicah groups were forced to form calpolleh of their own, working in services typically shunned by regular Pulateh. As a consequence of the historic ethnic redlining that was sporadically present in Aachanecalco's tlayacame, Iqozi refugees and Cuhonhicah alike were often forced into sub-optimal neighborhoods, though the former often received more sympathy and aid from the government and community. As a consequence of the lack of available space, some Iqozi and Cuhonhicah communities were in close proximity to each other, which led to frequent bouts of racially-motivated hate crimes, riots and civil disturbances throughout the remainder of the 20th century.

Numerous other ethnic groups call Aachanecalco home in various self-sustaining ethnic communities. In the aftermath of 20th-century upheaval in Ludvosiya, numerous groups including the Hvoruzi, Varrushi, Kelinerr, Araziner, Koraki, Nayrushi and Jakraji would settle in "Ludic neighborhoods" across Aachanecalco. Some, like the Koraki, Kelinerr, and Nayrushi eschewed industrial urban life and instead established farming calpolleh in the southern interior, advancing industrial agriculture in Pulacan. Of those that stayed, many integrated into the fabric of wider Aachanecalco politics; the current mayor (Nahua: Altepepixqui) of Aachanecalco, Zolin Kotzatino, is Jakraj-Pulatl. Kembesans began arriving in large numbers in Pulacan in the 1950s, towards the end of the Great Migratory Period, after being disillusioned by the failure of their homeland's 1948 political reforms. Though they largely settled on the Karaihe Sea coast, a small number (primarily intellectuals) came to Aachanecalco.

Culture

A community music festival.

As one of Pulacan's largest cities, Aachanecalco is a major cultural center. The blend of cultures both from across Pulacan and from around the world have produced a unique cultural output and urban identity distinct from the rest of Pulacan.

Music in Aachanecalco

Though the majority of Pulacan's film industry takes up residence in Mohembo due to its proximity to numerous climes, Aachanecalco is nevertheless a popular setting for movies, especially arthouse and independent productions. Numerous mayors have instituted tax credits for productions filmed within Aachanecalco in order to incentivize movie production in the city to spread its image.