Wealth and poverty: Aztec standard of living

In the sixteenth century, in the eyes of the ruling class, land, arable land, remained the basis of all prosperity. As the dignitary rose in rank, he acquired the rights to more and larger areas of real estate. Theoretically, nobody was the owner of the land. The land belonged to the collective owner, calpulli, to public institutions such as temples, or to the city itself. There was no private ownership of the land, there was collective ownership with individual right of use.