WI: Consequences of a Mayan-Aztec cultural/technological connection

Suppose that:
-a very large earthquake occurs in Yucatan, expelling a lot of mayans, destroying infrastructure, and forcing such refugees to flee. They decide to flee west, and end up finding the aztecs. This one may be more detrimental to the mayans.
-or, some mayan city-state grows into too much power, unites the Yucatan peninsula, and goes on a mongol-esque random conquest spree. They end up going west, and meet up with the aztec civilization.
-or, the aztec empire grows very wanky in the 15th century, expands east, and meets with the mayan city states.

So, we know how the aztec conquest of neighboring peoples influenced their culture. From conquered peoples came their own concepts of sacrifice, art, agriculture, sport and philosophy. It should be that such a connection between two large-sized-for-their-territorial-context civilizations should create some very interesting developments in culture and science.
The question is, how would a proposed mayan-aztec connection influence such sectors of culture and science in this "enlarged mesoamerican empire"? Would this empire develop enough technology in enough time to become more of a nuisance against the spaniard invaders that would come in the future?
 
There's also the Huastec to the northeast of the Valley of Mexico, who speak a Maya language.


Even earlier we have Teotihuacan. While there may not be a consensus on the details, its known that the center had some substantial interaction with the Maya kingdoms. I haven't read much on Mesoamerica for a while but It seems to me that however Teotihuacan influenced it's neighbors would be a likely precursor to how the Triple Alliance interacted with the surrounding polities. It might be helpful to see what went on there in order to visualize what an even more intensive correspondence between these regions would look like.
 
Any knowlege on at least one mesoamerican civilization with primitive knowlege of metal-casting?
I know the Postclassic Maya, and I think all other Mesoamericans during the period, knew how to work with copper. The most common use was to make copper axes, more durable than stone albeit not as sharp. They also sometimes made an alloy of both gold and copper called tumbaga. I think the Tarascans were starting to work with bronze around the time of the conquest.

In any case, to answer the question in your OP I should state that the Mesoamerican civilizations were by no means isolated from one another. A common trait among them all was a very mercantile disposition, the Aztecs considered traders to be of their own class above most of the commoners and among the Maya even noblemen engaged in trade. And even aside from long distance trade the Aztecs did border some Maya kingdoms and the island of Xicalango off the Yucatan (in the state of Campeche) was a major trading post.
 
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