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While the Wikipedia article does give us a broad perspective of the matter, it's important to aknowledge that the 'primary sources' quoted are still those of the colonizares and missionaries whose interpretations of the indigenous informers could be heavliy biased by the catholic view from that time.

To fully grasp the fenomena of sacrifice among mesoamerican societies (including the most popular, Mexica) I recomend the work of Miguel León-Portilla Aztec Thought and Culture and Alfredo López Austin Human Body and Ideology, both of them considered the biggest authorities regarding mesoamerican studies because their primary sources are not only the prehispanic codex but also the indigenous people that are alive in Mexico today.

Just for the sake of summarize: in mesoamerican cosmogony the life and death cicle desn't have the 'good' vs 'bad' connotations of cristianity, and gods doesn't work as allegories of the human's deepest impulses as in greek mythology. Even Jospeh Campbell notices these distinctions. The role of death is rather a transitionary state between the "physically incarnated world" and the other world that exists beyond human perception. One's truest essence, teyolia, that resides precisely in the heart is the only part of ourselves that can travel through the "other realms" not to purified our sins or to seek eternity, but to serve the gods in order to sustain the existence of the living world. In other words, death only means another way to maintain life. Sacrificed people are still serving the gods in this cosmovision.

So, yes. Sacrifice -at least among mesoamerican cultures- had heavily religious connotations, and its political aspects were indeed those of dominance tools, but not as instruments of fear as you may think (as depicted in the movie Apocalypto) but rather as an assertion of which group of people or tribe was more worthy of the favor of the gods. That's why captured* warriors accepted sacrifice with dignity; they knew they failed to their tribes, but afterlife they would be working for the gods anyway.

Pd. English is not my native language so I hope this text is legible enough.

*The objective of a war was to capture enemies, no to kill them.