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Descendants of Aztec Pictography
In the aftermath of the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of
Mexico, Spanish friars and authorities partnered with indigenous
rulers and savants to gather detailed information on Aztec history,
religious beliefs, and culture. The pictorial books they created
served the Spanish as aids to evangelization and governance, but
their content came from the native intellectuals, painters, and
writers who helped to create them. Examining the nine major
surviving texts, preeminent Latin American art historian Elizabeth
Hill Boone explores how indigenous artists and writers documented
their ancestral culture.
Analyzing the texts as one distinct corpus, Boone shows how they
combined European and indigenous traditions of documentation and
considers questions of motive, authorship, and audience. For
Spanish authorities, she shows, the books revealed Aztec ideology
and practice, while for the indigenous community, they preserved
venerated ways of pictorial expression as well as rhetorical and
linguistic features of ancient discourses. The first comparative
analysis of these encyclopedias, Descendants of Aztec
Pictography analyzes how the painted compilations embraced
artistic traditions from both sides of the Atlantic.
eBook
In the palace of Nezahualcoyotl : painting manuscripts, writing the pre-Hispanic past in early colonial period Tetzcoco, Mexico
Around 1542, descendants of the Aztec rulers of Mexico created accounts of the pre-Hispanic history of the city of Tetzcoco, Mexico, one of the imperial capitals of the Aztec Empire. Painted in iconic script (picture writing), the Codex Xolotl, the Quinatzin Map, and the Tlohtzin Map appear to retain and emphasize both pre-Hispanic content and also pre-Hispanic form, despite being produced almost a generation after the Aztecs surrendered to Hernn Corts in 1521. Yet, as this pioneering study makes plain, the reality is far more complex. Eduardo de J. Douglas offers a detailed critical analysis and historical contextualization of the manuscripts to argue that colonial economic, political, and social concerns affected both the content of the three Tetzcocan pictorial histories and their archaizing pictorial form. As documents composed by indigenous people to assert their standing as legitimate heirs of the Aztec rulers as well as loyal subjects of the Spanish Crown and good Catholics, the Tetzcocan manuscripts qualify as subtle yet shrewd negotiations between indigenous and Spanish systems of signification and between indigenous and Spanish concepts of real property and political rights. By reading the Tetzcocan manuscripts as calculated responses to the changes and challenges posed by Spanish colonization and Christian evangelization, Douglass study significantly contributes to and expands upon the scholarship on central Mexican manuscript painting and recent critical investigations of art and political ideology in colonial Latin America.
eBook
The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City
The capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan, was, in its era, one of the largest cities in the world. Built on an island in the middle of a shallow lake, its population numbered perhaps 150,000, with another 350,000 people in the urban network clustered around the lake shores. In 1521, at the height of Tenochtitlan's power, which extended over much of Central Mexico, Hernando Cortés and his followers conquered the city. Cortés boasted to King Charles V of Spain that Tenochtitlan was \"destroyed and razed to the ground.\" But was it?Drawing on period representations of the city in sculptures, texts, and maps, The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City builds a convincing case that this global capital remained, through the sixteenth century, very much an Amerindian city. Barbara E. Mundy foregrounds the role the city's indigenous peoples, the Nahua, played in shaping Mexico City through the construction of permanent architecture and engagement in ceremonial actions. She demonstrates that the Aztec ruling elites, who retained power even after the conquest, were instrumental in building and then rebuilding the city. Mundy shows how the Nahua entered into mutually advantageous alliances with the Franciscans to maintain the city's sacred nodes. She also focuses on the practical and symbolic role of the city's extraordinary waterworks—the product of a massive ecological manipulation begun in the fifteenth century—to reveal how the Nahua struggled to maintain control of water resources in early Mexico City.
eBook
La Malinche : The Princess Who Helped Cortâes Conquer the Aztec Empire
Examines the life and legacy of Princess Malinali, a Nahuatl princess from the coast lands of Tabasco who used her knowledge of Maya, Nahuatl, and Spanish languages to act as an interpreter when her kingdom was at war with the Aztec Empire.
Book
The Tira de Tepechpan
Created in Tepechpan, a relatively minor Aztec city in Central Mexico, the Tira de Tepechpan records important events in the city’s history from 1298 through 1596. Most of the history is presented pictographically. A line of indigenous year signs runs the length of the Tira, with images above the line depicting events in Tepechpan and images below the line recording events at Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire and later the seat of Spanish rule. Written annotations amplify some of the images. In this volume, which includes color plates of the entire Tira, Lori Boornazian Diel investigates the motives behind the creation and modification of the Tira in the second half of the sixteenth century. She identifies the Tira’s different contributors and reconciles their various histories by asking why these painters and annotators, working at different times, recorded the events that they did. Comparing the Tira to other painted histories from Central Mexico, Diel demonstrates that the main goal of the Tira was to establish the antiquity, autonomy, and prestige of Tepechpan among the Central Mexican city-states that vied for power and status in the preconquest and colonial worlds. Offering the unique point of view of a minor city with grand ambitions, this study of the Tira reveals imperial strategy from the grassroots up, showing how a subject city negotiated its position under Aztec and Spanish control.
eBook
Indigenous Education through Dance and Ceremony : A Mexica Palimpsest
\"This book presents an ethnography of contemporary indigenous education through the spirit practice, dance ceremonies, and cultural diffusion efforts of a Mexica (Aztec) dance circle in the United States. The author uses the metaphor of palimpsest to describe several teaching and learning spaces the group constructs with a combination of ancient and modern materials. Coli;n unpacks the group's organizational leadership, ceremonies, community service, education, and dance practices. Ultimately, dancers reclaim and re-author identity, language, culture, leadership, education, spirituality, and community activism. The book celebrates a dynamic indigenous community and their post-colonial resistance to erasure. \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Aztecs
The Aztecs brings to life one of the best-known indigenous civilizations of the Americas in a vivid, comprehensive account of the ancient Aztecs. A thorough examination of Aztec origins and civilization including religion, science, and thought Incorporates the latest archaeological excavations and research into explanations of the Spanish conquest and the continuity of Aztec culture in Central Mexico Expanded coverage includes key topics such as writing, music, royal tombs, and Aztec predictions of the end of the world.
eBook