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Rewriting Native Imperial History in New Spain: the Excot Can Dynasty Alena Johnson

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Rewriting Native Imperial History in New Spain: the Excot Can Dynasty Alena Johnson University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Spanish and Portuguese ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2-1-2016 Rewriting Native Imperial History in New Spain: The excoT can Dynasty Alena Johnson Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/span_etds Recommended Citation Johnson, Alena. "Rewriting Native Imperial History in New Spain: The excT ocan Dynasty." (2016). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/span_etds/24 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Spanish and Portuguese ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i Alena Johnson Candidate Spanish and Portuguese Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Miguel López, Chairperson Kimberle López Ray Hernández-Durán Enrique Lamadrid ii REWRITING NATIVE IMPERIAL HISTORY IN NEW SPAIN: THE TEXCOCAN DYNASTY by ALENA JOHNSON B.A., Spanish, Kent State University, 2002 M.A., Spanish Literature, Kent State University, 2004 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Spanish and Portuguese The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico December, 2015 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I express much gratitude to each of my committee members for their mentorship, honorable support, and friendship: Miguel López, Associate Professor of Latin American Literature, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of New Mexico; Kimberle López, Associate Professor of Latin American Literature, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of New Mexico; Ray Hernández-Durán, Associate Professor of Early Modern Ibero-American Colonial Arts and Architecture, Department of Art and Art History, University of New Mexico; and Enrique Lamadrid, Professor Emeritus, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of New Mexico. iv REWRITING NATIVE IMPERIAL HISTORY IN NEW SPAIN: THE TEXCOCAN DYNASTY by Alena Johnson B.A., Spanish, Kent State University, 2002 M.A., Spanish Literature, Kent State University, 2004 Ph.D., Spanish and Portuguese, University of New Mexico, 2015 ABSTRACT The pre-Hispanic capital of the Acolhua kingdom was the sovereign city-state of Texcoco in the northeastern region of central Mexico. Texcoco along with Tlacopan and México-Tenochtitlan later comprised the Aztec Triple Alliance or Aztec Empire (formed c. 1429-1431). As explained in the introductory Chapter 1, throughout sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century New Spain, Spanish authorities and the Nahua aristocracy recorded many versions of native imperial history using a range of official discourse and other media. This dissertation explores only a selection of the diversity of genres and texts elaborated under the new colonial order that pertain to the dynastic history of Texcoco and its illustrious line of rulers. It begins with colonial Mexican Inquisition proceedings and then moves on to the genre of colonial, native-style painted maps or cartographic histories. The discussion explores how the texts rewrite and renegotiate native imperial history within the discourse of their respective genres and to what end, v when Latin letters began to replace pre-Hispanic, oral-pictorial systems of writing in New Spain. Chapter 2 employs an historical-literary analysis to examine the inquisitorial discourse of the Proceso criminal (1539) or criminal proceedings against don Carlos Ometochtzin (r. 1531-39), a royal descendant of the Texcocan dynasts. Chapter 3, in turn, applies an historical-literary analysis to explore the native testimonies in the Proceso criminal, and the ancestral discourse or speech attributed to don Carlos as captured or transcribed in the proceedings. Chapter 4 offers an art-historical analysis, and reads the pictorial, dynastic history of Texcoco as a colonial, elite Nahua discourse of images in three native-style painted maps known as the Codex Xolotl (c. 1540), Mapa Tlotzin (c. 1542-46), and Mapa Quinatzin (c. 1542-46). While there are no known, extant pre-Columbian codices from the Acolhua region that record Texcocan history, these cartographic narratives derive from ancient Mesoamerican models of writing, yet were commissioned for both the Nahua communities as well as for Spanish authorities. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .....................................................................................viii LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................x CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...............................................................1 Texcoco and the Aztecs .....................................................................2 Provenance of the Corpus ..................................................................5 Historical Significance of the Acolhua/Texcocan Manuscripts .........13 Theoretical and Methodological Framework .....................................14 CHAPTER 2: NATIVE IMPERIAL HISTORY CONSIDERED AS HERESY IN THE INQUISITORIAL DISCOURSE OF THE PROCESO CRIMINAL ................................................................23 The Mexican Inquisition in New Spain .............................................23 The Criminal Proceedings of Don Carlos ..........................................28 Denunciations from the Native Witnesses .........................................28 Declaration of the Accused ................................................................40 The Accusation ..................................................................................40 Conclusion .........................................................................................61 CHAPTER 3: DON CARLOS AS HERETIC OR HERO? NATIVE DISCOURSE AND IMPERIAL HISTORY IN THE PROCESO CRIMINAL ................................................................................62 The Counter Discourse of Don Carlos ...............................................62 The Texcocan Testimonies ................................................................64 The Chiconautla Testimonies ............................................................78 vii Conclusion .........................................................................................101 CHAPTER 4: NATIVE IMPERIAL HISTORY AS COLONIAL NAHUA DISCOURSE IN THE TEXCOCAN MAPS .............................................102 Mesoamerican History as Native Elite Discourse in the Colonial Era .............................................................................102 The Colonial Nahua Discourse of the Texcocan Maps .....................106 A Colonial Discourse of Ancient Landscapes in the Migration Accounts .................................................................112 Conclusion .........................................................................................143 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION....................................................................145 WORKS CITED...........................................................................................148 viii LIST OF FIGURES Chapter 1 Figure 1.1. Map of the pre-Hispanic Valley of Mexico ................................3 Chapter 2 Figure 2.1. Tezcatlipoca [Dark (Obsidian) Smoking Mirror], pictorial image from the Codex Telleriano Remensis .................................................45 Figure 2.2. Quetzalcoatl [Feathered Serpent], pictorial image from the Codex Telleriano-Remenis ...........................................................45 Figure 2.3. Tezcatlipoca, pictorial image from the Codex Borgia ................46 Figure 2.4. Quetzalcoatl, pictorial image from the Codex Borgia ................46 Figure 2.5. Diagram of the Christian Holy Trinity, illustration from Peter of Poitiers (or Petrus Pictaviensis) ............................................49 Figure 2.6. Schematized diagram of the Christian Holy Trinity...................49 Figure 2.7. Schematized diagram of the Christian Holy Trinity...................49 Chapter 3 Figure 3.1. The Oztoticpac Lands Map of 1540 ...........................................68 Figure 3.2. Book 6, “Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy,” Florentine Codex ..97 Chapter 4 Figure 4.1. Folio 1, Codex Xolotl, the migration of Chichimecs under Xolotl into the Valley of Mexico and initial settlement in the territory........114 ix Figure 4.2. Panel 1, Mapa Tlotzin, “. .” ......................................................115 Figure 4.3. Panel 1, Mapa Quinatzin, “. .”..................................................116 Figure 4.4. The initial passage of Xolotl.......................................................122 Figure 4.5. Temple pyramid in Tulla-Tollan ................................................126 Figure 4.6. Columns of Toltec warriors on temple-pyramid, Tulla-Tollan ..126 Figure 4.7. Pyramid of the Sun, main temple complex, Teotihuacan ...........126 Figure 4.8. Nopaltzin encounters Toltec ruins, lower right ..........................128 Figure 4.9. Nopaltzin explores Teotihuacan .................................................128 Figure 4.10. Xolotl explores a Toltec city ....................................................129 Figure 4.11. Chichimecs in deerskins with bows and arrows walking through the Valley of Mexico, Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca ...........131 Figure 4.12. Chichimecs hunting deer intermingled with scenes of conquest, the Mapas de Cuauhtinchan ..............................................131
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