Zacapican
Red Banner Tribunal Panchichiltic Tlahtoloyan | |
|---|---|
 Flag | |
| Capital | Tequitinitlan |
| Largest city | Tecolotlan |
| Official languages | Nahuatl |
| Ethnic groups |
|
| Demonym(s) | Zacapine Zacapitec |
| Government | Federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy |
| Nochcalima I | |
• Prime Minister | Chicacua Xiomara |
• Senate Speaker | Tachto Callcalan |
• House Speaker | Queya Iluyollo |
| Legislature | Popular Assembly |
| Senate | |
| House of Representatives | |
| Formation | |
• Pre-Dynastic Period | 2,600-2000 BCE |
• Old Empire | 2000-119 BCE |
• First Intermediate Period | 119 BCE-21 CE |
• Middle Empire | 21-1534 CE |
• Second Intermediate Period | 1534-1599 CE |
• Start of New Empire period | 19 August 1599 |
• 1st Constitutional Reformation | 22 February 1706 |
| 1756-1781 | |
• 2nd Constitutional Reformation | 13 November 1781 |
| Population | |
• 2021 estimate |  61,558,935 |
• 2019 census | 60,785,909 |
| GDP (nominal) | 2019 estimate |
• Total | $1.67 Trillion |
• Per capita | $27,474 |
| HDI (2019) | 0.888 very high |
| Driving side | right |
Zacapican, formally the Red Banner Tribual (Nahuatl: Panchichiltic Tlahtoloyan), is an Imperial Federation located in southern Oxidentale, bordering Kayahallpa to the north. It is a constitutional monarchy in which power is shared between the monarchic Huetlatoani (lit. "Great Speaker", equivalent to the title of "Emperor") or the female equivalent Cihuahuetlatoani and the corresponding parliamentary authorities of the Popular Assembly which are the triumvirate formed by the Prime Minister, the Senate Speaker and the House Speaker. The wider Zacapine government is organized as a federation of city states called Atlepetl, each formally ruled by a figurehead Tlatoani lord while the operations of the focal city, satellite towns and rural communities is generally left to the Calpolli, which function as democratic council governments in towns or wards within a city. Atlepetl tier governments therefore mirror the federal tier government with a hereditary noble executive balanced against a popular assembly, derived from nationwide voting districts on the federal level and from Calpolli representatives at the state level.
Modern Zacapican is considered to be the legitimate continuation of an ancient Nahua empire which has occupied the southern cone region of Oxidentale for over 4,000 years, as the Panchichiltic Tlahtoloyan encompasses the 4th and 5th dynasties of the New Empire period in Zacapine historiography. However many aspects of the traditional culture and political structure of the empire have changed dramatically since the early modern period, namely the First Constituional Reformation which reorganized the feudal 2nd dynasty into a crowned republic dominated by wealthy landowners and urban elites which sought to dismantle the ancient Calpolli system, and then by the Red Banner Uprisings of the latter half of the 18th century along with the Second Constitutional Reformation, which again reshaped the national and local government systems according to the revolutionary principles of the rebel Red Banner peasants, re-establishing a revised version of the traditional Calpolli system and empowering the rural aristocracy to rule in the stead of the defunct 3rd dynasty's crowned republic system.
Under the reformed Calpolli system and the revised constitutional monarchy, Zacapican has enjoyed prolonged periods of stability and relative prosperity. Although the accptance of new agricultural and industrial techniques and methods has not been without some resistance, in general the nation has readily accepted and contributed to the advance of technology and its economic applications, allowing modern Zacapican to benefit from a fully developed secondary sector and growing tertiary sector of the economy. Zacapican is therefore considered to be a developed country with a diverse composition of agriculture, manufacturing and service industries. Zacapican is the third largest economy in Oxidentale, behind the economic powerhouses of Mutul and Sante Reze in northern Oxidentale.
Etymology
The common name Zacapican is derived from the nahuatl zacapi, itself a truncated form of zacapiliztli meaning to harvest or collect grasses, maize or other crops, along with the suffix -can. Thus together Zacapican can be translated as "place where the grass is harvested", a term which may have been assigned to the area in which the ancient migratory nahuas settled as they are believed to have imported sedentary agriculture to the region. Historians believe this name was originally ascribed specifically to the Zacaco grassland region in which the nahuas roginally settled, streaching across what is now central and eastern Zacapican, and was only later ascribed to the broader nahua empire which grew to dominate the southern cone of Oxidentale but was always based in the Zacaco plains.
Panchichiltic Tlahtoloyan, generally translated as Red Banner Tribunal, is the formal name of the current government and ruling system within the state. Panchichiltic is derived from the nahuatl Pantli meaning flag and Chichiltic denoting a red color, representing the red colored flags used as the rallying symbol of the Red Banner peasant rebellions which resulting in the overthrow of the previous dynasty and installation of the new regime. Tlahtoloyan is a more traditional designation, derived from the nahuatl Tlahto- meaning a ruling or decision, and the suffix -loyan, and so translates roughly to "place where decisions are made", although it may be more loosely translated as Empire or Tribunal. Those who rule a Tlahtoloyan are termed Tlatoani or Heutlatoani, the former translating directly as "decision maker" but more commonly as "Arbiter" or "Speaker", and the latter simply adding the Hue- prefix meaning big, and so translating to "Great Speaker" (or "Great Arbiter"). In Zacapine culture, a hegemonic Tlatoani is considered equivalent to and may often be loosely translated as King and thus the higher Huetlatoani is considered equivalent to can be translated as Emperor. Female equivalents of both simply involve the addition of the prefix Cihua-, meaning "woman", resulting in Cihuatlatoani and Cihuahuetlatoani translating directly to "Woman Speaker" and "Woman Great Speaker" respectively.
History
Zacapican possesses an extremely long recorded and archeological history which is made all the more remarkable by its organization into a single cultural and political continuity, although this is in part the result of ancient and more recent historical revisionism which sought to organized at times unrelated dynasties and regimes into a more standardized and rationalized format which fit the contemporary view of history. Nevertheless, it is generally acknowledged that the Zacapine civilization is a single continuum which has existed since at least 2,000 BCE and can be generally understood as being made up of one monolithic empire possessing three phases, the old, the middle and the new empire, which are distinguished from one another by the intervening periods of collapse and subsequent reunification. The period preceding the formation of the empire proper is termed the "predynastic period" as no imperial dynasty governed during this time. The present day is commonly understood to fall within the continuing New Empire period, although a dissenting opinion is that the Red Banner rebellions constitute a third intermediate period and thus the present day should fall within a fourth "Neo-Imperial" period. This view is generally contested and rejected by the academic establishment.
Predynastic Period
Old Empire
First Intermediate Period
Middle Empire
Second Intermediate Period
New Empire
First Constitutional Reformation
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While the development of mercantile capitalism was well established since long before the beginning of the New Empire period, the advent of industrial capitalism proved to be a significant disruption to the political and economic order of the feudal Zacapine civilization of the time. Pochteca merchants which had previously filled the role of traders of goods began to use their accumulating wealth to challenge and even eclipse the status of Zacapine nobility. The Pochteca most of all advocated the reorganization of Zacapine agriculture which was organized around the ancient Calpolli system and was primarily based on subsistence farming and food production, seeing the communal land holdings and agricultural methods as antiquated, inefficient and most importantly inefficient and thus unprofitable. This growing class of wealthy lowborn individuals and trading families became an increasingly powerful bloc relative to the aristocracy, and soon were influential enough to force the nobility to give concessions including extending privileges to the merchant caste which had previously been reserved to the nobility. This was overall met with little resistance, save from the most powerful nobles including the Huetlatoani, as these stood to loose the most to the rising merchant class while lesser and un-landed nobles were more amenable to working together and gaining from arrangements with the merchants. This dichotomy resulted in a palace coup and the unceremonious end of the New Empire period's 2nd Dynasty.
What followed was the First Constitutional Reformation which was ratified on the 22nd of February 1706, in which the 3rd dynasty was installed under a system of constitutional monarchy which operated as a crowned republic. In effect, this new dynasty, sometimes called the Pochtec regime, was a limited democracy dominated by factions of the agrarian and urban upper class merchants which held stakes in agricultural and proto-industrial ventures, while the monarchs of the 3rd dynasty were reduced to figureheads which legitimized the de-facto oligarchy which was beginning to replace the old feudal organization of the empire. In particular, the period following the 1st Reformation was characterized by the general destruction and dismantling of Calpolli towns which collectively owned the land in common. These lands would become privatized and consolidated in a process of enclosure which began to rapidly convert lands which had previously been cultivated by a large number of community members utilized small plots into a small number of large plantations and agricultural estates owned and operated by wealthy Pochtecatl. Following the consolidation of agriculture into the new plantation economy, agricultural yield began to shift towards cash crops intended for export.
In particular, crops which could be used to manufacture textiles in urban work-houses were preferred as this would generate profit upon being sold from the field, upon being sold from the work-house as textiles, and then again upon being transported and sold at a profit overseas. This early industrial economy generated a large amount of wealth for the upper classes of Zacapine society and brought an influx of foreign goods and improvements of technology into the country. However, it also brought about dissatisfaction with the nobility which found themselves increasingly sidelined by the merchant caste which they viewed as undeserving upstarts. Moreover, the agricultural policies of the Pochtec regime generated huge waves of landless peasants which emigrated into the cities looking for work, bringing mass poverty and disorder to these urban centers. Those who remained in the countryside found themselves working on land which was once theirs for poor wages, or simply out of work and facing poverty and starvation without access to the land needed to sustain themselves. While the Pochtec regime was considered a golden age by many due to the rapid advances in technology and wealth, it also brought an unprecedented level of poverty and unrest into the country, unrest which would inevitably boil over into rebellion.