Portraying the Aztec Past in the Codex Azcatitlan: Colonial Strategies1 Angela Marie Herren During the period of Aztec expansion and empire (c. 1325- can manuscript production.3 Federico Navarrete Linares’ work 1525), painter-scribes of high social-standing (tlacuiloque) has offered a comprehensive historical overview of all Aztec used a pictographic writing system to paint hundreds of manu- groups migrating into the Basin of Mexico and has addressed scripts detailing historical, calendric, and religious informa- alphabetic and pictorial accounts of the migration written by tion on hide, paper, and cloth. Although none of these Aztec both indigenous and European authors.4 The historical stud- manuscripts survived the events following the Spanish con- ies of both Navarrete and María Castañeda de la Paz have quest of Mexico (1519-1521), indigenous and mestizo artists expanded our understanding of the political ramifications of continued to use prehispanic writing systems to record infor- the migration history.5 This paper will not attempt to differen- mation about native culture throughout the sixteenth century. tiate between historical and mythical aspects of the Mexica This paper examines some of the colonial strategies employed migration. Rather, it will situate the Codex Azcatitlan’s mi- by indigenous artists in the Codex Azcatitlan, a post-conquest gration account in colonial discourse, examining how and why pictorial narrative that provides an extensive historical ac- the migration story is presented at this time. Using an art his- count of the origin and migration of the Mexica people, a torical approach this paper looks at the way the definition and genealogy of their rulers, and a brief history of conquest and contextualization of visual signs helps to make the Azcatitlan post-conquest events. The Mexica are one of several indig- “readable” to an audience living with mixed artistic and cul- enous groups collectively referred to as “Aztec.” Focusing on tural traditions. the migration history in the Codex Azcatitlan, this paper con- In addition to the Codex Azcatitlan, several sixteenth- siders some of the transformations that take place in indig- century colonial sources contribute to our understanding of enous pictographic expression in response to the profound the Mexica migration. For example, the Codex Boturini, Co- social and cultural changes that occurred after the conquest. dex Aubin, Codex Mexicanus, Codex Mendoza, Codex Previous studies have looked at the migration manuscripts Telleriano-Remensis, and Codex Vaticanus A/Ríos are other primarily as indigenous artistic and historical productions. In pictorial manuscripts that address this theme. The Mapa the last sixty years, scholars have periodically attempted to Sigüenza is an important pictorial document in map form that legitimate Mexica migration history archaeologically, search- features the migration. Several sixteenth-century religious and ing unsuccessfully for the remains of Aztlan, the place the secular writers provide prose histories based on oral tradi- Aztecs called their homeland.2 These studies have often de- tions and/or older pictorial manuscripts. These writers include bated the status of the migration accounts as history or myth. Hernando Alvarado Tezozómoc, Diego Durán, Toribio de More recently, Elizabeth Hill Boone has explored indigenous Benavente Motolinía, Francisco de San Antón Chimalpahin production and use of migration manuscripts. Her work has [Cuauhtlehuanitzin], Juan de Torquemada, Juan de Tovar, and examined the narrative structure of the migration story, pro- the unknown authors of the Histoyre du Mechique, Leyenda posed the idea of migration history as ritual performance, and de los Soles, and Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas. has situated the histories in the wider context of central Mexi- The Historia de Tlatelolco desde los tiempos más remotos 1 Following North American usage, the term “Aztec” will be used to desig- To Change Place: Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes, ed. David Carrasco nate the inhabitants of Mexico-Tenochtitlan and their empire. “Mexica,” (Boulder: U of Colorado, 1991) 121-151; Elizabeth Hill Boone, “Aztec the name the Aztecs called themselves, will refer specifically to the last Pictorial Histories: Records without Words” Writing Without Words: Al- indigenous group to migrate into the Basin of Mexico and found the Aztec ternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes, ed. Elizabeth Hill empire. “Colonial” refers to the period 1521-1821. Boone and Walter G. Mignolo (Durham: Duke UP, 1994) 50-76; and Eliza- beth Hill Boone, Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Az- 2 See for example, Paul Kirchoff, “Civilizing the Chichimecs: A Chapter in tecs and Mixtecs (Austin: U of Texas P, 2000). the Culture History of Ancient Mexico” Latin American Studies 5 (1948): 80-85; Wigberto Jiménez Moreno “La migración mexica” in Atti del XL 4 Federico Navarrete Linares, Mito, historia y legitimidad politica: las Congresso Internazionale degli Americanisti, Roma-Genova, 3-10 migraciones de los pueblos del Valle de Mexico (Mexico City: UNAM, Settembre 1972 Vol. 1 (Geneva: Tilgher, 1972): 167-172; and Michael E. Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Doctoral Thesis, 2000). Smith “The Aztlan Migrations of the Nahuatl Chronicles: Myth or His- tory?” Ethnohistory 31:3 (1984): 153-186. 5 Navarrete, Mito, historia y legitimidad politica and María Castañeda de la Paz, “De Aztlan a Tenochtitlan: Historia de una peregrinación,” Latin 3 See Elizabeth Hill Boone, “Migration Histories as Ritual Performance” in American Indian Literatures Journal 18:2 (Fall 2002): 163-212. 7 ATHANOR XXII ANGELA MARIE HERREN and the Anales de Gabriel de Ayala are also relevant. Among unfinished, are probably contemporary.10 The degree and oc- these sources, the Codex Azcatitlan, housed in the Bibliothèque currence of European devices, including the binding in book Nationale in Paris, Codex Boturini, located in the Museo format, rounded dimensional renderings of the figures, and Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico City, and Co- interest in perspective, suggest a date that is no earlier than dex Aubin, found in the British Museum, are closest in narra- the latter half of the sixteenth century. tive, perhaps deriving from a single earlier source, and pro- In the prehispanic period, painted manuscripts were used vide the most extensive pictorial recordings of the Mexica mi- to record information and as part of an oral tradition. Painted gration history.6 by tlacuiloque, trained male painter-scribes from the noble The Codex Azcatitlan uses painted images and glyphic class, the pictorial manuscripts served as mnemonic devices, signs to recount the origin and migration of the Mexica people, reminding an orator of key points and details in the narrative. the last of several indigenous groups to depart from a place The images may or may not have been shown to the audience. called Aztlan in the twelfth century. Depicted as a ragged band As Federico Navarette Linares has pointed out, the narrative of hunters, the Mexica are led by their god Huitzilopochtli may have been read completely or selectively to suit various and endure great hardships during a two-hundred year jour- audiences which may have included members of the privi- ney, until they encounter the omen of an eagle on a nopal leged class, the province (altepetl), rival groups, or neighbor- cactus, and, at last, settle at Tenochtitlan (an island in a lake ing altepetl.11 Pictorial manuscripts were used to record a va- that was located at the heart of present-day Mexico City). riety of information including histories, genealogies, geogra- Though the last to arrive in the Basin of Mexico, the Mexica phy, calendrical and cosmogonic information, songs, and po- used the next two hundred years to build an expansive empire ems. and to create and dominate the Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlan, After the conquest, production and use of pictorial manu- Tlatelolco, and Texcoco. The Codex Azcatitlan is an annal scripts altered dramatically. In 1528, under the first Bishop of and records each year of the migration. The migration se- Mexico, Juan de Zumarraga, manuscript collections were sys- quence begins with the departure of the Mexica in the year 1 tematically destroyed as a means of wiping out pagan belief Flint (glossed as 1168) and records each year until the arrival systems and introducing Christian doctrine. In addition, deci- at Tenochtitlan. mation of indigenous populations from disease, disruption of Consisting of twenty-five leaves, the Codex Azcatitlan is elite indigenous educational and religious systems and soci- painted on both sides of European paper by two or more art- ety, and availability of new materials and artistic traditions all ists and is bound like a European book.7 Three leaves appear contributed to a profoundly different environment for manu- to be missing from the whole, reducing the total number of script production and use. images from fifty-six to fifty. The Azcatitlan presents three As a product of transculturation—cultural interchange major subjects: (1) The migration sequence from Aztlan between prehispanic and European traditions—the Codex (glossed here as Azcatitlan) to the founding of Tenochtitlan; Azcatitlan provides a microcosm for the study of changes in (2) the dynastic history of the Tenochca monarchs; and (3) native pictorial tradition in the sixteenth century. These trans- the arrival of the Spaniards and events of the early conquest formations reflect