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Mariana Botey the Enigma of Ichcateopan: a Messianic Archive

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Mariana Botey the Enigma of Ichcateopan: a Messianic Archive The Enigma of Ichcateopan: A Messianic Archive of the Nation ‘Historicism contents itself with establishing a causal con- nection between various moments in history. But no fact that is a cause is for that very reason historical. It became historical posthumously, as it were, through events that may be separated from it by thousands of years. A historian who takes this as his point of departure stops telling the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary. Instead, he grasps the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one. Thus he establishes a conception of the present as the “time of the now” which is shot through with chips of Messianic time.’ — Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History The Site of the Messianic Archive: a Secret History or Counter-history In chapter xiv of the book La Supervivencia de Cuauhtémoc [Jose Angel Ceniceros, Ed., Mexico: Ediciones Criminalia, 151] the historian and anthro- pologist Eulalia Guzman explains that, on the nd of February 14, a community teacher from the town of Ichcateopan Guerrero don Salvador Rodriguez Juarez disclosed to the local priest, Father David Salgado, two handwritten manuscripts which had come into his hands from his ancestors. These documents recounted the recovery of the cadaver of Cuauhtémoc, the last Mexica (Aztec) Tlatoani or ruler. The manuscripts detailed the funereal journey of Cuauhtémoc, as his body was car- ried by a group of his loyal warriors from the site of his execution on the 8th of February 155 in the jungles of Tabasco to his birthplace in Ichcateopan. The story On the 17th of February of 14, Eulalia Guzman described how the king’s body was buried in the palace arrived at Ichcateopan commissioned by the Secretary of his maternal grandparents. It further detailed how, in of Education and the National Institute of Anthropology December 15, Cuauhtémoc’s remains were removed and History to corroborate the authenticity of the manu- from his ancestral burial grounds at the order of notori- scripts. Guzman’s complex investigation focused on the ous Franciscan missioner Fr. Toribio de Motolinia [141– transcripts, weighing local oral tradition and historical 156]. Motolinia demanded its entombment deep below and material evidence that validated both written and what soon became the main altar of a new local church of oral claims. Among the documents that don Rodriguez his own construction and design. Juarez disclosed to Guzman, there was a single blank page. Careful application of heat revealed that it was actually penned in an invisible ink apparently bearing the signature of Motolinia. Guzman and her team certified, after the examination of the paper, ink, the angle of the instrument utilized for the traces, and the graphology of the signature, that the document was indeed from the xvi century and that the signature was authentic. The text was unintelligible, however and the team considered it to be written in a secret code. Eulalia Guzman proceeded to gather the oral tradi- tion. The documents of the family of Rodriguez Juarez seemed to transcribe the oral versions of the account; both said that the burial of Cuauhtémoc was under the altar of the church. These manuscripts, the local folk- lore and the odd shape of the temple offered enough in her view to excavate, and from the 1th to the 6th of September she conducted a dig on the site of the church looking for the tomb of the king found in the very place that the tradition claimed. As Guzman and her team advanced with posi- tive results in their investigation and proceeded with the excavation, another committee was formed at the National Institute of History and Anthropology to give a second opinion about their discoveries. Alfonso Caso and Manuel Gamio, eminent scholars of the day, headed the new commission. They began by rejecting Guzman’s Comparison of invisible ink signature of Ichcateopan manuscript (top) anthropological findings and unleashing a firestorm of with authentic Motolinia signature (bottom) contention that consumed newspaper headlines for over 1 a year. While virulent attacks flew in both directions, Instead, they insinuate themselves as narrativizations those focused on Professor Guzman, her team and fol- of imagined pasts and futures where collectivities are lowers were particularly scathing. defined neither by the rituals of citizenship, nor by a false The polemic that arose around the pueblo of dichotomy of modernity and tradition. Ichcateopan and the quasi-magical artifact of the Ichcateopan is a strategic crossroad in the itinerary of Mexican hero’s bones evolved into a complex metaphor an anti-historical discourse that wrests subject positions, of the battleground for ideological constructs around the memory and idioms of resistance away from secular and indigenous past and present. The affair of Ichcateopan modern notions whose existence is predicated on a fail- split historians, anthropologists, public intellectuals and ure to recognize and repression of indigenous tempo- politicians. ralities, historical truths and political right. Thus, by the The matter was never settled, and to this day remains mid-twentieth century, when the discovery of the bones a fissure in the national consciousness. On the one side was read in the typology of a messianic code as the open- of this schism, a commission was dispatched in the 70s ing of the door of the prophecy – this opening signaled emer- reviving doubt about the authentication of bones, exca- gent potentialities of a radical turn; a vortex undoing vation, and documents. On the other, a cult emerged mechanisms of repression. around Ichcateopan, which became a sacred site for the The team lead by Eulalia Guzman produced nine chiliastic disciples of the Mexicayotl: a messianic tradition investigations: a chemical exam of the oval plaque of cop- that distilled a prophetic corpus around the return of the per that was found in the tomb bearing the inscription Indigenous. Followers of the Mexicayotl believe that the 1,525 1,529 Rey, e’, S, Coatemo; a crystallographic test of discovery of the tomb of Cuauhtémoc, the last Mexica the oxidation that covered the plaque; a mathematical (Aztec) Tlatoani, opened the door for the activation of exam applied to the oxidation of the plaque; a medico- the prophesy. legal and anthropological test of the bones discovered in An account of the complex genealogy that comprises the tomb; a paleographic exam of the inscription in the the multifarious Messianic Tradition in Mexico demands plaque; a paleographic test of the documents; an archi- an interpretation that takes into consideration a pro- tectonic exam of the church and its history which dates gram of (un)making history. These heterogeneous intri- back to the first half of the xvi century; a construction cate counter-histories and counter-discourses of this test of the character of the burial found under the main Messianic archive demand that we read them against the altar; and finally an historical exam of the oral tradi- grain; as traces of that which makes visible, within the tion, the folklore and the claims of the ‘guardians’ of very structures of its narrative forms, the repressive strat- the tradition, in particular the grandfather of Salvador egies and practices of history as a discipline that imbri- Rodriguez Juarez. This polemic and methodological ‘his- cates with power and colonialism. torical exam’ cross-examined the Indian tradition of the The archive itself is revealed as a site of that which town and the ‘guardians’ of this tradition, empirically Dipesh Chakrabarty describes as the radically heteroge- claiming their authenticity. neous: a site of translation across cultural, political and The “official” commission rejected this authentica- other semiotic systems. These prophetic accounts and tion paying very little attention to archeological and appeals are not to be contained within the archive. material evidence. Instead, it produced hundreds and hundreds of pages of “memos”. Bureaucratic in style spanned 184–115 don Florentino remained in remote and anxious in volume, these memoranda transcrib- Ichcateopan, deep in the sierra of Guerrero and acces- ing the ‘official’ account were recorded in the book: Los sible only by foot, horse or donkey. Hallazgos de Ichcateopan: Actas y Dictamenes de la Comision The “official” commission argued that neither the Investigadora: [Mexico, 16]. These detailed the histo- burial site nor the bones were authentic. According to the riographic arguments why the Ichcateopan tradition was first series of arguments both the tomb of Cuauhtémoc “impossible” and why it represented an unacceptable and the documents of the tradition were fabrications of corpus and type of Mexican history and anthropology. don Florentino Juarez; a complex hoax and forgery that In a heuristic manner, the very structure of the argu- became the tradition of the “Secret” of Ichcateopan and ment and the counter-argument begins to complicate the dead king. and reveal the effort to discipline a historical version to To accept their theory that the whole affair was the conform to a temporality and to serve as the politico- forgery of this man demanded that he was pictured as a juridical foundation of the nation. grave robber looking for a skeleton. Following this leap It is curious to note the exclusive attribution of “offi- of imagination, one would have to further imagine Don cial” status to this latter group of scholars given that Florentino Juarez cremating the stolen skeleton and bury- Guzman’s group was dispatched by the Secretary of ing it under the main altar of the church in spite of archi- Education and worked with the support of many poli- tectonic evidence that proves this course of events materi- ticians, including the governor of Guerrero. Surely this ally impossible. This activity would also have had to occur slippage of language can be read as a layer of this text.
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