The Indian Map Trade in Colonial Oaxaca

Home , Ceramics of Jalisco, Etlatongo, History of Oaxaca, Huamantla, La Mixteca, Mixteca Region

Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation

Authors Hidalgo, Alexander

Publisher The University of Arizona.

Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.

Download date 07/10/2021 07:06:15

Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/301765

THE INDIAN MAP TRADE IN COLONIAL OAXACA

Alexander Hidalgo

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

2013

As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Alexander Hidalgo entitled The Indian Map Trade in Colonial Oaxaca and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

______Date: 06/13/13 Martha Few

______Date: 06/13/13 Bert Barickman

______Date: 06/13/13 Stacie Widdifield

Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement.

______Date: 06/13/13 Dissertation Director: Kevin Gosner

STATEMENT BY AUTHOR

This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library.

Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without permission, provided that accurate acknowledgement of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author

SIGNED: Alexander Hidalgo

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project would not be possible without the support of Alan Sweedler. Stephen Colston, Paul Ganster, Jim Gerber, Pat Huckle, Matthew Kuefler, and especially Ramona Pérez at San Diego State University provided critical guidance that led me to Arizona. At the University of Arizona (UA), I wish to acknowledge financial support from the Group for Early Modern Studies, the Medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation Committee, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the Graduate College, and the History Department. I also wish to thank the Fulbright Commission, the Library of Congress, the American Historical Association, and the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and US Universities for support to carry out extended research. My appreciation to the Centro de Investigaciones Históricas at El Colegio de México for hosting me, and to Juan Pedro Viqueira for serving as my sponsor while I conducted research in Mexico City. Funding from the Ford Foundation and from the UA’s Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry allowed me to prepare my results.

I owe the most to my professors who have consistently demonstrated a dedication to their students I can only hope to emulate. Bert Barickman’s incisive questions and detailed commentary have always pushed me in new directions. Stacie Widdifield played a key role in this project providing critical guidance and feedback. Martha Few has been a fierce ally, an encouraging mentor, and a great role model. I am fortunate to have worked with Kevin Gosner, my advisor, whose dedication, support, and disposition have made my doctoral work a truly remarkable experience. I would also like to thank Helen Nader, Linda Darling, Dale Brenneman, and Michael Brescia for their support. Thanks to Dana Leibsohn, Stephanie Wood, Barbara Mundy, Emily Umberger, and John F. López with whom I have bonded over all things cartographic. My appreciation to Ramón Gutiérrez and David Robinson for their generous support. Matt Furlong, Cory Schott, Rob Scott, and especially Ryan Kashanipour, Max Mangraviti, and Ignacio Martinez have made this journey invigorating on so many levels.

My thanks to the Guzmán and the Vallejo families for hosting me in Mexico City, and to Anthony Mullan, Richard Headly-Soto, Mary Lou Reker, and Aleksander Mesa for their hospitality while I researched in Washington, DC. My appreciation to Enrique, Socorro, and Carlos Carrillo who have shown me there are no limits to the kindness one can offer others. Thanks also to Enrique Carrillo, Jr. and Gaby Alvarez for their support. My family, José Luis and Guadalupe Sánchez, John and Lety Focareta, Bella Floridia, Alexis and Eric Villegas, and Bianka León, has carried me during the rough patches. Juan Carlos and Lidia Rodríguez, Alfonso and Sandy Carrillo, Clemente Villegas, Asela Castaños, Pato and Faride Gómez, and Fausto Castañeda have enriched my life in countless ways. I would have never followed this path had it not been for the encouragement of my mother, Mariza Sánchez, who taught me to dream, to work hard, and to pay attention to the universal language that binds us. My daughters, Alys, Siena, and Chiara, inspire me every day with their joy and their laughter. Finally, I want to share credit of this project with Gabriela Carrillo, my partner in life, with whom I hold the strongest bond of all. 5

In memory of Emma

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... 7

ABSTRACT ...... 9

INTRODUCTION: MAPS, AUTHORITY, AND HISTORIOGRAPHY...... 10

CHAPTER 1: THE TRAIL OF FOOTSTEPS ...... 35

CHAPTER 2: CARTOGRAPHIC MATERIALS...... 88

CHAPTER 3: AUTHENTICATION ...... 134

CHAPTER 4: A TRUE AND FAITHFUL COPY ...... 166

CONCLUSION: A FINAL REMARK ...... 205

APPENDIX A: THE MAP OF SANTA CRUZ XOXOCOTLÁN (1686) ...... 212

APPENDIX B: FIGURES ...... 213

REFERENCES ...... 263

LIST OF FIGURES

1. Map of Nuestra Madre del Rosario, Santa María Atzompa, 18th century . . . . .213 2. Diagram of Maps located in Mexican and US archives (1570s-1600s) ...... 214 3. Diagram of Maps located in Mexican and US archives (1610s-1740s) ...... 214 4. The Valley of Oaxaca ...... 215 5. Map of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán, 1686 ...... 216 6. Painter-scribe (detail), Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus I (aka Codex Vienna), c. 15th century, f. 48 ...... 217 7. Relación Geográfica Map of Teozacoalco,1580 ...... 218 8. Ordered pair detail, Relación Geográfica Map of Teozacoalco, 1580 ...... 219 9. Large/great altar logograph, Relación Geográfica Map of Teozacoalco, 1580. .219 10. Coming of age scene, Codex Mendoza, f. 60, c. 1541 ...... 220 11. Folio 3v, Codex Yanhuitlán, c. 1550s ...... 221 12. Map of San Miguel Cuestlahuaca, 1582 ...... 222 13. Albrecht Dürer, “The Holy Family with Two Angels,” c. 1503 ...... 223 14. Map of Guaxilotitlán, 1586 ...... 224 15. Map of Santa María Guelacé, San Jerónimo Tlacochaguaya, and Santa Cruz Papalutla, 1778 [1690] ...... 225 16. Detail, Map of Santa María Guelacé, San Jerónimo Tlacochaguaya, and Santa Cruz Papalutla, 1778 [1690] ...... 226 17. Map of Santo Domingo Tepenene, 1617 ...... 227 18. Relación Geográfica Map of Tehuantepec, 1580 ...... 228 19. Map of Tzanaltepec, Tonaltepec, and Oztutlán, 1580 ...... 229 20. Map of Tlapanaltepeque, 1585 ...... 230 21. Map of Tlapanaltepeque, 1586 ...... 231 22. Map of Ixtepec and Zixitlán,1598 ...... 232 23. Map of Santo Domingo Tepenene and Cuestlahuaca,1590 ...... 233 24. Map of Tepenene, 1600 ...... 234 25. Map of Tolcayuca, c. late 17th/early 18th century ...... 235 26. Map of Teposcolula, 1590 ...... 236 27. Paper detail, Relación Geográfica Map of Teozacoalco,1580 ...... 237 28. Map of Cuquila, 1599 ...... 238 29. Patch of paper detail, Map of Cuquila, 1599 ...... 239 30. Map of Mistepec, Chicaguastla, and Cuquila,1595 ...... 240 31. Map of Santa Ana and Santa Cruz, 1591 ...... 241 32. Detail, Map of Santa Ana and Santa Cruz, 1591 ...... 242 33. Map of Teotitlán, 1583 ...... 243 34. Ink detail, Map of Teotitlán, 1583 ...... 244 35. Verso, Map of Santo Domingo Tepenene, 1617 ...... 245 36. Key, Map of Nuestra Madre del Rosario, Santa María Atzompa, 18th century.246 37. Town detail, Map of Nuestra Madre del Rosario, Santa María Atzompa, 18th century ...... 247

LIST OF FIGURES – continued.

38. Father Crespo’s Hacienda, Map of Nuestra Madre del Rosario, Santa María Atzompa, c. 18th century ...... 247 39. San Lorenzo Cacaotepec, Map of Nuestra Madre del Rosario, Santa María Atzompa, c. 18th century ...... 248 40. Map of Miltepec, 1617 ...... 249 41. Map of Justlaguaca, 1609 ...... 250 42. Map of Tlaxiaco and Cuquila, 1588 ...... 251 43. Map of Cuscatlan, 1607 ...... 252 44. Map of Zimatlán and Ocotlán, 1686 [1639] ...... 253 45. “Ojo” detail, 1686 ...... 254 46. Relación Geográfica Map of Amoltepeque, 1580 ...... 255 47. Cataloguing inscription no. 1, Relación Geográfica map of Amoltepeque, 1580 ...... 256 48. Cataloguing inscription no. 2, Relación Geográfica map of Amoltepeque, 1580 ...... 256 49. Céspedes annotations, Relación de Teozacoalco y Amoltepeque,1580 ...... 257 50. Disputed land near Xoxocotlán, 1686 ...... 258 51. Map of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán with interpretive key, 1686 ...... 259 52. Certifying gloss no. 1, Map of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán, 1686 ...... 260 53. Certifying gloss no. 2, Map of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán, 1686 ...... 260 54. Map of Xoxocotlán, 1718 ...... 261 55. Cut piece, Map of Nuestra Madre del Rosario, Santa María Atzompa, c. 18th century ...... 262

ABSTRACT

This dissertation analyzes the practice of making indigenous maps and their circulation in Oaxaca from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. Indian maps functioned as visual aids to distribute land for agriculture, ranching, subsistence farming, and mining, they served as legal titles to property, and they participated in large-scale royal projects including aqueducts and assessments of human and natural resources. Map production is examined from four distinct vantage points including social networks, materials and technology, authentication, and reproduction. In each case, maestros pintores--native master painters--collaborated with a host of individuals including Spanish officials, scribes, merchants, ranchers, farmers, town councils, caciques and lesser lords, and legal professionals to visually describe the region's geographical environment. Indigenous mapping practices fostered the development of a new epistemology that combined European and Mesoamerican worldviews to negotiate the allocation of natural resources among the region's Spanish, Amerindian, and mixed-race communities. This work stresses the role of Indian painters in the formation of early modern empires highlighting the way mapmakers challenged Spanish ideals of visual representation instead re- envisioning spatial relations according to local and regional concerns. 10

INTRODUCTION: MAPS, AUTHORITY, AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

All maps state an argument about the world.

―Brian Harley, The New Nature of Maps

The meeting with the mayor and the three councilmembers from Santa María

Atzompa, a municipality in Oaxaca’s rich central Valley, was scheduled for a late afternoon in the summer of 2006. Besides conducting my own research in the region, I was invited to help design a project led by the Center for Latin American Studies at San

Diego State University where I had just earned a Master of Arts degree. The project involved the rehabilitation of Atzompa’s historic archive, a summer initiative to support the preservation of the community’s past, generating research opportunities for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. During the meeting with Atzompa’s representatives to gauge the extent of their collection, the mayor opened a drawer from his desk and pulled out what looked like a bulky piece of cloth. What he proceeded to unfold was a rather large painted map (Figure 1) which he said had belonged to the town since time immemorial. The map, he told us, was a community treasure and had been passed down from mayor to mayor for generations along with a book of titles dating from the eighteenth century. As I struggled to contain my excitement, I was struck by my incredible luck. The vibrancy of the colors and the positioning of geographical elements around the page seemed odd but fascinating. Over the next few days, I had the opportunity to take digital images of the map and the book of land titles with my camera.

Weeks later, I found myself in Tucson starting the doctoral program in Latin American

History at the University of Arizona where I faced the task of writing a major research 11

paper. I proposed to write one on the painted map. I was curious about its use but also its material condition. What skills did the individuals who made maps use and how did they learn? Who was their audience and why were maps needed? Why was their physical appearance so striking? Who benefited from maps?

My dissertation in many ways is a response to this initial set of questions, an analysis of the production, use, and circulation of indigenous maps in Oaxaca from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. I argue that indigenous mapping fostered the development of a new epistemology that combined European and Mesoamerican worldviews to negotiate the allocation of land among the region’s Spanish, Amerindian, and mixed-race communities. Maps played important roles in the definition of spatial boundaries functioning as visual aids to assign land for agriculture, ranching, mining, and subsistence farming, in legal disputes when deployed by litigants as evidence, as visual aids in infrastructure projects such as aqueducts, and in assessments of human and natural resources. My analysis centers on four distinct aspects of the map trade including the participation of social networks, the application of materials and technology, a map’s legibility and authentication, and the practice of reproduction. Indian maps challenged

Spanish ideals of pictorial representation by envisioning spatial relationships according to local concerns. In my interpretation of maps, I have drawn from a range of fields including cultural history, art history, the histories of cartography and science, and ethnohistory to explain the significance of mapmaking within wider debates about colonialism, technology, literacy, artistic innovation, and the environment. 12

That indigenous people made maps often surprises learned and popular audiences.

In fact, native maps circulated widely throughout New Spain from contact and into the eighteenth century. Officials and painters described them as pinturas, or paintings, a term that addressed the representation of the elements found in nature, “an imitation of something visible delineated on a flat surface, not simply in relation to its shape, but also in relation to its color and other features,” according to an early modern Spanish source.1

The term pintura acquired a more expansive meaning in central New Spain where it described a range of visual sources that included not only sketched maps drawn by scribes and officials, but more complex political genealogies, tribute records, and ritual manuscripts produced by natives across Mesoamerica. While not articulated with a separate term until the late seventeenth century, a specific genre of pinturas best described as maps gradually developed to represent the geographical environment.

Maps fulfilled the needs of authorities interested in identifying towns, lands, boundaries, rivers, and roads as they divided and exploited their domains. Individuals used them to petition officials for land and to protect personal and corporate interests.

This reliance on indigenous maps signals a significant but often overlooked aspect of the history of New Spain with far reaching implications for the understanding of colonial and post-colonial societies. Although based in relationships of unequal power, the interaction between painter and authorities marks an important site of contact where local geographical knowledge informed representations of the natural world, imperial policies,

1 Diccionario de la lengua castellana, en que se explica el verdadero sentido de las voces, su naturaleza y calidad, con las phrases o modos de hablar, los proverbios o refranes, y otras cosas convenientes al uso de la lengua (Madrid: Imprenta de la Real Academia Española, por los herederos de Francisco del Hierro, 1737), 278. 13

distribution of land, and notarial culture. Michael Baxandall’s analysis of early Italian

Renaissance painting offers a useful model to consider the commission of maps. He proposes that, “A fifteenth-century painting is the deposit of a social relationship. On one side there was a painter who made the picture, or at least supervised its making. On the other side, there was somebody else who asked him to make it, provided funds for him to make it, and after he made it, reckoned on using in some way or other.”2 While individuals in Italy commissioned paintings largely as luxury goods to enhance their status, in Oaxaca map commissions informed more utilitarian efforts associated with land tenure and its exploitation. Over time, people often endowed some maps with great authority, communal treasures used to recount local histories during ritual celebrations and to defend town patrimony under threats of encroachment. Although marked differences exist between Renaissance patronage and indigenous cartography, the process by which maps entered into the public record also witnessed the “deposit of social relationships” between those involved with the commission and use of indigenous maps.

Oaxaca’s great ethnic diversity, peoples’ strong ties to land, and the region’s rich pictorial writing tradition make it possible to closely examine the development of indigenous mapping during the colonial period. From the 1570s through the 1600s painters in the Mixteca, Tehuantepec, Sierra Norte, and coastal regions made maps to petition or regularize land, to dispute boundary claims, to seek social privileges, and even to supply geographical information for royal efforts to account for their vast holdings in

2 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 1. 14

the New World (Figure 2). This period of map production coincided with a realignment in the Spanish and Indian populations that adjusted spatial boundaries as a result of resettlement campaigns in the sixteenth century.3 The generous number of maps available for this period contrasts sharply with the limited amount located between 1610 and the 1670s. The pattern mirrors population decline in important centers of activity, primarily in the Valley of Oaxaca. Antequera’s tributaries, natives who paid a forced tax to Spanish authorities, fell from 8,000 in 1570 to a little over 2,000 by 1646. In the

Cuatro Villas, a 1570 census recorded 7,052 tributaries but only 849 by 1643.4 As the native population recovered from the late seventeenth century onward, a scatter of maps every few years suggests indigenous cartographic practices sometimes informed spatial practices that included surveying, ritualized boundary walking, and witness testimony

(Figure 3). Officials introduced the term mapa, or map, and the combined term, mapa y pintura (map and painting) during this period to describe indigenous pictorial records focused on spatial representation.

3 William Taylor, Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), 21, 26-27, 37; Peter Gerhard, A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 51-52, 90-91, 159; Kevin Terraciano, The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca: Ñudzahui History, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford, 2001), 119-21; Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-1810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press,1964), 28, 54, 282-86; and James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 44-46, 415-416.

4 Gerhard, 51, 93. 15

Sources and Methods

Based on archival research conducted in local, state, and federal archives and libraries in the US and Mexico, this study analyzes the relationship between colonialism and cartographic practices in the southern Mexican region of Oaxaca. The Archivo

General de la Nación (AGN), the national archive in Mexico City proved to be the richest depository for this project, housing hundreds of pictorial records from across

Mesoamerica, often accompanied by written manuscripts that helped contextualize a map’s use.5 A sample of five dozen maps drawn from the AGN that have never been systematically analyzed and many of which remain unpublished informs the range of activities that surrounded the making of a map. The Mapoteca Manuel Orozco y Berra in

Mexico City as well as the Archivo General del Estado de Oaxaca and the Archivo

General de Notarías housed at the Biblioteca Francisco de Burgoa in Oaxaca City enhanced the scope of the project in unique ways providing a mixture of maps, civil records, and criminal cases that textured my understanding of mapmaking. The collection of responses and native maps from the Relaciones Geográficas, a sixteenth-

5 A rich body of bibliographical work guides first-time users and seasoned veterans in examining the vast holdings of the AGN. The multi-volume Catálogo de ilustraciones (Mexico City: Archivo General de la Nación, 1979-84) and its online equivalent found at http://www.agn.gob.mx/mapilu/ both proved invaluable resources. For indigenous pictorial records also see, Joaquín Galarza, Códices y pinturas tradicionales indígenas en el Archivo General de la Nación. Estudio y catálogo (Mexico City: Libreria Madero and Amatl, 1996). The following catalogs and indexes on land and ethnohistorical sources for the study of Oaxaca facilitated my research in the archive: Límites, mapas y títulos primordiales de los pueblos del estado de Oaxaca: Índice del Ramo de Tierras, ed. Enrique Méndez Martínez and Enrique Méndez Torres (Mexico City: Archivo General de la Nacion, 1999); Enrique Méndez Martínez, Índice de documentos relativos a los pueblos del estado de Oaxaca (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1979); Documentos para la etnohistoria del estado de Oaxaca: Índice del Ramo de Mercedes del Archivo General de la Nación, ed. Ronald Spores and Miguel Saldaña (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Publications in Anthropology, 1973); and Colección de documentos del Archivo General de la Nación para la etnohistoria de la Mixteca de Oaxaca en el siglo XVI, ed. Ronald Spores (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Publications in Anthropology, 1992). 16

century Spanish survey of the New World in the Benson Latin American Collection at the

University of Texas at Austin and many chronicles, natural histories, geographical treatises, vocabularies, and orthographies at the Library of Congress served to contextualize the technology and knowledge involved in the production of maps. After returning to Tucson from extended research to focus on writing, Google Books proved an indispensable tool to locate a surprising number of rare treatises that would have otherwise required expensive research trips abroad.6

Historians have typically regarded maps as simple visual finding aides without much concern about their cultural value. J. B. Harley, a leading twentieth-century scholar of cartography remarked that “historians have tended to relegate maps―along with paintings, photographs, and other non-verbal sources―to a lower division of evidence than the written word.”7 Harley’s claim mirrors the attitudes of intellectuals in other fields who have historically argued for the primacy of alphabetic over pictorial writing, an element used to justify imperial expansion in the New World.8 Likewise, discussion about cartography rested for generations in the notion that mathematical precision and topographical accuracy represented the most salient qualities in a map, a truthful way of understanding spatial relationships. Mark Monmonier’s classic How to

Lie with Maps (1991) dispelled many of the claims traditionally made about their veracity

6 This tool is not without pitfalls. See Robert Darnton’s widely circulated, “The Library in the New Age,” in The New York Review of Books, June 12, 2008.

7 Harley, 34.

8 For critiques of this paradigm, see Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995); and Elizabeth Hill Boone, “Introduction: Writing and Recording Knowledge,” in Writing without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes, ed. Elizabeth Hill Boone and Walter D. Mignolo (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994). 17

by examining the varied strategies used by modern cartographers to manipulate data on maps. Not that this fact had been lost on historical actors.

“[A map] depends entirely on the will of those who make it and those who commission it,” exclaimed Diego Fernández de Cordoba somewhat deridingly after inspecting an indigenous map in 1688. As the representative of a Spanish landholder embroiled in a dispute with a Mixtec town in the Valley of Oaxaca, he rejected the notion that a map could serve a legal purpose, especially when written titles did not accompany it. That Fernández articulated such an insightful view of maps is reminiscent of Harley’s idea that maps represent space “in terms of relations and of cultural practices, preferences, and priorities. What we read on a map is as much related to an invisible social world and to an ideology as it is to phenomena seen and measured in the landscape.”9 Space acquired significance when individuals endowed specific expanses of land with meaning. In other words, people selected and then isolated certain spaces defining a use for them recognizable by different groups of people.10 In colonial Oaxaca, land held great social, economic, and ritual value. Defining it included measures such as ritual boundary walking, witness testimony, and record-making that involved officials, translators, notaries, caciques, Spanish ranchers, and witnesses of assorted backgrounds.

Harley’s provocative ideas, themselves a response to postmodern thought and the cultural turn of the late twentieth century, inspired a generation of scholars to think about

9 Harley, 35-36.

10 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1991), 16. 18

maps as multifaceted objects that brought together people, tools, and knowledge.11

Fernández’s proposition is also suggestive in at least two other respects. For one thing, it indicates a fairly obvious bias against maps and native pictorials, records deployed by lords and political officers of indigenous towns to acquire land and privileges with varying rates of success. Less transparent is the fact that Fernández’s proclamation corresponds to strategies used by lawyers to discredit an opponent’s evidence, a measure that sought to exploit weakness very much as it does today in our modern courtrooms.

Yet the charge against maps in colonial Oaxaca did not always meet the stereotypes portrayed by critics, individuals who stood to lose from their acceptance in the courts of

New Spain. Authorities, in fact, regularly turned to pintores, indigenous painters, to describe local geography for matters concerning the division and exploitation of land.

Visual analysis represents the most useful tool to examine the content of each map. The identification and classification of cartographic signs helped to define the range of elements used to describe spatial relations. Painters focused on the illustration of human settlements including towns, ranches, and villages as well as geographical features such as mountains, rivers, trees, and rocks. Roads paved with footprints and hoof marks to indicate human and animal travel connected settlements to one another aligning regions in a visual format. Animals and people, when represented, provided a

11 See for instance, Christian Jacob, “Toward a Cultural History of Cartography,” Imago Mundi 48 (1996): 191-198; Matthew Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765- 1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); D. Graham Burnett, Masters of All They Surveyed: Exploration, Geography, and a British El Dorado (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Ricardo Padrón, The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); and Mary Sponberg Pedley, The Commerce of Cartography: Making and Marketing Maps in Eighteenth-Century France and England (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005). Also see Kapil Raj’s Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650-1900 (London: Palgrave, 2007), esp. Chapter 2. 19

reference to the types of activities individuals engaged in to work the land. A second aspect of the analysis included the identification of a map’s written elements. A paleographic study of alphabetic writing in Spanish, Nahuatl, Mixtec, or Zapotec found on most maps reflects the intervention of scribes and authorities when inspecting the contents of a map to legitimate its content. It also revealed the intervention of painters seeking to establish authority over space and its visual representation. A third focus considers the materiality of native maps including an analysis of colors, ink, binders, and support materials such as paper, brushes, cloths, and vellum. The material condition of maps, that is, the selection of organic and inorganic ingredients used to make them, plays an important role in the way we think about indigenous pictorial records. Never would we confuse a sixteenth-century Spanish landscape, a Portolan chart to track maritime voyage, or the plan of a city with an indigenous map. This rarely discussed aspect of indigenous pictorial activity, and the focus of the Chapter 2, raises questions about technical matters associated with the production of maps.

The study of materials and technology informs a rich and evolving historiography associated with indigenous mapmaking in colonial Mexico. Major studies of native cartography have carved important paths to understand shifting modes of pictorial representation during the sixteenth century as well as the historical context and political conditions under which maps were made.12 These works have enriched our

12 Serge Gruzinski, “Colonial Indian Maps in Sixteenth-Century Mexico: An Essay in Mixed Cartography,” Res: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 13 (1987): 46-61; Dana Leibsohn, “Primers for Memory: Cartographic Histories and Nahua Identity,” in Writing without Words, and “Colony and Cartography: Shifting Signs on Indigenous Maps of New Spain,” in Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650, ed. Claire Farago (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Barbara Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciones 20

understanding of native painters and their role as mediators between authorities, towns, and individuals in the early colonial world, but they have stopped short of mentioning the presence of mineral and natural materials used to make maps. In most respects, the responsibility of investigating Mesoamerican material technology used in pre-Colombian and early colonial pictorial documents has fallen under the purview of conservators and textile experts who have established useful parameters to measure the types of elements used in native pictorial activities including mapmaking.13 Two recent edited works have featured contributions that showcase indigenous material technology originating in central Mexico during the sixteenth century.14 The work of art historian Diana Magaloni

Kerpel, a unifying thread in both volumes, draws effectively from the use of conservation

Geográficas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), and “Mesoamerican Cartography,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 3, Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Artic, Australian, and Pacific Societies, ed. David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); and Alessandra Russo, El realismo circular: Tierras, espacios y paisajes de la cartografía novohispana, siglos XVI y XVII (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 2005).

13 See Mary Elizabeth Haude, “Identification of Colorants on Maps from the Early Colonial Period of New Spain (Mexico),” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 37 (1998): 240-270; Sylvia Rogers Albro and Thomas Albro, “The Examination and Conservation Treatment of the Library of Congress Harkness 1531 Huejotzingo Codex,” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 29 (1990): 97-115; Leticia Arroyo Ortiz, Tintes naturales mexicanos: Su aplicación en algodón, henequén y lana (Mexico City, 2008); Teresa Castelló Yturbide, Colorantes naturales de México (Mexico City, 1988); and H. G. Wiedemann and A. Boller, “Thermal Analysis of Codex Huamantla and other Mexican Papers,” Journal of Thermal Analysis 46 (1996), 1033-1045. Compare Arthur Anderson’s “Materiales Colorantes Prehispánicos,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963): 73-83; and Carmen Arellano Hoffmann, “El escriba mesoamericano y sus utensilios de trabajo: La posición social del escriba antes y después de la conquista española,” in Libros y escritura de tradición indígena: ensayos sobre los códices prehispánicos y coloniales de México, ed. Carmen Arellano Hoffmann, Peer Schmidt, and Xavier Noguez (Toluca and Eichstätt: El Colegio Mexiquense and Katholische Universität, 2002).

14 The collection of essays in Colors between Two Worlds: The Florentine Codex of Bernardino de Sahagún, ed. Gerhard Wolf, Joseph Connors, and Louis Waldman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012) covers important aspects of the study of pigments associated with Sahagún’s work including the redaction of botanical treatises, painters and techniques, and the circulation of materials across the Atlantic. Those in Painting a Map of Sixteenth-Century Mexico City: Land, Writing, and Native Rule, ed. Mary Miller and Barbara Mundy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012) inform the making of the Beinecke Map, a complex pictorial record made on native bark paper held at Yale University.

practices, historical analysis, and visual interpretation to examine the relationship between materials, colors, and usage.15

Authorities and individuals commissioned maps with specific goals in mind.

While many maps have been separated from their original dockets, others have not.

Extant sources reveal a relationship between the division and distribution of land and the practice of making maps. Grants of land, titles, disputes, complaints, surveys, and testimonies inform the commission, use, and circulation of maps across a wide range of social networks that often extended beyond the location where they were originally made.

These documents referenced the parties involved in dividing space, including: individuals or indigenous town councils represented by political officers seeking or defending land;

Spanish officials, especially regional judges known as alcaldes mayores and corregidores who presided over commercial, civil, and criminal affairs; lawyers; notaries; translators drawn from the Spanish and Indian worlds; and witnesses. This rich cast of characters, all of them involved in shaping spatial relationships, formed part of the region’s manuscript culture where maps circulated.

Print technology transformed the way audiences gained access to knowledge during the early modern period but it did not eliminate the production of manuscript sources, especially in the Iberian world.16 Fernando Bouza’s insightful work on Spain’s

15 See Diana Magaloni Kerpel, “The Traces of the Creative Process: Pictorial Materials and Techniques in the Beinecke Map,” in Painting a Map; and “Painters of the New World: The Process of Making the Florentine Codex,” in Colors between Two Worlds. My thanks to Barbara Mundy for suggesting these sources.

16 The spirited debate in the pages of the American Historical Review between Elizabeth Eisenstein and Adrian Johns on the print revolution hinges on the transition, but not replacement, of manuscript copying versus mechanical reproduction. “Forum: How Revolutionary was the Print Revolution?” AHR 107 /1 22

Golden Age highlights the rich array of literary, notarial, philosophical, religious, and scientific manuscripts that circulated across a broad social spectrum reaching literate as well as semi- and non-literate audiences.17 More importantly, it suggests the interrelated histories of print and manuscript traditions, not the replacement of one over the other. In scientific activities involved with exploration, Spanish authorities often chose to produce manuscripts rather than to print their findings in order to protect state secrets from rival

European powers. A new generation of scholars, mostly historians of science, has made convincing arguments for Iberian scientific achievements especially in botany and cartography, subject areas suppressed by a northern European rhetoric that portrayed the

Spanish empire as conservative and backward.18 Other forms of manuscript sources including official correspondence between important religious and political figures, as well as personal letter writing with established salutations, textual conventions, and themes facilitated communication across the Iberian world.19

(2002). Also see Eisenstein’s influential The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, vol. I-II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), and Johns’s The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

17 Fernando Bouza, Corre manuscrito: Una historia cultural del Siglo de Oro (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2001); and Communication, Knowledge, and Memory in Early Modern Spain, trans. Sonia López and Michael Agnew (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

18 See Padrón, The Spacious Word; Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006); Antonio Barrera- Osorio, Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006); María Portuondo, Secret Science: Spanish Cosmography and the New World (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009); and the collection of essays in Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500-1800, ed. Daniela Bleichmar, Paula de Vos, Kristin Huffine, and Kevin Sheehan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).

19 Rebecca Earle, “Letters and Love in Colonial Spanish America,” The Americas 62 (2005): 17-46; Bouza, Corre manuscrito, 137-213. 23

An important aspect of the development of manuscript culture in Spanish

America involves the circulation of records produced by indigenous people, especially in

New Spain. Art historians of Mesoamerica and early colonial Mexico have examined the transition between pictorial and alphabetic systems of writing, the implications of non- alphabetic literacy among Indian societies in the Americas, and the supposed collapse of indigenous knowledge brought on by Western learning.20 James Lockhart’s philological approach to the study of Nahuatl records from central Mexico has served as a model to write about the experiences of Amerindian groups from New Spain.21 Studies of native pictorial records known as títulos primordiales have emphasized the creative responses of

Indian towns lacking proper titles to falsify manuscripts in order to safeguard land.22

20 See George Kubler, “On the Colonial Extinction of the Motifs of Pre-Colombian Art,” Essays in Pre- Colombian Art and Archaeology, ed. Samuel Lothrop (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), and Donald Robertson, “The Pinturas (Maps) of the Relaciones Geográficas, With a Catalogue,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians Vol. 12, Part I, vol. ed. Howard F. Cline (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972), hereafter cited as HMAI. Compare Barbara Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, xix; and Alessandra Russo, El realismo circular, 19.

21 See Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest, and an earlier collaboration between Arthur Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart, eds., Beyond the Codices: The Nahua View of Colonial Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). Other important works within this strand of scholarship include Louise Burkhart, The Slippery Earth: Nahua Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989); Robert Haskett, Indigenous Rulers: An Ethnohistory of Town Government in Colonial Cuernavaca (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991); Matthew Restall, The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550-1850 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); and Terraciano, The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca. For historiographical discussions of the New Philology see Restall, “A History of the New Philology and the New Philology in History,” Latin American Research Review 38 (2003): 113-134, and “Heirs to the Hieroglyphs: Indigenous Writing in Colonial Mesoamerica,” The Americas 54 (1997): 239-267. Compare Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “Renaissance Mess(tizaje): What Mexican Indians did to Titian and Ovid,” New Centennial Review 2 (2002), 269-70.

22 See Paula López Caballero, ed., Los títulos primordiales del centro de México (Mexico City: CONACULTA and Fondo Editorial Tierra Adentro, 2003); Enrique Florescano, Historia de las historias de la nación mexicana (Mexico City: Taurus, 2002), and “El canon memorioso forjado por los títulos primordiales,” Colonial Latin American Review 11/2 (2002): 183-230; Xavier Noguez and Stephanie Wood, eds., De tlacuilos y escribanos: Estudios sobre documentos indígenas coloniales del centro de 24

While Spaniards and other Europeans controlled print culture in Spanish America, in

New Spain, Amerindians actively participated in manuscript culture as purveyors of ritual, geographical, and botanical knowledge, but also as artists and scribes.

Forging Memories

For the various ethnic groups in Oaxaca, including heavy concentrations of

Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Nahuas but also Chocho, Cuicatec, Chatino, Mazatec, Trique,

Mixe, Zoque, Huave, and Chontal peoples, the Spanish conquest signified a radical realignment of culture and space. Forced resettlements known as congregaciones during the sixteenth century and a series of epidemics that struck in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries altered the social and political configuration of Indian landholdings in many regions of Oaxaca.23 Natives, referred to by Spaniards as indios (Indians) or naturales (natives), organized themselves in social groups led by caciques, hereditary lords, and lesser nobles described as principales. The ethnic state, known among Mixtecs as ñuu and among Zapotecs as yetze, formed the basic unit of organization, each one controlling specific areas of land where individuals contributed crops and service for the benefit of the unit. The Spanish-imposed repúblicas de indios, a blanket term based on

México (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1998); Robert Haskett, “Paper Shields: The Ideology of Coats of Arms in Colonial Mexican Primordial Titles,” Ethnohistory 43 (1996): 99-126; and Lockhart, The Nahuas, 357, 360-364, and 410-418. A limited number of titles have been identified for the Oaxaca region. See Lisa Sousa and Kevin Terraciano, “The ´Original Conquest’ of Oaxaca: Nahua and Mixtec Accounts of the Spanish Conquest,” Ethnohistory 50 (2003): 349-400; and María de los Ángeles Romero Frizzi, “El título de San Mateo Capulalpan, Oaxaca. Actualidad y autenticidad de un título primordial,” Relaciones: Estudios de Historia y Sociedad 122 (2010): 21-54.

23 For resettlements in the Valley of Oaxaca, Gerhard, 51-52, 90-91, and 159; and Taylor, 21, 26-27, 37. For the neighboring Mixteca region, see Terraciano, The Mixtecs, 119-21. On congregaciones in the Valley of Mexico, see Gibson, 28, 54, and 282-86; and Lockhart, The Nahuas, 44-46 and 415-16.

the Castilian principle of municipal government used to describe the political jurisdiction of an Indian town, only partially coincided with the range of the ñuu or yetze which incorporated elements of the sacred.

Land played a pivotal role in the development of society in New Spain. During the sixteenth century, the Crown, Spanish colonists, secular authorities, and the regular orders made advances on land previously used by the native clergy and the ruling elite.

In central Mexico, officials reassigned property, confiscated possessions, and limited cacique holdings reducing the amount of indigenous land in the region,24 Officers from the altepetl, primarily principales and often also caciques, administered lands held in common maintaining careful records, and dividing and assigning plots as needed.

Cacicazgos, entailed estates held by generations of leading notables, suffered compression as a result of Spanish policies, labor drafts, and the seizure of land by other natives. During this period, caciques across central and southern Mexico enjoyed the labor of commoners that worked land to support the office.25 In the Valley and the

Mixteca, caciques held considerable land as well as access to labor even though a general decline in wealth defined many cacicazgos.26 Some caciques used this period of change to expand their holdings while limitations in laws governing entailed Indian estates allowed caciques to rent lands from their cacicazgos rather than selling them.27

24 Gibson, 264.

25 Gibson, 265.

26 See Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-Between, 150; Terraciano, 230-231; and Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 35.

27 See Taylor, 44. 26

The Mixtec informants from Cuilapa who in 1580 gave an account of their history to Fray Agustín de Salazar claimed to have arrived to the Valley of Oaxaca in great numbers three hundred years before as a result of marriage alliances between leading nobles.28 The informants made a point to emphasize that Mixtecs originated in the northwest mountains known as the Mixteca Alta, not in the Valley, a traditional Zapotec domain.29 They used the Mixtec place name, Yuchaca, instead of the more commonly used Nahuatl one, Cuilapa, a practice no doubt reflective of social and political shifts since the imposition of Nahua authority in the region beginning in the mid-fifteenth century. The Mixtec informants’ reading of the landscape reflects Andrés Reséndez’s notion of “carving spaces” out of land. He argues that when settling the US-Mexico borderlands during the first half of the nineteenth century, Anglos, Mexicans, and Indians

“subscribed to alternative mental maps and admitted several geographical readings” that allowed each group to negotiate its presence in spite of state efforts to impose its own geographical agenda.30 A similar process took shape in the Valley where competing interests among Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Nahuas, and Spaniards clashed against imperial policies producing highly charged and long-lasting encounters over land.

28 Relación de Cuilapa (1580), Relaciones Geográficas of Mexico and Guatemala, 1577-1585, Benson Latin American Collection, General Libraries, University of Texas at Austin (hereafter BLAC), Folder XXIV-10.

29 The Dominican Antonio de los Reyes identified the Mixtec spoken in Cuilapa with the one from Yanhuitlán, a powerful head town in the Mixteca Alta. See his Arte en lengua mixteca (Nashville: Vanderbilt University, 1976 [1593]), vii.

30 Andrés Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 16. 27

In Oaxaca, rich traditions of pictorial writing and record making in the era preceding the arrival of Europeans contributed to an active participation of Nahuas,

Mixtecs, and Zapotecs in the Oaxaca’s manuscript culture.31 While the use of pictorial manuscripts as legal devices did not enter formally into law until 1643, Indian codices, maps, and lienzos had served as testimony of civil and commercial transactions, as curiosity items for patrons in European courts, and as the site of exchanges in geographic and ritual knowledge since the early sixteenth century.32 Although the output of native pictorial records waned in the seventeenth century, they continued to circulate within the local and regional court system, and in the hands of individuals and town governments.

This practice allowed people of various backgrounds, especially Spanish officials and notaries but also interpreters and witnesses of various ethnicities as well as clerics, to come into contact with pictorial manuscripts fostering a limited, but practical, knowledge of conventions and style.

Spaniards spread their own roots into Oaxacan soil. In 1529, portions of the

Valley came under the authority of the Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca, a title held by the

31 See Mary Elizabeth Smith, Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico: Mixtec Place Signs and Maps (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973); John Monaghan, “The Text in the Body, the Body in the Text: The Embodied Sign in Mixtec Writing,” in Writing without Words; Terraciano, The Mixtecs, 15-65; and Sousa and Terraciano, “The Original Conquest.” For Indian manuscripts in general, see Donald Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period: The Metropolitan Schools (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994); Elizabeth Hill Boone, Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000); Hoffman, Schmidt, and Noguez, eds., Libros y escritura de tradición indígena; Serge Gruzinski, La colonización de lo imaginario: Sociedades indígenas y occidentalización en el México español. Siglos XVI-XVIII (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1991), esp. 15-148; Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side, 87- 96; and Lockhart, The Nahuas, 326-418.

32 See Florescano, Historia de las historias, 241; Thomas Cummins, “From Lies to Truth: Colonial Ekphrasis and the Act of Crosscultural Translation,” in Reframing the Renaissance; Eloise Quiñones Keber, “Collecting Cultures: A Mexican Manuscript in the Vatican Library,” Reframing the Renaissance; and Mignolo, The Darker Side, 188-197. 28

heirs of Hernán Cortés to whom the crown bestowed a seigniorial grant. The estate included separate holdings in central Mexico and Oaxaca and its heirs maintained the right to appoint alcaldes mayores and collect revenue from the property they held. The

Cuatro Villas del Marquesado de Oaxaca, an alignment of four towns under Cortés’ authority (Figure 4) included Etla, Tecuilabacoya, Huaxyácac (later Oaxaca), and

Cuilapa, the latter hosting at least two thirds of the combined residents. A villa was smaller than a city (ciudad) but larger than a village (aldea) usually enjoying some privileges including self-government. In the 1520s when Cortés quarreled with his rivals,

Spanish colonizers in the Valley secured a royal sanction authorizing the establishment of the Villa of Antequera, controlled by an independent town council known as a cabildo which included a representative of the crown. By 1532, royal authorities granted

Antequera the status of a city, serving as the Spanish seat of power in the region during the rest of the colonial period. Together with Oaxaca, they functioned as twin cities in the region.33

By the seventeenth century, several generations of criollos, American-born

Spaniards, along with recent Iberian migrants populated Oaxaca. “Illustrious gentlemen cultivated [this land] for the Church’s gardens,” wrote the Dominican Francisco de

Burgoa in his Geográfica descripción, a natural and social history of Oaxaca published in

1674.34 Burgoa, a criollo born in Antequera praised the work of sixteenth-century

33 Gerhard, 48-52, 88-91.

34 “De varones insignes, que la cultivaron para jardines de la Iglesia,” Francisco de Burgoa, Geográfica descripción de la parte septentrional del polo ártico de la América, y nueva iglesia de las Indias occidentales, y sitio astronómico de esta provincia de predicadores de Antequera Valle de Oaxaca (Mexico City: En la imprenta de Juan Ruíz, 1674), 2; Biblioteca Francisco Burgoa (BFB). 29

missionaries in their battle against idolatry. He described the region before the arrival of the Spaniards as “murky domains, a pit of darkness and [the] shadow of death,” a reference to the Christian belief that Satan had enjoyed unlimited control over the spiritual care of people in the Americas.35 Burgoa’s metaphor about the ominous landscape also represented a statement of geographical possession. In the friar’s view, his Dominican forbearers had established a deep bond with the natural environment through their spiritual work, one which entitled them to enjoy the bounty of the New

World. Their painstaking labor navigating the region’s rugged terrain to gain Indian converts, administer sacraments, and preside over ecclesiastical matters―a way of life familiar to Burgoa―allowed the missionaries to increase their geographical knowledge while developing strong ties to the land. The lived experience of his ancestors, one that included elements of the built environment, natural landscapes, and the formation of social relationships permitted Burgoa to idealize a common past among the region’s

Spanish inhabitants highlighting its unique contribution to the empire.

Unlike most of the Dominicans he wrote about, Francisco de Burgoa was a native of Oaxaca. In his Geográfica descripción Burgoa noted that Antequera hosted close to two thousand Spanish citizens known as vecinos, “many of them noble, [and also various] ancient families of Old Christians,” that is, those untainted by Jewish blood.36

Vecindad, formal membership in a Spanish municipality, carried with it a set of privileges including the use of common land, participation in political affairs, voting

35 “Regiones lóbregas, abismo de tiniebla, y sombra de muerte,” Burgoa, 2.

36 The original passage reads, “muchos Nobles, y Casas antiguas de Cristianos viejos,” Burgoa, 6. 30

rights, and commercial opportunities but also obligations such as payment of taxes, contributions for public expenses, participation in militias and submission to local authority.37 These rights and obligations also bound individuals to communities. Early settlers with “fond memories [of Andalusia],” remarked Burgoa, “succeeded in persuading the others to name [the city Antequera] to distinguish it from Oaxaca, [its name] in the Mexican language.”38 Burgoa concerned himself not only with tracing the

Christian origins of Antequera, but with plotting its exact location on a mathematical grid. He offered its position to his readers as “a little over seventeen degrees North, ruled by the sign of Capricorn in the House of Saturn exalted in Mars” to emphasize the qualities of leadership imbued under this astrological configuration.39 Burgoa praised the

Valley’s aromatic flowers, its lush landscapes, and its natural wealth including cochineal, a valuable red dye harvested by local farmers from cactus plants. Displaying Christian ties to the Old World allowed the Dominican to position Antequera as an important and honorable member of the Spanish Empire while locating the region on a geometric plane allowed him to possess it in name of the Church.

Spaniards settled primarily in major urban areas across Oaxaca during the sixteenth century including Antequera, Teposcolula, and San Ildefonso de Villa Alta

37 See Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 6.

38 Scribes and other Spaniards such as Burgoa who produced written records referred to Nahuatl, Mesoamerica’s lingua franca, as lengua mexicana. The original passage reads, “muy afecto sus memorias, y pudo persuadir a los demás el nombre [Antequera] para distinguir el de Oaxaca, que es de la lengua mexicana,” Burgoa, 6.

39 The location of Antequera reads: “ . . . en poco más de diez, y siete grados a la parte del Norte, reconoce para el dominio, el signo de Capricornio, y exaltación de Marte,” Burgoa, 6.

though the number of colonists in Oaxaca was consistently small during the colonial period. Terraciano notes that little opportunity to prosper economically limited migration to Oaxaca, a region with “no great mines, few haciendas, and no obrajes (Spanish-run textile enterprises).”40 During the first half of the century, the crown awarded encomiendas, grants of Indian labor and tribute, to individual Spaniards in Oaxaca who used them to mine for gold but also to extract cacao, cloth, dyes, maize, and cotton.

Encomenderos, holders of an encomienda, played prominent roles in local power relationships that also included Christian clerics, regional judges, and native caciques from whom they wrested power. The gradual elimination of the system of encomienda during the second half of the sixteenth century, a planned effort on the part of the Crown to limit the ambitions of local strongmen, contributed to a heightened interest in land during the seventeenth century that continued into the eighteenth. Spaniards also controlled the legal mechanisms imposed by imperial authority to ensure social order.

Bureaucrats, alcaldes mayores, corregidores, scribes, lawyers, and a host of other officials worked and lived in Oaxaca forming social networks with the rich cast of natives,

Africans, Europeans, and individuals of mixed-race ancestry known as castas.

The Map Trade

This work is divided into two main parts. The first pays particular attention to native painters and their capacity to make maps. Chapter 1 analyzes the social context in which painters developed their unique skills. The use of footprints on maps, a common

40 Terraciano, 339. 32

cartographic symbol drawn from the Mesoamerican pictorial canon applied by painters to denote roads and travel, serves as a motif to trace the training and activities of these important figures. Chronicles, land dispute records, and criminal cases inform an examination of their preparation with friars and native elders, their interactions with

Spanish officials and bureaucrats, their ventures into agriculture, their participation in political affairs at the local level, and the visual strategies they applied to convey spatial relations. The ability to speak Spanish, an essential tool to communicate with royal officials who inspected and validated maps, placed them in unique positions of power to shape discussions about boundaries and authority.

The production of maps extended into the material realm, painters tasked with selecting and preparing a variety of organic and inorganic ingredients to illustrate their products. Chapter 2 analyzes this under-examined aspect of indigenous mapmaking to enhance our understanding of a painter’s technical skills. Material technology highlights the way Indian painters incorporated botanical and geographic knowledge including the selection of plants and minerals in their natural state, the ability to recognize quality materials from adulterated products if acquired at a market or from an individual or a store, and the capability of mixing natural and synthetic elements to prepare for use. A sample of maps from various regions in Oaxaca as well as land disputes, criminal cases, trade records, and botanical histories shed light on the movement of ingredients such as rocks, plants, roots, insects, and soil as they found their way from the physical world to the hands of an Indian painter who skillfully transformed them into paper, colorants, ink, 33

and binders. The application of natural elements witnessed the circulation of materials and dyeing techniques in the process contributing to the distinct style of Indian maps.

The second part of this dissertation examines the lives of maps after their creation.

When a painter finished a map, it typically passed through the hands of a royal official tasked with authenticating its content. Chapter 3 examines the practices of authorization developed by Spanish officials who inspected Indian maps within the Spanish courts.

Scribes and regional judges known as alcaldes mayores developed specific tools to read and comment on the maps introduced by Indian painters including keys, systems of organization that assigned numbers or letters to identify a map’s elements, and written labels used to describe geographical features. Keys typically appeared written on the side of maps though on occasion officials wrote them on separate folios forging a relationship for the reader between image and text. An official’s participation, visible on a map’s surface in the form of descriptive labels about distance and place, corrections and annotations, certifying texts, and signatures played an important role in defining a map’s form and function but more importantly, it validated its use in the local and regional courts. Their written glosses stand out in part because of the use of iron-gall ink, the material of choice for those in the business of writing legal manuscripts. These practices took place in an increasingly competitive social environment where individuals and corporate entities vied for access to land, wood, water, and other natural resources.

While royal officials authorized the use of native maps as visual evidence, lawyers and litigants often regarded them with distrust. 34

The last quarter of the seventeenth century witnessed a modest surge in mapmaking after a dramatic decline at the beginning the 1600s. The fourth and last chapter uses a land dispute and a copied map made by a native cacique in 1686 to contextualize changes and continuities associated with the production of indigenous maps during this period. An interest in land for agricultural development and cattle ranching generated competition for natural resources while authorities pushed policies to tax its use. Native towns and individuals in Oaxaca adjusted by strengthening community ties with elders, procuring titles and bills of sale for property, and turning to old maps that described property boundaries and political borders. The use of old maps, pieces often in disrepair and scarred with the passage of time called for the intervention of skilled painters who could reproduce their content. Just as their predecessors before them, painters mimicked old pictorial traditions reinventing, adapting, and improvising visual signs to fit the needs of contemporary audiences. Maps contributed to social memory practices including ritual boundary walking and witness testimony that sought to establish a connection with the past in order to legitimate use of land in the present.

CHAPTER 1: THE TRAIL OF FOOTSTEPS

The entire world’s greatness, no matter how large you paint it, lies at the feet of a man who measured it.

―José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las indias (1590)41

Acosta’s words memorialized the great scientific and technological leaps in the

Hispanic world during the sixteenth century. His comments, at once a compliment to exploration, cartography, and colonization were also meant as a warning about the fallibility of human beings and the inherent biases of those who represented aspects of the terrestrial globe: no matter how large the world was painted, individuals could only see what lay below their feet. In colonial Oaxaca, generations of indigenous painters primarily of Mixtec, Zapotec, and Nahua origin represented land and spatial boundaries for a variety of purposes and for a multitude of audiences. They, too, were limited by what they saw below their feet not to mention the cultural assumptions that undergird their world view. In their efforts to support petitions of land, defense cases against encroachment, and descriptions of individual property and political boundaries, painters applied a range of skills used to make maps.

In the Valley of Oaxaca in early October 1686, a painter by the name of Domingo de Zárate, a native lord from the Mixtec ñuu of Xoxocotlán, accepted a commission to copy an old map (Figure 5). Antonio de Abellán y Carrasco, the alcalde mayor of the

Cuatro Villas del Marquesado, an alignment of the four principal towns in the heart of the

41 José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias, en que se tratan las cosas notables del cielo, y elementos, metales, plantas, y animales dellas: y los ritos, y ceremonias, leyes, y gobierno, y guerras de los indios (Sevilla: Juan de León, 1590), 17.

Valley, commissioned the map from Zárate following a request from two political officers of Xoxocotlán to duplicate it. The copy would take the place of the original map in support of a suit against a Spanish landholder. In recognition of its unique pictorial content, the alcalde mayor mandated that a master painter replicate the map, “que se trasunte por un maestro pintor,” a task delegated to Zárate. The painter turned up with officers from the Mixtec town three weeks later to present the tattered original and its copy to the alcalde mayor. The intervening time between the map’s commission and its formal introduction into the notarial record marks a significant moment not considered in the records, one of careful examination, access to an old pictorial record, and knowledge to procure and make materials to paint.

The ancient map served as a testament to the pictorial skills of an earlier generation of painters and it informed Zárate’s own abilities. In the process of making the map, the master painter acquired thick coarse linen fabric that served as the surface on which to paint and he prepared a medium brown pigment that colored the copy’s backdrop. Next, he mixed a series of earth tones including green, crimson, and dark brown with which to illustrate a range of mountains that straddled the western boundaries of Xoxocotlán. Zárate carefully detailed place sites, physical structures, and natural resources in pictorial fashion later adding geographical names and written descriptions in

Mixtec next to some symbols.42 In effect, the map described the landscape in Mixtec terms, Zárate conveying authority through an assortment of cartographic signs and written language.

42 Full transcriptions, translation, and interpretation of this map appear in Chapter 4 and Appendix A. 37

Scattered across the page connecting settlements to one another, Zárate painted a series of roads with footprints to signify movement. Feet imprints used in pre-Colombian codices symbolized journeys, a reminder that a great lord once embarked upon a quest of marriage or to wage war in an effort to preserve a lineage and to expand domains. The use of feet acquired new meaning during the last quarter of the sixteenth century when a new generation of painters adapted its use to make pictorial records, most notably community and regional maps used to petition and to defend land. A dearth of maps in the decades following 1610 suggests a temporary pattern of stability in matters related to land in part brought on by continued population decline in major urban areas. Painters revived old motifs when authorities and town councils called on them to paint maps that followed the local tradition, a response to new policies on land and increased population growth. Don Domingo’s use of footprints and of strategies reminiscent of logographic writing used a century earlier was no mere coincidence. During the map’s inspection on

October 25, Zárate presented his copy for inspection. On the map’s bottom right hand corner, an unconventional certifying gloss appeared, it read in part, “I copied this map based on the original given to me; [I made it] according to the traditions of my art of painting without damaging or diminishing a single thing.”43 Native painters who made maps did not typically sign them instead surrendering the task of certification and alphabetic writing to the scribes and officials who inspected and approved them. In this case, Zárate assumed the role of certification normally reserved for a scribe exhibiting not

43 The original inscription reads, “Por orden del Capitan Don Antonio de Abellán . . . cupie [copie?] esta Mapa según su original que se me dio sin estrepar [estropear?] ni disminuir cosa Alguna según se acostumbra en mi arte de la pintura.” Map of Xoxocotlán (1686), AGN, No. 0625, Tierras, Vol. 129, Exp. 4, f. 249. 38

only pictorial skills used to copy the old map but knowledge of notarial protocols displayed through written fluency in Spanish as well as Mixtec. But the most compelling aspect of the passage is the fact that Zárate presented himself as a practitioner of a unique form of expression, “mi arte de la pintura,” “my art of painting,” he said.

What did Zárate mean by his art of painting? Where and how did he learn his trade? What kind of visual strategies did Zárate and others like him use to express spatial relationships? Zárate’s declaration took place nearly eighty years after a marked decline of native pictorial activity in Mesoamerica. What significance does his commission to replicate the old map and his self-description as a maestro pintor have on our understanding of indigenous pictorial traditions and the manuscript culture of New

Spain? In the Hispanic world, arte represented what sixteenth-century Spanish jurist

Gaspar Gutiérrez de los Ríos defined as “a compendium and assemblage of well-tested precepts and rules that through methodical and purposeful learning guide us towards a worthy goal.”44 Zárate’s unusual declaration suggests he held a similar view of his own pictorial tradition, one in which specific knowledge ordered the form and content of a map. Perhaps he also understood his talent as huisi, the Mixtec term that described a trade or profession, an activity developed through yodzatacundi, the act of painting.45

Painters in Oaxaca during the late sixteenth century through the early eighteenth century

44 The passage states, “El arte no es otra cosa, sino una recopilación, y congregado de preceptos, y reglas, experimentadas, que ordenadamente, y con cierta razón, y estudio nos encaminan a algún fin y uso bueno.” Gaspar Gutiérrez de los Ríos, Noticia general para la estimación de las artes, y de la manera en que se conocen las liberales de las que son mecánicas y serviles, con una exhortación a la honra de la virtud y del trabajo contra los ociosos, y otras particulares para las personas de todos estados (Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1600), 15-16, Library of Congress Rare Books (LCRB).

45 Francisco de Alvarado, Vocabulario en lengua mixteca (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista and Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1962 [1593]), 27, 168. 39

made maps drawing from visual strategies that included the organization of geographical elements on the page usually in a circular fashion, the use of the center as a focal point, the application of pigments and colors to form hierarchies, and the repetition of signs that often carried various meanings for multiple audiences.

The use of foot prints, an important sign found on Mesoamerican pictorial records across time, functions as a metaphor to examine the role of painters within colonial society. Feet imprints establish an individual’s presence in a specific geographical location suggesting movement within that space. On maps and pictorial records of the late sixteenth century, feet accompanied an intricate system of roads through which people and goods circulated. In some ways, footprints stand in for painters’ scouting activities when they mapped a region, the traces they left as they reconnoitered an area.

In another respect, the ritual aspect of walking the boundaries played a key role when taking possession of a piece of land and to recognize the limits of a settlement or town, a moment certainly worthy of recognition on maps. Pictorially, each footprint design is unique in itself providing an unofficial signature which helps to distinguish one painter from another. These tracks support the development of a social profile of painters, especially in consideration of the limited resources that tie individuals to maps. Why could painters express spatial relationships to multiple audiences? Did knowledge of regional geography including mountains, streams, rivers, mineral deposits, trees, and other features facilitate communication with Spanish officials and native leaders? Where and how did painters learn about plants, roots, soil, and insects and the proper way to transform these ingredients into pigments, ink, and paper? Painters functioned as 40

intermediary figures between the Spanish and native worlds, forming part of several overlapping sectors involved in the division of land and the allocation of privileges and goods that generated the need for maps.46 Understanding of local politics, history, and culture allowed painters to represent the interests of their mostly native clientele responding to them but also to the Spanish officials who authorized the maps and other pictorial manuscripts they made.

Typically from the upper strata of native society, painters participated in the political and religious affairs of their communities and they held land, through private ownership and customary rights as nobles, for agriculture which they often leased to

Spaniards and natives. Although painters seldom signed their maps, the few who did enjoyed cacique status. Traditions of record keeping among cacique lineages may have provided them access to pictorial sources that represented an important component of mapmaking. It follows that the transfer of knowledge and skills to make maps may often have taken place within familial units from elder to younger males, most likely from father to son or from uncle to nephew. A cacique’s ability to speak Spanish, an essential tool to communicate with royal officials who inspected and validated maps, placed painters in a unique position of power to shape discussions about boundaries and authority. Their patrons included native town councils known as cabildos, caciques,

Spaniards, and royal authorities. Scribes recorded the encounters between painters and

46 On intermediaries, intellectuals, and other cross-cultural individuals, see Berta Ares Queija and Serge Gruzinski, ed., Entre dos mundos: fronteras culturales y agentes mediadores (Sevilla: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1997); Alida Metcalf, Go-Betweens and the Colonization of Brazil, 1500-1600 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005); Yanna Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); and Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California, 1995). 41

alcaldes mayores according to notarial principles designed to regulate the relationship between individuals and the Crown and its dependencies across the empire. Individuals who made maps played an active role in shaping the region’s spatial relations as well as its manuscript culture, a loose association between scribes, notaries, lawyers, clerks, translators, caciques, and clerics involved in the production of written records.

The Art of Painting

Zárate’s words were rare considering the dozens of maps from Oaxaca and central

Mexico that remained unsigned. During the sixteenth century, Spaniards called native pictorial records pinturas, a term used in Spain to designate visual sources that sought to imitate nature’s proportions while describing the qualities of objects portrayed, their makers designated simply as pintores or painters. Contemporaries in the European and indigenous worlds of the period would have recognized distinctions in the use of the term. A retablo painter, for instance, performed a very different service than a painter of maps yet they were both described with the same word. Among Mixtecs, a painter-scribe was known as ñahuisi tacu, “he whose craft is to write,” Zapotecs described these individuals as huazee, and among Nahuas, they were known as tlacuilo. In the colonial period, a gradual erosion during the sixteenth century of pictorial manuscripts as a response to the introduction of alphabetic writing rendered these terms virtually obsolete.

In the Mixteca, native scribes, tay taatutu, learned not only to write in Spanish but also to express their own language alphabetically, a practice adopted by Nahuas in central

Mexico and the Maya in Yucatan and Guatemala. The adoption of alphabetic writing 42

made painting an increasingly niche activity, a badge of honor for a select few with access to knowledge and sources.

During the sixteenth century, painters made a range of pictorial manuscripts that modern scholars have invariably labeled codices, lienzos, and maps. In most parts of

Mesoamerica, codices, screen-fold books prepared in a purely pre-Colombian style that pictorially described historical events, cosmology, genealogy, and calendrics disappeared by the second half of the sixteenth century under intense pressure from zealous Christian clerics fearful of their religious content. Lienzos, genealogical and historical records painted on large cloth surfaces utilizing certain Mesoamerican symbols, predominated during the second half of the sixteenth century when indigenous nobles and caciques used them to petition land, goods, and privileges. Regional maps, visual records that described spatial relationships between neighboring settlements, traditionally supported the allocation and retention of land in Oaxaca though on occasion authorities commissioned them to support royal initiatives designed to measure natural wealth and water infrastructure.

Extant maps suggest individuals turned to painters in greater numbers during the last quarter of the sixteenth century when spatial adjustments took place after forced resettlement campaigns led to spatial realignments in Oaxaca. Similar patterns of mapmaking can be detected in central Mexico, and to a lesser extent, among Maya peoples in the Yucatán peninsula and into Guatemala.47 Painters tapped into learning gained through centuries of interaction through trade, writing, warfare, and dynastic

47 Gruzinski, “Colonial Indian Maps.” 43

alliances across Mesoamerica. An expression of this pattern of exchange includes what scholars have described as the Mixteca-Puebla style, an interpretive model used to analyze pottery, pictorial manuscripts, and religious iconography from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries. The region that encompassed the Cholula area of Puebla and northeastern portion of Oaxaca in south-central Mexico had a profound cultural impact on the rest of Mesoamerica. The model included a well-defined aggregation of deities, stylized picture-writing, and the use of a common fifty-two-year calendar cycle, its influence stretching as far north as the US Southwest and to Nicaragua in the south. The geometric precision with which artists defined their lines, the standardization of signs, the use of vivid colors as decorative and symbolic components, and the exaggerated representation of figures articulated important aspects of the Mixteca-Puebla style.48

Manuscript picture-writing constituted an important activity among ethnic groups in Oaxaca and the art of painting flourished most prominently among Mixtecs and

Zapotecs. Vocabularies of native languages from the region made during the second half of the sixteenth century to aid missionaries in the conversion process revealed a rich array of words to express pictorial activity that often distinguished qualities associated with painters. Mixtecs differentiated between huisicara, “the best scribe or painter,” huisica nootacuta, “the one who best applies color,” and huijca dzicudusa tacuta, “the painter

48 The term was coined by archeologist George Vaillant in a series of essays written at the end of the 1930s, “A Correlation of Archeological and Historical Sequences in the Valley of Mexico,” American Anthropologist 40/4 (1938): 535-573. H.B. Nicholson expanded on Vaillant’s theme sharpening the unique elements of the pictorial style in, “The Mixteca-Puebla Concept in Mesoamerican Archeology: A Re- examination,” in Men and Cultures: Selected Papers from the Fifth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, ed. Anthony F.C. Wallace (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960), and “The Mixteca-Puebla Concept Re-visited,” in The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central Mexico, ed. Elizabeth H. Boone (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1982).

with the best hand.”49 Zapotecs referenced the act of painting, tozèea, “painted things,” nayye, but also “writing,” tozèeaquíchi, and “sacred writings,” tícha nachijño.50

References in Nahuatl, the lingua franca used throughout Mesoamerica, to a type of scriptorium known as tlacuiloloyan, “place to write,” conceivably housed tlacuiloca teachcauh, “head painter-scribes” who oversaw the work of others as they made pictorial manuscripts, an act defined as tlacuiloliztli.51

Accounts from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries suggest painters during the pre-Hispanic period also migrated to other provinces contributing to the movement of ideas and goods. Fernando de Alva Ixtlixóchitl, a mestizo (an individual of

Spanish and indigenous heritage) descendent from the last rulers of Texcoco wrote that,

There came from the provinces of the Mixtecs two nations whom they called

Tlailotlaques and Chimalpanecas who were also of the lineage of the Toltecs. The

Tlailotlaques had for their chief Aztatlitexcan, or according to the general history

Coatlitepan. They were skilled in the art of painting and making histories more than in

the other arts.52

A historian, Ixtlixochitl wrote his early seventeenth-century Historia Chichimeca, an account of Mesoamerica up to the Spanish invasion of Tenochtitlan, based on native

49 Reyes, Arte en lengua mixteca, 11.

50 Juan de Córdova, Vocabulario en lengua çapoteca (Mexico City: SEP and Ediciones Toledo, 1987 [1578], 182v, 315v.

51 Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1944 [1571]), 120.

52 Robertson suggests Ixtlixóchitl may have drawn his insight about this connection from the Codex Xolotl, an early sixteenth-century pictorial history, Mexican Manuscript Painting, 13.

sources held in his family for generations including the Codex Xolotl, an early colonial historical-genealogical manuscript made on native bark paper.53 Pictorial histories and genealogies were naturally tied to the ruling elite who took advantage of the genre to record its activities in trade, warfare, and marriage alliances. A rich tradition of using older pictorial manuscripts as models continued into the colonial period ensuring the circulation of records and the continued practice of the art of painting.

Zárate’s written commentary on the 1686 map formed part of a pattern followed by generations of painters that recognized their art as a unique instrument to capture information about politics, history, and spatial relationships. The artist of the Codex

Vindobonensis (aka Codex Vienna), a pictorial manuscript made towards the end of fifteenth century that related Mixtec history and politics, depicted a scribe (Figure 6) holding a brush in his left hand in front of a stone vessel used to store pigments. The frieze that supports the scribe suggests painters represented the scribal profession through an association of elements, most notably the ilhuitl symbol in the form of two inverted scrolls.54 The term ilhuitl, defined by the sixteenth-century Franciscan grammarian

Alonso de Molina as “observance of celebration, or any day of the week,” has been adopted by archeologists and art historians to define one of several symbols that form part of “celestial bands,” decorative banners which gave meaning to rituals typically

53 See Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting, 13. For a recent analysis of native manuscript production in the Texcoco region, see Eduardo de J. Douglas, In the Palace of Nezahualcoyotl: Painting Manuscripts, Writing the Pre-Hispanic Past in Early Colonial Period Tetzcoco, Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010).

54 H.B. Nicholson, “The Temalacatl of Tehuacan,” El México Antiguo VIII (1955), 110.

found on Aztec sculptures and ceramics.55 The ilhuitl symbol also represented the scribal profession in codices, relief sculpture, and mural painting across central and southern

Mexico.56

During the colonial period, painters-scribes across Mesoamerica adapted to change collaborating with the Catholic orders to illustrate religious themes embedding elements of their own pictorial vocabulary in their commissions. The use of the ilhuitl motif in mural paintings in the Augustinian monastery of Malinalco in the state of

Mexico allowed painters to express their authorship over painted work. In a detail of one of the murals, a carefully painted song scroll includes glyph-like symbols of a shell, a flower, and ilhuitl the latter represented by two inverted speech scrolls which closely mirror those used in pictorial writing.57 In the Codex Vienna, a similar pattern of symbols including a flower (right hand side) and a shell (center) illustrates the frieze that supports the surface on which the painter/scribe sits. The third symbol directly below the painter’s vessel on the farthest left may represent a variation of the double-scrolled ilhuitl, complementing the frieze’s design.

The similarity in visual components and the pictorial setting in which they appeared suggests painters drew from a rich vocabulary from across Oaxaca and central

Mexico which allowed them to generate collective expressions of their trade, embedding pictorial and scribal activities within the broader social context of the period. Many of

55 Molina, 37v; Nicholson, “The Temalacatl,” 104-113.

56 Nicholson, “The Temalacatl,” 110.

57 Jeanette Favrot Peterson, “Synthesis and Survival: The Native Presence in Sixteenth-Century Murals of New Spain,” special issue, “Native Artists and Patrons in Colonial Latin America,” Phoebus 7 (1995), 16. 47

these traditions continued to inform pictorial manuscripts after Spanish colonization in the sixteenth century when painters diversified their talents contributing to mural painting, mapmaking, and scribal work. Because the audience and motivations shifted with time, so did the symbols used to make the art of painting meaningful. In this sense, painters adjusted their tools, constantly transforming and improvising new ways of conveying messages especially when thinking about the native and Spanish audiences that typically played a part in commissioning and reviewing their work. In another sense, the art of painting symbolized a form of expression closely tied to indigenous identity and social memory. By 1686 when Domingo de Zárate made his statement about the art of painting, the ilhuilt symbol figuratively reemerged to illustrate the importance of pictorial activity only this time the painter chose to convey his message as a set of words written alphabetically on a map.

Generational Mapping

The assortment of maps made during the late sixteenth century reflects a considerable sophistication in visual representation, the articulation of geographical knowledge, and an understanding of the subtleties of spatial relationships in local and regional environments. Yet the difference in style that separated some maps from others raises questions: why did some painters include logographic writing while others only roads and churches? Why did some artists draw buildings in three-dimensional perspective and others depicted objects in flat, two-dimensional space? These traits associated with the making of maps make suggests the participation of several 48

generations of painters guided by two forces, one rooted in tradition, the other in change.

Mapmaking formed part of a tradition of pictorial record-keeping passed down from elder to junior but also heavily influenced by the introduction of European norms and culture.

During the sixteenth century, men across several generational groups gained access to indigenous and European learning in very different ways influencing the tone and character of each map. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a handful of painters such as Domingo de Zárate described at the beginning of this chapter adapted the tradition of earlier mapmaking practices to fulfill the need to reproduce older maps used in litigation.

References that directly name painters or maps signed by them suggest indigenous men of cacique or principal status controlled the art of painting.58 Certainly

Domingo de Zárate’s self-identification as a cacique supports this idea. From their privileged position, painters had access to learning, land, and often, political control, though their power varied from region to region. Wealth, also a variable matter not only among caciques but commoners as well, created social differences among leading notables who often competed for land, access to labor, and privileges with each other and with Spaniards.59 In central Mexico, the encomienda system contributed to a decline in the power of caciques reducing their estates and draining them of laborers. In the Valley of Oaxaca and the Mixteca, caciques retained considerable land and for some time

58 Useful works to understand the role of painters include Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting, 25-58; Dana Leibsohn, “Colony and Cartography”; Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 61-89; Carmen Arellano Hoffmann, “El escriba mesoamericano y sus utensilios de trabajo,” 220-234.

59 Lockhart, 94. 49

enjoyed the labor of commoners who worked it on their behalf. Complaints from caciques after the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries about the commoner status of individuals in competing political factions signal the challenges aimed at caciques while suggesting the rhetoric used to defend traditional privileges and to discredit their opponents.60 In the region of Tehuantepec along the Pacific Coast, Zapotec notables also retained entailed estates mobilizing native labor for public works projects that allowed caciques to play key roles in local affairs.61 Because of their leadership positions, caciques performed a variety of activities including ranching, agriculture, trade, public affairs, and scribal work while functioning as intermediaries between their communities and Spanish authorities. Some practiced the art of painting.

Maps produced starting in the 1580s could have been made by a male belonging to one of three broad generational groups that lived in Oaxaca during the late sixteenth century. While some shared a common ethnic identity, each group shared certain traits that influenced their representations of spatial relationships. The oldest group included males born sometime between 1500 and 1519. These men survived the realignments resulting from the Spanish conquest during the century’s middle decades and were in their 60s and 70s by 1580 when a noticeable mapmaking pattern emerged. A second group included those born from 1520 to 1539, a conquest generation that adjusted to the evangelization campaigns, labor drafts, reduced power and authority as well as punishment and humiliation that characterized Spanish-Indian relationships during this

60 See Gibson, 117.

61 Judith Francis Zeitlin, “Ranchers and Indians on the Southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec: Economic Change and Indigenous Survival in Colonial Mexico,” Hispanic American Historical Review 69 (1989), 52-53. 50

early period. In their 40s and 50s, these individuals maintained in the 1580s the reins of political and economic power in their communities administering lands, labor, and tribute. A younger, third group born between 1540 and 1560, learned to embrace

Christianity and Spanish customs while maintaining strong ties to basic social units known as ñuu among Mixtecs, yetze among Zapotecs, and altepelt among the Nahuas.

These complex autonomous and semi-autonomous states held physical territory delimited by clear boundaries, a political structure, constituent units, temples and palaces, and an organized labor and tribute-producing system.62 In most cases, painters represented these social units and their boundaries in maps.

The repeated use of churches, roads, mountains, feet, rivers, and celestial objects suggest indigenous painters across generations shared a common set of values they knowingly expressed in their maps. The application of pictorial devices used in

Mesoamerican picture-writing, the introduction of elements drawn from European culture, the interpretation of two- and three-dimensionality, access to pictorial documents, and the use of new media such as rag paper influenced the manner in which painters defined and portrayed spatial relationships in maps. At the individual level, each painter applied these elements in varying degrees and in distinct ways reflecting their personal choices but also exposure to different forms of learning. For instance, the map of Teozacoalco (Figure 7) made in the southeast reaches of the Mixteca region in 1580, a map representing historical lineages of rulers connected to the distribution of towns,

62 Terraciano, 347-48. 51

displayed considerable skills rooted in Mesoamerican pictorial traditions.63 The use of ordered pairs (Figure 8) ascending from the bottom of the left hand side of the map accounted for generations of royal couples that made up Teozacoalco’s political genealogy. The painter also utilized the A-O calendar device used to identify dates, architectural ornamentation symbolic of political authority, accoutrements of power including headdresses and clothing, and feet to indicate travel.

Inside the map’s globe on the right hand side, the painter situated Teozacoalco, the cabecera or head town in the central left surrounded by its thirteen dependencies or estancias. A series of over forty place signs defined the boundaries of this jurisdiction through the use of logographs, images that expressed words or ideas. In logographic writing, painters used mountains, cacti, water, trees, plants, temples, people, weaponry and other elements to represent words that assigned meaning to geographical markers and towns. For instance, the painter for the Teozacoalco map applied a Mixtec logograph of a man chiseling a stone temple (Figure 9) to describe, chiyo ca’nu, “large/great altar.”

The map’s circular encasement also included the representation of rivers and animals as well as three ruling couples directly linked to Teozacoalco. Besides the new religion,

Spaniards introduced a host of animals that had transformed the natural landscape of

Mesoamerica. Horses and later oxen, swine, and sheep left deep imprints on American terrain eroding stretches of land used as pasture sites. Native towns often complained to royal authorities of cattle invasions from neighboring estates and of ruined crops. By the second half of the sixteenth century, painters memorialized the Spanish presence in their

63 Map of Teozacoalco and Relación de Teozacoalco y Amoltepeque (1580), BLAC, Folder XXV-3. 52

maps with a simple but powerful gesture: they added hoof prints to the roads where before only feet had traveled.

The specialized tools used to make the map of Teozacoalco could have only been deployed by someone deeply versed in the Mesoamerican pictorial tradition. The map’s detail reflected an intimate knowledge of history and geography, mastery over various forms of visual representation including logographic writing as well as more technical matters associated with the production of the vibrant colors used to give meaning to its elements. Considering the use and application of these tools, it is conceivable an elder master individually made or oversaw the production of the Teozacoalco map. Hernando de Cervantes, the Spanish judge known as corregidor who petitioned the map, specifically sought the guidance of leading indigenous elders to respond to the questions in the questionnaire. Cervantes enlisted the help of Juan Ruíz Zuaso, the town’s bilingual

(Spanish-Mixtec) priest to facilitate an interview between a group of elder indigenous males and the corregidor. When preparing his responses on January 9, Cervantes credited his informants, noting, “We initiated a true and faithful report as best as we could infer from the [testimony of the] oldest natives from said town and from what one can visually survey.”64 We must treat Cervantes’ commentary with caution since Spanish sources often clump ancianos (elders) and naturales (natives) together as if these groups were homogeneous entities that followed unified goals to acquire land, status, and privileges.

64 “Se comenzó a hacer relación cierta y verdadera según se pudo colegir de los más ancianos naturales del dicho pueblo y por lo que por vista de ojos se puede entender,” Relación de Teozacoalco, BLAC, Folder XXV-3. 53

A line separated those trained under the supervision of the friars from the elder generation brought up under Mesoamerican customs, the former often viewing the latter with distrust for their adherence to Spanish customs. In some instances, interests cut across generations divided along Christian factions that supported missionary efforts and traditionalist factions that sought to preserve native customs and rituals.65 In the case of the Teozacoalco map, Cervantes’ testimony seems simply to ratify what is visibly obvious: the map could have only been made by someone with great experience and a sophisticated understanding of pictorial writing acquired through learning and practice.

How did painters in 1580 learn to produce such records? Elders represented the last generation of elite men to have trained in astronomy, religion, calendrics, and writing under the guidance of specialists in a native educational institution before the Spanish conquest of the sixteenth century.66 The Dominican Juan de Córdova noted in his vocabulary of the Zapotec language that “schools where they teach” were known as yohotoatoceteni while “schools similar to Salamanca,” quechenoo quelahuecete, suggest some attended institutions of higher learning. “Masters who teach a variety of things” were known as huelèe, “learned masters,” pènihuechijñohuecocète, and the masters of an art or trade, copèeche, an activity that implied the passing of knowledge from an experienced master to a young novice. 67 In his Vocabulario en lengua mixteca, a dictionary intended for evangelization published in 1593, the Dominican Francisco de

65 Serge Gruzinski, Man-Gods in the Mexican Highlands: Indian Power and Colonial Society, 1550-1580, trans. Eileen Corrigan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 34-36.

66 Boone, “Aztec Pictorial Histories: Records without Words,” in Writing without Words, 60-4; and Sousa and Terraciano, 352.

67 Córdova, 183v, 252v-253. 54

Alvarado observed similar patterns in the Mixtec language identifying schools as huahi sadzaquaha and its instructors as yya yotasi tnuni huahi ñuhu. The general Mixtec term for “master who teaches,” tay yodza ha ñaha, was distinct from ñahuisi, “master of an art.”68 While this rich vocabulary is a reflection of the Spanish compiler’s own interests, tools used by clerics to breakdown the same indigenous cosmology native teachers had passed on for generations, it nonetheless allows us to consider the extent and importance of conveying information related to the transmission of knowledge.

Painters from the eldest generation shared a direct connection to religious institutions used in the pre-Hispanic period where pictorial writing thrived. Although records from Oaxaca scarcely reference formal learning, a folio (Figure 10) from the

Codex Mendoza painted two decades after the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521 described education for males in central Mexico when they reached the age of fifteen.69 In the scene, a father, seated on a reed mat on the left hand of the page, addressed his two sons as they each prepared to enter one of the two types of educational institutions available to young Nahuas. Largely restricted to the male nobility, the calmecac, religious facilities usually affiliated with individual deities (top right corner) trained priests and nobles who would assume positions of leadership in matters of state. In the image, a tlamacazqui, instructor-priests who taught at the calmecac, received the novice. On the bottom, the second young man headed to a telpochcalli, “neighborhood schools” that trained the sons of commoners in warfare. An instructor known as a teachcauh greeted the second young

68 Alvarado, 102v, 142v.

69 The Codex Mendoza, vol. 1-4, ed. Frances Berdan and Patricia Anawalt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 55

man. The painter for this coming of age scene marked the journey of both men with a trail of footsteps to capture not only the physical aspects of movement but also the transformative ones at the hands of their instructors. For one man, entry into a disciplined and regimented environment dedicated to waging campaigns against enemies and protecting Aztec interests across the empire. For the other, an excursion into an environment of self-discipline and demanding rituals exemplified by the priest’s appearance on the top, his dark stained skin, long black hair, and spilled blood over the left ear symbols of the rigors associated with priestly life. Writing and painting was concentrated precisely within these circles of ritual specialists who worked in the interests of the state passing their knowledge to a limited number of youth in the most developed areas of Mesoamerica. Spanish authorities quickly dismantled native institutions of learning soon after the conquest intent on stamping out religious practices, supplanting them instead with conventual schools that emphasized Christian doctrine and

Western culture.

Transition for the eldest painters of the 1580s to the institutions, laws, and culture imposed by Spaniards in the first half of the sixteenth century represented a difficult challenge especially in spiritual matters. Testimonials from the decades following the subjugation of Oaxaca suggest native ritual practices continued under intense scrutiny from Christian clerics, primarily Dominican, but also Franciscan, Augustinian, and by the end of the century, Jesuit missionaries. To perform the rituals, individuals made substances such as ink tied to the art of painting. An Indian slave identified simply as

Juan declared in 1545 before an Inquisitorial tribunal that Don Francisco, a native lord 56

from the important head town of Yanhuitlán in the Mixteca Alta, worshiped the old deities in secret:

Since it wouldn’t rain, Don Francisco sent the priests to the woods to make charcoal.

When they brought it, they grinded it and made ink. Don Francisco undressed and

blackened himself saying, “I am no longer a Christian, I have returned to what I used to

be.” He then bled his ears while the others perfumed him with copal. He sent for many

quails and sacrificed them, calling the devil, and he asked his friends and relatives to do

the same.70

The slave’s motivations notwithstanding, the account vividly captures one aspect of native ritual practices reminiscent of the themes articulated in the scene from the Codex

Mendoza. In one respect, the slave’s account referenced the ideological conflicts faced by those who bridged the pre-Hispanic and colonial periods when forced to negotiate droughts, disease, and punishment. For Don Francisco, the pressure of a drought pushed him to revert to the ancient practices through an elaborate cleansing ritual. Black ink, an element commonly made by painters to illustrate pictorial manuscripts, played a central role in Don Francisco’s transformation. Don Francisco and his cohorts selected the right wood, usually ocotl a species of pine, they burned it to make charcoal, returned it the house and grinded it before applying it on themselves. It should come as little surprise to find priests making ink since this group held considerable sway over pictorial writing

70 “Como no llovía, el dicho Don Francisco mandó a los papas que fuesen al monte, y hiciesen carbón y traído lo molieron y hicieron tinta, y el dicho don Francisco se desnudó y se pintó de manera de tizne y dijo, ahora ya no soy cristiano, sino como antes solía, y luego se sacrificó las orejas y se hizo sahumar con copal y mandó traer muchas codornices y las sacrificó, y llamó al diablo y lo mismo mandó que hiciesen sus amigos y parientes,” transcription in María Teresa Sepúlveda y Herrera, Procesos por idolatría al cacique, gobernadores y sacerdotes de Yanhuitlán, 1544-1546 (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1999), 170; original in AGN, Inquisición, vol. 37, exp. 7, f. 167.

before the sixteenth century when it facilitated the diffusion of beliefs and practices across Mesoamerica.71

A few years after the slave’s testimony, civil and religious authorities reached an agreement with the caciques to build a sumptuous church and convent financed primarily by the caciques and the town. A painter memorialized the occasion by producing a manuscript no doubt commissioned by the caciques that negotiated the settlement. The production of the Codex Yanhuitlán (Figure 11), a pictorial record made with black- carbon ink on European paper, followed closely on the heels of the Inquisitorial trial that threatened to weaken cacique power in this region of the Mixteca.72 One of the figures represented in the codex, Don Domingo de Guzmán, known by his Mixtec name as sañuu or 7-Monkey, stood trial before the Holy Office along with Don Francisco for idolatry.

The testimony from the case reveals existing conflicts between the Dominicans and the local encomendero, but also regional rivalries between Yanhuitlán and neighboring towns including Etlatongo, Nochixtlan, Jaltepec, and Suchitepec that sought to break from under their status as a subject town of Yanhuitlan.73 Since there was no precedent on either side for the type of document needed, the painter improvised a manuscript that conveyed symbols of European authority including chairs, rosaries, clothing, and religious themes with native place names and calendrics. The manuscript’s mixture of ornate costumes, exaggerated proportions, and pictorial writing captured the work of a

71 Terraciano, 17.

72 Códice Yanhuitlán, ed. Wigberto Jiménez Moreno and Salvador Mateos Higuera (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia and Museo Nacional, 1940), f. 3v.

73 Terraciano, 31-38, 274-278. 58

painter in the service of the native patrons who commissioned the pictorial and the

Spanish authorities involved in viewing and confirming the agreement.

The Conquest Generation

The arrival in the sixteenth century of European soldiers, clerics, adventurers, notaries, officials, and entrepreneurs profoundly reshaped indigenous society in Oaxaca.

Swift negotiations by the native elite with Spanish forces in the early part of the century in important centers of power including the Valley of Oaxaca and the Mixteca Alta facilitated the retention of land and privileges for many nobles and towns while avoiding bloodshed on the scale of central Mexico. Members of the indigenous elite served as intermediaries between royal officials, clerics, and encomenderos, holders of native labor grants, and their own communities supporting the collection of tribute, the distribution of indigenous men to work Spanish enterprises, and the administration of local religious and political affairs. While the eldest generation experienced these changes firsthand as they were moving into adulthood, a new generation born at the same time as the Viceroyalty of New Spain grew up, shaped by the instruction of Christian missionaries.

Dissemination of alphabetic writing and Spanish culture under the leadership of

Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian missionaries sought to turn natives into model

Christians who would then spread the Gospel in their communities. Missionaries recruited and educated children of the native elite as part of their strategy to dismantle indigenous cosmology, encouraging them to denounce their parents and elders should they recede into the old rituals. Clerics across New Spain aligned juniors to their cause 59

often humiliating their parents in front of them to demonstrate the inefficiency of native deities and beliefs.74 In Yanhuitlán, generational conflicts divided the region when elite children under the care of the Dominicans denounced Don Francisco and others in the

1540s.75 Vocational and spiritual education of elite children allowed clerics to promote their interests. In central Mexico, Franciscans founded the schools of San José de los

Naturales which focused on crafts and technical skills that included carpentry, shoemaking, and also sculpting and painting, and Santa Cruz at Tlatelolco where children studied European philosophy and religion learning to read and write in Latin and

Spanish.76 The introduction of alphabetic writing contributed to a tradition of Mixtec scribes who wrote their own language starting in the sixteenth century and through the end of the colonial period.77 Indigenous nobles recognized the importance Spaniards placed on writing and record keeping regularly engaging authorities with written and pictorial documents to negotiate tribute payments, petitions of land and privileges, and to issue complaints.78

Before their suppression and eventual disappearance in the latter part of the sixteenth century, these institutions educated males from native families from across

74 These practices were deployed by clerics across the Americas. See, for instance, Ramón Gutiérrez’s analysis of Franciscan strategies of domination among Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 75-77.

75 Terraciano, 277.

76 Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting, 42-45; Gibson, 382.

77 Terraciano, 15.

78 For an example of complaints in the first half of the sixteenth century, see AGN, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 450, exp. 1, f. 3-6, and a series of accompanying pictorial documents, No. 3122-3125.

Mesoamerica to eventually serve in local affairs in their own towns; whether indigenous families willingly surrendered their sons to the European friars is another matter. After completing his studies at Tlatelolco, a Cuicatec lord named Francisco de Salinas returned to western Oaxaca where in 1580 he formed part of a group that advised the region’s corregidor on local history, geography, and culture during the compilation of responses for the Relaciones Geográficas survey.79 Salinas’ indigenous background and European training placed him in a unique position to communicate, in written and verbal form, with royal officials.

Missionary orders used prints as well as canvas and mural paintings to explain religious doctrine. In the seventeenth century, the Dominican Francisco de Burgoa recalled the early efforts of individuals such as Gonzalo de Lucero who he identified as the first Dominican to preach in Oaxaca. Burgoa glorified Lucero’s work noting,

He walked barefoot through the unconverted towns of the region, to preach to them in the

Mexican language which he knew well and was the one spoken within the towns

subjected to the Ministers of Emperor Moctezuma. This servant of God took with him

some rolled canvases with paintings of the principle mysteries of our Holy Faith.80

It was often elder and conquest-generation Indians who produced or helped produce the canvas paintings and other visual sources used for indoctrination. The conversion crusade undertaken by the missionary orders in New Spain amounted to what Serge

79 Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 77.

80 “Saliendo a pie y descalzo por los Pueblos, todavía infieles de la Comarca, a predicarles en la lengua Mexicana, que sabía muy bien, y era la general que corría en los Pueblos, que dependían, o comunicaban a los Ministros del Emperador Montezuma, llevaba consigo el siervo de Dios unos lienzos arrollados con pinturas de los principales Misterios de nuestra Santa Fe,” Burgoa, Geográfica descripción, 13.

Gruzinski refers to as a “war of images,” a campaign waged through the displacement of pre-Colombian visual culture, particularly that of a religious nature, replacing it with

Christian imagery.81 Indeed Spaniards assaulted the New World with a visual canon that included everyday items such as clothing as well as military objects including artillery, steel swords, helmets, armor, and insignias. Crosses, rosaries, paintings, and prints gave way to the construction of massive Christian temples designed to awe and inspire, the materials used to build them drawn from the ruins of destroyed ancient ritual centers that honored the old deities.82 By the latter part of the sixteenth century, Dominican churches across Oaxaca could be spotted by residents and travelers from leagues away.83 Images, reasoned religious authorities, facilitated the task of reshaping native understanding of the cosmos.84

Painters captured these cultural transformations and ideological shifts in their maps. About eighteen leagues north of Teozacoalco in the highland region of the

Mixteca Alta, a painter from the Cuestlahuaca region made a map (Figure 12) in 1582 to petition a site of land for livestock for the town of San Miguel.85 Painted on paper with a combination of green and yellow, the painter’s rendition of the landscape sought to evoke

81 Serge Gruzinski, Images at War: Mexico from Columbus to Blade Runner (1492-2019), trans. Heather MacLean (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 34-48.

82 See Samuel Edgerton’s Theatres of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001).

83 Robert Mullen’s Dominican Architecture in Sixteenth-Century Oaxaca (Tempe: Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona State University, 1975).

84 Participants of the Third Mexican Provincial Council addressed the role of images in their discussions about religious doctrine. See Manuscritos del Concilio Tercero Provincial Mexicano (1585), vol. I-II, ed. Alberto Carrillo Cázares (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán and Universidad Pontificia de México, 2006).

85 Map of San Miguel Cuestlahuaca (1582), AGN, No. 1609, Tierras, vol. 2682, exp. 9, f. 8. 62

what the corregidor described as “unpopulated, broken, mountainous, and dry terrain.”

Alternating feet, a sign drawn from Mesoamerican pictorials to signal movement or a journey, marked the presence of New Spain’s major artery, the Royal Highway, a road that passed through San Miguel moving towards the livestock ranch which sat on the side of a small hill. The church on the right, a symbol that stood in for the town of San

Miguel, reflected the painter’s attempt to represent depth and space, the use of three- dimensionality no doubt a response to the circulation of European prints. Printed images, mostly illustrations of religious scenes such as Albrecht Dürer’s, “The Holy Family with

Two Angels” (Figure 13), circulated across New Spain in and outside of convent walls used by clerics to teach aspects of the Catholic faith. In both the map and the print, an emphasis on the vaulted features of the church allowed each artist to project a sense of depth through perspectival drawing and shading. Although it is difficult to determine whether the painter of Cuestlahuaca viewed Dürer’s print of the Holy Family, his or her attempt to portray depth and space in reference to architecture had roots in the circulation in New Spain of religious imagery made in Europe.

In the process of identifying sites of land for ranching and agriculture, painters made choices about the ways to portray the built environment, an assortment of physical structures including churches, houses, corrals, and the occasional sugar mill that dotted the landscape. Geographical elements such as mountains, rivers, lagoons, springs, trees, plants, animals, and rocks played prominent roles in defining boundaries, their representation on maps adjusting to changing stylistic conventions but also to a painter’s access to elder advisors and pictorial documents. Their maps borrowed freely from both 63

ancient Mesoamerican logographic writing as well as from visual components such as heraldry, seals, religious iconography, paintings, printed matter, and architecture that accompanied Spanish colonization. Faced with multiple Spanish and indigenous audiences, a native painter’s need to convey a message required, in James Scott’s words,

“an experimental spirit and a capacity to test and exploit all loopholes, ambiguities, silences, and lapses available to them.”86 The system of castes in colonial society reduced all relationships of power to the simple fact that regardless of social status,

Spaniards enjoyed mastery over the colonial world.87 The unequal standing of natives when confronted with Spaniards, even for the most powerful caciques and noblemen, served as a motivating factor to develop new tools to express spatial relationships. Over time, use of the Spanish courts allowed native leaders to develop an intimate knowledge of legal practices to participate in the defense of land. Painters navigated within these delicate channels especially coming into contact with the royal scribes, jurists, and clerics that dominated the region’s manuscript culture.

The period starting in the 1580s witnessed a defining moment when painters learned to apply new techniques, gradually shifting from conceptual to perceptual interpretations of the natural environment. Typically associated with European image making, perceptual illustrations present elements of three-dimensionality and an illusion

86 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 138.

87 Nancy Farriss, Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 99. 64

of spatial depth while conceptual ones appear in two-dimensional, flat spaces.88 But the maps do not suggest an abandonment or immediate replacement of one style over another but rather the disposition of painters to try out new ideas. Churches, arguably the most important buildings in colonial society, came to symbolize townships and they represented the most recognizable cartographic element on any given map, a practice tied to their role in daily life as the centers of power and social interaction across cities, villas, and towns in New Spain. The relationship between the painter, the map’s patron, and the authorizing official who inspected it over time led to a systematization of its use that could be easily interpreted by various audiences: churches represented towns. This simple premise allowed painters to communicate spatial relationships while developing their own pictorial voice; as long as they were clearly depicted, painters could represent towns by using a number of different styles and techniques. After all, it was the idea of the church that could be thought of as a systematized element of mapmaking; its representation could and did take on a variety of forms.

The painter of the map of Guaxilotitlán (Figure 14), a former Zapotec ritual center northwest of Antequera in the Valley of Oaxaca, made a painting in 1586 for Domingo

Martín, an Indian notable from the subject town of San Felipe to petition a site for a livestock ranch.89 Mountains frame the left and inferior edges of the map while two roads emerge from the top right hand corner merging into a single artery toward the left

88 Ellen Taylor Baird, “The Artists of Sahagún’s Primeros Memoriales: A Question of Identity,” in Work of Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-Century Aztec Mexico, ed. Jorge Klor de Alva, H.B. Nicholson, and Eloise Quiñones Keber (Albany and Austin: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, the University at Albany, SUNY, and University of Texas Press, 1988), 212.

89 Map of Guaxilotitlán (1586), AGN, No. 1726, Tierras, vol. 2702, exp. 2, f. 10.

bottom portion of the page; footprints and hoofmarks indicate travel. The painter used a dark green shade to color a river with two tributaries that cut across the region. Along with the roads and mountains, the painter’s style reflected native pictorial traditions yet the most noticeable items on the map include the ten churches of various sizes scattered across the page. Colored in deep crimson with gold and black outlines, the churches represent Guaxilotitlán and the surrounding town sites. That the painter chose to depict local settlements with a church instead of the more traditional teptl place-sign reflects the transformation of indigenous pictorial expression.

A century later, religious buildings continued to serve the interests of indigenous painters who used them to describe town sites. The painter of the copied map of Santa

María Guelacé (Figure 15), a Zapotec town southeast of Antequera, drew on this technique to dramatic effect.90 The map was originally commissioned in 1690 to protect the boundaries known as mojones of the Zapotec settlement and it possesses many of the attributes of native mapmaking. The extant version of the map, a copy produced in 1778 by an unknown painter, supported Guelacé’s petition for access to coal and wood on a southwest boundary that neighbored with a nearby ranch. The map drew the viewer’s attention to the carefully detailed church in the center of the page. Around the church, men engage in agricultural activities on town lands while women collect water by the river west of the main church. Elsewhere, a man sleeps with his head on his knees and a bag strapped to his back while an Indian in a tilma, a tunic with a strap over the shoulder

90 Map of Santa María Guelacé, San Jerónimo Tlacochaguaya, and Santa Cruz Papalutla (1690 [1778]), AGN, No. 0956, Tierras, vol. 1206, exp. 1, cuad. 8, f. 21. 66

typically worn by the male indigenous nobility, stands with a spear in his hand facing the church (Figure 16). His much larger counterpart, an unclothed woman with dark waist long hair walks commandingly over the landscape, her impressive figure twice as large as any other human in the map. This unique picture of everyday life reflects labor patterns and economic activities but also attitudes towards authority, in this case directed at the church in the form of two natives subverting traditional social roles. While the original map of Guelacé sought to define all town boundaries, the copy’s primary function rested on defending a single mojón. The choice of cartographic symbols to represent human settlements allowed the painter to appeal to Spanish sensibilities surrounding religion and authority. Further, it suggests the degree to which European religious ideology had penetrated native communities since churches represented centers of religious and economic activity in small towns and cities across the Viceroyalty.91

Cacique-Painters

In the Mixteca Alta near Tepenene in the northwestern region of Oaxaca, the cacique Don Domingo de Mendoza practiced the art of painting. In 1617, Mendoza used his skills to make a map (Figure 17) in order to petition an estancia, a site for ranching, for himself one league from Santo Domingo Tepenene, a subject town to the more powerful cabecera, or head-town, of Cuestlahuaca.92 The map’s two main features, a mountain in the form of an ancient temple on the upper left hand corner, and a church

91 See William Taylor’s, Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).

92 Map of Santo Domingo Tepenene (1617), AGN, No. 2225, Tierras, vol. 2812, exp. 11, f. 312. 67

traced with graph lines on the bottom right of the page, reflect Mendoza’s individual approach to pictorial representation. Mendoza presented the map to the alcalde mayor, who according to the scribe’s inscription on the upper right hand edge noted, “This map was made by order of his lordship for the proceedings related to the cattle site sought by

Don Domingo de Mendoza.”93 In this instance, Mendoza served as both the painter of the map and its co-patron along with the alcalde mayor, applying his pictorial skills to negotiate a tract of land for himself.

Political and economic interests forced cacique-painters to develop cultural and language skills to function within multiple social settings in the colonial world. In court records from across the region, scribes frequently referenced ladino caciques, those who spoke Spanish, highlighting their language skills and also often their Spanish clothing, a symbol of prestige reserved for a select few.94 Attire allowed powerful members of society to display their status and authority. In the Andes and Mesoamerica, sumptuary legislation existed before the arrival of the Spanish, but the restriction of fabrics and dress reserved for privileged groups relaxed with the introduction of Western clothing. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many Amerindian nobles received special privileges including exemptions from tribute, political appointments, and access to luxury goods such as saddles, certain types of arms, weights and measures, and Spanish

93 “Esta pintura se hiso por mandato de su Excelencia en las diligencias acerca de las tiab[tierras?] que pretende para sitio de estancia el cacique Don Diego de Mendoza,” Map of Santo Domingo Tepenene (1617), AGN, No. 2225.

94 Despite their fluency in the language, many Indian ladinos in Oaxaca relied on interpreters who could translate their words from their native languages into Spanish.

clothing.95 Recall that Don Domingo de Zárate, the cacique who copied the ancient map of Xoxocotlán, wrote fluently in Spanish. But acculturation often came at a price. In the

Zapotec sierra, the term ladino “was at once descriptive, meaning bicultural, and pejorative, connoting duplicity.”96 The capacity of ladinos to move between worlds provoked suspicion among natives and Spaniards alike that feared abuse and trickery.

A painter required cultural awareness to maneuver within Spanish bureaucratic channels and the structures of native cabildos. Individuals operating between these two distinct cultural milieus required versatility in order to function in multiple social spheres, an aspect of which included fluency in languages and intercultural negotiation skills.97 A painter’s experience and mapping output varied in accordance to preparation, the strength or weakness of regional pictorial traditions, the presence of Spanish officials and settlers, and the individual’s interests in local affairs. Alida Metcalf observes that different levels of participation mark the roles of intermediaries. Accordingly, some functioned as

“transactional go-betweens,” those who facilitated communication between individuals and corporate entities including “translators, negotiators, and cultural brokers.” Others shaped through “writings, drawings, mapmaking, and the oral tradition . . . how

95 See Ruth Lechuga, El traje indígena de México (Mexico City: Panorama Editorial, 1982); Arnold Bauer, Goods, Power, History: Latin America’s Material Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Ana María Presta, “Undressing the Coya and Dressing the Indian Woman: Market Economy, Clothing, and Identities in the Colonial Andes, La Plata (Charcas), Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century,” Hispanic American Historical Review 90 (2010): 41-74; my thanks to Lisa Munro for pointing me to this source.

96 Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-Between, 36.

97 I draw this idea from Oscar Martínez’s, Border People: Life and Society in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (Tucson: University of Arizona Press), 20. 69

Europeans and Native Americans viewed each other.”98 In Oaxaca, painters blurred the boundaries between these two groups developing unique pictorial tools to describe the natural world. They gained experience to navigate the structures of Spanish power most notably the bureaucratic streets lined with alcaldes mayores and scribes who approved and certified everyday activities and documents including the use of maps. Many natives practiced autodidactic learning to master elements of Spanish culture especially in the manufacture of goods designed for local consumption.99 It seems fitting that an element of this type of learning carried over into mapmaking. Combined with knowledge of the region’s ecological environment, these skills allowed cacique-painters to interpret spatial relationships for their patrons, their communities, and themselves.

Mapping Tehuantepec

The activities of the painter of Tehuantepec, an individual who made maps in a remote region of southern Oaxaca along the Pacific Coast during the last quarter of the sixteenth century, bear witness to the way individuals adapted their skills to communicate to different audiences while providing a service rooted in local knowledge. Unlike painters in the Valley or the Mixteca who made maps mostly to represent the interests of native cabildos and caciques, the painter of Tehuantepec worked closely with Spanish patrons. From the 1570s until the end of the century, royal officials sought the painter’s services to describe spatial relationships in Tehuantepec generating over half a dozen

98 Metcalf, 9-10.

99 Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting, 40.

maps of different parts of the region.100 Most maps responded to the ranching boom that took place during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that redirected

Zapotec, Zoque, and Huave land to Spaniards bold enough to negotiate the region’s unique topography and extreme climate.101 The ranching expansion placed a burden on the local ecology, forced an encroachment on native lands, and prompted complaints from Indians when herds destroyed agricultural plots very much as it did in other regions of Mesoamerica. Zapotecs, based in part on the strength of their social hierarchy, maintained a tight grasp on irrigated lands developing a complex cropping system suited to the region’s windy and arid climate.102 The Huave took advantage of their geographical location on the coastal plain to retain lands but also the trade of shrimp, fish, lime, and purple cloth in the region. Disease reduced the Zoque during the sixteenth century to a fraction of its pre-contact estimates opening up land for Spanish ranching transforming the local economy and culture.103 The maps made by the painter from

Tehuantepec document this period of Spanish expansion, one in which authorities sought to define spatial boundaries through visualization. A close analysis of the maps from the

100 Map of Mistequilla y Tehuantepec (1573), AGN, No. 2378, Tierras, vol. 3343, exp. 4, f. 43v and 44; Map of Tzanaltepec, Tonaltepec, and Oztutlán (1580), AGN, No. 1903, Tierras, vol. 2729, exp. 4, f. 107v y 108; Relación Geográfica Map of Tehuantepec (1580), BLAC; Map of Tlapanatepec (1583), AGN, No. 1964, Tierras, vol. 2737, exp. 25, f. 8; Map of Tlapanaltepeque (1585), AGN, No. 2391, Tierras, vol. 3343, exp. 20, f. 8; Map of Tlapaltepeque (1586), AGN, No. 1965, Tierras, vol. 2737, exp. 25, f. 29; and Map of Ixtepec and Zixitlán (1598), AGN, No. 2084, Tierras, vol. 2764, exp. 22, f. 302.

101 See Zeitlin, “Ranchers and Indians”; and Lolita Gutiérrez Brockington, The Leverage of Labor: Managing the Cortés Haciendas in Tehuantepec, 1588-1688 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989).

102 Zeitlin, 51.

103 Zeitlin, 49-50. 71

painter of Tehuantepec suggests the choices made by individuals in an effort to convey meaning.

The earliest example of the painter’s work dates to 1573 when alcalde mayor

Gaspar Maldonado commissioned a map for a land grant northeast of Tehuantepec near

Mixtequilla and Comitlán. To identify Tehuantepec, the seat of power in the region, the painter used its logographic place-name, a jaguar resting over a hill, and a small Christian church at its foot. A distinctive house structure with a rectangular base and entrance covered by a triangular rooftop described a settlement in the center of the page. More than any other cartographic symbol, this motif defined the painter’s trademark style, a recurrent tool used to designate towns found on all of his maps.

In another commission, the painter of Tehuantepec portrayed a much broader expanse of land. Juan de Torres de Lagunas, the region’s alcalde mayor, requested a map

(Figure 18) of the entire region from the painter in 1580 to complete a geographical survey on behalf of the King of Spain and his cosmographer to measure New World resources.104 Oriented to the east, the map offered a detailed view of the area’s aquatic condition, a complex system of waterways, lagoons, and rivers tied to the Pacific Ocean on the right hand side of the page identified as Mar del Sur, “The South Sea.” With the use of the distinctive house structure, the painter identified the towns and settlements situating Tuehuantepec in the center of the page identified by the jaguar hill place-name similar to the one used in the 1573 land grant map. While the map from 1573 described the relationship between two ranching sites in proximity to one another, the Relaciones

104 Relación Geográfica Map of Tehuantepec (1580), BLAC. 72

Geográficas map provided an expansive view of the landscape connecting roads and rivers to multiple settlements. In both of these maps, the painter applied a logographic character to describe the place-name of Tehuantepec and the use of feet to denote a road or travel, elements drawn from the Mesoamerican pictorial catalogue. The difference in maps recognizes the painter’s versatility to represent specific and general aspects of the region as well as his disposition to generate unique maps tailored to the patron’s needs.

Torres de Lagunas sought the painter’s services a second time in 1580 to allocate a ranching site for the native town of Tzanaltepec on the eastern portion of Tehuantepec near Chiapas. This region suffered a steady population decline through the end of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth, though these demographic changes did not deter Spanish ranchers from pursuing their objectives. The shortage of indigenous labor prompted Spaniards to import African slaves to support their economic activities transforming Tzanaltepec into a predominantly black enclave by the 1670s.105 On the

Marqués’ ranches in Tehuantepec, Africans and Afro-Mexicans held supervisory positions and occupied the top ranching positions as vaqueros, or cowhands.106 Others ran packs of mules that transported goods including the prized blue dye, añil, from

Guatemala to Oaxaca, Mexico City, and Veracruz, a topic discussed in the following chapter.

For the commission, the painter of Tehuantepec made a map (Figure 19) that situated the site of land marked with a rectangular horseshoe, a commonly used symbol

105 Brockington, 13-17; Gerhard, 266.

106 Zeitlin, 47. 73

to denote ranches and agricultural sites, near the center of the page flanked by two small hills. The three buildings with the triangular top lined up along the vertical axis, and the thick moss-like outline along the edge of each mountain bear the painter’s signature pictorial elements. A river that flows horizontally separates Tzanaltepec from the site by two leagues while a major road marked by feet that runs east to west provides the map’s vertical axis. Each of the three towns depicted in the map, Tonaltepec at the top,

Tzanaltepec in the center, and Oztotlán at the bottom, were designated by the rectangular structure with the triangular rooftop. Interestingly, from this point forward, the rest of the painter’s cartographic output omits references of logographic writing. Considering the strong technique displayed in the Relaciones Geográficas map of 1580, in some ways it is surprising not to see more elements from the Mesoamerican canon in the painter’s later maps. Was it necessary, for instance, to include a logogram for a Spanish audience? The painter seemed to think it was not. One assumes the change took place as a result of the artist’s willingness to adapt his pictorial skills to fit the audiences’ needs coupled with the expectations of the patron for the finished product.

In the two maps (Figures 20 and 21) made for alcalde mayor Hernando de Vargas in 1585 and 1586, the painter outlined major geographical features of the coastal town of

Tlapanaltepeque including treeless plains, mountains, streams, and roads as well as the

Pacific Ocean at the bottom of the page. Predictably, the use of a rectangular structure with a triangular rooftop signaled the town of Tlapanaltepeque from where officials measured distances to the desired sites of land. Neither of the maps included any traces of logographic writing, though hoof marks continue to designate roads; yet even this most 74

visible element disappeared from the painter’s later maps (Figure 22). Over time, the painter developed a simple but effective formula: a few well-placed structures and lines combined with a discrete amount of color allowed officials to easily identify petitioned sites, ranches, and towns within the region’s geographical environment. Armed with pictorial skill and geographical knowledge, the mapmaker succeeded in fulfilling the needs of five different alcaldes mayores that sought maps over a period of twenty-five years.107

Circuits of Knowledge

In some regions of Oaxaca, the circulation of maps suggests individuals shared their knowledge and work with each other. In Cuestlahuaca, painters such as Domingo de Mendoza negotiated with royal officials with the support of maps. One made in 1590

(Figure 23) describes the site for a caballería, a measure of land of about 105 acres near

Tepenene petitioned by Francisco de Mendoza, another cacique from the region.108 The painter represented the town with a small church in the left center portion of the map where feet connected Tepenene with Concepción as well as the cabecera, Cuestlahuaca, three leagues away. The two serpents facing away from each other below a large church represent the place-name for Cuestlahuaca, “in the plain of snakes.” An arm extends from a teptl place-sign to indicate the town of Tepenene. Mary Elizabeth Smith suggests the separation of the church from the place-sign may reference the site of the town before

107 Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 201.

108 Map of Santo Domingo Tepenene y Cuestlahuaca (1590), AGN, No. 1904, Tierras, vol. 2729, exp. 5, f. 117. I have followed Taylor’s measurement of caballerías, Landlord and Peasant, 259. 75

the Spanish congregaciones, resettlements, of the sixteenth century.109 Within indigenous settlements, control of mapmaking remained largely in the hands of a select few, typically caciques who made and stored maps and pictorial documents. Considering the location where this map and the1617 map of Tepenene (Figure 17) circulated, it is highly plausible Francisco and Domingo de Mendoza had a familial bond. Had this been the case, it is likely the former transferred knowledge of the art of painting to the latter.

A decade later, another map (Figure 24) that recorded the petition of Don Juan de

Salazar for a livestock ranch near Tepenene reflected certain similarities to the 1590 map.110 On February 20, 1600 Salazar met in Tepenene with Felipe de Echagoyan, the alcalde mayor of Yanhuitlán, to review the map. Oriented east, the map’s painter incorporated traditional Mesoamerican iconography including a river along the center of the page with sixteen houses on either side, a road with feet to indicate travel that reaches the desired site, and the teptl hill that indicates the site of the livestock ranch where the alcalde mayor inscribed the caption “aquí el sitio,” or “the site [is] here.” In the center of the page, a church in three-quarter view represents the town of Tepenene while a sun at the top of the page signals east. The celestial objects on the map, most notably depictions of the stars, share a striking resemblance to the ones on the map painted in Tepenene in

1590 (Figure 23). Both maps include stars that share an outline contoured with medium lines filled in with flat washes of color. Though other elements, including the use of the teptl hill, differ from one another, the styling used to illustrate celestial objects suggests

109 Smith, 184.

110 Map of Tepenene (1600), AGN, No. 1812, Tierras, vol. 2719, exp. 23, f. 9. 76

familiarity with local visual practices and an adherence to the pliable nature of pictorial record-making.

The circulation of maps and other pictorial records served to foreground the elaboration of new maps. Cartographic activity of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in many ways emulated the “mapping tradition” of the late sixteenth century through the copying of maps.111 The reproduction of pictorial manuscripts represented a primary means of transmitting spatial knowledge in Mesoamerica, the maps of the late sixteenth century themselves a product of earlier models tempered through decades of cultural exchange with Europeans. The practice of reproduction presupposes a reliance on older documents in the process contextualizing the circulation of maps across time.

When Domingo de Zárate described himself as a master who practiced the art of painting in 1686, he unintentionally opened a curtain that veiled the continued practice of pictorial record-making in Oaxaca. How did knowledge of painting circulate during this later period? Mostly through oral means communicated from elders to juniors but also visually through the circulation of pictorial records. Elders bore the burden of transferring their knowledge to younger generations using pictorial records as didactic devices. When identifying the painting used to legitimize the petition made by the Juárez de Zárate brothers in 1690, Julian de Santiago, a seventy-year-old former political officer

111 Reinvention through reproduction in many ways characterizes the history and historiography of visual culture, especially indigenous pictorial documents, in New Spain. See Clara Bargellini’s “Originality and Invention in the Painting of New Spain,” in Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521-1821 (Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2004); Barbara Mundy and Dana Leibsohn, “Of Copies, Casts, and Codices: Mexico on Display in 1892,” Res: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 29/30 (1996): 326-343; Baird, 222-226; and Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting,107, 112, 130, 132, 150, 185-86. 77

from Santa Catarina Ixtepeji confirmed the map belonged to the Juárez family. He told authorities his knowledge stemmed from an oral exchange with seniors in his youth, the scribe noting, “The elders have suggested it and explained it to him.”112 Sixty-year-old

Lucas de Santiago declared, “I know the map in which the origin and descent of those named in this petition is the true and ancient one . . . I have heard it said by others, older and more ancient than me.”113 Pictorial knowledge relied in large part on oral exchanges between junior members of a town and the elders who taught them about their community’s culture and history. The testimony of the two men suggests spaces existed where individuals discussed and learned about the use and manufacture of pictorial manuscripts and maps. Besides gaining specific tools designed to provide a valuable service, access to this knowledge at the local level served to reaffirm social status within elite circles of caciques and principales who led town affairs.

In some instances, elders used maps as mnemonic devices to recite the history of their communities transmitting in the process important spatial and geographical knowledge used to establish autonomy. Lucas de los Santos testified in 1691 on behalf of the Mixtecs of Xoxocotlán about their ancient map (Figure 5) and the land titles in their possession. The town used the map in the late 1680s and early 1690s to litigate against a

112 “Es el antiguo, y del que siempre se han valido para que los conozcan que han guardado en sus casas para que se eternice la memoria y que se sepa que legítimamente son caciques y de buena sangre . . . además de lo expresado se lo han dado a entender, y explicándoselo los antiguos,” AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, Civil, exp. 23, no page.

113 “El Mapa en que se halla descifrada la descendencia y origen de todos los nominados en dicha petición sabe es el antiguo y verdadero y el de la misma descendencia por que fuere de los que ha declarado como indio viejo, y antiguo se lo ha oído decir a otros sus mayores, y más antiguos, y siempre ha visto lo han tenido los de dicho linaje representando ser su descendencia, y origen sin haber habido cosa en contrario, y que de haberla lo supiera este testigo, y no pudiera ser menos por ser anciano, y natural de dicha cabecera,” AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, Civil, exp. 23, f. 4. 78

Spaniard over five acres of land. During an interrogation to establish the map’s authenticity, de los Santos declared he had seen the map and had witnessed the town’s elders reading it aloud. Likewise, thirty-eight-year-old Joseph de Santiago testified he knew the map and had also heard elders reading from it. Yannakakis observes this practice among Zapotecs noting, “Logographic descriptions punctuated pictorial boundary maps, evoking boundary and place names for a prominent community elder who, through oral exegesis, could interpret the visual representation, and publicly rehearse the community’s history and the identity of its founding ancestors during important days of the ritual calendar.”114 Orality and visuality played central components of indigenous learning contributing to the production of maps in the region.

The Painter’s View of Local Conflict

Within indigenous settlements, control of mapmaking remained largely in the hands of a select few throughout the late sixteenth century, typically powerful caciques who stored maps and pictorial documents. A steep decline in the production of maps at the beginning of the seventeenth century marked the end of a significant period of indigenous mapmaking defined by a mixture of European iconography combined with abstract renderings and traces of logographic writing. The surge in maps at the end of the seventeenth century responded to increased pressure on the part of authorities to regulate land tenure but also on enhanced competition for land from a recovering native population as well as an increasingly land-driven Spanish minority. These forces pulled

114 Yanna Yannakakis, “Witnesses, Spatial Practices, and a Land Dispute in Colonial Oaxaca,” The Americas 65 (2008): 164. 79

individuals such as Domingo de Zárate, who copied the map of Xoxocotlán in the late seventeenth century, in a variety of directions. In one respect, social interaction within native towns was fraught with conflict. Caciques such as Zárate clashed with lesser nobles and other caciques over political appointments, abuses of power, women, territorial disputes, and tribute collection. While they often connected the Spanish and indigenous worlds, caciques jealously guarded their privileges and goods, sometimes in concert with ñuu interests but often in protection of family and individual wealth and status. The second half of the seventeenth century witnessed a decline in cacique power as well as a push from macehuales, native commoners, who made gains on political appointments and traditional practices including the art of painting in spite of efforts by caciques to limit their participation.

Such was the case in the painter Domingo de Zárate’s home town, Santa Cruz

Xoxocotlán, a powerful Mixtec settlement with a rich cartographic tradition in the southwest reaches of the Valley of Oaxaca.115 Xoxocotlán in the 1680s serves as a laboratory to examine another aspect of a painter’s social environment, one rooted in rivalry, violence, and conflict. Although Zárate did not directly participate in the following events involving a powerful cacique, the painter knew and lived among those mentioned in the incident. Likewise, the presence of another painter, one of alleged mixed-race heritage, suggests the way ethnicity played a role in defining social relationships at the local level. Accusations and complaints from this episode shed light on the gradual erosion of social and political roles in Oaxaca during the late seventeenth

115 See discussion of maps from Xoxocotlán in Chapter 4. 80

century, a period that witnessed increased population growth and competition for land. A close reading of the events helps document important aspects of a painter’s social environment providing a window into the opportunities and challenges they faced in everyday life.

Screams of pain drew a crowd of onlookers sometime between seven and eight in the evening on February 2, 1680. As people approached the center of Xoxocotlán, they stumbled upon a gruesome scene. A naked man hung from the pillory, his bare body savagely whipped by the native constable and the sheriff on the orders of Don Félix de

Mendoza, a thirty-seven-year-old cacique who owned cattle, maguey plantations, and several houses, and who actively participated in the administration of town affairs.

Serving as the local judge, Mendoza punished Bartolomé de Zárate, a former political officer of the town because according to him, he had carried on an improper relationship with a married woman. Mendoza indicated an Indian named Juan de la Cruz complained

Zárate had taken his stepdaughter as a concubine. He told authorities Juan attempted to persuade Zárate to end the relationship, a dangerous affair since the woman was married and her husband absent, but his pleas failed. Afterwards, Juan sought Mendoza’s help who proceeded to order Zárate’s arrest along with a penalty of two-dozen lashes.

The initial complaint and witness testimony made a month after the incident did not mention Mendoza also punished another man that night. Fifty-year-old Marcial de la

Cruz, an Indian painter, suffered a similar fate as Zárate for supposedly entering into a separate relationship with a married woman. Mendoza himself mentioned de la Cruz 81

during his first interview with authorities on March 30 two months after the beating had taken place,

I declare that Bartolomé de Zárate and Marcial de la Cruz, natives of said town [of

Xoxocotlán], on the occasion of having corrected their bad behavior depriving them of

their liberty to prevent further offenses against God Our Lord, have in vengeance and

hatred stirred and instigated other natives from the town to seek legal recourse, as they

did, with the Real Audiencia. I have received news they were awarded a warrant against

me, [obtained] with a sinister report, slandering me with odd remarks and suggesting I

castigate and abuse them in other ways in order to remove me from the justice office I

hold, and to cause me expenses and torment.116

The scribe who wrote the report underlined de la Cruz’s name highlighting the introduction of another, until then, unmentioned offender. But while Mendoza provided a thorough explanation of his actions against Zárate, he did not offer any context for those against de la Cruz except to say they mirrored Zárate’s. Supporting testimony for

Mendoza’s version of events did not clarify the matter. Pablo de la Cruz, a 60-year-old

Xoxocotlán native declared, “because of the complaint against Bartolomé de Zárate . . .

116 Original reads, “Y digo que Bartolomé de Zárate y Marcial de la Cruz, naturales de dicho pueblo con ocasión de haberles corregido sus malos procedimientos en odio y venganza de no permitirles ni dejarles en su libertad para cometer mayores delitos en ofensa de Dios nuestro señor inquietaron e instigaron a otros naturales de dicho pueblo para que todos ocurriesen como lo hicieron al superior gobierno de donde tengo noticia ganaron cierto despacho, contra mí con siniestra relación afectando calumnias muy extrañas de mi proceder suponiendo les hago castigos y otras vejaciones, para con este pretexto amoberme, del oficio de justicia que ejerzo y ocasionarme gastos y vejaciones,” Archivo General del Estado de Oaxaca (AGEO), Alcadías Mayores, leg. 48, exp. 10, f. 17-18.

[Mendoza] gave him twenty-four lashes in the prison’s courtyard, and for the same reasons whipped Marcial de la Cruz, painter.”117

The connection between Mendoza, Zárate, and de la Cruz extended beyond this incident of immoral behavior. As the case against Mendoza unfolded, deep fissures cut across Xoxocotlán’s political landscape. In 1675, de la Cruz served on Xoxocotlán’s cabildo in the post of fiscal, church steward. Along with two other officials, de la Cruz supported Mendoza’s candidacy for gobernador, the highest political office within the town council, for the following year. The appointment troubled many principales including Juan de la Cruz, the same man Mendoza told authorities instigated Zárate’s arrest. The principales opposed Mendoza’s appointment on the grounds that he influenced the selection process in order to continue in office.118 The powerful cacique had obtained a dispatch from the Real Audiencia that gave him the leverage to select a body of his choosing to determine who would carry out the duties of public office in

Xoxocotlán.119 Since this action contravened usos y costumbres, traditional practices that called for elders and previous officers to make the selections, several principales retaliated by filing a formal complaint. Mendoza told authorities that in spite of their accusations, de la Cruz and Zárate had supported his election noting, “[Your Lordship] may recognize the hate and vengefulness with which the aforementioned have determined to strip me of the staff, generating expenses [for me] and other hardships.

117 “Sabe le dio 24 azotes en el patio de la cárcel y por lo mismo azoto a Marcial de la Cruz pintor,” AGEO, Alcadías Mayores, leg. 48, exp. 10, f. 30. The underlining represents a reader’s annotation.

118 See AGN, Real Audiencia, exp. 124.

119 Taylor also notes this pattern, Landlord and Peasant, 49.

Likewise, these [accusations] work against them since on other occasions Bartolomé de

Zárate and Marcial de la Cruz have selected and elected me for their alcalde because of my good conduct and patronage.”120

Accounts of Mendoza’s behavior including his heavy drinking, intimidation tactics, and violent punishments surfaced during the trial. Diego Juárez, a seventy-year- old man who witnessed Zárate’s beating told officials Mendoza “was drunk on pulque as he often is.” Francisco de Mendossa declared, “Don Félix says he punishes them so they won’t commit public sins and to prevent concubinage yet he sets a bad example living, to everyone’s shock, with a [married] Indian woman,” an affair he said Mendoza had carried on for over a decade.121 On one occasion, Mendoza arranged for a butcher to cut the ears off a man who had been whipped while riding an ass through the streets of

Xoxocotlán.122 After Mendoza’s arrest on January 21, 1681 Sebastian Vásquez, a seventy-year-old resident of Xoxocotlán felt distressed during his testimony disclosing to authorities he was “fearful for having made this declaration [against Mendoza] because he threatened me and others many times,” a sentiment echoed by Francisco Martín.123

120 “Se reconocerá el odio y venganza con que los susodichos proceden intentando el quitarme la vara, causarme gastos y otras molestias sino también el ser esto contra su propio hecho pues en otras ocasiones los dichos Bartolomé de Zárate y Marcial de la Cruz, me han propuesto y elegido por su alcalde experimentando [por] mi buen proceder y fomento, AGEO, Alcadías Mayores, leg. 48, exp. 10, f. 28.

121 “Luego dice que los castiga por que no hagan pecados públicos ni estén amancebados siendo así que habita con mal ejemplo y escándalo de todos lo está el dicho Don Félix viviendo mal con una india,” AGEO, Alcadías Mayores, leg. 48, exp. 10, f. 10.

122 AGEO, Alcadías Mayores, leg. 48, exp. 10, f. 120.

123 “Declaró mediante dichos intérpretes que se hallaba temeroso de que por haber de hacer esta declaración le había hecho muchas amenazas a él y a otros naturales dicho Don Félix,” AGEO, Alcadías Mayores, leg. 48, exp. 10, f. 70.

Fear gripped Martín a month later when he refused to ratify his testimony, plaintiffs from

Xoxocotlán noting on February 26, “he finds himself so frightened [at what Mendoza might do to him], he dares not come.”124 Accusations and counter accusations about manipulation, intimidation, and violence shed light on the pressure of private interests over the limits of social relationships and political control.

In jail, Mendoza made two important declarations that further contextualize rapidly shifting interests and unstable alliances among the local elite. On January 30,

1681, under mounting pressure from authorities who sequestered his goods, and residents that continued to disclose his pastimes, Mendoza changed his story. He declared that the true account began when, “Catalina de Mendoza, Bartolomé de Zárate’s mother, came at about eight in the morning [on the day in question] to complain about her son because he was not living a conjugal life with his wife but instead openly cohabited with a married

Indian woman.”125 She asked Mendoza to take Zárate to Father Mateo de Porras to receive punishment to which he replied, “There is no need to go before the parish priest, since I am alcalde, I can do it myself.”126 Don Félix told authorities he then visited

Zárate at his home where, “with good words,” he attempted to reprove the illicit behavior; Zárate, visibly altered and with “an impudent tone (“voces muy

124 “Se haya tan amedrentado que no se atreva a venir a ratificarse,” AGEO, Alcadías Mayores, leg. 48, exp. 10, f. 120.

125 “Como a las ocho horas de la mañana Catalina de Mendoza madre de dicho Bartolomé de Zárate a querellarse a este confesante del dicho su hijo porque no hacia vida maridable con su mujer por estar amancebado públicamente con una india casada,” AGEO, Alcadías Mayores, leg. 48, exp. 10, f. 90.

126 “Catalina de Mendoza le pidió a este confesante llevarse a dicho su hijo a la presencia del Padre cura Fray Mateo de Porras para que lo castigase a que le respondió no había necesidad de ir ante dicho Padre cura cuando lo podía hacer este confesante por ser alcalde,” AGEO, Alcadías Mayores, leg. 48, exp. 10, f. 90.

descompuestas”), declared he would not leave his lover. In this statement, Mendoza no longer relied on Juan de la Cruz, the aggrieved stepfather to support his actions. His change of story reflected shifting allegiances since Juan de la Cruz added his name to the list of officials from Xoxocotlán who pursued the complaint against the cacique.

Authorities also asked Mendoza about his involvement in the election of public officials. He explained that, “Elections for political officers took place in Xoxocotlán with the intromission of parish priests and the alcaldes mayores’ minions who against our will voted for some Indian macehuales [commoners] who did not deserve it.”127 Because of this, Mendoza attempted to limit the power of outside forces by petitioning a license to restrict the participation of electors.128 Mendoza singled out “Bartolomé de Zárate and his consorts” including the painter Marcial de la Cruz who he described as “an enemy of mine.” The idea of the “undeserving” macehual reflected distinctions of wealth and status articulated by caciques, a group increasingly threatened by advances on entailed- estates and communal land and competition to control local affairs, using it to undermine rivals.129 William Taylor notes that in the Valley, “Macehuales were elected to municipal offices; and through commercial enterprise, marriage with principales, and the division of principal estates, many commoners rose to a position of wealth equal to that of most

127 “Con ocasión de considerar que en las elecciones que se hacía en dicho su pueblo de oficiales de república sucedía que por intervención de los padres doctrineros y criados de alcaldes mayores las hacían a disgusto por entrometerse a dar votos algunos indios maceguales que no lo merecían,” AGEO, Alcadías Mayores, leg. 48, exp. 10, f. 91.

128 Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 49.

129 Gibson, 156; Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 48-56. 86

nobles.”130 In a society ordered on the basis of race and privilege, Mendoza appealed to an official’s recognition of tradition and status.

The case against Don Félix de Mendoza reveals the complexities of negotiating political and economic power within native towns. Don Félix’s influence extended into various sectors of colonial society including the lawsuit that generated the petition for

1686 copied map of Xoxocotlán (Figure 5) made by Domingo de Zárate, the master painter. Some caciques such as Mendoza diverted funds from infrastructure projects, handed out corporal punishment to rivals, altered usos y costumbres to influence political appointments, and imposed derramas to generate funds. Their work was aided by members of the lettered city including scribes and alcaldes mayores who prepared and oversaw petitions and complaints, and by native elite that sought to retain the privileges of their class while curbing the rise of commoners. The presence of Marcial de la Cruz, an Indian painter of supposed macehual status at the center of Mendoza’s web, provides a unique glimpse into social differences and the strategies used to limit cacique power.

Macehuales and lesser nobles sought recourse from the courts against abusive caciques, failed to pay derramas, accessed positions of power including political appointments and the art of painting, and mobilized community members. Together these elements highlight the social environment in which painters developed and adapted to in the late seventeenth century.

130 Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 49. 87

Conclusion

The trail of footsteps spread from the Valley of Oaxaca to the northwestern mountains of the Mixteca and across the southwestern coast of the Pacific to Tehuantepec in the east. A host of actors including caciques, native political officers, Spanish landholders, and royal officials turned to pintores, indigenous painters who acquired skills that allowed them to describe the natural environment in pictorial fashion, to fulfill the need for maps in the region. The variety of maps reflect a pictorial diversity rooted in local traditions but flexible enough to accommodate new ideas to fulfill the expectations of patrons and royal officials. In their efforts to communicate with multiple audiences, painters freely incorporated signs and ideas drawn from the Mesoamerican tradition also using elements of European culture introduced by explorers, missionaries, colonists, and civil authorities. Each painter who made a map or document belonged to social units often producing them for members of the ñuu or for the corporate body as whole when related to matters over collective property. Different generations of painters had access to various types of knowledge that affected the signs and appearance of maps and other pictorial records. Transmission took place traditionally from elders to juniors, and in some cases from the regular clergy to the native elite who controlled pictorial and alphabetic writing.

CHAPTER 2: CARTOGRAPHIC MATERIALS

Visual representations take the place of something that is absent, and they reveal, at the same time as they mask and conceal, relationships and forms of understanding, making and transforming in the world.

―Gabriela Siracusano, El poder de los colores131

“It is the painter’s craft to know how to use colors, and draw and give meaning to images with carbon, and to properly combine colors for grinding and mixing,” commented Bernardino de Sahagún in the late 1570s about an Indian painter’s range of skills. In his Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, a history of Mesoamerican culture compiled with the assistance of native informants during the second half of the sixteenth century, Sahagún highlighted their “good hand” and their ability to paint gracefully, to embellish, and to carefully consider the subject matter.132 The attention to materials and craftsmanship observed by the Franciscan reflects an appreciation of the tools and methods used by native painters―described by Spanish authorities typically as pintores but known among Zapotecs as huazèe, among Mixtecs as ñahuisi tacu, and among Nahuas as tlacuilo―to hone their craft.133 Material characteristics play an important role in the way we think about indigenous pictorial records in contemporary

131 “Representaciones visuales ocupan el lugar de algo que está ausente y revelan, a la vez que disimulan u ocultan, relaciones y formas de pensar, hacer e intervenir en el mundo.” Gabriela Siracusano, El poder de los colores: De lo material a lo simbólico en las prácticas culturales andinas, Siglos XVI-XVIII (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005), 17.

132 “El pintor, en su oficio, sabe usar de colores, y dibujar o señalar imágenes con carbón, y hacer muy buena mezcla de colores, y sábelos moler muy bien y mezclar. El buen pintor tiene buena mano y gracia en el pintar, y considera muy bien lo que ha de pintar,” Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, vol. III, ed. Ángel María Garibay (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1977), 115. Hereafter cited as HGNE.

133 Córdova, Vocabulario en lengua çapoteca, 315v; Alvarado, Vocabulario en lengua mixteca, 168; and Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana, 120. 89

discourse. Blanket terms such as lienzo to describe pictorials on cloth, maps to describe those on paper, and codices those on animal skin establish parameters through material features that define the range and content of the visual records. This rarely discussed aspect of indigenous pictorial activity raises questions about technical matters associated with the production of maps.

The relationship between mapping and materials is not always transparent.

Before painters committed symbols to the surface of a map, they prepared the substances used to illustrate it. Painters, shrewd multilingual caciques often dressed in European clothing accustomed to dealing with scribes and officials, made pigments by selecting elements found in nature, converting them into working ingredients, and mixing them to produce colorants, inks, and binders. This important but overlooked aspect of the history of indigenous cartography defines a significant aspect of mapmaking that drew from botany, healing science, and chemistry to transform the natural world into cartographic materials. The knowledge applied reflects a deep engagement with plants and minerals acquired through generations of learning. Knowledge, as James Secord has posited, sits at the center of a dialogue between those who produce objects and their dissemination among various groups of people at the local, regional, and global levels.134 Since all objects reflect a similar pattern of communication, the study of materials informs a broader dialogue about ethnicity, cross-cultural encounters, and imperial expansion that shaped spatial relationships. These “relationships and forms of understanding,” as

Gabriela Siracusano describes them in the epigraph that launches this chapter, enhance

134 James Secord, “Knowledge in Transit,” Isis 95/4 (2004): 654-672. I wish to thank Josep Simon for pointing me to this source. 90

our ability to interpret indigenous cartography in a fuller context that accounts not only with what is visible on a map but also what hides beneath its surface.

A pictorial analysis of the maps used in this study yields important clues about a painter’s choice of materials. Most used three to five different colors in each map, a practice that continued after the early seventeenth century when maps circulated in less numbers. They achieved this diverse chromatic range through the mixture of plants, minerals, roots, insects, fluids, and fruit that constituted the adhesives, ink, and colorants used to make maps. Pintores favored colors such as green, brown, red, blue, and black but applied others including yellow, steel gray, teal, and magenta. While color in pictorial manuscripts of the pre-Colombian period had a close association with ritual and politics, the practice of assigning meaning to specific tones suffered after the second half of the sixteenth century when painters tailored maps to appeal to scribes and royal officials more interested in establishing locations and boundaries.135 Some painters such as the artist from Cuquila described below used a single color to illustrate their maps.

Alvarado identified monochromatic pictorials among Mixtec as dzo eeni nuu tacu,

“painting of one color.”136 The use of this convention existed in central Mexico as well where twenty years earlier, Molina noted in his Vocabulario de la lengua mexicana that monochromatic paintings were known as çancecni ycac tlacuilolli and çancecnic tlachia tlacuilolli (“painting of a single color”).137 Although the precise context of

135 Serge Gruzinski, “Colonial Indian Maps,” 51-52.

136 Alvarado, 168.

137 Molina, 96.

monochromatic images remains obscure, terms such as these convey the significance materials and color played in the art of painting to carry messages.

The growing interest in early modern materials, commodities, and technology among historians of science and art has exposed the intimate relationship between learned inquiry and practical experience.138 Siracusano’s El poder de los colores, an analysis of materiality in Andean colonial art serves as a particularly useful model to consider questions about the application of knowledge to produce pigments and other elements used in mapping. Siracusano proposes that the diversity of materials of European and

New World origin available to artists in the Andes promoted experimentation with ingredients and techniques contributing to the paintings’ unique character. Her use of chemical analysis and early modern treatises on alchemy, art, metallurgy, botany, and medicine to inform the circulation of knowledge and pigments among social networks opens unique possibilities to contextualize intellectual exchanges and the technical practices associated with visual culture. Questions about materiality suggest new paths to examine indigenous learning in the natural sciences that contributed to the fabrication of materials used to paint a map as well as the transformative influence of European ideas, tools, and ingredients on pictorial records.

138 See Colors between Two Worlds; Ursula Klein and E. C. Spary, eds., Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe: Between Market and Laboratory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500-1800; Paula de Vos, “Natural History and the Pursuit of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Spain,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 40/2 (2007): 209-239, and “The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire,” Journal of World History 17/4 (2006): 399-427; Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature; Siracusano, El poder de los colores; Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe, ed. Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen (New York and London: Routledge, 2002); and Pamela O. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

Paper

From the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, indigenous pintores used a variety of mediums on which to map, adapting to changes in material technology and access to goods. Dominican friar Francisco de Burgoa commented in his Geográfica descripción (1674), a cultural and natural history of Oaxaca, that indigenous records were made “on paper from the bark of trees and [on] tanned leather.”139 Alvarado noted the terms dzoo ñee ñuhu and ñee tutu designated “paper on which the ancients wrote,” but a limited number of pictorials made on “ancient” paper has made it difficult to gauge the extent of papermaking practices in Oaxaca.140 Burgoa’s description points to the use of paper made from the bark of the ficus tree described by Sahagún as amacuáuitl more commonly known as amatl. When he described papermaking in central Mexico, Sahagún observed, “There are in this land some trees they call amacuáuitl. Their bark is smooth and their leaves very green. They are about the size of peach trees. They make paper from the bark.”141

Francisco Hernández, the royal physician and naturalist who in the late sixteenth century spent seven years in New Spain cataloguing native plants and their uses described the process of preparing the bark to make paper. In his Historia natural de

Nueva España, the physician wrote,

139 “Y así mismo algunas historias pintadas, en papel de cortezas de árboles, y pieles curtidas,” Burgoa, Geográfica descripción, 134.

140 Alvarado, 161.

141 Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, Vol. II (Madrid, 1990), 967. 93

[They] only cut the tree’s thick branches, leaving the shoots. They are soaked in water

and left to steep in the rivers or streams overnight. The next day, the bark is stripped off,

and, after removing the outside cuticle, it is extended by pounding it with a flat rock

which is cut with certain grooves supported by an unpolished willow rod folded in a

circle in the form of a handle. The flexible wood yields; it is then cut into pieces that

when pounded once again with a flatter stone, easily join together and are [then]

smoothed. Lastly, they are divided in sheets of two palmos in length and approximately a

palmo and a half in width, [a size] that imitates our thickest and most common paper, but

these are smaller and whiter though much inferior to our smoothest paper.142

For Spaniards accustomed to writing with fine- and medium-tip quills, a “smooth” finish on the surface of a sheet of paper gained it high praise allowing the ink and pen to flow seamlessly. Considering the fibrous surface of amatl-based paper designed for various types of paints applied with rabbit-hair brushes or fashioned out of animal bones, it is not surprising to learn the physician favored the European kind. Hernández commented that paper informed various aspects of ritual life including “wrapping and [is] very adequate and useful among these western Indians [the Nahuas] to celebrate the feasts of the gods,

142 “Se cortan sólo las ramas gruesas de los árboles, dejando los renuevos; se maceran con agua y se dejan remojar durante la noche en los arroyos o ríos. Al día siguiente se les arranca la corteza, y, después de limpiarla de la cutícula exterior, se extiende a golpes con una piedra plana pero surcada de algunas estrías, y que se sujeta con una vara de mimbre sin pulir doblada en círculo a manera de mango. Cede aquella madera flexible; se corta luego en trozos que, golpeados de nuevo con otra piedra más plana, se unen fácilmente entre sí y se alisan; se dividen por último en hojas de dos palmos de largo y un palmo y medio aproximadamente de ancho, que imitan nuestro papel más grueso y corriente, pero son más compactas y más blancas, aunque muy inferiores a nuestro papel más terso,” Francisco Hernández, Historia natural de Nueva España, vol. I, in Obras Completas, vol. II (Mexico City: UNAM, 1959), 83-84; hereafter cited as HNNE I. One palmo, a unit associated with the distance from the thumb to the little finger, measured roughly 20.95 cm.

to prepare sacred garments, and to adorn funerals.”143 Papermaking activities across

Mesoamerica shared similar patterns of technology which survived into the eighteenth century.

Amatl papermaking shared a strong relationship with pictorial manuscripts and served to document history, genealogies, urban design, ritual, land tenure, and tribute collection up until the late seventeenth century, though only a small number of manuscripts, mostly land titles tied to historical events, circulated within local courts and indigenous towns. The map from Tolcayuca (Figure 25), for instance, depicted the local landscape in the state of Hidalgo.144 It belongs to a genre known as Techialoyan, indigenous manuscripts usually made in central Mexico on amatl paper during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as a response to pressures on land. These type of manuscripts, most of which sought to convey a sixteenth-century origin, were produced as indigenous communities and caciques scrambled to comply with legislation designed to regulate property.145 Amatl papermaking played an important role in their

143 Hernández noted, “[El papel] es propio para envolturas y muy adecuado y útil entre estos indios occidentales para celebrar las fiestas de los dioses, confeccionar las vestiduras sagradas, y para adornos funerarios,” HNNE I, 83.

144 Map of San Juan Tolcayuca (late 17th century), Library of Congress, Kislak Collection, not yet catalogued.

145 See Donald Robertson, “Techialoyan Manuscripts and Paintings with a Catalogue,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 14, ed. Robert Wauchope and Howard Cline (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975); Stephanie Wood, “Pedro Villafranca y Juana Gertrudis Navarrete: falsificador de títulos y su viuda (Nueva España, siglo XVIII)," in Lucha por la supervivencia en América colonial, ed. David G. Sweet and Gary B. Nash (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987); “Don Diego García de Mendoza Moctezuma: A Techialoyan Mastermind?” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 19 (1989): 245-268; “El problema de la historicidad de Títulos y los códices del grupo Techialoyan,” in De tlacuilos; and “The Techialoyan Codices," in Sources and Methods for the Study of Postconquest Mesoamerican Ethnohistory, Provisional Version (e-book), co-edited with James Lockhart and Lisa Sousa (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities Project, University of Oregon, 2007) . 95

production, pintores striving to archaize the appearance of a map or a document in order to establish a connection to the past that could support contemporary needs and threats.

Few amatl records survive from Oaxaca. The tribute record from Tecomastlabaca

(Tecomaxtlahuaca) in the Mixteca Baja, an indigenous pictorial made on native paper suggests its maker used amatl, but the exact makeup of the paper is unknown. Don

Francisco de Arellano, a cacique from the Mixtec town, deployed the pictorial in 1578 against a group of terrasgueros (sharecroppers) over a parcel of land.146 Other indicators such as the use of toponyms suggest individual settlements had ties to papermaking activities in Oaxaca. Amatitlán in the Mixteca, “the place of paper trees,” describes a relationship between papermaking and ficus, though the Nahua place name may have reflected the priorities and knowledge of the Aztecs that controlled the area rather than that of Mixtecs who may have described their place-name according to a very different reading of the natural landscape.147 The place-sign tani juibeti, “hill of the penca [agave leaf],” on the Zapotec Lienzo of Santiago Guevea made in 1540 identifies a center of metl (agave) paper production in the Isthmus.148 In Tehuantepec, Zapotec tribute records made on maguey paper during the sixteenth century include bundles of paper for ceremonial use.149

146 The AGN describes this pictorial record as a codex and uses the original spelling of the town. Códice de Tecomastlabaca, 1578, AGN, Mapoteca, No. 1692.8, Tierras, Vol. 2692, Exp. 16, f. 24.

147 On indigenous toponyms associated with paper or papermaking activities, see Arellano Hoffmann, “El escriba mesoamericano y sus utensilios de trabajo,” 238-239.

148 Hans Lenz, El papel indígena mexicano (Mexico City: SEP-Setentas, 1973), 154-55.

149 Códice de Teguantepec, c. 16th century, AGN, Mapoteca, No. 3122, Hospital de Jesús, Leg. 450, Exp. 1, f. 3. 96

Materials used to make indigenous paper varied according to the availability of certain plants, a situation usually conditioned by a region’s climate and geography. In temperate and cold climates in Mesoamerica, individuals typically used fibers from maguey to make paper while in tropical and warmer climates they used ficus and mulberry bark.150 Alvarado noted daa cuiñe daa yata described “the fiber obtained from maguey,” confirming the plant’s material served textile purposes.151 In his Vocabulario en lengua çapoteca (1578), Juan de Córdova, a Dominican linguist noted quijchipevo and quichiyagapeo expressed “paper of the land,” while quijchiyatii Castilla, “paper from

Castile,” recognized the European type used by Spaniards.152 Hernández recognized maguey, a multipurpose plant used to build fences and roofs, for firewood, as plates, for medicinal practices, for rope, and to draw thread for shoemaking and fabrics, also supported papermaking.153 In the second half of the eighteenth century, the creole Jesuit

Francisco Javier Clavijero wrote a brief description about native papermaking practices that incorporated maguey noting, “They would make it from the leaves of a certain type of agave, pounded in the style of hemp, and later washed, extended, and smoothed.”154 A range of materials were used to make paper that served as a support for pictorial activity.

150 Arellano Hoffmann, 239. Lenz notes that izotl, a fiber drawn from palm trees, served to make paper but this material has been difficult to identify in extant pictorial manuscripts, 151.

151 Alvarado, 143 v.

152 Córdova, 300.

153 Hernández, HNNE I, 348.

154 Francisco Javier Clavijero, Historia antigua de Mejico sacada de los mejores historiadores españoles, y de los manuscritos de los indios (Mexico City: Imprenta de Juan Navarro, 1853), 18. 97

The small number of visual records made on indigenous paper before and after the arrival of Spaniards suggests this practice may have played a far less significant role in Oaxaca’s regional mapmaking practices than it did in central Mexico. Instead, surviving pre-Colombian and early colonial codices including the Féjérváry-Mayer,

Bodley, and Selden attest to the skills displayed by artists in Oaxaca to prepare deerskin for writing.155 Alvarado noted the word ñee designated hide while ñee yehe and ñee yechi meant “hide for tanning.” Ñee cuisi, “parchment,” was different from nee nicuita and nee nidza cuita, both terms that indicated tanned leathers.156 In Zapotec, Córdova observed quitimani meant “animal hide” and quitichibi, “animal hide without hair.”157

Sahagún noted that in central Mexico the thick bark of oak trees was used in the tanning process but he did not provide a detailed explanation―perhaps it served as a dye, or maybe as a makeshift brush to remove hair from the animal pelt.158 Painter-scribes used deerskin “sewn together as a screenfold manuscript, so that each strip could be folded back upon the next and viewed individually.”159 The Mixtec language accounted for material distinctions in relation to pictorial manuscripts differentiating between “sacred

155 For detailed studies of these codices see, Interpretación del Códice Bodley 2858, ed. Alfonso Caso (Mexico City: Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, 1960); Interpretación del Códice Selden 3135 (A.2), ed. Alfonso Caso (Mexico City: Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, 1964); and Codex Fejérváry-Mayer: M 12014 City of Liverpool Museums, ed. C. A. Burland, Codices selecti, vol. 26 (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanst., 1971).

156 Alvarado, 59, 166.

157 Córdova, 101-102.

158 Sahagún, Historia general, 966.

159 Terraciano, 16.

paper” (tutu ñuhu) and “sacred vellum” (ñee ñuhu).160 Screenfold books narrated historical events, ancient genealogies, ritual and religion, and other aspects of life before the conquest.

Native communities and individuals preserved pictorial documents such as maps but also ancient hide manuscripts during the colonial period that often circulated during ritual festivities or to support legal disputes. Sahagún noted that “in 1570, or thereabouts, two clerics worthy of faith certified they viewed in Oaxaca, about sixty leagues away from this city [of Mexico], that they viewed some very ancient paintings, illustrated on deerskin, which narrated many things that alluded to the preaching of the Gospel.”161

Despite framing the incident as a triumph of the Catholic faith, Sahagún’s interest in native technology and learning guided his explorations of indigenous societies of

Mesoamerica. As late as the eighteenth century, caciques from Tututepec in Oaxaca’s

Pacific coast cared for the Codex Colombino, a twelfth-century genealogical history made on folded vellum. They used it in the early 1700s to support a dispute with neighboring San Miguel Sola.162 But the introduction of European paper in the sixteenth century reduced the use of deerskin for painting contributing to the transformation of indigenous manuscript traditions. In spite of these changes, the Codices Porfirio Díaz,

160 Joyce Marcus, Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 60.

161 Original, “El año de setenta, o por allí cerca, me certificaron dos religiosos dignos de fe que vieron en Guaxaca, que dista de esta ciudad sesenta leguas hacia el oriente, que vieron unas pinturas muy antiguas, pintadas en pellejos de venados, en las cuales se contentan muchas cosas que aludían a la predicación del Evangelio,” Sahagún, Historia general, 1061.

162 Los códices de México (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1979), 54.

Baranda, and Dehesa attest to the continued fabrication of deerskin to support manuscripts as late as the seventeenth century.163

By the final decades of the sixteenth century, the most popular medium to make a map was the European rag paper favored by Spanish scribes in Europe and America. Old rags served as the main ingredient to make European paper from the late Middle Ages through the end of the early modern period. In the thirteenth century, papermakers in

Spain and Italy developed specialized machines powered by hydraulic mills that converted cloth into pulp. The most sought after type of paper in New Spain was the superior de Cataluña, Catalan paper prized for its consistency and smooth surface though high demand in both Spain and New Spain required the importation of Dutch, French, and Italian paper.164 Out of the five dozen maps located for this study, ninety-three percent of them were made on European paper, the remaining seven percent on various unidentified cloth surfaces. The reçute or in plano size, a standard paper cut used widely among scribal, legal and religious networks circulated widely in New Spain.165 Among

163 See Códices cuicatecos Porfirio Díaz y Fernández Leal: edición facsimilar, contexto histórico e interpretacíon, ed. Sebastían van Doesburg (Mexico City: Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2001); Códice Baranda, ed. René Acuña (Mexico City: Ediciones Toledo, 1989); Códice Dehesa, largo: 5 metros 20 centímetros; ancho: 17 centímetros; pintado por ambos lados; existente en el Museo Nacional de México (Mexico City, 1892); and Ana G. Díaz Álvarez, “El Códice Dehesa: Reflexiones en torno a un documento mixteco colonial a partir de su análisis codicológico,” Revista Española de Antropología Americana 40/2 (2010): 149-165.

164 María Cristina Sánchez Bueno de Bonfil, El papel del papel en la Nueva España (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1993), 18.

165 Sylvia Rogers Albro and Thomas Albro define the reçute (small) size of paper according to a Bolognese papermaker’s stone from which Spain acquired paper; it measured 31.8 x 43.6 cm., “The Examination and Conservation,” 99 and 106. Emma Rivas Mata notes that the basic sheet of paper known as in plano measured 32 x 44 cm., “Impresores y mercaderes de libros en la ciudad de México, siglo XVII,” in Del autor al lector: Libros y libreros en la historia, ed. Carmen Castañeda (Mexico City: CIESAS, 2002), 95 n. 63.

100

the Mixtecs, distinctions existed of the various types of paper available during the colonial period including the previously mentioned ancient paper, vellum and also the paper introduced by the Spanish. Ee huisi tutu, ee tnanu tutu, ee tutu caa tnanu, and ee tutu nee all designated a sheet of paper while ee dzee tutu and ee vuisi tutu distinguished the pages from a book.166 The use of European paper in native mapmaking―specifically the reçute size―reflects a shift tied closely to the region’s demand for written manuscripts which were used to petition and defend land during the late sixteenth century.

European paper acquired a major role during the early Spanish settlement of

Oaxaca as a tool on which to inscribe authority and goods: scribes and officials allocated natural resources, organized labor drafts, indoctrinated, made appointments to royal posts, recorded tribute, and bestowed and certified property on paper. “Paper,” notes

José Piedra, “is far from being simply a static or passive surface that serves to display words and worth.”167 Paper functioned as an object used to empower its holder hosting an act of validation and accomplishment. Various efforts to secure a steady supply of paper in central Mexico in the years following the fall of Tenochtitlán calls attention to the medium’s importance in establishing colonial rule. Individuals such as Juan de

Zumárraga, the first Bishop of Mexico, petitioned King Charles V in 1534 not only for the authorization of a printing press but for a paper mill as well. By 1538, Zumárraga thanked the king for authorizing the press but noted somewhat demoralized, “Due to the

166 Alvarado, 125 v., 168 v.

167 José Piedra, “The Value of Paper,” Res 16 (1988), 102.

101

lack of paper, little progress [has been made] in terms of printing making it difficult [to publish] the works that are ready here [in New Spain] and others that soon will be ready to go to press.”168

The continual shortage of paper led entrepreneurs such as Hernán Sánchez de

Muñoz and Juan Cornejo to propose establishing a mill in Mexico City that would take advantage of local materials. The Crown jealously guarded the right to award licenses to individuals seeking to establish paper mills in the New World relying instead on the hundred or so papermakers in Spain under royal sanction.169 After reviewing the proposal in 1575, Phillip II granted the two men a patent to produce paper over the next twenty years noting, “We have been made aware that you have found in New Spain certain material from which to make paper in abundance and that you have made experiments to confirm [the project’s viability].”170 Although the historical record does not reflect the outcome of the venture, the example reminds us of the high premium individuals placed on paper and the lengths they went to procure its supply. In Oaxaca,

Burgoa commented on the good quality of the paper used to write an indigenous handheld book about traditional culture, “un libro de mano escrito en buen papel,” an ironic statement considering the book caused a stir among Spanish clerics who were

168 Juan de Zumárraga to Charles V, 6 May 1538, in Cartas de Indias (Madrid: Imprenta de M.G. Hernández, 1877), 786. University of Arizona Special Collections (UASC).

169 The decree of 1638 required the use of paper bearing the royal seal for official use prohibiting its production to anyone without a license. See Hans Lenz, Historia del papel en México y cosas relacionadas (1525-1950) (Mexico City: Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 1990).

170 “Para que por 20 años use la exclusiva de cierto modo para la fabricación de papel en esta Nueva España,” June 8, 1575; duplicate in AGN, Reales Cédulas Duplicadas, Vol. 1, Exp. 18; transcription in Sánchez Bueno de Bonfil, 51-53.

102

never able to identify its “secret” author. Shortly after clerics confiscated the book it disappeared from a church where it rested in a safe with two locks. Burgoa commented simply, “it vanished as if it were made of smoke.”171

The reçute folio partially defined the packaging of native maps which when folded in half fit neatly into a scribe’s file. Notice the crease mark along the center of the folio in the map of Teposcolula (Figure 26) made in 1590, a drawing made to petition a site of land represented by a grid in the center of the page.172 The deterioration reflects a common feature of native maps defined by their use over time. Indigenous and Spanish vendors sold European paper during the sixteenth century when patrons commissioned a majority of native maps. Sahagún noted that in the markets of central Mexico, sellers offered various types of paper including the Spanish kind. “He who deals in paper,” he said, “pounds it if it is from this land. He also sells the type from Castile which is white or coarse; thin, wide, and long, or plum or thick, poorly made, lumpy, rotten, off- white, grey.”173 In Oaxaca, it is possible paper could also be obtained in one of the region’s major markets, weekly affairs that brought together goods mostly of local origin but also

Spanish items as well. In the Valley, the Villa de Oaxaca hosted a weekly market as did

171 The passage reads, “Hallose algunos años después, en este pueblo, después de bautizados, y que habían aprendido algunos a escribir, un libro de mano escrito en buen papel, con historias en su lengua como las del Génesis, empezando por la creación del mundo, y vidas de sus mayores como la de los patriarcas . . . y este libro fue tan secreto su autor, que no se pudo descubrir ni rastrear, diciendo el que lo tenía que lo había heredado, y lo peor fue, que guardado en la caja del depósito, debajo de dos llaves se desapareció, como si fuera de humo,” Burgoa, 135-136.

172 Map of Teposcolula, 1590, AGN, No. 1711, Tierras, vol. 2696, exp. 21, f. 8.

173 “El que trata en vender papel, májalo si es de la tierra. También vende el de Castilla, el cual es blanco o recio, delgado, ancho, y largo, o gordo, o grueso, mal hecho, gorulloso, podrido, medio blanco, pardo,” HGNE, 143. 103

Mitla, Chilateca, Ocotolán, and Ayoquesco.174 The market of Suchitepec in the Mixteca supplied residents from Yanhuitlán while other markets including “the great market center” of Miaguatlán supplied a predominant Zapotec population in south central

Oaxaca.175

Some Spanish stores carried paper in their inventories. In addition to a wide array of imported fabrics including damask, silk, taffeta, camlet, felt, ribbed silk (capichola),

Brabant linen, printed and semi-fine cotton as well as local silk from the Mixteca,

Captain Martín de Arce stocked 22 resmas (reams) of paper in his cloth shop in

Antequera in 1684.176 A resma consisted of twenty sets of paper known as manos, or quires, of 25 sheets each. The scarcity of paper in New Spain is best described in

Antonio de Robles’ Diary of Notable Accounts, a chronicle that explored various aspects of daily life in Mexico City during the second half of the seventeenth century. Robles’s report of paper shortages in 1677 provides a vivid description of price fluctuation and demand. In August, he noted one resma cost fifteen pesos and a mano cost six reales; a few days later a quire reached one peso.177 In early December, word spread that 700 hundred resmas from Guatemala purchased at fifteen pesos each would soon reach

Mexico City. By the end of the month, merchants considerably raised prices prompting

Robles to note, “The cost of paper has gone up so high that a ream costs thirty pesos, a

174 Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 99, 103.

175 Terraciano, 249; Gerhard, 187.

176 Demanda puesta por Doña Ana Velázquez, viuda del Capitán Martin de Arce, contra Juan Martínez por haberle robado ciertas mercancías, AGEO, Alcaldías Mayores, leg. 5, exp. 4.

177 Antonio Robles, Diario de sucesos notables (1665-1703), vol. I, ed. Antonio Castro Leal (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1946), 220.

104

quire costs two pesos, and a folio one real . . . Many books have been taken apart to sell the paper; many works are not being published and the presses are not operating.”

Incidentally, Robles’ account identified various styles of paper in circulation in New

Spain including quebrado (uneven, broken) which cost one peso per quire, the marca mayor, a double-size folio typically used for larger works and maps sold by the sheet for a real and a half, and the escrito (examination paper) which cost two and a half reales per sheet or the more affordable six pesos and two reales per ream.178 Considering the low supply and its high price, Arce’s inventory in Oaxaca suggests the merchant capitalized on the demand for paper in the region.

The motivations behind the use of the reçute folio by indigenous painters likely reflected a mixture of practicality and access as well as an expression of power where pictorial elements associated with political legitimacy at the local level interacted on a purely imperial surface. Consider the statement made by the elders from the Mixtec town of Teozacoalco in 1580 when they presented their map of the region (Figure 7) to the

Spanish corregidor Hernando de Cervantes. Cervantes received instructions from the

Viceroy of New Spain, Martín Enríques de Almanza (1568-1580) to respond to a royal questionnaire that formed part of the Relaciones Geográficas. He enlisted the help of

Juan Ruíz Zuaso, the town’s bilingual priest to facilitate an interview between a group of elder indigenous males and himself. Cervantes noted on January 9, “We initiated a true and faithful report as best as we could infer from the [testimony of the] oldest natives

178 Robles, 228-229. 105

from said town and from what one can visually survey.”179 At some point after he received the questionnaire’s instructions and before he sent his responses to Spain,

Cervantes commissioned a map from the natives of Teozacoalco and another from

Amoltepeque, a nearby town. The commission complied with the survey’s tenth question which instructed officials to illustrate on paper a town’s layout including streets, important buildings, churches and monasteries. In response to the questionnaire, Spanish officials in New Spain often assigned this task to native painters.180 If the indigenous cohort that spoke to Cervantes on January 9 delivered the map, the corregidor made no mention of it in his relación, but this was not because he would have forgotten what he saw.

At an impressive 176 x 138 cm, the map of Teozacoalco is perhaps the best known example of the maps made for the Relaciones Geográficas.181 The map includes

Mixtec political dynasties, ordered pairs of rulers aligned on the left hand side moving upward from the map’s bottom, and place-names and boundaries depicted on the circular portion in the right hand side. The map has gained notoriety for facilitating the decipherment of several pre-Colombian codices made in Oaxaca including the

Vindobonensis, Nuttall, Bodley, and Selden, a tremendous breakthrough for the study of

179 “Se comenzó a hacer relación cierta y verdadera según se pudo colegir de los más ancianos naturales del dicho pueblo y por lo que por vista de ojos se puede entender,” Relación de Teozacoalco, BLAC, XXV-3.

180 Barbara Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 61-62.

181 Size led one nineteenth-century cataloguer to file the map simply as enorme, “huge,” a description still used today in its current home at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Austin.

106

indigenous pictorial documents.182 Since the second half of the twentieth century the map has served to illustrate continuities and changes in Mesoamerican writing systems and pictorial techniques especially as scholars of colonial Mexico turned increasingly to the study of indigenous-made sources after the 1980s. Less frequently noted are the map’s considerable proportions and its material condition, aspects that contribute to its message of authority.

The painter achieved its impressive size by binding sheets of paper together to form a large rectangular surface on which to illustrate lineages and political relationships.

Any viewer can clearly notice the outlines where the papers are joined with glue, a patchwork of nearly two dozen folios (Figure 27). Pintores applied adhesives made from plants, copal, and rubber to join sheets of paper.183 The pseudobulbs of the tzacutli plant, storage organs that grow between the stem and two lymph nodes typical among orchids, served to prepare a resistant and durable solution. Tzacutli functioned both as a binding agent when mixing it with other natural elements to make colors, but also as glue.184

Hernández noted tzacutli was valued for its “white, fibrous” roots which possessed strong adhesive qualities.185 “The root is cold, humid, and viscose,” he noted, “you prepare with it excellent, tenacious glue that Indians, especially pintores, use so that the colors adhere

182 Alfonso Caso famously wrote that the Teozacoalco map was “a key, a true Rosetta Stone for the final interpretation of the Mixtec codices.” Caso, “El mapa de Teozacoalco,” in Obras: El México antiguo, vol. 8 “Calendarios, códices y manuscritos antiguos” (Mexico City: El Colegio Nacional, 2007), 149.

183 Lenz, 77.

184 Fernando Martínez Cortés, Pegamentos, gomas y resinas en el México prehispánico (Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1974), 15.

185 Martínez Cortés notes that even though Hernández refers to roots (raíces), the parts of the plants used to make the binder are the pseudobulbs, 18.

107

firmly [to paper] and the figures won’t fade easily.” The physician described that the parts were cut into small pieces then dried in the sun, grinded into powder and mixed with cold water.186 Tzacutli also possessed medicinal qualities used to treat patients with dysentery and other maladies associated with laxity.

The use of European paper to make the map of Teozacolaco is perhaps less surprising than the fact the painter used so much of it. One can only image the reaction of the Spanish officials when the Indian caciques unfolded the rather large pintura. Other pictorial traditions in Oaxaca, most notably the lienzo genre from the sixteenth century made on large cloth surfaces, resembles the size and content of the map of Teozacoalco.

Lienzos typically described genealogical information as well a geographical markers and place names associated with indigenous settlements.187 The surfaces used to make these large pictorials were known as dzoo cuisi (“lienzo; plain unornamented cloth”) and dzoo yadzi (“lienzo; thin cloth”).188 Over time, mapmakers often chose to paint maps on larger cloth surfaces and paper composites, but unlike the lienzo tradition, they rarely represented genealogies and pictorial histories.189 The unique example of the

Teozacoalco map, an expression that tapped into traditional pictorial modes of representation that expressed a relationship to the past through history and genealogy,

186 “La raíz es fría, húmeda y glutinosa; se prepara con ella un gluten excelente y muy tenaz que usan los indios, y principalmente los pintores, para adherir más firmemente los colores de suerte que no se borren fácilmente las figuras,” Hernández, HNNE I, 118.

187 Terraciano, 19.

188 Alvarado, 138.

189 See, for instance, the Map of Xoxocotlán (1686), AGN, No. 0625; Map of San Pablo Mitla (1730), AGN, No. 0719, Tierras, vol. 489, 1ª. pte., exp. 1, f. 271; and the Map of Nuestra Madre del Rosario, Santa María Atzompa, c. 1700s, Archivo Histórico de Santa María Atzompa; map lost; author in possession of digital images. 108

also channeled a message of authority and political legitimacy. If paper served to undergird Spain’s imperial ambitions, it could serve to re-inscribe Mixtec authority as well.

Ink

Indigenous painters in colonial Oaxaca made and used ink of various kinds to illustrate maps that described spatial relationships. The painter from Cuquila, a head town in the Mixteca Alta in northwestern Oaxaca prepared a blend of black ink, nduta tnoo, in 1599 to draw a map of the region (Figure 28) for the Spanish scribe Alonso

Morán.190 The painter included two structures, a temple and a church, from where a network of roads marked by footprints spread to other parts of the region. The arteries connected Cuquila to Tlaxiaco, the region’s center of power to the northeast, to Ocotepec in the south, and to Chicaguastla in the southwest and on to the Pacific Coast. An ocelot enclosed in a bell-shaped hill appears inverted in the bottom section of the map representing Cuquila’s place name, the town of the ocelot. Church, temple, and hill include a black and white decorative frieze running along the bottom of each structure consistent with pre-Colombian and early colonial pictorial writing.191 Likewise, the

190 Map of Cuquila (1599), AGN, No. 2463, Tierras, vol. 3556, exp. 6, f. 175. Cuquila was a small head town known as a cabecera in the Tlaxiaco region of the Mixteca Alta with a rich pictorial tradition. Other native maps from the Cuquila region include the Map of Tlaxiaco and Cuquila, 1588, AGN, No. 1692.9, Tierras, vol. 2692, exp. 17, f. 8; Map of Tlaxiaco, Cuquila, and Mistepec, 1595, AGN, No. 1614, Tierras, vol. 2682, exp. 17, f. 18; and the Map of Mistepec, Chicaguastla, and Cuquila, 1595, AGN, No. 0867, Tierras, vol. 876, exp. 1, f. 122.

191 The Codices Bodley, Nutall, Selden, Colombino, Yanhuitlán, the Lienzo de Zacatepec, and the Map of Teozacoalco (1588) all share this pattern in association with imperial buildings, temples, and place names. Detailed studies on each of these manuscripts can be found in The Codex Nuttall: A Picture Manuscript 109

painter detailed a band of small cylinders below the church’s bell used to convey political and religious authority, an element drawn from Mixtec architectural design.192 Two rivers that flow diagonally across the page in parallel lines encase all three elements. A combination of technical savvy and fluency in pictorial writing allowed the painter to execute his commission for the scrutiny of the scribe’s watchful eye.

When the painter from Cuquila presented the map to local authorities, the scribe used his own blend of ink to authenticate it. Written commentary on the front and back of the map identifying roads and rivers, describing local climate, measuring distances between places and counting the number of tributaries suggests the presence of another hand involved in the inspection.193 The practice of authentication, an exercise between painters, scribes, and regional judges to identify and annotate the contents of a map, gave authorities the opportunity to review and to ask a painter questions in order to validate it according to legal protocols. The patch of paper (Figure 29) on the map’s bottom left hand corner, for instance, covered the original illustration used by the painter, a dual church-temple motif, for a settlement of houses known as a casería. During the inspection or sometime shortly after, the scribe placed the patch over the original

from Ancient Mexico, ed. Zelia Nuttall (New York: Dover Publications, 1975); Interpretación del Códice Bodley 2858; Interpretación del Códice Selden; Alfonso Caso, “El mapa de Teozacoalco”; Códice Colombino: Interpretación del Códice Colombino por Alfonso Caso. Las glosas del Códice Colombino por Mary Elizabeth Smith (Mexico City: Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, 1966); and Códice Yanhuitlán. For the Lienzo de Zacatepec, see Smith, Picture Writing from Ancient Mexico, 89-121, 264, 266-90.

192 James Kiracofe, “Architectural Fusion and Indigenous Ideology in Early Colonial Teposcolula: La Casa de la Cacica: A Building at the Edge of Oblivion,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas XVII/66 (1995): 45-84; and Terraciano, 160.

193 The handwriting on the front of the map is different from the writing on the back. One possible explanation for this is that one individual, a corregidor perhaps, inspected the map’s symbols and descriptions leaving the task of signing the map to Morán, the scribe. Another possibility suggests the painter may have annotated his own map but this practice was a much rarer occurrence. 110

illustration preferring to visualize the casería with small houses spread out evenly conforming to royal directives for the settlement of villages and towns. Spaniards commonly used a solution known as iron-gall ink, a mixture of tannins, sulfates, and gum from the Old World to write the alphabetic glosses that accompanied a map’s pictorial elements. Iron-gall ink played a crucial role in the making of maps allowing scribes and officials to codify and make them legible for others, and in preparation for their transition into one of various archives where maps and documents rested for future reference.

Scribes visually transformed maps with the ink they used, a substance that supported the task of authentication but which also contributed to a map’s unique material condition.

The painter from Cuquila preferred ink for his maps. He prepared a mixture of ink in 1595 to paint a map (Figure 30) on behalf Pascuala de Rojas, a cacica who petitioned for title to a livestock ranch from Spanish authorities.194 In Oaxaca, some

Mixtec women “held great wealth in land, houses, livestock, and movable property of all kinds, were entitled to specific services from the population of the communities making up their cacicazgos [entailed estates], and functioned as regional entrepreneurs.”195 The painter placed Chicaguastla in the upper left hand corner, Mistepec in the upper right, and

Cuquila at the bottom serving as the map’s main reference point; the large oval in the center of the page identified the site. Although the spatial configuration of the 1595 map differed from the one made in 1599 (Figure 28), several elements tie both maps to the

194 Map of Mistepec, Chicaguastla and Cuquila (1595), AGN, No. 0867, Tierras, vol. 876, exp. 1, f. 122.

195 See Ronald Spores, “Mixteca Cacicas: Status, Wealth, and the Political Accommodation of Native Elite Women in Early Colonial Oaxaca,” in Indian Women of Early Mexico, ed. Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 186.

111

same author. The shape of the churches used to designate towns shared the painter’s distinctive double-line contour and the same design for doors, windows, and bells. Roads designated with a single line on both maps share identical feet that indicate travel while the mountains, highly stylized renderings, all include similar nubs to indicate broken and uneven terrain. Most importantly, the painter’s signature black ink facilitated the description of regional landscapes. That the painter chose the same substance to draw the

1595 and 1599 maps serves as testimony of the skills required to consistently mix materials, dexterity in this activity resulting from observation, practice, and “artisanal innovation.”196

In colonial Oaxaca, ink circulated in various compositions allowing scribes and painters to record alphabetic and pictorial elements onto a flat surface including paper, vellum, and cloth. Hernández identified two types of ink made by painters in the

Mixteca. “Tetlilli or black stone,” he said, “is a soil extracted primarily from the region of this New Spain known as the Mixtecas [sic]; it is sometimes used by painters to produce said color.”197 Hernández noted a carbon-based mix made from an aromatic pine known as ócotl also circulated in the region.198 “[Painters] also prepare among them,”

196 Ursula Klein and E. C. Spary, “Introduction: Why Materials?,” in Materials and Expertise, 1.

197 “El tetlilli o piedra negra es una tierra que se extrae principalmente en la región llamada de las Mixtecas, de esta Nueva España, y que usan a veces los pintores para dar dicho color,” Hernández, Historia natural de Nueva España, vol. II, in Obras completas, vol. III (Mexico City: UNAM, 1959), 409. Hereafter cited as HNNE II.

198 The use of Nahuatl as the primary unit to classify plants and minerals from New Spain reflects Hernández’s preference for this widely spoken language, his careful research informed by Nahua interpreters, painters, and healers. See José M. López Piñero and José Pardo Tomás, “The Contribution of Hernández to European Botany and Materia Medica,” in Searching for the Secrets of Nature: The Life and Works of Dr. Francisco Hernández, ed. Simon Varey, Rafael Chabrán, and Dora B. Weiner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 124; and The Mexican Treasury: The Writings of Dr. Francisco 112

observed the physician, “another blend of black ink with the smoke of woodchips from any pine tree known as ocotlilli (ócotl in the vernacular and from where the ink gets its name).”199 When burned, the wood produced thick black smoke captured by painters in clay jars until it condensed. They would then scrape the soot from the inside of the jars forming small round balls that according to Hernández could be purchased at local markets for individual use.200

Pintores incorporated other natural elements to make ink. Hernández pointed to the use of two varieties of tlalíyac, a mineral extracted from the earth either as clods with bits of silver and gold particles, or as black stones. He described them as “hot, dry, and astringent [in] nature, and acrid in taste. The natives make ink out of them.”201 The physician also mentioned nacazcólotl, the fruit of a tree formed in the shape of deformed ears (“orejas torcidas”) noting, “Its nature is very astringent and somewhat dry. You prepare with it very good ink.”202 During his travels in New Spain, Hernández responded to a viceroyal mandate to investigate the devastating cocoliztli epidemic that swept central Mexico in 1576. That same year, Sahagún and his native informants worked on

Hernández, ed. Simon Varey; trans. Rafael Chabran, Cynthia L. Chamberlin; and Simon Varey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 78.

199 “Se prepara también entre ellos otra clase de tinta negra llamada ocotlilli con humo de astillas de cualquier pino (ócotl en lengua vernácula y de donde la tinta toma su nombre),” HNNE II, 409.

200 HNNE II, 408-09.

201 “Ambos son de naturaleza caliente, seca y astringente, y de gusto acre. Los indígenas hacen tinta de ellos,” Hernández, HNNE II, 407-08.

202 “Su naturaleza es muy astringente y algo cálida. Se prepara con él una tinta muy buena,” HNNE II, 65- 66.

113

the final stages of the Historia general in spite of the rising death toll.203 It was during this period the informants shared with Sahagún the properties of various plants and minerals including nacazcólotl. “There is in this land,” he remarked, “a fruit of a tree which thrives in hot lands [and] that is not edible. This fruit is called nacazcólotl. If you add copperas [ferrous sulfate] and other materials, you make very good ink to write.”204

But it was another blend called tlilliocotl that the Franciscan praised above others.

Sahagún called it “tinta del humo de teas,” wood-smoked ink, noting, “The natives make ink from the smoke of wood and it is very fine ink; they call it tlilliocotl. They make it in some jars called tlicomalli in order to distill it. It is worth the cost of many inks.”205 Its fabrication mirrored the ocotlilli blend described by Hernández for the Mixteca. For generations, ocotlilli ink and its variants had served as an essential component of

Mesoamerican ritual practices. Recall the testimony from the Indian slave named Juan described in Chapter 1 who in 1545 accused a native lord from Yanhuitlán of covertly worshiping the old deities; at the center of his testimony stood the fabrication and use of black ink for ritual purposes.

203 See Martha Few, “Indian Autopsy and Epidemic Disease in Early Colonial Mexico,” in Invasion and Transformation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico, ed. Rebecca Brienen and Margaret Jackson (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2007); Diana Magaloni Kerpel, “Painters of the New World,” 49-52; and HGNE, 353, 356-57.

204 “Hay en esta tierra un fruto de un árbol que se cría en tierras calientes, que no es de comer; llámase este fruto nacazcolotl, con el cual, y el aceche y otros materiales, se hace muy buena tinta para escribir,” HGNE, 342.

205 “Hacen estos naturales tinta del humo de las teas, y es tinta bien fina; llámanla tlilliocotl; tiene para hacerla unos vasos que llaman tlicomalli, que son a manera de alquitaras; vale por muchas tintas para escribir,” HGNE, 343.

114

In other parts of Mesoamerica, painters made ink using the bark of the huitzquahuitl, a large tree of reddish wood native to Michoacán. According to Sahagún, they would split the bark into pieces, grind it and place it in water until it turned deep crimson. From this mixture, painters could obtain a bright red dye by combining organic materials and a stone known as tlaxócotl, or they could obtain ink by mixing tlalíyac soil and other unspecified elements.206 Tlaxócotl, described in Spanish as piedra alumbre

(alum stone), existed in great quantities and was an important ingredient in the mixture of colorants.207 A variant of huitzquahuitl ink known as huitztecoláyotl incorporated

Brazilwood, a species of tree native to South America but also found in Oaxaca and

Morelos. Painters boiled the red dye from the Brazilwood with tlalíyac until the substance thickened and the black liquid cooled.208 Dominican Francisco Ximénez commented in his Historia natural del reino de Guatemala (1722) about a rich black soil used in the Maya region to make black ink. “God has even blessed these parts with black inks,” he said, “both to dye and also to write. In that mountain range of Zacapulas, next to the town of Cuzal, there is a mineral in the form of black soil that just by crumbling it in water produces the blackest ink to write. It is, however, necessary to add gum, without it, [anything you write] will vanish because it is soil.”209 The rich array of natural

206 HGNE, 342-43.

207 HGNE, 343.

208 Maximino Martínez, Catálogo de nombres vulgares y científicos de plantas mexicanas (Mexico City: Ediciones Botas, 1937), 354.

209 “Hasta de tintas negras, así para teñir, como para escribir, ha dado Dios minerales en aquestas partes. . . En aquesta sierra de Zacapulas, junto al pueblo de Cuzal, está un mineral de tierra negra, que solo con que se desborote en agua, se hace una tinta muy negra para escribir. Aunque es menester echarle goma, porque 115

ingredients used to make ink suggests painters applied a variety of techniques based on the availability of sources.

The variety of inks is often clearly visible when examining indigenous maps. The thin black lines used to define the visual elements in the 1591 map of Santa Ana and

Santa Cruz in southeast Oaxaca (Figure 31) reflect a luster not visible in the more opaque and matted finish achieved by the ink of the painter from Cuquila.210 Originally prepared to petition a site of land which was marked by an empty banner on the upper left hand corner, the painter applied a range of colors to signify the elements on the map. Yellow and charcoal colorants gave the mountains a moss green effect that contrasts sharply with the stylized renderings of the artist from Cuquila. The road that connected Santa Cruz,

Santa Ana, and the new site was painted deep red while a river that flows across the page encases the town of Santa Cruz in the upper right hand corner. The painter made these colors drawing from the same botanical knowledge that guided the fabrication of ink.

The black outline from the painter’s ink contrasts sharply with the iron-gall ink used by the scribe to inspect the map. The scribe’s intervention appears near the church of Santa

Ana where he added additional houses to the perimeter of the town (Figure 32). He used a banner that included the name of the town, an element influenced by European mapping techniques, as a space to include a comment about distance noting the site was located a league away. The contrast of the two inks enhances our understanding of the painter’s

sola se borra como es tierra,” Francisco Ximénez, Historia natural del Reino de Guatemala compuesta por el reverendo padre predicador general fray Francisco Ximénez, de la orden de predicadores escrita en el pueblo de Sacapulas en el año de 1722 (Guatemala: Editorial José de Pineda Ibarra, 1967 [1722]), 343. Thanks to Kevin Gosner for pointing me to this source.

210 Map of Santa Ana and Santa Cruz (1591), AGN, No. 0581, Tierras, vol. 56, exp. 5, f. 16.

116

pictorial intentions and the scribe’s expectations, its presence a visual reminder of negotiations over land.

Recipes from the Old World

Spaniards in the New World had their own traditions for making ink that tapped into centuries of experimentation and practical learning. In early modern Spain, carbon- based and other unknown mixtures circulated with the popular iron gall inks, a combination of tannins, vitriol, and gum. Late medieval and early modern Spanish formulas for ink suggest the majority of users mixed the iron-gall variety. Knowledge of ink circulated in manuscript form mostly through the writings of notaries and scribes who scribbled mixtures in loose notes or who annotated recipes on the margins of a page.211

In print format, ink recipes appeared primarily in treatises on calligraphy and orthography such as Andrés Flórez’s Doctrina christiana del ermitaño y el niño (1546) who published a variation of a common recipe used throughout the Hispanic world,

Good ink is made from white wine and the common type from water; it is better if it is

puddle water. Add an ounce of mashed nutgalls to a pint of water and boil until a third

is dissolved. Strain, mix an ounce of copperas [ferrous sulfate] or better yet vitriol, and

add a quarter ounce of Arabic gum, stir well and move in strained lukewarm water.

Repeat as necessary.212

211 Antonio Mut Calafell, “Fórmulas españolas de la tinta caligráfica negra de los siglos XIII a XIX y otras relacionadas con la tinta (reavivar escritos, contra las manchas y goma glasa),” in El papel y las tintas en la transmisión de la información, Primeras jornadas archivísticas (Huelva: Diputación Provincial, 1994).

212 Andrés Flórez, Doctrina christiana del ermitaño y el niño (Madrid, c. 1546), in Mut, 160. Another edition of this work was printed in Valladolid in 1552, see José Antonio González Salgado, “Contribución 117

The acidic quality of tannins, usually obtained from tree galls, produced a dark substance when mixed with iron salts and diluted in water or wine; gum acted as a binding agent for the mixture. Individuals obtained various lusters and shades of ink depending on the ingredients which also include onions, pomegranates, sugar, and liquor.

Variations of Flórez’s formula circulated widely in the Hispanic world. Diego

Bueno, for instance, added sugar and six ounces of brandy to his mixture of galls, vitriol, and gum.213 Others took advantage of the Atlantic trade incorporating new ingredients into their recipes. Nicolás Monardes wrote in his Historia medicinal de las cosas que traen de nuestras Indias, a compendium of curative plants from America published in

Seville in 1574, about a rich soil from the New World used to make ink. “Of the black

[soil],” he declared, “I can say someone sent me a small sample from which to make ink.

When diluted in water or wine, you can make fine ink to write well, and it has a blue hue which makes it more pleasant to the eye.”214 Regional differences characterized the production of ink that, according to Adrian Johns, “enjoyed no common chemical or cultural composition.”215 But the differences depended less on the ingredients used to

al estudio de la ortografía en el siglo XVI: La reforma del padre Flórez,” Dicenda: Cuadernos de filología hispánica 14 (1996): 149-158.

213 Diego Bueno, Arte nuevo de enseñar a leer, escribir, y contar príncipes y señores (Zaragoza: Por Domingo Gascon, 1690), 26, in Mut, 165.

214 The original text reads, “De la [tierra] negra se decir, que me enviaron un poco para que de ella hiciese tinta, la cual echada en agua, o vino se hace de ella muy buena tinta, con que se escribe muy bien, y es algo azul que la hace de mejor gracia,” Nicolás Monardes, Primera y segunda y tercera parte de la historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias occidentales que sirven en medicina (Madrid: En casa de Alonso Escribano, 1574), 115v. Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division (LCRB).

215 Adrian Johns, “Ink,” in Materials and Expertise, 105.

118

make the composition than on the method of preparation. In his Arte sutilísima printed in

1553, Juan de Icíar instructed readers to place a solution of three ounces of crushed galls into half a pitcher of rainwater under the sun for a period of two days after which one should add two ounces of vitriol and set to rest for another two days.216 Ignacio Pérez used the same ingredients but mixed galls, vitriol, and gum each in separate vessels with water and wine letting them rest for a period of six days and stirring four to five times a day. “You will then place a large cauldron over a good flame,” he said, “and you will deposit the jar with the galls and let it boil for an hour,” a process he instructed should be repeated for the contents of the other two containers.217

Despite these differences, the formulas suggest individuals valued certain properties of ink including tone and durability which made the substance stand out. To add luster, for instance, Icíar recommended boiling his solution moderately while adding pomegranate peels.218 For writing on paper, José de Casanova recommended in his

Primera parte del arte de escribir (1560) using water, “it is looser, [and] it has less body and strength,” but for parchment he suggested wine. “It is imperative it be wine,” he declared, “for the black is better, it settles and endures more.” After describing the mixture of ink prepared over a two week period without the use of fire, Casanova remarked, “I have acquired experience with many recipes that circulate in written form

216 Juan de Icíar, “Recepta de tinta para papel,” in Arte sutilísima, por la cual se enseña a escribir perfectamente (Zaragoza: Miguel de Çapila, 1553).

217 “Luego se pondrá una caldera grande, a buena lumbre, y se echará en ella la vasija donde están las agallas y cocerá una hora,” Ignacio Pérez, Arte de escribir (Madrid: En la Imprenta Real, 1599), in Mut, 161.

218 Icíar, “Recepta de tinta para papel.”

119

and I have found none that produce better results than this one.”219 In some instances, individuals even valued ink for its medicinal properties which helped to alleviate certain ailments of the skin. Sixteenth-century Spanish physician and pharmacologist Andrés

Laguna provided a recipe for making the liquid substance noting, “Writing ink heals puss-filled sores and burn wounds over which you must apply thick coats with water until the sores granulate.”220

The advent of the printing press called for inks of different viscosities that would function with typeset, woodblocks, and copper plates as opposed to quills and other devices used to write by hand. Joseph Moxon, an English printer and mapmaker who lived in the seventeenth century, praised Dutch ink, a substance that circulated in Spain, for its varnish and described the method used to make it,

They provide a kettle or a cauldron, but a cauldron is more proper. . . . This vessel should

hold twice so much oil as they intend to boil, that the scum may be some considerable

time arising from the top of the oil to the top of the vessel to prevent danger. This

cauldron hath a copper cover to fit the mouth of it, and this cover hath a handle at the top

of it to take it off and put it on by. This cauldron is set upon a good strong flame iron

trivet, and filled half full of old linseed oil, the older the better, and hath a good fire made

under it of solid matter, either sea coal, charcoal or pretty big chumps of wood that will

burn well without much flame; for should the flame rise too high, and the oil be very hot

219 “Yo he hecho experiencia con muchas recetas que andan escritas y con ninguna he hallado tan buen efe[c]to como con ésta,” José de Casanova, Primera parte del arte de escribir todas formas de letras (Madrid: Por Diego Díaz de la Carrera, 1650), 10.

220 “Sirve la tinta con que escribimos, a las llagas llenas de corrupción, y a las quemaduras del fuego: sobre las cuales debe aplicarse espesa con agua, y dejarse hasta que las dichas llagas se encoren,” Andrés Laguna, Pedacio Dioscorides Anazarbeo, acerca de la materia medicinal, y de los venenos mortíferos (Antwerp: Juan Latio, 1555), 568. 120

at the taking off the cover of the cauldron, the fume of the oil might be apt to take fire at

the flame, and endanger the loss of the oil and firing the house: Thus they let the oil heat

in the cauldron till they think it is boiling hot, which to know, they peel the outer films of

an onion off it, and prick the onion fast upon the end of a small long stick, and so put it

into the heating oil: if it be boiling, or almost boiling hot, the onion will put the oil into a

fermentation, so that scum will gather on the top of the oil, and rise by degrees . . . if the

oil be hot enough, and they intend to put any rosin in, the quantity is to every gallon of oil

half a pound, or rarely a whole pound. The resin they beat small into in a mortar, and

with an iron ladle, or else by a handful at a time strew it in gently into the oil lest it make

the scum rise too fast; but every ladle-full or handful they put in so leisurely after one

another, that the first must be wholly dissolved before they put any more in . . . so that

you may perceive a great care is to keep the scum down: For if it boil over into the fire

never so little, the whole body of oil will take fire immediately.221

Moxon’s recipe repeatedly cautioned those attempting to execute it about the dangers involved, “For the process of making ink being as well laborious to the body, as noisome ungrateful to the sense, and by several odd accidents dangerous of Firing the Place it is made in.”222 The author’s detailed description captures the challenges of producing the black substance.

In Spain, printers used similar technology to produce a variety of inks, a practice they exported to the New World. An inventory of printed works, machinery, and other artifacts including typeset, boards, vellum, and paper made in 1557 for a shop in Burgos

221 Joseph Moxon, Mechanic Exercises, or, the Doctrine of Handy-Works (London: Printed for Joseph Moxon, 1677), 77-79, LCRB.

222 Moxon, 75.

121

reveals some of the instruments used to make ink. Among the thousands of books held in stock, 15,827 in all, Juan de Junta’s bookstore also included two cauldrons (one made of bell-metal the other made of copper), a large stone to grind vermillion for red ink, two inkwells, a special copper cask to make varnish, and a mortar and stone set to crush various materials.223 Bookshops in Spain encompassed a broad range of activities including wholesale distribution, bookmaking, and supplier of articles such as paper, parchment, ink, and books.224 Ink also circulated in the domestic sphere under the care of women who were tasked with producing it for use in the household.225 Early modern housewives very likely purchased ingredients to make ink from peddlers or from more established shops.

A rare example from a London advertisement published in the 1670s suggests the manner in which individuals made and acquired writing ink during the early modern period. Robert Pask, a stationer near the city’s Royal Exchange, printed an announcement to promote his writing ink that highlighted its useful qualities,

Robert Pask Stationer, at the Stationer’s Arms and Ink-Bottle on the North side of the

Royal Exchange, London: Hath made a Choice Sort of Black Ink in Hard Balls, with that

Conveniency, that you may wear them about you, without any Damage to the Ink, or your

Linen. Cut a little of it into fair Water, or any Wine (except Red) and it will be

immediately fit to write with. It is brought to that Goodness, it is fit for Records. The

223 Inventory of Juan de Junta, originally in Archivo Histórico Provincial de Burgos, no. 5542 (1557), f. 100-134v transcribed in William Pettas, “A Sixteenth-Century Spanish Bookstore: The Inventory of Juan de Junta,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 95 (1995), 29-188.

224 Pettas, 8.

225 Johns, 109.

122

longer you keep it in Ball, Liquid, or in Writing, the better it grows. The Price is Six

pence a Ball. And they are for Quality and Quantity cheaper than any other ink.226

Pask’s ad reveals issues associated with handling ink―staining, practicality, use over time, and cost, all of which differentiated one product over another. The presence of the so-called “black balls,” an ingredient likely made of soot and other minerals recalls similar practices in the markets of New Spain.

Many of the printed recipes for ink including those by Casanova, Pérez, and Icíar circulated in New Spain during the colonial period and scribes in Oaxaca used variants of these mixtures to write documents, and on occasion, to make their own maps.227 In 1583, the Spanish scribe Juan de Aragón sketched a map of Teotitlán in the southwestern region of the Valley of Oaxaca (Figure 33) for a survey to allocate land.228 Aragón mapped a largely isolated part of the region surrounded by mountain-ridges in the north and plains and heavily forested mountains in the east. The scribe viewed the region from a southwestern point near Teotitlán’s estancia on the bottom left corner, fanning the region’s geographical features across the page creating a useful blank space in the center on which to later inscribe the map. “And this is the true painting,” certified Aragón with a flourish of his pen. The scribe used a variety of iron-gall ink to draw the map’s components including the road to Tlacolula that ends at an estancia held by Teotitlán on

226 Robert Pask, “Advertisement,” original in British Library, Record No. E4:2[18b], accessed through http://eebo.chadwyck.com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/search/full_rec?SOURCE=var_spell.cfg&ACTIO N=SINGLE&ID=226855015&ECCO=N&FILE=../session/1317868956_1222&SEARCHSCREEN=CITA TIONS&DISPLAY=AUTHOR&SUBSET=1&ENTRIES=1&HIGHLIGHT_KEYWORD=default on October 5, 2011.

227 See José Torre Revello, “Algunos libros de caligrafía usados en México en el siglo XVII,” Historia Mexicana 5/2 (1955): 220-227.

228 Map of Teotitlán (1583), AGN, No. 0560, Tierras, vol. 35, exp. 7, f. 11. 123

the left edge, as well as to annotate unused territory with the word baldíos. His choice can be gleaned in the two holes along the map’s central axis (Figure 34) where blots of ink concentrated burning through the paper over time, a product of iron-gall’s corrosive effect.

Indigenous pintores incorporated the European ink into their own inventory of materials. In 1617, Don Domingo de Mendoza, a native cacique from Tepenene in the

Mixteca Alta drafted a map (Figure 17) to petition Spanish authorities for a livestock ranch known as an estancia a little over a league away from the main town. Mendoza used a palate of three different colorants to define a triad of trees with vibrant red blossoms and another trio with yellow flowers. The two most inconspicuous elements on the map, the mountain in the shape of an ancient temple on the upper left hand corner connected by a trail of feet to the church on the bottom right, did not incorporate color but instead appear to be drawn with iron-gall ink. Notice the effects of the substance on the page when the map is turned over (Figure 35). The lines of the pyramid-shaped mountain, visible on the map’s upper right hand side, have seeped through the page leaving noticeable traces comparable to the scribe’s certification on the left hand edge.

The map’s material condition suggests indigenous painters sometimes used a combination of Old and New World substances to represent spatial relationships and the natural environment much the same way they incorporated a mixture of Western iconology and Mesoamerican cosmology.

124

Blue

Painters used other substances to draw and write. Consider the map of Our Lady of the Rosary (Figure 1), the patroness of the Mixtec town of Santa María Atzompa in the

Valley of Oaxaca.229 The painter drew the map in a circular fashion over a large linen surface (120 x 61 cm. approx.) depicting a series of boundaries associated with land administered by the town’s cofradía, a religious confraternity. Visually, the map evokes indigenous pictorial traditions in use during the late sixteenth century, but the cartographic signs such as the illustration of buildings and the natural landscape suggest its production dated closer to the early to mid-eighteenth century. A noticeable aspect of the map’s origin includes the painter’s adoption of a key (Figure 36) to guide the viewer, a practice seldom used in indigenous cartography during the late sixteenth century but which came into practice a century later influenced by European systems of ordering applied in maps and illustrations. Keys described mountains, rivers, plants, rocks, dwellings, ranches, and other manmade structures as well as social and political relationships between a region’s inhabitants. In both cases, the use of text functioned to validate a map’s pictorial elements in order to establish spatial relationships. In the map of Our Lady of the Rosary, the use of red and blue colorants not only illustrated the pictorial elements but served as the ink used to write the key, a rare occurrence considering most alphabetic text found on maps came from the hands of Spanish officials that favored the iron-gall variety.

229 This map was held in the Municipality of Santa Maria Atzompa in the Valley of Oaxaca. Together with a book of land titles tracing the ownership of an estate belonging to the town during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and another map painted in watercolor they formed part of the town’s historical records. Since 2008, the documents have disappeared. The author has digital copies of all three items. 125

The map of Our Lady of the Rosary’s top left corner reveals the painter’s strategy of representation, one that relied on the use of colors to rank social and political relationships repeated in other parts of the map. The space includes the town of Atzompa

(Figure 37) which sits on a hill just below a bright red sun. Notice the painter’s use of blue tones and shading to enrich the church’s profile, a combination applied to the two adjoining buildings, the casa real, or noble house, and the casa cural, or curate’s home, depicted next to the church as an indication of their importance in the local structures of power. Throughout the map, important buildings were illustrated in blue to mark their distinction from the brown community dwellings situated on the hills below―the positioning on the canvas reinforced a difference in status.

In the map of Our Lady of the Rosary the visual schema described above defined other components of the map. The painter used it to ascribe meaning to an agricultural and cattle ranch designated as Father Crespo’s hacienda (Figure 38) as well as to designate the town of San Lorenzo (Figure 39) where a church and a noble home sit side by side. The absence of a curate’s house in San Lorenzo may point to the fact that the community did not have a resident priest, a marker of distinction at the regional level since clerics enhanced a town’s status.230 While it is tempting to establish a deeper significance between color, ritual, and authority, the diversity in mapmaking during this period renders this subject a highly speculative endeavor. To be sure, certain colors including white, black, and red held ritual meaning in Mesoamerican society, but their use on indigenous maps did not necessarily translate into a standard cartographic

230 Lockhart, The Nahuas, 208-210. 126

practice.231 Each map includes its own visual schema organized around a set of principles defined by a patron’s needs and the painter’s skill.

Most mapmakers relied on a palette of three to four colors to accentuate their maps. The choice of pigments used in mapmaking depended on the painter’s knowledge of the plants and minerals, but also of local markets where semi-manufactured dyes circulated. Indigo, añil in Spanish, a coveted blue dye that fed European textile markets in the eighteenth century, has been found on maps made in late sixteenth-century New

Spain.232 The production of añil in the viceroyalty enjoyed some prosperity from the

1580s to the 1620s but declined in the seventeenth century due to protectionist policies in favor of pastel production from Europe. During the second half of the eighteenth century, the period when the map of Our Lady of the Rosary was made, vast sums of capital from peninsular and Creole Spaniards in New Spain financed profitable dye operations in Mexico and Guatemala.233 Harvesting the crop brought together small and large-scale merchants and investors who financed and ran farms, Indian and low-wage workers that provided labor, Spanish officials who inspected and approved shipments, and ground and maritime transportation services that moved the product from one destination to another.

Indigofera plants, the genus from which individuals extracted indigo dye, grew abundantly in New Spain. Although major indigo production for overseas trade

231 See Burkhart, The Slippery Earth, 59.

232 Haude, “Identification of Colorants,” 250-251.

233 Alicia del Carmen Contreras, Capital comercial y colorantes en la Nueva España: Segunda mitad del siglo XVIII (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1996), 43. 127

originated in Central America in regions such as Santiago de Guatemala, Tegucigalpa,

Honduras, San Salvador, and San Vicente, areas in Mesoamerica including Michoacán,

Jalisco, Guerrero, Morelos, Puebla, Colima, Chiapas, and Tabasco also produced the blue dye. In Oaxaca, indigo trees and shrubs thrived in places such as Guaxapa, Nochistlán, and Teposcolula in the Mixteca, Nexapa in the eastern part of the state, Miaguatlán in the south central region, Mitla, Antequera and the Cuatro Villas in the central valley, and in

Tehuantepec along the coast. These regions witnessed the propagation of species including Indigofera suffruticosa, Indigofera cuernavacana rose, and Indigofera thibudiana.234

A plant’s leaves served as the main component to make the blue dye. Hernández noted xiuhquilitlpitzáhoac, a plant with long cylindrical stems (about “the width of [your] little finger,” he said) and small red and white flowers produced the leaves known as xiuhquílitl used to make the blue colorant tlacehuilli or mohuitli. To prepare the leaves,

Cut the leaves into pieces and add to a kettle or cauldron of boiling water, but after it has

cooled down and warm, or better (according to specialists) cold and without placing over

the flames. Stir it forcibly with a wooden shovel, and drain the dye-water slowly into a

clay vessel or jar allowing the liquid to pour through some holes it has at a certain

position to let the material from the leaves sit. This residue is the colorant. Dry it in the

sun, strain into a hemp bag and then form into small disks which harden when placed on

plates over hot coals; and finally, store and use them during the year. 235

234 Contreras, 123; Martínez, Catálogo, 33.

235 “Se echan las hojas despedazadas en un perol o caldera de agua hervida, pero ya quitada del fuego y tibia, o mejor (según afirman los peritos) fría y sin haber pasado por el fuego; se agitan fuertemente con una pala de madera, y se vacía poco a poco el agua ya teñida en una vasija de barro o tinaja, dejando 128

Sahagún emphasized xiuquílitl’s qualities noting “this indigo color produces a gleaming dark blue dye, it is a valued commodity.”236

Not all species of indigofera produced the same vibrant tones. Hernández described xiuhquilitlpatláhoac, a broad-leaved variety of indigo (añil latifolio), instructing readers to use the same method described above “except,” he pointed out,

“this plant is inferior which is why I say nothing about its cultivation.”237 On a commercial level, nearly two dozen varieties of indigo dye circulated within New Spain’s networks including the prized tinta flor, sobresaliente, a medium grade dye, and the less- refined, corte. Oaxaca benefited from its rich natural environment where indigo thrived but also from its geographic location along the Royal Highway that connected Central

America, the richest indigo production zone in Spanish America, to the heart of the viceroyalty. An important commodity for the European export market, it usually traveled north from Guatemala where over one hundred harvesters from Central America processed añil from its natural state into a dye.238 Production of the colorant flowed towards Antequera, the Spanish seat of power in Oaxaca where it was collected and sent to Veracruz via Puebla and Mexico City bound for Seville.

después que se derrame el líquido por unos agujeros que tiene a cierta altura, y que se asiente lo que salió de las hojas. Este sedimento es el colorante; se seca al sol, se cuela en una bolsa de cáñamo, se le da luego la forma de ruedecillas que se endurecen poniéndolas en platos sobre las brasas, y se guarda por ultimo para usarse durante el año,” HNNE II, 112.

236 Sahagún, Historia general, 669.

237 HNNE II, 113.

238 Manuel Rubio Sánchez, Historia del añil o xiquilite en Centro América (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 1976), 67-74.

129

Roads and trails played a central role in colonial society allowing individuals and goods to travel from one destination to another. Roads represent a major feature of indigenous cartography appearing in a high percentage of maps made from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Pictorial depictions of roads allowed pintores to situate the viewer geographically, a town’s proximity to a major road a symbol of power. In the map of Our Lady of the Rosary, roads function to define spatial relationships on a regional scale. The Camino Real or Royal Highway, starts from the town of San Lorenzo

Cacaotepec on the bottom right hand corner and divides the map into two distinct sections. The Camino de Etla then cuts across to the top of the map and effectively creates a third distinct space anchored by the Cerro de Apastle to the right and the Cerro

Calichoso to the left. The presence of these two roads creates what Alessandra Russo calls desdoblamiento, a technique used by early colonial artists to create a balance of elements by placing them on the margins of the map.239 Notice how the Royal Highway connects both the town of Atzompa on the top left corner and the town of San Lorenzo on the bottom right. At the same time, the Cerro de Apastle and the Loma de Torcas become anchors on the top right and bottom left respectively. Roads thread towns and mountains providing a visual balance to the representation of space.

The history of cartographic materials must consider internal and regional circulation networks that allowed painters to gain access to colorants. Roads served as bridges between towns and small human settlements channeling people and goods including indigo, cochineal, and achiote, elements used by painters to make maps. In

239 Russo, El realismo circular, 93-8. 130

some instances, individuals harvested these materials and then introduced them into major marketplaces in Oaxaca. In other cases, materials entered through backdoor channels outside of royal control. Consider the testimony of Juan de la Cruz, a forty- year-old mulato from Tehuantepec, a remote corner along Oaxaca’s Pacific coast. De la

Cruz operated a train of forty mules and a mare with his brothers Bartolomé and Thomas who were known as los perdidos, “the lost ones,” a reference to their ability to evade problematic situations or perhaps because of their misguided behavior. On January 6,

1756 los perdidos agreed to transport one hundred zurrones (leather bags) of indigo dye of various kinds from Guatemala City to Antequera in the Valley of Oaxaca, a four- hundred-fifty mile journey across a series of treacherous mountains. When they finally reached their destination on February 1, 1757, the scribe in Antequera who received the shipment confirmed the quantity but noted a discrepancy in weight: “In terms of quantity, the one hundred bags appear to be the same ones recorded in the shipping order dated

January 6, 1756; because of the weight [however], I can see a difference in volume.”240

Two days later, Don Francisco Joseph Moreno, a merchant from Antequera to who the shipment was addressed complained to authorities about the missing ink and accused de la Cruz and his brothers of failing to deliver the entire shipment.

Authorities caught up with Juan on February 5 sequestering the mule pack to serve as collateral on his debt to the merchant from Oaxaca. In prison, de la Cruz told authorities that on the journey from Guatemala somewhere between Thamassola and a

240 “Cuyos cien zurrones parece ser lo mismo que constan en el conocimiento de 6 de enero de 1756 . . . en cuanto a su número, y no en cuanto a su peso por la falla que se percibe del adjunto peso,” AGEO, Alcaldías Mayores, leg. 29, exp. 17. 131

place known as La Punta, his brothers and Manuel de Obregón opened the bags of indigo with the intent to sell portions of its contents. Juan told authorities a squint-eyed Indian from Thonala named Alejo purchased a good portion of the ink. Others who purchased añil included a vecino from Ciudad Real named Bartolo Amola, and a gachupín, a peninsular Spaniard, named Pedro Ponce from Chiapas. De la Cruz claimed that because he sat at the head of the pack, he failed to see the exchange taking place and not until they reached Tehuantepec did he learn from his brother what had happened. The Indian, the merchant, and the gachupín likely functioned as retailers or wholesalers for local consumption or perhaps to feed contraband ships travelling overseas.

Eighty years earlier, another mulato pack driver also named Juan de la Cruz entered the Villa of Tehuantepec on March 7, 1681 with a loaded train. De la Cruz’s arrival attracted the attention of Capitan Antonio de Arenas, a lieutenant judge known as teniente de alcalde mayor, who set out to find the alcalde mayor to warn him of the muleteer’s arrival. Arenas told the judge he represented Capitan Juan Ventura, a vecino from Mexico City residing in Guatemala who contracted de la Cruz’s services to deliver a freight of eighty boxes of tinta, a shorthand term used to describe indigo dye, to the port of Veracruz. According to Arenas, de la Cruz failed to deliver forty-eight boxes of tinta worth 720 pesos. The judge prepared a written document explaining, “Because there is no public scribe in a forty-league radius, [I am] acting as a legal receiver to present this petition and other demands,” a reflection of the region’s isolated environment.241 He

241 “Actuado como juez receptor por no haber escribano público ni real a más de 40 leguas en contorno presento esta petición y demás recaudos; mando que se haga embargo a la recua y mulas de silla del dicho mulato arriero . . . a quien se le reciba declaración de cuantas trae y hecha se le ponga en guarda que vaya convoyando la dicha recua hasta la ciudad de Oaxaca para que después de haber entregado la carga que 132

ruled to sequester de la Cruz’s recua which included forty-eight pack-mules and seven saddle mules with reins and seats. These examples capture practices that fell outside royal control contributing to the circulation of natural dyes and colorants across southern

Mexico.

Conclusion

To make maps and pictorial records, painters applied sophisticated skills to identify, collect, and transform plants and minerals into working materials. The commission and use of maps to negotiate land attest to the range of material choices available to indigenous painters to describe spatial relationships. The history of materials reveals a deep understanding of the properties of plants and minerals, elements used to create colors to embellish and give meaning to maps. Painters such as the artist from

Cuquila applied ink to great effect drawing from traditional Mesoamerican pictorial techniques while incorporating materials introduced by Spaniards in the New World.

The diversity of methods and formulas used to make colorants, ink, and paper in Oaxaca reveals the way knowledge circulated among individuals in towns and regions but also across the Atlantic. In central and southern Mexico, painters shared their knowledge of botany and the natural world with individuals such as Sahagún and Hernández who left detailed records of their accounts. Together with dozens of extant maps that represent

lleva en dicha recua; el dicho guarda; procure que el dicho Juan de la Cruz no extravíe y esconda la dicha recua; y de cuenta de ella,” AGEO, Alcaldías Mayores, leg. 53, exp. 22. 133

landholding, political boundaries, and petitions for unused property, these sources provide valuable insight into the range of skills used to make maps in colonial Oaxaca. 134

CHAPTER 3: AUTHENTICATION

Legal writing sustained the idea of empire.

―Roberto González Echevarría, Myth and Archive

No one knows how long Gonzalo Messia de Magaña had to wait for his map

(Figure 40), perhaps not long at all.242 As corregidor of Guaxuapa in the Mixteca Baja, a hot, dry, and weather-beaten region in the northwest, he received notification from the

Viceroy in late January 1617 about the petition of a royal grant of land (merced) by the political officers of Miltepec to add to their corporate holdings. The instructions laid out a series of steps to authorize the grant of land: a statement of the site’s purpose, notifications to neighboring towns and settlements, identification of existing or potential conflicts, the recording of witness testimony, and a physical visit to the land in question.

In preparation for the inspection, the instructions also requested Messia “make a map of it

[the site known locally as Ytlaumitepec] with clear annotations so that it is legible.”243

The map’s primary intent informed imperial aspirations focused on describing the distance and relationship between the major settlements and the petitioned site of land.

The Viceroy requested a traslado, an authorized copy of the proceedings, to inform the viceregal archive in Mexico City once the town received possession of the site; he reminded the corregidor of the four-month waiting period to allow for any possible complaints to surface. Maps made in Oaxaca had circulated for decades within local and

242 Map of Miltepec (1617), AGN, No. 1776, Tierras, vol. 2711, exp. 7, fs. 9v. y 10.

243 “Haciendo pintura de ello con sus anotaciones claras para que se entienda,” AGN, Tierras, vol. 2711, exp. 7, .f. 2. 135

regional bureaucratic offices in the hands of scribes, alcaldes mayores, corregidores, native officers, caciques, and lawyers who used them to inform petitions of various kinds associated with land and its division.

Messia de Magaña visited Miltepec on Saturday May 13 to follow up on

Miltepec’s petition. In order to perform his duties, he needed the support of a scribe to record and keep track of petitions, testimonies, and other public acts associated with the granting of the merced but none was available in the region. To resolve this issue, he appointed a scribe and recruited a Spaniard fluent in Mixtec and Nahuatl to serve as translator. The following day, a Sunday, the three men waited for the announcement of approaching festivities at the end of mass to notify those present of the petition of land advising interested parties of the site visit scheduled for May 17. When the corregidor, his support staff, and four witnesses arrived to the town to make the inspection, they found a large crowd that included political officers and commoners from Miltepec as well as the neighboring towns of Ixitlán, Suchitepec, Tequecistepec, and Guaxuapa that had gathered to view the site. This public act, an important element of defining spatial relationships in Oaxaca, allowed neighbors from the region to safeguard their boundaries, limit aggressive expansion, and record and preserve its memory.

When the group reached Ytlaumitepec, they surveyed it. According to the scribe’s account, the corregidor “called for the painter Domingo Hernández, to make a map and description of the site, indicating the place where the community of Miltepec has petitioned the merced; said map should be clear in every aspect including its 136

annotations and neighboring towns.”244 In the following sentence, the scribe confirmed that, in fact, “said map was made in the presence of the corregidor who ordered it be given its proper place in the proceedings.”245 On paper, the scribe moved from the act of calling the painter and commissioning the map to signing and filing it in one fell swoop, the two moments flowing seamlessly into one another without any gaps in time. In reality, the space that separated them included a series of calculated steps that formed part of the negotiation of spatial relationships in Oaxaca. The simple act of calling the pintor during the vista de ojos, as site inspections were commonly referred, had required planning, most likely a discussion between the corregidor and town officers facilitated by the translator days earlier to assure the presence of a painter. According to the scribe’s account, the painter made the map during the inspection which meant he visited the site carrying various tools including one or several brushes, semi-prepared pigments to make colors, and paper. The corregidor and those present then waited for the painter to finish his rendition, a striking green and yellow maze of roads, stylized mountains, and churches that brought together the region’s geographical elements in visual form. Once it dried, the corregidor had the opportunity to inspect the map making clear annotations to identify towns, roads, and natural features.

244 “En el dicho sitio de Ytlaumitepec, el dicho corregidor mando parecer a Domingo Hernández pintor para que haga una descripción y pintura del sitio y puesto donde la dicha comunidad del pueblo de Milltepeque pide se le haga merced, y que la dicha pintura sea con distinción en todo y sus anotaciones y pueblos, circunvecinos,” AGN, Tierras, vol. 2711, exp. 7, f. 3.

245 “. . . la cual dicha pintura se hiso en presencia de el dicho corregidor y mando se pusiese en su lugar en el proceso y lo firmo,” AGN, Tierras, vol. 2711, exp. 7, f. 3.

137

One of the most significant aspects of indigenous colonial cartography concerns the practice of authentication, an exercise between painters, scribes, and officials to identify and annotate the contents of a map. During authentication, officials had the opportunity to review a pintura and to ask the painter questions about its elements in order to validate it according to legal protocols. Scribes and officials actively engaged in the mapmaking process leaving written traces of their actions on the surface of every map they inspected. Their writing recognized towns and place signs and it appeared next to rivers, trees, and rocks and also buildings and crosses. Officials aired potential conflicts, measured distances, suggested pathways, and in some instances, added pictorial elements in their efforts to make sense of the maps and their coded messages. Fraught with tension due to differences embedded into the Spanish legal system that favored the European minority, authentications made maps legible by relying on written formulas designed to shape and classify individuals and their activities―indeed, as González Echevarría observes in this chapter’s epigraph, legal writing supported the notion of empire. But why would scribes and officials commission and use indigenous maps in the first place?

To what extent did they understand the maps they viewed? If officials disapproved or distrusted pictorial documents as some evidence suggests, why did they continue to inspect and accept maps until the eighteenth century?

The majority of maps made in Oaxaca from the late sixteenth through the early eighteenth centuries bear written glosses from the scribes, alcaldes mayores, and corregidores who inspected them. Painters controlled geographic and pictorial knowledge as well as the tools needed to make maps but scribes and officials helped 138

define a map’s content to fit Spanish legal principles. Conferring sameness to maps represented a scribe’s most important task designed to render documents legible to a broad bureaucratic audience.246 “This is true and faithful,” they certified on countless occasions after reviewing a map, branding it with their signatures in an act of possession that sought to convey authority and truth in the state’s eyes. Certification represents a pivotal moment in mapmaking permitting scribes to learn about the art of painting and about a painter’s intentions; the process also allowed scribes to articulate and emphasize the requirements imposed by the Crown. For painters, certification served as a forum to verbally explain the content of their maps, manuscripts that carried expressions associated with local and regional identities, training, access to sources, and the painter’s individual style. The encounters served as sites to negotiate the allocation of land, the fixing of boundaries, the confirmation of property holdings, encroachment, and surveying allowing painters to properly explain the contents of a map. This moment represented an opportunity for painters and patrons to direct the message of the map because once it entered New Spain’s bureaucratic channels, they lost control over it.

While the trend in studies of mapped environments moves towards a decentralization of maps from the state, this chapter highlights the way state efforts promoted indigenous cartography, and how scribes and regional officials gradually developed an understanding of visual representation assimilating and codifying it into an evolving imperial archive. According to Daniel Lord Smail, “it has become de rigour to

246 See James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Have: Yale University Press, 1998), 2-3; and Daniel Lord Smail, Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Late Medieval Marseille (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 10. 139

speak of state interest in and control over early modern developments in mapping,” subjects that subordinate cartographic practices to the whims of rulers and their trusted advisors.247 But what of indigenous mapping efforts that, while responding to colonial rule, did so from distinctly local perspectives and with uniquely local goals in mind? I propose that the authentication of maps marks a critical site of knowledge where social actors contested and defined land and territorial boundaries in the process building a mutual language of spatial representation with a distinct indigenous character.

The Notarial Culture of Maps

Maps circulated within the limits of the “lettered city,” an elaborate bureaucracy designed and directed by letrados, individuals trained in law and liberal arts supported by the work of scribes and regional officials who helped shape imperial design. In Ángel

Rama’s estimation, this “priestly caste” exercised power by controlling writing and the

Empire’s mediums of communication in Spanish American cities.248 The use of language and writing to structure Spanish imperial activity in New Spain generated a steady production of handwritten manuscripts detailing the activities of officials, explorers, clerics, merchants, lawyers, and others involved in colonization.249 At the local and

247 Smail, 224.

248 Ángel Rama, The Lettered City, trans. John Charles Chasteen (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 16. Joanne Rappaport and Tom Cummins have built on Rama’s analysis incorporating images, print culture, architecture, and performance into the lettered city to explain the way individuals in the Andes engaged with various forms of reading and the interpretation of language and information. Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012). My appreciation to Martha Few for bringing this source to my attention.

249 See González Echevarría; Mignolo, The Darker Side; Cummins, “From Lies to Truth”; Jorge Cañizares- Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the 140

regional levels, scribes generated thousands of pages each year when individuals needed to address authorities in writing for formal transactions that required a record. Along with corregidores and alcaldes mayores who administered justice and collected taxes at the regional level, scribes participated closely in the commission and authentication of indigenous maps. Maps informed surveys commissioned by royal authorities, the interests of individuals in land petitions and disputes who had to engage with the local bureaucracy, and the needs of officials who asked for maps to describe sites of land.

Scribes and officials engaged with maps, annotating and codifying them to make them legible for the immediate use of authorities but also in preparation for their transition into one of various local or regional archives where documents rested for future reference.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the crown adopted a policy of selling public offices in the New World including escribanías, scribal appointments, and alcaldías mayores, regional judgeships, to generate income for the royal coffers. In principle, the King designated royal scribes to perform their duties in any town or city to fulfill the needs of government agencies across the viceroyalty. Public scribes authenticated the acts of private citizens but were limited to a specific town or region.

The requirements for holding a scribal appointment depended on knowledge of the written word and on individual qualities of honor valued in the Hispanic world including

Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002); Padrón, The Spacious Word; and Kathryn Burns, Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010).

141

vecindad and an Old Christian background.250 In practice, authorities in America appointed scribes on a regular basis who did not always meet the Crown’s standards. A stream of reprimands from Spain between 1564 and 1669 accused the viceroys of failing to scrutinize the selection of scribes “resulting in notable errors and invalidating testimonies, investigations, and examinations.”251 In New Spain, regional officials such as Gonzalo Messia de Magaña, the corregidor of Guaxuapa described at the start of the chapter, sometimes appointed scribes in remote regions of the empire, in principle, to meet the region’s demand. Since these officers covered various towns and settlements, securing allies through scribal appointments―lucrative endeavors in themselves―could facilitate the duties of public administration as well as open business opportunities down the line.

Scribes recorded the public actions individuals wanted preserved according to prescribed legal formulas. Patrons sought their services precisely because in matters of law, their word was truth.252 Instructional manuals that circulated in the New World allowed scribes to select from a range of templates to articulate sales, mortgages, wills, leases, licenses, and other contracts.253 These state-sanctioned guides to learn the notarial

250 See Burns, Into the Archive, 13; and Juan Ricardo Jiménez Gómez, Un formulario notarial mexicano del siglo XVIII: La instrucción de escribanos de Juan Elías Ortiz de Logroño (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro and Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2005), 18 n. 17, 21.

251 “Resultado venir los autos, pesquisas, y averiguaciones con notables yerros, y nulidades,” De los escribanos de gobernación, Título Ocho in Recopilación de leyes de los reinos de las Indias (Madrid: Boiz, 1841), 179.

252 Burns, 2-3.

253 See Bernardo Pérez Fernández del Castillo’s useful catalogue of handbooks in Historia de la escribanía en la Nueva España y del notariado en México (Mexico City: Colegio de Notarios del Distrito Federal and Editorial Porrúa, 1988), 49-52. 142

arts did not, however, include “how to” sections on pictorial records from faraway places.

Instead, scribes, alcaldes mayores, and corregidores applied notarial techniques to the authentication of maps focusing on identifying towns, roads, boundary markers, unused lands, distance, and rivers relying on painters to point out relevant details. Their actions responded to directions such as those that informed the merced petitions calling for maps that clearly depicted sites and neighboring towns.

For all its color and unique design, the map (Figure 41) inspected by the scribe

Pedro Valades in 1609 for a livestock ranch near Justlaguaca in western Oaxaca followed one simple rule: to describe the relationship between major settlements and a petitioned site.254 In the map, the town appeared on the left hand side represented by a church within a circular enclosure of mountains; Valades wrote underneath it, “Justlaguaca.” He also identified the road with footsteps moving away from the town guiding the viewer to the petitioned site known as Ixcotepec. Valades’ annotations reflect the manner in which officials prioritized and ordered space, an itinerant practice dependent on movement, walking or riding, tied to land, surveys, and boundary-making. In the back, the scribe authorized the inspection noting, “The map and description, with the bearings it contains, was mandated by the alcalde mayor who signed it himself along with said scribe.”255

Signatures afforded the bearers of maps juridical authority embodying and invoking the signatory who attested to its contents. Signing implied several acts such as viewing,

254 Map of Justlaguaca (1609), AGN, No. 1271, Tierras, vol. 1871, exp. 11, f. 11.

255 “La cual dicha Pintura y descripción por los rumbos que en ella se contienen la mando hacer el dicho alcalde mayor y lo firmo de su nombre con el dicho escribano,” Map of Justlaguaca, AGN, No. 1271, Tierras, vol. 1871, exp. 11, f. 11v.

143

reading, writing, categorizing, and discussion in order to make sense of the contents of a map.

Despite the unique pictorial quality of each piece, land grant maps in Oaxaca tended to fulfill criteria centered on the identification of petitioned sites. The painter of the map of Tlaxiaco and Cuquila (Figure 42) displayed a sophisticated sense of style applying a palate of earth tones, shading, and three-dimensionality in his 1588 composition for a Spanish tavern keeper who petitioned a livestock ranch and two caballerías from authorities.256 When the corregidor, Melchor de Godoy Sotomayor, inspected the map, he identified the important Mixtec center of Tlaxiaco at the top of the page represented by a church. The feet and hoof marks moving away from Tlaxiaco towards Cuquila in the bottom led to the site of petitioned land marked with the word sitio. The painter focused on representing the relationship between the two towns, the land that separated them, and the road that connected them. Below Tlaxiaco, Godoy translated the elements of the map into writing, noting the distance between the two towns and the site of land. The corregidor commented on the nature of the land, uncultivated and mountainous, “as is registered in this map,” and proceeded to sign it, the ultimate act of authentication. In concert with imperial policies, Godoy’s attention on places, distance, and land use defined his intervention, an act of authentication grounded in the language of the state. The fact the corregidor turned to a native painter to fulfill a petition of land for a Spaniard suggests one of the ways indigenous mapping informed spatial negotiations across a broad social spectrum. Although the pictorial style of each

256 Map of Tlaxiaco and Cuquila (1588), AGN, No. 1692.9, Tierras, vol. 2692, exp. 17, f. 8. 144

painter helped generate distinct and often visibly striking maps, their content depended on the needs of authorities usually interested in the location of specific plots of land.

On the rare occasion officials mapped their own locations, they usually did so with this same task in mind. The corregidor Diego de Santa Cruz Olguín’s 1607 map

(Figure 43) described the site where Luis Quijada intended to establish a roadside inn near the town of Cuscatlan in the northern region close to Puebla.257 Santa Cruz used few pictorial details and as many words to convey his message.258 Santa Cruz’s quickly sketched map included a small church representing the town, and two straight parallel lines that stretched from one corner of the page to another in a diagonal fashion representing the road from Puebla to Oaxaca. Although the top corner of the page where the road ends is torn, one can imagine that some sort of symbol marked the petitioned site. Even in this simple sketch, the corregidor made sure to annotate the map in order to give it clarity. Common sense, a changing concept responsive to shifts in power relationships and issues of representation and rights, guided an official’s actions when faced with making or authenticating a map.259 When the priorities of late sixteenth- century mapping, those centered on petitions for land and the execution of imperial policy, shifted to issues related to defense of patrimonial lands by the late seventeenth century, so too did common sense and the standards used to petition and measure maps.

257 Map of Cuscatlan (1607), AGN, Tierras, vol. 2682, exp. 4, f. 9.

258 Serge Gruzinski has described Spanish notarial maps as “extremely restrained, spare, and unadorned.” “Colonial Indian Maps,” 57.

259 The trick, according to Ann Laura Stoler, is to distinguish between the things that could go unmentioned in documents because they were public knowledge, those that remained unwritten because they could not be conceptualized, and those which could simply not be stated. Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 3. 145

With more complex pictorial records and maps, some authorities made separate records to guide the user. In 1558, the cacique Diego Cortés used a pictorial manuscript to renegotiate a tasación for him and his brothers Bartolomé and Hernando. The tasación served to determine which privileges Spanish authorities bestowed on some members of the Indian nobility. Over the course of two days, the Valley’s alcalde mayor reviewed the petition and interviewed a host of principales from Cuilapa about the Cortés brothers and about a pintura Diego presented as evidence of his status. The extent to which some officials in Oaxaca examined pictorial documents within the legal environment of the region can be gleaned from this experience.

The public reading of the painting brought together native leaders―including perhaps a painter or two―as well as Christian clerics who together with the alcalde mayor examined its contents over the course of two days. On September 4, the alcalde mayor remarked that having “seen the painting herein contained, and examined it with the principales of this town and with its [Spanish] clergy, it was determined that the macehuales [Indian commoners] depicted in this pintura were a gift of birth from his father Don Luis.”260 The alcalde mayor’s declarations from the second day reflect the consensus the parties reached concerning its interpretation. “There are 1,148 married

Indian commoners,” he said, “tributaries of the Marques del Valle; from the [illustrated

260 “Vido esta pintura aquí Contenida y examinada con los principales de este dicho Pueblo y con los religiosos del se averiguo que los macehuales contenidos en esta pintura se los dio desde que nació Don Luis su padre,” AGN, Tierras, vol. 243, exp. 4, f. 17.

146

figures] in the pictorial, it seems Don Diego is a tequitlato.”261 As a tequitlato, Cortés could collect tribute on behalf of the Crown as well as the harvest of a plot of land from the macehuales under his authority. Diego pushed his petition further claiming his older brother, Hernando, “suffered extreme need,” for which he requested a stipend from the

“leftovers” in Cuilapa’s community chest, a fund used for a range of activities associated with town affairs.262 The alcalde mayor remarked that since Cortés had a second tasación with another set of Indian tributaries, he had “plenty to eat and [means] with which to support himself, his home and family, and Don Hernando.”263 While it is not clear whether the alcalde mayor granted the stipend, he did, in effect, authorize Diego Cortés’ petition recognizing his cacique status and his role as a tequitlato. The pictorial used by

Cortés possessed qualities associated with genealogical manuscripts as well as tribute records. While the painting utilized to negotiate this petition was separated from the document, one can gauge the way in which some officials viewed and inspected pictorial records and the methods they applied to make them legible.

In other instances, the documents also reveal the way judges and scribes used native maps during their boundary surveys. Such was the case with a group of Spanish and indigenous officials who met on May 10, 1687 at the plaza of San Ana Zegache, a

Zapotec town in the southern portion of the Valley of Oaxaca. Led by Antonio de

261 “Parece en ella que hay mil y ciento y cuarenta y ocho macehuales casados tributantes al Marques del Valle de los cuales por la dicha pintura parece que es tequitlato Don Diego,” AGN, Tierras, vol. 243, exp. 4, f. 17.

262 “Padece extrema necesidad; . . . de las sobras de la Caja de Comunidad de hoy en adelante [Diego pidió] diesen para sustentación al dicho Don Hernando,” AGN, Tierras, Vol. 243, Exp. 4, f. 15-16.

263 “Con las cuales dichas dos tasaciones tiene bastantemente de comer y poderse sustentar el y su casa y familia y Don Hernando su hermano,” AGN, Tierras, vol. 243, exp. 4, f. 15. 147

Abellán y Carrasco, the alcalde mayor of the Cuatro Villas del Marquesado, an alignment of four principal towns in the Valley, the group headed west at daybreak aided by a sturdy painted map (Figure 44).264 The map served as a navigation tool helping the party identify geographical elements, ranches, and natural and manmade boundary markers during a survey and demarcation (deslinde y reconocimiento) of nearby lands. The property belonged to the Marqués, an absentee landlord consolidating his assets in the region. Native political officers known as oficiales de república from Zimatlán and San

Pablo helped guide the group through a portion of the estate they contested. The alcalde mayor of Chichicapa and Zimatlán, towns under the authority of the Crown not the

Marqués, and a deputy (teniente) for the city of Antequera, the Spanish seat of power in the region also controlled by the Crown, accompanied the expedition. Though some natives spoke Spanish, an interpreter travelled with the group to translate when necessary.

After walking nearly a league and a half, they reached the hacienda of Captain

Cristobal Ramírez, who produced a título y merced, a title and royal deed confirming the limits of his property. The group remained on the hacienda long enough to compare the deed to the property’s boundary markers after which point the scribe noted, “Guided by him [the alcalde mayor] and the [native] informants, and the map’s demonstrations, we

264 Map of Zimatlán and Ocotlán (1686 [1639]), AGN, No. 3009, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 85, exp. 4. The AGN dates this map to 1639, but the certifying gloss on the back by Hernando Ortiz de Sepúlveda suggests it was copied in 1686 from an earlier model made in 1639. The text reads, “Esta cotejado con su original de donde se sacó en 29 de septiembre de 1686 años [It is compared with its original from where it was copied on September 29, 1686].” The year “1639” appears in smaller lettering above the word, “cotejar.” Two other copies of this map, AGN, No. 3039, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 146, exp 13, f. 33, and AGN, No. 3018, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 102, exp. 33, f. 24, are dated 1686 and 1734 respectively.

148

veered left leaving said hacienda until it was out of sight.”265 They headed south along what the Indians from San Pablo considered their patrimonial lands. During this particular leg of the journey, San Pablo introduced manuscripts including various autos de posesión, formal edicts of possession they claimed verified their control of the land.

Abellán ordered the survey to continue in spite of their objections but asked the natives from San Pablo to show him the boundaries described in the map. “Having mandated that the land titles be incorporated into these proceedings, the alcalde mayor [also] ordered that [the natives] guide him to the limits they know to be theirs including the sites depicted on the map,” the scribe noted.266 Officials looked to the map to identify and determine boundaries, the scribe referencing it another four times during the survey with phrases such as “according to the map’s demonstration,” and “they fall within the map’s delimitations.”267 Clearly, the native map played a key role in fixing spatial boundaries.

After individuals and towns transacted petitions with scribes and officials or when a legal dispute ended, copies and original dockets including maps were scattered in archives across Oaxaca and Mexico City. The law held scribes liable for safeguarding the written records they produced, a responsibility that passed to another when a scribal appointment was renounced. When Zimatlán addressed the court in the fall of 1686 about the impending survey of the Marquesa’s land that would affect their town

265 “Y guiados por él y los informantes y demostraciones del mapa dejando a mano izquierda la identidad de dicho sitio,” AGN, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 85, exp. 4, f. 117v.

266 “Dicho señor alcalde mayor mandando poner los instrumentos presentados con estas diligencias mando que sin embargo de lo referido le guiasen a los términos que tienen por conocidos en que se incluyen los sitios demostrados en el mapa,” AGN, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 85, exp. 4, f. 117v.

267 “Según la demonstración de el mapa,” and “que todos caen en la situación de dicho Mapa,” AGN, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 85, exp. 4, f. 118v and 119v. 149

boundaries, native officials directed royal authorities to a legal docket supposedly stored in Mexico City:

Our ascendants and we have held some lands since time immemorial that fall within our

town’s eastern boundaries; [they] are named in our [Zapotec] language Guiyalana y

Secbichi [and are located] by some small mountains. The titles and maps to these [lands]

are in the Real Audiencia of this New Spain [to support] the dispute we had with the

natives from Santa María Magdalena. The survey your grace intends would seriously

damage and impair us, and with all due respect and reverence, we request your lordship

not prevent our grievance. We contradict this survey once, twice, and three times, and as

many as is necessary according to our rights and we petition that the titles be drawn [from

the Audiencia] for our defense.268

Seventeen members of the town council signed their names to the request. After reviewing Zimatlán’s petition, a scribe or lawyer involved in the case wrote on the margins of the page (Figure 45) a cautionary ojo, literally “eye,” to warn the reviewer.

The note reads, “Watch out as these titles have not appeared, only a merced without a name, survey, or possession.”269

The incident exposes significant aspects of the use of indigenous maps in colonial society. The town’s claim that the map and titles resided in Mexico City may have been

268 The orginal text reads as follows: “Nosotros hemos estado poseyendo de inmemorial tiempo esta parte y nuestros ascendientes de unas tierras que caen de nuestro pueblo, para la parte del oriente nombradas en nuestro idioma [q/g]uiyalana y Secbichi que son donde están unos cerrillos cuyos títulos y mapas están en [la] Real Audiencia de esta Nueva España en el pleito que tuvimos con los naturales de Santa María Ma[g]dalena y porque en el deslinde que se intenta hacer por Vuestra Merced somos sumamente damnificados y perjudicados hablando con el acatamiento y reverencia debida requerimos a Vuestra Merced no nos pare ningún perjuicio y contradecimos una dos y tres y las demás veces que decimos por derecho deslindes con protestación de pedir sacar los instrumentos que conducirán a nuestra defensa ,” AGN, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 85, exp. 4, f. 104.

269 AGN, Hospital de Jesus, leg. 85, exp. 4, f. 104. 150

false, an allegation implied by the reader who wrote on the margin, but it was not farfetched. Maps presented by individuals, towns, and lawyers to local authorities were typically routed to Mexico City for review by a magistrate at the Audiencia. In other occasions, litigants and lawyers travelled to the capital to testify or attend hearings where they presented maps to support their petitions. In 1687, for instance, the legal representative of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán, Juan López de Pareja, presented an Indian map to a judge (oidor) at the Audiencia for a dispute between the Mixtec town and a Spanish captain. Lawyers for both parties and judges inspected the map before someone returned it to Oaxaca, its place of origin, where it continued to inform the natives’ case.270 While patrons used maps to define local spatial relationships, the maps formed part of a larger network tied to the lettered city’s production of manuscripts. Those same individuals who held a hand in reviewing and producing textual manuscripts participated in the review and certification of Indian maps. The circulation of maps also opened the possibilities of loss, misplacement, theft, and damage when individuals surrendered their manuscripts over to notaries, royal officials, or lawyers as evidence. Even after their initial production, Indian maps could continue to inform social and political relationships across time.

Maps also circulated among caciques and their families and in small community archives where the local elite jealously guarded their alphabetic and pictorial manuscripts. The growth of indigenous archives in Oaxaca reflected an appreciation of law and notarial practices used to petition authorities for privileges and goods, and also to

270 A full analysis of this case anchors a discussion of copied maps in Chapter 4. 151

defend corporate interests. When native officers from the remote outpost of Tehuantepec along Oaxaca’s Pacific coast complained to the Viceroy in 1660 about the abusive behavior of the alcalde mayor, their grievance made light of the fact they, too, stored important papers that structured their rights and obligations. “No other alcalde mayor has attempted [to extract so much tribute from us] until now,” they claimed, “because of the many royal provisions we have in our archives which are obeyed by the other justices for our protection.”271

The Juárez de Zárate brothers, caciques from Santa Catarina Ixtepeji in the central

Valley stored a map held in their family for generations. In 1690, they used the map to petition the judge for a number of privileges accorded to individuals of their status including the right to bear a sword and a harquebus, to use weights and measures, to use a saddle and spurs for riding, to slaughter cattle, and the right to wear Spanish clothing.272

In the deposition, they introduced the map noting, “With all due formality of the oath [we have taken], we present this map in which the lineage of our ancestors and the origin it had from its beginning is deciphered, so that the witnesses can recognize it and declare what they know.”273 Several witnesses confirmed the identity of the caciques and their

271 “No habiendo tratado ningún alcalde mayor de hacerlo desde el día de hoy, por muchas provisiones reales que tenemos para ellos, las cuales están obedecidas por las demás justicias para amparo nuestro,” Carta dirigida al virrey Duque de Albuquerque por la república de indios de Tehuantepec, in María de los Ángeles Romero Frizzi, El sol y la cruz: Los pueblos indios de Oaxaca colonial (Mexico City: CIESAS, 1996), 256.

272 Testimonio en cuanto a la información de legitimación y mérito de Don Pedro Juárez de Zárate y su hermano Don Domingo Juárez de Zárate caciques principales de Ixtepeji (1691), AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, Civil, exp. 23.

273 “Hacemos demostración con la debida solemnidad del juramento del Mapa en que se haya descifrada la descendencia de Nuestros antepasados, y el origen que tubo desde sus principios para que los dichos 152

map, one of them noting the map was “the ancient one, the one they [the Juárez family] have always used to be known [which they have] stored in their homes in order to preserve the [family’s] memory so that everyone can know they are legitimate caciques of good blood.”274

Scribes and officials drew from notarial practices to define the parameters of map authentication. The close interaction between authorities and individuals to negotiate land, goods, and privileges generated petitions, complaints, testimonies, sales, auctions, and surveys as well as maps. All played an important role in shaping spatial divisions in

Oaxaca. The making of a map brought together scribes, alcaldes mayores, and corregidores to inspect and authenticate its content, creating what Kathryn Burns has described as “a space where negotiations once took place, around the notarial template, leaving traces of understandings that often belie the wording of the text.”275 The practices of viewing and annotating maps had direct implications for land tenure practices, establishing a tradition followed by later generations of natives deploying them in matters related to land. The use of maps and titles owes part of its success to imperial archival practices that sought to systematize record-making. That records were scattered among family, local, and regional archives attests to the value placed by individuals in record-keeping but also to the practice of copying, which facilitated the production of

testigos los reconozcan y declaren lo que supieren,” AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, Civil, exp. 23, no page number.

274 AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, Civil, exp. 23.

275 Kathryn Burns, “Notaries, Truth, and Consequences,” American Historical Review 110 (2005): 355.

153

legal papers, both of which carried notarial fees.276 These efforts contributed to the circulation of notarial manuscripts within a culture of hand-written documents that defined the Iberian world.

Pinturas and Empire

Maps served kings, ministers, and ranking officials across European imperial bureaucracies to plot, describe, and possess lands known and unknown.277 They used them to measure territory, trade routes, potential revenue, taxes, and mineral extraction, and to design or redevelop infrastructure. Maps and the knowledge used to make them represent one of the most significant developments of the early modern period.

Cartography represented geographical space using mathematics, allowing readers the experience associated with viewing and possessing the territory represented on the page.278 In New Spain, cartographic practices informed projects across the viceroyalty that relied on maps to manage imperial affairs. In Mexico City, the scheme to drain the lake in order to resolve the city’s devastating flood issues generated numerous maps from engineers, architects, and surveyors working, though not always harmoniously, across

276 Bouza, Corre manuscrito, 31.

277 See the essays in Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe, ed. David Buisseret (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); J.B. Harley, “Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early Modern Europe,” in The New Nature of Maps; and Portuondo, Secret Science.

278 See, for instance, David Turnbull, “Cartography and Science in Early Modern Europe: Mapping the Construction of Knowledge Spaces,” Imago Mundi 48 (1996): 5-24.

154

fields to try to bring an end to the problem.279 Strong bonds tied cartographic practices and imperial administration and expansion.

Indigenous mapmaking in Oaxaca also responded to the exigencies of Spanish rule. Attempts to administer New World domains generated surveys, expeditions, and laws during the second half of the sixteenth century that led to spatial realignments, measurements of ecology and culture, and record-keeping practices designed to capture accounts of state. These efforts contributed to the commission and production of native maps, an activity that combined pictorial skills and geographical knowledge with a measure of cultural sensibility. Officials reviewed, interpreted, classified, and stored maps adopting administrative measures to accommodate local manuscript practices.

Based on their continued use in the courts, the mid-seventeenth century witnessed a policy change that sanctioned the introduction of maps by natives and indigenous towns as evidence in legal settings.280 As a result, officials and scribes also turned to indigenous pintores for maps. As authority figures and patrons, they sought the services of native painters to describe spatial relationships and to comply with royal mandates.

Since no written policy guided the use of maps and pictorial manuscripts, authorities and painters improvised. When the Relaciones Geográficas started to arrive in New Spain during the late 1570s, officials turned to native painters for assistance to complete its mapped portion.281 This unscripted yet seemingly coordinated moment illustrates the

279 See John F. López, “‘In the Art of My Profession’: Adrian Boot and Dutch Water Management in Colonial Mexico City,” Journal of Latin American Geography 11/S (2012): 35-60.

280 Florescano, Historia de las historias, 241.

155

complexities of managing an overseas empire, the efforts to rationalize collected data, and the choices made by officials to meet local realities. The turn towards painters and their maps reminds us of the limitations of officials on the ground who relied on the geographic knowledge of others that had a deeper understanding of the local environment.

The Relaciones Geográficas formed part of a long-term agenda designed by the king and his advisors to measure the extent of the empire and maximize its returns.282 A cédula, royal decree, dated May 25, 1577 explained to officials in New Spain and Peru that in order to “attend to their good government, it has seemed a proper thing to decree that a general description be made of the whole condition of our Indies, islands, and their provinces, the most accurate and certain possible.”283 The recently appointed Royal

Chronicler and Cosmographer Juan López de Velasco developed an instrument in the form of a written survey that asked officials across the Spanish empire to respond to a series of questions relating to the culture and geography of America. The chronicler- cosmographer’s main task was to research and write histories and geographical treatises

281 See the following works: Howard F. Cline, “The Relaciones Geográficas of the Spanish Indies, 1577- 1648,” in HMAI; René Acuña, Relaciones geográficas del siglo XVI: Antequera, vol. 2 (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de México, 1986); and Barbara Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain. The relaciones topográficas, a similar effort in the Spanish peninsula, took place around the same time period. See Helen Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain: The Habsburg Sale of Towns, 1516-1700 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); and William Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

282 Phillip’s 1568 junta magna, a summit of high ranking civil and ecclesiastic officials, addressed issues related to missionary practices, tribute collection, fiscal responsibility, labor assignments, land allocation, and illegal trade. See Demetrio Ramos Pérez, “La junta magna de 1568. Planificación de una época nueva,” in La formación de las sociedades Iberoamericanas (1568-1700), ed. Demetrio Ramos Pérez (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1999).

283 “Cédula,” in Cline, “The Relaciones Geográficas,” HMAI, Appendix A, 233.

156

of the Indies and López de Velasco intended the responses to his survey to inform the most complete assessment of that portion of the world.284 He designed the survey with a wide audience in mind that included governors, corregidores, and alcaldes mayores as well as priests and town councils that could generate detailed written accounts known as relaciones. Directions on format and dating instructed users to start with a fresh piece of paper to “note a title of the account, [and] the day, month, and year it is made.” To keep track of respondents and the survey’s circulation, López de Velasco asked respondents to identify themselves and also the officials that made the instruction available.285 The cosmographer’s attention to detail drew from the strong notarial tradition that characterized record-keeping activities in the Mediterranean world.

As the questionnaires trickled into the various regions of New Spain, officials turned to locals to help answer the survey. Instructions called for the use of native informants, “persons knowledgeable of the things of the land,” who could discuss a region’s history, politics, and rituals. Responses originated in central Mexico, Yucatán,

Guadalajara, Michoacán, Tlaxcala, and Guatemala. In Oaxaca, the rate of responses was high.286 From 1579 through early 1581, authorities prepared forty relaciones reaching

284 Cline, “The Relaciones Geográficas,” HMAI, 189.

285 “Primeramente, en un papel aparte, pondrán por cabeza de la relación que hicieren, el día, mes, y año de la fecha de ella: con el nombre de la persona, o personas, que se hallaren a hacerla, y el del Gobernador, u otra persona a que les hubiere enviado la dicha instrucción,” in “Instrucción y memoria de las relaciones que se han de hacer para la descripción de las Indias,” printed instructions attached to a majority of the individual responses returned to Spain, BLAC. See translation of instructions and questions in Cline, “The Relaciones Geográficas,” HMAI, Appendix B, 233-237; and of the questionnaire in Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, Appendix B, 227-230.

286 Fifty four text responses originated in Yucatan, forty in central Mexico, twenty-three in Michoacán, fourteen in Guadalajara, sixteen in Tlaxcala, and two and Guatemala. Twenty-two texts from Mexico, 157

across the region to Mixtec, Zapotec, Nahua, Chocho, Cuicatec, Chinantec, and Mixe settlements.287 An important component of the survey included the mapping of individual towns, coasts, and islands. “Make a map of the layout of the town, its streets, plazas and other features, noting the monasteries, as well as can be sketched easily on paper,” the cosmographer instructed respondents on item ten of the questionnaire.288 For question forty-two he asked about “the ports and landings along the coast” requesting “a map showing their shape and layout,” and on forty-seven he asked about islands close to shore instructing respondents to “make a map, if possible, of their form and shape, showing their length, width, and lay of the land.”289 From the cosmographer’s point of view, maps would provide critical information about urban design, coastlines, and infrastructure that would help plot a map of Spanish domains around the globe.

Across New Spain, authorities tapped into a pool of native artists, astute bilingual caciques often dressed in European clothing accustomed to dealing with scribes and officials. The reasons for turning to native painters reflect a series of choices derived from a reading of the instructions, an estimation of the work involved, knowledge of the

Michoacán, Guadalajara, Oaxaca, and Tlaxcala have been lost, as well as another three unidentified texts. See Cline, “The Relaciones Geográficas,” HMAI, 196.

287 In other regions of New Spain including Guadalajara and Guatemala, officials responded to the survey as late as 1585. Cline, “The Relaciones Geográficas,” HMAI, 196.

288 Original reads, “Con la traza y diseño de pintura de las calles, y plazas, y otros lugares señalados o monasterios como quiera que se pueda rascuñar fácilmente en un papel.” English translation follows Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, Appendix B, 228.

289 Item 42 reads, “Los puertos y desembarcaderos que hubiere en la dicha costa, y la figura y traza de ellos en pintura como quiera que sea en un papel, por donde se pueda ver la forma y talle que tienen.” Item 47 states, “Los nombres de las Islas pertenecientes a la costa, y porque se llaman así, la forma y figura de ellas en pintura, si pudiere ser y el largo y ancho.” English translation follows Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, Appendix B, 230.

158

region, and an official’s network of relationships with scribes, priests, and native intermediaries. Scribes and officials of Mediterranean notarial cultures had developed traditions of linguistic mapping during the later Middle Ages but maps of towns and regions had not played a significant part in these practices.290 Not surprisingly, authorities in New Spain seldom attempted to map a region and when they did, they put on display their notorious skills as doodlers more than their geographical observations.291

More than disdain for visual images or lack of interest, most scribes, alcaldes mayores, and corregidores were simply not prepared to render spatial relationships visually. And while there is no doubt Spaniards prized writing and the power of the written word, officials also recognized the value of local expertise and the importance of obtaining the most precise information, available mostly through cooperation with natives. Likewise, as Thomas Cummins has observed, “the invention of writing was one of the key cultural differentiations that Europeans made between themselves and the peoples of the New World, whereas pictorial images were something they held in common.”292 Officials in New Spain generated dozens of responses, a majority of which originated in the most populated regions in the central, near north, and southern regions.

Out of a total of ninety-one maps generated for the survey, a large percentage can be traced to an indigenous hand. At least twenty-seven maps had their origin in Oaxaca, a

290 Smail, 2.

291 Smail, 1; Burns, Into the Archive, 68.

292 Cummins, “From Lies to Truth,” 153.

159

preponderance of them reflecting native ancestry.293 The maps formed part of the region’s manuscript culture, a loose association of scribes, officials, clerics, translators, caciques, and painters that produced records to obtain benefits, legitimate possession of lands and goods, and petition requests.

What exactly did officials tell Amerindian painters who took on the task of elaborating maps? What type of guidelines, if any, did they provide? In their contact with mapmakers and other intermediaries, officials must have recited the items as they appeared on the instructions leaving painters to sort out the details as they went along.

For painters, this communication established parameters of representation used to define the content of a map but it also left them to creatively respond to the representation of space resulting in a mixture of pictorial traditions. The use of European ideas and motifs notwithstanding, the maps reflected Mesoamerican visual culture and identity. Hernando de Cervantes, a corregidor in the Mixteca petitioned two maps in the region from local pintores to inform the responses to his relación. The map (Figure 46) he received from the painter of Amoltepeque marked the town’s boundaries through a series of logographic place-names forming a half-moon that enclosed the town.294 Within the half-moon, a church, the only visible symbol of European culture sat next to the place-name of

Amoltepeque, “hill of the soap plant,” on the right hand side. Below these two elements, a ruling pair faces each other inside a palace decorated with the “overlapping feather-

293 Cline, “The Relaciones Geográficas,” HMAI, 196.

294 This was one of two maps submitted with the Relación de Teozacoalco y Amoltepeque (1580), BLAC, Folder XXV-3.

160

symbol” that designates a plain.295 A river, traced with straight lines, cuts across the landscape on the right-hand side in a vertical fashion. True to form, Cervantes viewed the pintura inscribing an alphabetic gloss below the church that identifies the main population center in the region.

What motivated officials to delegate the task of mapping to natives? A combination of factors contributed to the commission of native painters to make maps.

For one thing, the regional legal system devoted a considerable amount of its time to presiding over matters related to land. Records of sales, leases, auctions, disputes, boundary inspections, petitions, certifications, and testimonies filled local, regional, and viceregal archives in Oaxaca and Mexico City. The region’s dependence on notarial culture demanded strong knowledge of the law from indigenous leaders who used alphabetic and pictorial writing as well as oral traditions to safeguard individual and corporate assets. The importance of scribes, courts, and archives had not escaped the attention of native elites across Mesoamerica. In Oaxaca, pictorial manuscripts of various types circulated within local and regional bureaucratic channels establishing a tradition that carried into the eighteenth century. In another respect, the act of commissioning a map reflects an exchange based on the recognition of someone’s ability to make a pictorial representation that considers the region’s geographical and political space.

The cartographic output of the painter from Tehuantepec discussed in Chapter 1 bears a brief reprise here. This individual mapped a vast portion of land in that region

295 Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 159-160. 161

during the last two decades of the sixteenth century working with five different alcaldes mayores from 1573 to 1598. The maps from this painter not only reflect his individual talent but also the Spanish authorities’ reliance on his expertise to describe and define the micro-localities of Tehuantepec, and in one instance, to map the entire region. In their majority, the maps informed a growth in ranching activities preceded by petitions from

Spaniards and natives who wished to access land. The maps share a similar composition, use of cartographic signs, and application of color that make it easy to discern the author’s signature style. In each case, the painter worked within official parameters centered on the definition of sites in relation to settlements. For a commission from the alcalde mayor Juan de Torres de Lagunas for the Relaciones Geográficas survey, the painter set out to map the entire region of Tehuantepec (Figure 18). We can infer from the detailed map presented to Torres de Lagunas that a discussion about its range including major towns, roads, and rivers preceded its execution. In fact, the map’s detail prompted the official to write a key assigning letters to its various features and then preparing a separate written description he included with his relación.296

After completing the surveys, officials returned their responses to Mexico City from where they made the journey back to Spain. On November 21, 1583 administrators at the Council of the Indies in Seville turned over to López de Velasco three legajos, or large bundles, of relaciones and maps to inform the King’s project.297 We can never know how López de Velasco reacted when he first inspected the responses he had

296 Relación de Tehuantepec, BLAC, Folder XXV-4, f. 4v-6.

297 Cline included a Spanish transcription of the inventory of manuscripts and maps that were handed over to López de Velasco in 1583. “The Relaciones Geográficas,” Appendix D, 237-240. 162

commissioned though perhaps we can anticipate a sense of disappointment about the mapped portion of the survey. For one thing, a large quantity of the responses did not include any maps. In another respect, the maps he did receive, a majority of which were

Indian-made, reflected at best a mixture of native and European pictorial traditions, at worst an unreadable―to European eyes―visual portrayal of the New World landscape.

Whatever the case, the maps were inspected and catalogued under a file labeled

“Descripción y Población” presumably housed with the chronicler-cosmographer.298 On the map of Amoltepeque, for example, two different inscriptions (Figures 47 and 48) bear witness to their inspection in Spain. The first simply states “Amoltepeque” to indicate its origin while the second indicates the name of the town as well as its assignation of a catalogue number.

The file existed or originated when the King appointed Juan de Ovando y Godoy as Visitor of the Council of the Indies in 1569.299 As Ovando’s secretary during the restructuring of the Council two years earlier, López de Velasco was well positioned to know about its existence, a matter compounded by Ovando’s support of the information- gathering activities of the chronicler-cosmographer in later years. In 1596, a new cosmographer, Andrés García Céspedes, re-organized the Descripción y Población file, his work noticeable via his signature and multiple annotations (Figure 49) of regions, ethnic states, bishoprics, and towns on the margins of many of the responses. Later chroniclers such as Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas and the jurist Antonio de León

298 There is some debate about the identity of the cataloguer. The two likely candidates are López de Velasco and Céspedes. See Cline, HMAI, 196.

299 Cline, “The Relaciones Geográficas,” HMAI, 189. 163

Pinelo accessed material from the Relaciones Geográficas in the Descripción y Población file for their own works on the Indies.300

Despite the use and circulation of the materials produced for the Relaciones

Geográficas, this unique and massive imperial effort has usually been described as an unsuccessful venture. Howard Cline noted that, “little or no administrative use was apparently ever made of them. With some few exceptions they seemingly lay untouched in files until . . . the late eighteenth century.”301 Along similar lines, Barbara Mundy has observed that, “When López de Velasco compiled a terse catalogue of the texts and maps of the Relaciones that had arrived to Spain by 1583, he must have been afflicted with an overriding sense of the project’s failure.”302 Admittedly, the king’s desire to produce the most up-to-date atlas and chronicle of the Indies did not come to fruition under López de

Velasco’s leadership, but his goal of obtaining informed reports about his possessions in the New World far exceeded any past efforts in this respect. If Phillip considered the project a failure, he did not deprive López de Velasco of advancement in his professional career, appointing the former chronicler-cosmographer as his private secretary in 1591.

In another respect, the Relaciones Geográficas mobilized a rather large bureaucratic machine that in the case of New Spain relied on indigenous knowledge to fulfill the request.

300 Cline, “The Relaciones Geográficas,” HMAI, 194. Appendix E includes a Spanish transcription of the manuscripts consulted by León Pinelo, 240-242.

301 Cline, “The Relaciones Geográficas,” HMAI, 194.

302 Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 27.

164

Conclusion

Painters in Oaxaca made maps drawing from regional traditions that by the 1570s incorporated a mixture of symbols from the European and Mesoamerican pictorial canons. From the 1570s to the 1600s, a large number of maps informed petitions for land from individuals who sought royal grants for agriculture, livestock, and cattle-raising.

The use and circulation of pictorial documents of various kinds to negotiate aspects of imperial rule associated with tribute, labor, rights and privileges, commerce, and land presented challenges for local scribes confronted with their inspection. The simplicity with which painters often portrayed spatial relationships responded in part to a need to communicate to multiple audiences that included the scribes and alcaldes mayores associated with the lettered city, but also caciques and indigenous towns who had a stake in the acquisition and retention of land and other resources. Native pictorial manuscripts continued to circulate in various forms after the sixteenth century as Indian painters and scribes adapted styles, materials, and iconography to accommodate contemporary needs.

Whether or not most officials had any previous experience reviewing and authorizing pictorial documents remains uncertain but they certainly did not shy away from taking possession of a map through the use of their quills. In fact, their participation transformed a map’s appearance forever, a reminder of the region’s dependence on the officers of the lettered city but also a nod to local practice, an accepted part of conducting business in Oaxaca. This type of interaction fostered new ways of communicating across cultural frontiers fostering an exchange of symbols and representational techniques applied in certain aspects of manuscript culture. Legal and notarial writing functioned as 165

the primary tools used to legitimize spatial practices―including the validation of maps―though social memory and tradition also played important roles in this process sometimes taking precedent against the written word. These activities were tied to spatial routines including ritual boundary walking, surveying, witness testimony, mapping, and naming designed to define and control the natural environment. 166

CHAPTER 4: A TRUE AND FAITHFUL COPY

The natives of the town of Xoxocotlán . . . presented two maps, one of them old, torn, and frayed with the passage of time, the other copied and produced according to and as the ancient one.

― Francisco de Medina, a local scribe from Antequera (1686)

In the fall of 1686, Antonio de Abellán y Carrasco needed a map.303 As alcalde mayor of the Cuatro Villas del Marquesado, Abellán oversaw a range of civil and criminal cases involving the region’s Indian, Spanish, and African members. Abellán mediated a case between a local Spaniard named Bartolomé Ruíz, and Santa Cruz

Xoxocotlán, a Mixtec town south of Antequera, the Spanish seat of power in the region.304 The parties disputed ten measures of a livestock ranch known as an estancia de ganado menor effectively under Ruíz’s control.305 On October 3, two political officers from Xoxocotlán appeared before Abellán to present an ancient map they said described all of the town’s land.306 The two men suggested the map would facilitate the alcalde mayor’s impending survey of Xoxocotlán’s property but because of its physical state,

303 An earlier version of this chapter titled, “A True and Faithful Copy: Reproducing Indian Maps in the Seventeenth-Century Valley of Oaxaca,” appeared in “Imperial Geographies and Spatial Memories,” a special issue of the Journal of Latin American Geography 11/S (2012): 117-144.

304 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4.

305 A medida, or measure, equaled about one half acre. An estancia de ganado menor measured around three square miles; the larger estancia de ganado mayor, or cattle ranches, measured close to seven square miles.

306 They belonged to the town’s cabildo, the municipal council that administered local matters. The size of each cabildo varied according to the size of each municipality. In 1691, Xoxocotlán’s cabildo included two alcaldes, five regidores, two alguacil mayores, and a scribe. The town received a license in 1640 to elect their own officials, a growing trend among Indian republics that sought independence from head towns known as cabeceras as the native population recovered from epidemics, see Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 30; Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-Between, 100-102.

167

“worn by the passage of time,” they petitioned a copy. Abellán evaluated the request and commissioned the task to a maestro pintor, a master painter. Three weeks later officials from the town accompanied an Indian cacique named Domingo de Zárate to meet with

Abellán to examine the copy he had made of the ancient map (Figure 5).307 Why was an indigenous map used in a land dispute during the late seventeenth century and what did the map’s audience have to say about those who commissioned and used it?

The story that unfolds in attempting to respond to these questions opens a unique window into the spectrum of social networks in the Valley of Oaxaca. The first part of this chapter overviews the region where the two Mixtec officials introduced the map, an area with a high concentration of land disputes. A close reading of the case contextualizes the commission and use of indigenous maps exposing political power shifts, generational relationships, spatial practices, and legal strategies used to defend land. These elements recall the “multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of them superimposed or knotted into one another” described by Clifford Geertz in his interpretation of culture.308 Geertz’s so-called “thick description,” an ethnographic analysis to sort out the elements of signification among social groups, sought to find meaning behind every day customs, gestures, and rituals. Drawing from this insight, the case of Xoxocotlán, a lengthy docket of over three hundred folios and the copied map, allows us to scrutinize the strategies used by social actors to engage one another and the

Spanish courts revealing the multiplicity of interests involved in the defense of land. A

307 Map of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán (1686), AGN, No. 625, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 249.

308 Clifford Gertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 10. 168

visual analysis of the copied map followed by an examination of the map’s reception within the legal circuits where it circulated reveal the advantages and limitations of pictorial manuscripts in legal disputes. The copied map, a strategic representation of space used to describe the town’s land as well as local social and political structures, formed a unique aspect of spatial practices in the Valley.

The Setting

The seven-hundred-square-kilometer area of the Valley of Oaxaca is located in southwestern Mexico and is dissected by three large mountain ranges (Figure 4). During the colonial period, its rich soil, temperate climate, and thriving trade networks hosted a diverse population that included Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Nahuas, Spaniards, Africans, and mestizos, individuals of mixed-race ancestry. Unlike other regions of New Spain, Indian towns and individuals retained control of two thirds of land in the region by the end of the eighteenth century. This situation contrasts sharply with northern and central Mexico where natives progressively lost territory to Spanish-dominated haciendas, landed estates with a mixed economy of cattle and agriculture. William Taylor’s Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca is a basic text to understand land tenure patterns in the Valley region.

Writing in the 1970s, Taylor challenged the idea that haciendas functioned as the dominant form of land tenure in Mexico, a notion advanced in François Chevalier’s Land and Society in Colonial Mexico. Although haciendas existed in Oaxaca, Taylor argued they were simply another type of land holding rather than the principal form of social 169

organization proposed by Chevalier. Later studies further contextualized regional variances that challenged the hacienda model of an earlier generation of scholars.309

The Valley’s unique experience stemmed from a less violent conquest than central Mexico, a smaller number of Spaniards in the region, and a more effective enforcement of laws designed to protect Indians.310 Repúblicas de indios, the Spanish term most often used to designate native townships, competed fiercely over spatial boundaries contributing to the high rate of litigation in the region.311 These

“micropatriotic” efforts to protect social organization and defend land from ethnic rivals characterized indigenous townships across Mesoamerica, a process also mirrored by

Spaniards in New Spain.312

Land held unique value in the Valley. It yielded basic foodstuffs including maize, wheat, and sugarcane as well as variety of fruits and vegetables including beans, avocados, maguey, onions, figs, and tomatoes. Land provided pasture for goats, sheep,

309 See Taylor, Landlord and Peasant and François Chevalier’s Land and Society in Colonial Mexico: The Great Hacienda, trans. Alvis Eustis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970). Also see James Lockhart, “Encomienda and Hacienda,” in Of Things of the Indies: Essays Old and New in Early Latin American History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); and Eric Van Young, Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth-Century Mexico: The Rural Economy of the Guadalajara Region, 1675-1820 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), and “Mexican Rural History Since Chevalier: The Historiography of the Colonial Hacienda,” Latin American Research Review 18 (1983): 5-61. More recent scholarship has drawn on Oaxaca’s unique land holding patterns to examine the role of native intermediaries in the negotiation of power and natural resources in the region’s northern sierra, see Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-Between, 131-157.

310 Taylor, 198.

311 Taylor, 82-89, 209-10. Also see Méndez Martínez and Méndez Torres, Límites, mapas y títulos primordiales.

312 Robert Haskett, “Paper Shields,” 111.

170

cattle, horses, and swine and supplied wood for fuel and building materials.313 Spaniards held haciendas, estancias de ganado mayor (cattle ranches), smaller livestock estates known as labores, and estancias de ganado menor.314 In addition to farming and livestocking sites, indigenous groups placed a high premium on land because of its ritual value tied to cellular units of social organization known as ñuu in Mixtec communities and yetze among Zapotec ones.315 Marcello Carmagnani suggests that in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, land among Mixtecs and Zapotecs was tied to a revival of ethnic values and political organization, efforts that sought to curb the effects of colonialism.316

“Territory,” he writes, “was conceived as something altogether sacred and earthly.

Sacred because it was the spatial dimension conferred by the gods to its children and earthly because it was the human and geographical space capable of synthesizing the fulfillment of everyday needs and the reproduction of future generations.”317 In the

Valley, residents competed across ethnic lines to secure local boundaries, revealing in the process a web of interests that shaped spatial practices.

Maps usually entered the public record to facilitate claims to land. The region’s rich manuscript culture, a coalition of scribes, clerks, lawyers, translators, mapmakers,

313 Taylor, 13-17.

314 Taylor, 111-140.

315 See Terraciano, 102-132; John M.D. Pohl, “Mexican Codices, Maps, and Lienzos as Social Contracts,” in Writing without Words; and Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-Between, 20. The ñuu or ethnic state formed the basic unit of organization for Mixtec societies in Oaxaca equivalent to the altepetl in central Mexico. See Lockhart, The Nahuas, 14-47.

316 Marcello Carmagnani, El regreso de los dioses: El proceso de reconstitución de la identidad étnica en Oaxaca. Siglos XVII y XVIII (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988), 13.

317 Carmagnani, 104. 171

and assorted Spanish and Indian officials, generated various types of handwritten documents for individuals and corporate entities engaged in commercial and legal affairs.

Native lords and towns, the Church, Spanish landholders, and religious brotherhoods known as cofradías all procured titles, boundary surveys, maps, testimonies, and auction records to serve as evidence in matters related to land. A unique aspect of manuscript culture in Oaxaca involves the circulation of indigenous maps, pictorials, and alphabetic records written in native languages.318 Individuals relied on the use of manuscripts to verify a claim, and on witnesses to legitimate that claim through memory. Both manuscripts and memory worked in tandem to secure a favorable judgment, but were themselves subjected to the power dynamics of each locality.

The Second Wave

In the late seventeenth century and into the 1700s, patrons including Indian towns, caciques, alcaldes mayores, and Spanish landholders still petitioned maps from painters such as Zárate primarily to litigate disputes over land. Between 1610 and 1670, the number of maps located in the archives represents a much smaller amount than those made in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. This shift paralleled dramatic population losses in the Valley during the same period. While Antequera hosted in 1570 nearly 8,000 tributaries, natives who paid a forced tax to Spanish authorities, disease reduced this figure to 2,000 by 1646. The Cuatro Villas reported similar losses. A 1570

318 Terraciano, 15-65; Monaghan, “The Text in the Body”; Smith, 1973; and Boone, Stories in Red and Black. 172

census estimated a little over 7,000 tributaries but only 849 by 1643.319 Scattered maps in the latter part of seventeenth century suggests indigenous mapping sometimes informed spatial practices that included surveying, ritualized boundary walking, and witness testimony. The surges responded to royal efforts to enforce legislation including the Composición de tierras decree of 1631 for the parceling of land, and newer policies such as the extension of the fundo legal, the minimum space allocated to each Indian community, promoted in the 1680s.320 Authorities sought to generate funds and to regulate land tenure in order to manage it more effectively at times reviving old rivalries or provoking disagreements between neighbors that often led to litigation. Raymond

Craib has noted that “sharp lines of political and proprietary demarcation are neither timeless nor natural. . . . The result of requiring villagers to precisely fix their borders could often spur as many conflicts as it resolved.”321 While the majority of indigenous maps made in Oaxaca date to the late sixteenth century, the tradition of making them continued into the eighteenth.

Some patrons commissioned copies of earlier maps. Extant examples suggest reproductions of late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century maps were made mostly in the central Valley after the 1680s, a pattern that continued into the late eighteenth century.322

319 Gerhard, 51, 93.

320 Royal authorities increased the fundo legal from 500 varas, roughly 1,375 feet, to 600 varas or 1,605 feet. AGEO, Alcaldías Mayores, leg. 62, exp. 12; Enrique Florescano, Historia de las historias, 241; Taylor, 6-7, 68. Each vara equaled roughly 33 inches.

321 Raymond Craib, Cartographic Mexico: A History of State Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 64-65.

322 In the AGN, examples of copies made in the Valley of Oaxaca include the map of Zimatlán and Ocotlán (1636), AGN, No. 3009, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 85, exp. 4; the map of Ocotlán and Zimatlán (1686), AGN, 173

Copies accounted for nearly half of the indigenous maps found after the late seventeenth century. The copies themselves emerged as original productions that attempted to capture the details of the model but that also reflected the painter and the patron’s contemporary sensibilities and needs. In some cases, copies served as models for newer commissions. Barbara Mundy and Dana Leibsohn have argued that in late nineteenth- century Mexico copies of sixteenth-century codices “became foundations for new narratives” that allowed the state to portray an image of a powerful pre-Colombian past bypassing the colonial context in which they were made.323 In the Valley of Oaxaca, those who commissioned copies attempted to establish a continuous thread with the past that often included negotiations with Spanish authorities in order to gain control over land. This is a particularly salient feature of some títulos primordiales, indigenous titles made to resemble sixteenth-century legal documents.324 Títulos circulated primarily during the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth as a result of the same pressures on land that prompted the commission of maps.

No. 3039, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 146, exp 13, f. 33; Map of Ocotlán and Zimatlán (1734), AGN, No. 3018, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 102, exp. 33, f. 24; the map of Xoxocotlán (1686), AGN, No. 625, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 249; and the map of Santa María Guelaxé, San Jerónimo Tlacochaguaya y Santa Cruz Papalutla, (1690[1778]), AGN, No. 0956, Tierras, vol. 1206, exp. 1, cuad. 8, f. 21. At the Mapoteca Orozco y Berra, see Xoxocotlán, 1718, MOB No. 1176-OYB-7272-A; 1660 original lost; 1771 copy lost, but image available in Smith, 338. For the Mixteca, see the original Map of Guaytlatlauca, Tosatengo, Coaxochtla, Mimichtla, Tisacovaya, and Socontitlán (1609), AGN, No. 2500, Tierras, vol. 3619, exp. 4, f. 7; and its copy, the map of Guaytlatlauca and Socotitlán, made 1709, AGN, No. 0663, Tierras, vol. 254, exp. 2, f. 24bis.

323 Mundy and Leibsohn, 340.

324 For sources on this subject see n. 22 and 145. 174

Negotiating Landscapes

Individuals and corporate entities in the Valley often turned to the courts in matters related to land. For a large part of the seventeenth century, Xoxocotolán and the owners of a neighboring hacienda to the west of the town quarreled over the limits of five acres of land defined by an assortment of trees (Figure 50). According to Xoxocotlán, the five acres formed part of their patrimonial lands since time immemorial. Three successive hacienda owners argued the five acres formed part of an estancia de ganado menor sold by a cacique from Cuilapa to Francisco Muñoz de Tejada, a Spanish landholder, to add to the property. Beginning in the 1640s, the town and hacienda owners litigated on separate occasions over the course of fifty years for control of this property. During each instance, the parties involved presented written evidence, witnesses provided oral testimony, and officials surveyed the physical terrain resulting in a verdict, followed by a break in litigation. Tensions usually resurfaced when a new owner took over the hacienda property, each new tenant claiming the right to the estancia including the five acres of land and contesting the limits declared by Xoxocotlán. The records indicate the town relied on the testimony of elder Indian males and some influential Spaniards to attest to the town’s claims. After decades of successful litigation,

Xoxocotlán lost the right to the five acres in the early 1680s when they failed to provide a written title. The three phases analyzed below contextualize spatial practices used to divide, to defend, and to assign meaning to the natural environment, all of which led to the introduction of the copied map in 1686.

175

The Red Roses Tree (1643-1649)

In 1643, officials from Xoxocotlán complained to the courts about the Spanish landholder Francisco Muñoz de Tejada. According to the complaint, Muñoz violently expelled Diego Juárez, Juan Jacinto, and other Indians on September 24 as they cut wood along a contested boundary northwest of Xoxocotlán’s church. Muñoz, they argued, attempted to kill Juárez and the others with a spear and took away their axes humiliating them and committing other, unspecified, offenses.325 Muñoz had also prevented

Xoxocotlán’s horses and oxen from grazing freely further angering the Indians and causing the animals much harm. In order to prevent additional altercations, the officers from Xoxocotlán petitioned Hernando Ortiz de Sepúlveda, the alcalde mayor of the

Cuatro Villas, to affirm the limits of their town’s land in a process known as amojonar, a survey of natural and manmade boundaries to define property limits.326 Yanna

Yannakakis contends that “ritual boundary marking emerged as a particularly salient spatial practice because of the degree to which indigenous people accepted Spanish notions of property, in which firm boundaries were critically important.”327 Amojonar comprised a key element to assign value to space in Oaxaca.

On September 28, the town’s political officers and other members of the community along with Ortiz, Muñoz, and Nicolás Rodríguez, a bilingual scribe who spoke Nahuatl, gathered at the top of a hill toward the western portion of Xoxocotlán’s

325 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 67.

326 Margot Beyersdorff, “Covering the Earth: Mapping the Walkabout in Andean Pueblos de Indios,” Latin American Research Review 42 (2007), 130.

327 Yanna Yannakakis, “Witnesses, Spatial Practices,” 164. 176

domains. The Indian officers pointed to a tree that blossomed with red roses (árbol de rosas coloradas) and said it was the first boundary marker, or mojón. They led the group southward down the hill stopping along the way long enough to rebuild an ancient boundary stone (mojón antiguo) as they journeyed towards the next marker that skirted el

Camino Real, the King’s Highway. When they reached this ancient mojón―the source of the conflict―the scribe recorded the following passage: “When we arrived at the

Royal Highway that comes from Antequera to the Villa of Cuilapa, we found another stone mojón the Indians said was ancient and they placed a cross there. They asked the alcalde mayor to witness the way they had arranged the markers.”328 This symbolic act of possession sought to preserve both the boundary marker and the memory of its renewal in written form. The act was designed to serve as a memory trigger allowing later generations to reference it in their own disputes with neighbors.

Muñoz had purchased the estancia nine years earlier from Don Gerónimo de Lara y Guzmán, a powerful cacique from nearby Cuilapa. Lara, a Spanish-speaking Indian described as ladino who wore Spanish dress boasted, “for some of us, selling them is of no consequence, there are many more lands that form part of our cacicazgo [entailed

Indian estate] which we farm and lease to others.”329 Caciques, native hereditary lords, often held entailed estates but their power varied from region to region. When called to testify about the limits of his estancia, Lara agreed with Xoxocotlán that the piece of land

328 The original transcription reads, “Hasta llegar al Camino Real que se viene de la Ciudad de Antequera a la Villa de Cuilapa de donde así mismo pareció otro mojón de piedras que dijeron los dichos naturales ser antiguo y allí pusieron una cruz y pidieron al dicho alcalde mayor se les diese por testimonio de cómo habían puesto los dichos mojones,” AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 6.

329 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 20.

177

in dispute did not form part of the original sale. Five witnesses, including four Spaniards and an Indian cacique, confirmed Lara’s reputable character and proper lineage swaying the alcalde mayor to recognize the boundary claimed by Xoxocotlán. Except for Lara’s testimony, no written title appears to have accompanied the Indian town’s defense of its boundary, a fact not lost on Muñoz.

Muñoz urged the alcalde mayor to reconsider his decision. For Muñoz, the lack of a written title placed the Indians of the town, not himself, at a disadvantage, a point he made clearly in a deposition before a scribe on October 3, 1643. He asserted that his title, a merced (royal land grant) issued in 1591 to cacique Juan Guzmán, a relative of Don

Gerónimo, specified the location of the estancia and he petitioned authorities to measure the landscape.330 He further argued that “the Indians had not presented authentic proof to confirm that the lands were theirs,” adding that, in fact, he was one of the first holders

(primeros poseedores) of the property, a testimony of time that sought to bind him to the land.331 On the surface, Muñoz’s appeal fulfilled the key elements for a successful lawsuit in New Spain, namely the presentation of an official title of ownership. In 1644,

330 A copy of the original document included in the case states that a merced was issued to “Don Juan de Guzmán indio principal de la Villa de Cuilapa de un sitio de estancia para ganado menor de ella en la parte y lugar que en lengua zapoteca dicen Tepeacatontze y en mixteca dicen Cuyen; una loma yerma que va a dar unas tierras altas peladas que por la una baja una quebradilla y por las dichas lomas a sus lados están unas quebradillas la cual por mi mandato y comisión fue a ver y vido Luis Suárez de Peralta, alcalde mayor de la Ciudad de Antequera, AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 68-69. For the sale of the estancia to Francisco Muñoz de Tejada, Guzmán’s heirs described the location of the property in more detail: “Decimos que nosotros [The Guzmán caciques] tenemos y poseemos un sitio de estancia despoblado en una loma yerma a la falda de un cerro alto en el pago que llaman Tepeacatonstui en términos de la Villa de Cuilapa que linda por la parte del Oriente con tierras del pueblo de Xoxocotlán de esta jurisdicción y por la parte del norte con unos cerros altos que son tierras realengas y por la del poniente con tierras del cacicazgo de Mecatepeque y Huihui que son dos barrios de la dicha Villa de Cuilapa y por la del sur con tierras patrimoniales del cacicazgo de Doña María de Mendoza cacique fue de la dicha villa,” AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 19-20.

331 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 67. 178

judges at the Real Audiencia in Mexico City, the Viceroyalty’s highest judicial authority, reviewed the case issuing an auto, an official sentence that instead confirmed alcalde mayor Ortiz de Sepúlveda’s decision to uphold Xoxocotlán’s claim on the five acres of land.

In Oaxaca, the notion of “time immemorial,” especially among fiercely competitive ñuu, served to strengthen the bonds between individuals and place by according first settlers a privileged status. Royal decrees issued in 1588 and again in

1594 stipulated that “estancias and lands awarded to Spaniards should not be detrimental to Indians” embedding an element of time into the possession of land.332 Recourse to this device, especially in the absence of a legal title, appealed to an official’s sense of tradition calling into play the elements of custom and local rule.333 When the natives from Xoxocotlán brought caciques and elder witnesses to testify on their behalf, they sought to establish an ongoing relationship between the past and present that had a direct bearing on land disputes by drawing from peoples’ collective memories. Collective memories expressed a continual link to the past pliable by those who used them and constantly in danger of disappearance.334 Muñoz’s claim as a first settler on the property

332 The section that regulated land tenure in the Recopilación de las leyes de los reinos de Indias includes numerous edicts issued during the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries instructing cabildos to divide lands but to leave Indian lands untouched. That authorities reissued them on a regular basis reflects the difficulties in upholding these prescriptions. Recopilación de leyes, 118-122.

333 The idea of “time immemorial” appeals to customary practices defined by publicly accepted guidelines. Similar rhetoric appeared in early modern Spain when different social groups negotiated privileges and natural resources with authorities. See Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain; and Richard Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile, 1500-1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981).

334 Susan Crane, “Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory,” American Historical Review 102 (1997), 1373-1377; and Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoir,” Representations 26 (1989), 9. 179

near Xoxocotlán sought to challenge the Indian’s own claim of time immemorial.

Indeed, memories played an important role in shaping the contours of the Valley of

Oaxaca’s spatial boundaries but they “represented a construct that masked competing claims through the political domination of a particular group of elites.”335 During this first moment of contention, a period that lasted roughly from 1644 through 1649, the natives from Xoxocotlán successfully retained the property that bordered the neighboring hacienda. They did so without a formal title, relying instead on powerful Indian witnesses such as Don Gerónimo de Lara to support their claim.

Xoxocotlán v. Antonio Rendón (1649-1660)

Francisco Muñoz’s nephew inherited his uncle’s hacienda and sold it in 1649 prior to his death to another Spaniard by the name of Antonio Rendón, a treasurer for the

Church in Antequera. By 1655, Rendón made advances on the same portion of land prompting Xoxocotlán to ratify the 1644 amparo, a document that protected the boundaries defined during their litigation against Muñoz. According to their petition, individuals under Rendón’s employ attempted to gain control of the land by sowing maguey plants and allowing Rendón’s cattle to graze freely, a practice that greatly damaged the natives’ parcels. Juan Pérez de Salamanca, Xoxocotlán’s attorney, stated his clients held property that belonged to their community which they had possessed since time immemorial.336 Pérez de Salamanca emphasized the Mixtec town’s

335 Yannakakis, “Witnesses, Spatial Practices,” 173.

336 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 1.

180

relationship to the past by relying on the older manuscripts to establish a claim, especially since they included a boundary survey that described Xoxocotlán’s mojones. The importance of memory and manuscripts can be gleaned from a declaration provided by the officials from Xoxocotlán two years later in 1657 while the case was still unresolved:

“[Our lands are] here marked and surveyed as is clearly evident from these documents we present . . . We request you order the limits and boundaries of our lands be respected, and to newly protect our borders with an amparo according to the aforementioned manuscripts.”337 Clearly, to the natives from Xoxocotlán the fact that their mojones were memorialized in written form in prior years acted as a shield to protect their property.

Manuscripts produced to defend land stand out as important sites that capture collective memories revealing the way individuals interacted with the past. In the Valley of Oaxaca, notaries recorded a range of experiences including petitions and complaints, notification of witnesses, public announcements and auctions of land, presentations of written, pictorial, and oral evidence, and land surveys to measure spatial extension.

Ultimately, the relationship between individuals, corporate entities and land was ritualized and recorded in public acts of possession that brought together litigants, townspeople, Spanish and Indian authorities, translators, witnesses, and painters to divide any given estate in the region. In each of these cases, mastery of the past in oral and written form supported the heavy burden of maintaining land in a contested environment such as the Valley.

337 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 291.

181

In 1657, Spanish officials visited Xoxocotlán in order to inspect and protect the boundary markers in dispute. In this case, political officers from the Indian town engaged collective memories about their territorial limits through an examination of written documents, but also by recalling the physical landscape which still bore evidence of earlier boundary inspections. On October 25, 1657 officials from Xoxocotlán led

Spanish authorities as well as the hacienda’s custodian or mayordomo, Manuel de Leyva, once again to the top of the hill towards the western flanks of the town where the survey commenced. The scribe noted a pile of large and small rocks next to a set of trees that included a wild fig and a crimson rose, the latter presumably the same one described over a decade earlier during the inspection with Francisco Muñoz. After the alcalde mayor protected (amparó) the boundary, the group followed southward until they reached another group of rocks the Indians described as “the ancient mojón referred to in said manuscripts.” 338 By highlighting the earlier encounter, the town sought to establish a relationship between the boundary and the manuscript’s content to strengthen their claim.

The entourage passed a group of plum trees not mentioned in the previous survey on their way to the last mojón, a cross on the edge of the Royal Highway erected by former Indian officials during their boundary walk with Muñoz in September 1643. It is evident from the day’s transcription that the representatives from Xoxocotlán and the Spanish officials relied on the older manuscript and the memory of each mojón to confirm the limits of the property. At the end of the day, the alcalde mayor protected Xoxocotlán’s lands with an

338 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 293. 182

amparo instructing the hacienda’s mayordomo not to trespass or let Rendón’s cattle graze beyond the limits described in the document.

Three months later, on February 5, 1658 officials from Xoxocotlán returned to

Antequera to present alcalde mayor, Pablo Fajardo de Aguilar, a signed document by

New Spain’s Viceroy, Francisco Fernández de la Cueva, which ratified the earlier amparo. Fajardo followed prescribed rituals and guidelines when handling the folios noting, “having seen it, I took it in my hands, kissed it, and placed the letter from my

King and natural lord above my head to carry out [any orders] in compliance with His

Majesty’s wishes.”339 One year later, the natives from Xoxocotlán again petitioned an amparo to protect their boundaries, this time their mojoneras had started to disappear.

Their request stated that their mojones had “deteriorated with time” but also that some people were intentionally removing them to cause them harm. On May 5 1659, officials from Xoxocotlán, Spanish authorities, and other assorted guests gathered again at the hilltop with the fig tree and crimson roses to follow the trail of mojones that led towards the cross on the edge of the Royal Highway. We may infer from the records that

Xoxocotlán’s amparo succeeded in thwarting Rendón’s encroachment allowing the town some measure of control since the complaints stop in 1659. By the end of this cycle, the town of Xoxocotlán had secured their boundaries through an amparo ratified in Mexico

City by the Viceroy. They had done so by deploying a combination of written titles and collective memories tied to the natural world, the limits of their town, and their shared political experience.

339 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 2. 183

The Plum Trees (1676-1692)

In 1676, ownership of the Muñoz hacienda passed to another Spaniard, a captain named Bartolomé Ruíz. By 1680, Ruíz reclaimed the five acres, now planted with corn and beans by a set of plum trees near the red rose tree identified in the previous survey.

When Xoxocotlán complained to the courts, Ruíz’s attorney, Diego Fernández de

Córdoba, argued that the five acres in fact formed part of his client’s property.

According to him, it was Xoxocotlán’s residents who had breached the boundary of the plum trees, the halfway point between the hill with the crimson roses and the cross by the

King’s Highway. Ruíz’s attorney recognized that amparos, legal documents that sheltered its holder under the law existed which protected the boundaries in favor of

Xoxocotlán, but he claimed the town had succeeded in retaining the land for so long because of the “improper and impetuous ruling of the alcaldes mayores who against all justice” protected the natives in the first place.340 This comment sought to discredit past legal verdicts that according to the attorney reeked of complicity between Spanish authorities and natives. Ruíz capitalized on the fact that Xoxocotlán had no legal title to the land grounding his claim to it in the recognition of a legitimate bill of sale like his own.341 Since he physically controlled the five acres of land in question, he believed the

340 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 81.

341 Ruíz’s traspaso, a transfer of rights and responsibilities from one individual to another, on November 16, 1676 included the transfer cost (1,300 pesos) and the mortgage (censo) on the property stipulating, “Antonio Rendón otorga que traspasa el dicho sitio y tierras de labor y casas en el edificadas con todas sus tierras, mercedes, pastos, aguas, y abrevaderos.” The parties agreed to survey the property in the near future noting, “se obliga de entregarle un mandamiento [a Bartolomé Ruíz] para ajustar la medidad del dicho sitio y estancia que se le despachó en virtud de los títulos,” but no such document accompanied the docket. Ruíz did obtain the original merced awarded to Don Juan de Guzmán described in n. 315 as well as subsequent transfer agreements, boundary surveys, and other related documents associated with the property, AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 77-78. 184

lack of a proper title did not work against him. To resolve the dispute, the alcalde mayor ordered both parties to present evidence of ownership in early 1682 including their legal records and witnesses.

Xoxocotlán assembled a group of elder males, mostly Indian lords with ties to the region, whom they called on to support their claim. It presented ten witnesses―eight

Indian men and two Spaniards―who testified about the boundaries that divided the lands of the town from those of the Ruíz estate. Luis de San Juan, a ninety-five-year old cacique agreed that the plum trees marked Xoxocotlán’s legitimate boundary; he knew this, he said, because he attended the amparo described above when serving as a political officer for Cuilapa. San Juan’s testimony presents a dilemma since the plum trees were not mentioned during the 1643 boundary walk. It is possible Xoxocotlán’s council members and Spanish officials chose not to reference the trees in writing but that local residents identified them as a natural marker. An alternative explanation suggests, as

Ruíz’s attorney later commented, that San Juan lied to authorities in order to support the town’s claims. Andrés de Velazco, another cacique from Cuilapa, testified that he witnessed Ruíz’s son, Francisco, enter to the east beyond the plum tree mojones that marked the property limits, ruining the Indians’ sweet potato fields. Velazco had participated in an official boundary perambulation in 1657 and knew the borders well.

According to the scribe who transcribed his deposition, Velazco, San Juan, and several other caciques who gave testimony wore Spanish clothing (traje de español) and spoke

Spanish, both symbols of prestige usually recognized in notarial records. 185

The testimony of the two Spanish witnesses also hints at the way interests shaped testimony in the Valley. Juan de Almogabar, a thirty-eight-year old landholder, reluctantly confirmed he had acted as a witness in a boundary survey during a former dispute between Xoxocotlán and another property owner. When questioned if he knew anything about the conflict between Ruíz and Xoxocotlán, he stated simply, “No, I know nothing.” When asked about the relationship between Ruíz and the Indian town, the witness said, “I only known that they contested [the estancia] this year.” But Almogabar could not deny that during an earlier land survey he witnessed the boundaries “started at a tree with crimson flowers leading to a triad of plum trees,” the same marker currently under contention. Although he confirmed the boundaries, he made a point of emphasizing he had witnessed Bartolomé Ruíz utilize the five acres of land in the past and that this was the first time Xoxocotlán complained: “I have seen Antonio Rendón

[the hacienda’s prior owner] and then Bartolomé Ruíz sow beyond the boundaries but I have never known the Indians to do the same or to contest [this boundary] until now.”342

Hardly the compelling testimony the Indians had hoped for. Weeks later, Xoxocotlán’s legal counsel criticized Almogabar’s deposition suggesting he feared Ruíz and deliberately provided false testimony. A second Spanish witness, Marcial de Molano, also testified. Molano told authorities he knew the land belonged to Xoxocotlán because he had witnessed a boundary survey presided by an alcalde mayor. Ruíz’s attorney,

342 The original reads, “ha visto que sin embargo de dichos mojones a sembrado cogiéndolos dentro el dicho Antonio Rendón y después el dicho Capitán Bartolomé Ruíz sin que sepa que los dichos Indios lo hayan hecho nunca ni contradicho sino es en esta ocasión,” AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 100. 186

Diego Fernández de Córdoba, later challenged Molano’s testimony suggesting the witness had ulterior motives to verify Xoxocotlán’s claim.

Ruíz’s attorney brought together a group of individuals that included nine Spanish men and one Indian from a range of trades including farmers, cattlemen, butchers, scribes, and public officials. These witnesses emphasized their own connection to the past and to the hacienda in order to establish a legitimate claim. The testimony of two men, a Spaniard and an Indian cacique, added a layer of complexity to the suit when they suggested Don Félix de Mendoza, a powerful cacique from Xoxocotlán with a penchant for pulque and public displays of violence, also conspired to appropriate the five acres.343

Francisco de Medina, a local scribe from Antequera recalled that eight months prior to his testimony he had assisted the alcalde mayor of the Cuatro Villas in giving possession of lands to Simón de Chávez, another cacique from Cuilapa. Chávez was married to

Doña María de Guzmán, a descendent of the original holders of the merced land owned by Ruíz and a relative of Don Félix; the couple sought to protect their assets. During the survey, Chávez and Don Félix gathered in Xoxocotlán with a cadre of nobles and other

Indians to claim the land that bordered with Ruíz’s property. According to Medina,

Chávez and Guzmán intended to claim the entire estancia as part of their patrimony before Bartolomé Ruíz met them at the boundaries to protest the claim. Medina testified

Ruíz challenged the two caciques asking, “How can you claim my estancia and lands that were sold legitimately by your wife’s grandfather and which I posses with just title?”

343 AGEO, Alcaldías Mayores, leg. 48, exp 10. See discussion in Chapter 1, 78-86. 187

Chávez and Guzmán responded they no longer wished to take possession of the estancia and proceeded to survey other parts of the cacicazgo.344

The final witness, a forty-eight year old Indian male in Spanish dress named Juan de Aguilar suggested a conspiracy in Xoxocotlán to deprive Ruíz of his property.

Aguilar, a cacique from Xoxocotlán, assured the judge that the estancia, presumably including the five acres belonged to Ruíz having passed down legitimately from

Francisco Muñoz. He stated that because he believed Ruíz to be the rightful owner, the other native officials avoided and refused to speak to him lest he reveal the truth of their schemes. Aguilar’s testimony exposed a clear rift within Xoxocotlán’s indigenous elite, many of whom supported the powerful Don Félix. During the earlier dispute between the town and Francisco Muñoz in the 1640s, officials from Xoxocotlán relied on assistance from Don Gerónimo de Lara, a wealthy cacique from Cuilapa, to verify the limits of the estancia. Following the same strategy to litigate against Ruíz proved more complicated since Mendoza’s actions raised suspicion among his critics.

In a petition to the alcalde mayor in June 1682, Ruíz’s attorney, Fernández de

Córdoba claimed Don Félix de Mendoza had persuaded the witnesses to provide false testimony in order to strengthen their case. He stated the witnesses testified at the behest of Don Félix, “an enemy of mine, who for this occasion incited this conflict persuading the other natives from the town to do it with his great authority as a powerful

344 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 401.

188

nobleman.”345 Fernández claimed Mendoza imposed derramas, forced payments that exceeded Spanish demands for tribute, on Xoxocotlán’s residents and noted that

Mendoza’s father-in-law, ninety-five-year-old cacique Luis de San Juan and other kin made up the great portion of Xoxocotlán’s witness list. The lawyer capitalized on the tension between Xoxocotlán’s ruling elite arguing that Aguilar’s privileged position as a mayordomo, a custodian of community lands or other town possessions, confirmed his client’s testimony.

The picture that emerges from the testimony of these witnesses describes a complex web of relationships tempered by competing interests in land and in some cases leading to hostile accusations and open enmity. “The question of boundaries,” argues

Yannakakis, “became a fraught one in which local knowledge of land tenure on the one hand, and of Spanish property law on the other, could be wielded as weapons by indigenous elites acting as witnesses in pursuit of varied objectives.”346 In the Valley, alliances took on various shapes that often pitted townspeople and lesser nobles seeking access to resources against more powerful caciques looking to retain traditional rights and privileges.347 The fact that Juan de Aguilar, an Indian notable, testified against Mendoza and Xoxocotlán’s officials evinces the differences of indigenous interests and memory in matters related to land. Fernández’s comments about Mendoza’s sphere of power

345 “Don Félix de Mendoza, principal del dicho pueblo de Xoxocotlán, enemigo de mi parte y quien por dicha ocasión le movió dicho pleito persuadiendo a los demás naturales de dicho pueblo a ello con la mucha mano que tenía como principal y poderoso,” AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 129.

346 Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-Between, 165.

347 In the Valley, 18 cases—political disputes from 1582 to 1762; land disputes, 12 cases from 1576 to 1814. See Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 239. 189

suggests key Indian figures held influential positions in local affairs that threatened

Spanish and indigenous interests alike. Likewise, individuals such as Bartolomé Ruíz played an active role in shaping the region’s spatial contours.

In Mexico City, judges at the Real Audiencia reviewed the case in September

1682 issuing a verdict in favor of Bartolomé Ruíz. In Antequera, the alcalde mayor validated the disputed boundaries as described by Ruíz and warned the Indians not to disturb the Spanish landholder’s possession.348 During this phase of litigation, Ruíz secured the five acres of land under dispute near Xoxocotlán. Although this moment marked a shift in the relationship between Xoxocotlán and the neighboring hacienda, it did not deter the town from appealing the decision and further pursuing the claim. Four years later, the Real Audiencia in Mexico City granted Xoxocotlán an appeal.349 The introduction of the old map in 1686 and the subsequent commission of its copy were directly related to the chain of events described above.

A True and Faithful Copy

The map of Xoxocotlán copied by Zarate in 1686 (Figure 5) emphasized the town’s natural boundaries to legitimize the claims against Ruíz.350 Oriented to the west

(top of the map) towards the archeological site of Monte Albán’s southern range, an important ritual center in Oaxaca’s central valley, the map’s upper portion includes a

348 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 415.

349 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 172.

350 Appendix A includes a full transcription and translation of the Map of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán’s two dozen features. 190

chain of stylized mountains that extend downward on the right hand side. An ocelot

(Figure 51, No. 1) sits atop the mountain at the top left while a stylized tree with red- feathered leaves stands on the right (Figure 51, No. 2). The ocelot suggests a symbolic relationship with the mountain reminiscent of the place-glyph used in earlier indigenous mapping to convey meaning, in this case describing Ocelotepeque, ocelot hill

(ocelotl=ocelot/-peque=hill). Mary Elizabeth Smith explains place signs as logograms,

“pictorial representations of a place-name in which the pictorial units are the equivalent of one or more words.”351 Indigenous painters used logographic expression in local maps throughout the sixteenth century but this practice declined by the early seventeenth.

The moon in the map’s top center (Figure 51, No. 3) suggests nightfall to indicate the cardinal direction west. The second moon on the farthest right (Figure 51, No. 4) appears to blend into the landscape perhaps as an attempt to evoke noo yoo, literally

“moon-faced,” a reference to the flower that gave the town its first Mixtec name. After subduing the region in the late fifteenth century, the Nahuas rechristened the town

Xoxocotlán, the “land of abundant sour fruits” because of the many plum trees in the region, a group of which defined the property under dispute. The presence of multiple names reveals a layer of ordering used to assign meaning to social and political space.352

In Zárate’s copy, alphabetic glosses in Mixtec next to specific places (Figure 51, No. 9-

21) inscribed the landscape to fit Mixtec needs, a practice that as Barbara Mundy has

351 Smith, 37.

352 See, for instance, Marta Herrera, Santiago Muñoz, and Santiago Paredes, “Geographies of the Name: Naming Practices Among the Muisca and Páez in the Audiencias of Santafé and Quito, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Journal of Latin American Geography 11/S (2012): 93-118.

191

noted witnessed an attempt to control the blank spaces of a map but instead rendered them virtually unreadable to their Spanish audience.353

On the map’s right hand edge, an unnamed town represented by a church (Figure

51, No. 5) connects to another town (Figure 51, No. 7) by a southern road marked by footmarks, the pre-Colombian sign for travel, and hoof marks, a sixteenth-century device that signaled the arrival of horses and beasts of burden in Oaxaca.354 A series of mojones, or boundary markers (Figure 51, No. 8a-c), define the town’s borders along the road. A mojón with a cross on the top (Figure 51, No. 8b) suggests it represents the boundary described during the land survey conducted in 1643 when upon arriving at the Royal

Highway, officers from Xoxocotlán petitioned the alcalde mayor to witness their placing of a cross on an ancient marker. Below this stretch of land lies the town of Xoxocotlán in the center of the manuscript symbolized by a church. Zárate inscribed it “huee ñoho

Santa Cruz,” the “sacred house of Santa Cruz,” rather than Xoxocotlán. One may note the use of a Catholic theme, “The Holy Cross,” a symbol that catered to Spanish sensibilities about religion and the state but also to indigenous peoples’ incorporation of

Catholicism in their daily lives. Leibsohn argues that the use of the church sign occupied a progressively privileged position on Indian maps, gradually replacing hill glyphs in the sixteenth century.355 Churches, symbols laden with value across cultural spheres in the colonial world, allowed officials to identify towns on maps while drawing attention to

353 Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 175.

354 Though not mentioned on the map, the prominent size of each church and their positioning on the map suggest the original painting described de Villa of Oaxaca and Cuilapa, to which Xoxocotlán was subject.

355 Leibsohn, “Colony and Cartography,” 273.

192

indigenous spatial ordering.356 It is no coincidence that Zárate and the painter before him situated the key town in the center of the map, to emphasize its importance. J. B. Harley noted that such practices added “geopolitical force and meaning to representation” found on maps.357 A partitioned area with a black and green border in the central left portion of the map (Figure 51, No. 11) encases a series of boundaries, perhaps an attempt to indicate the old map’s original purpose since none of them appear to have any direct relationship with the Ruíz case. At the map’s bottom center, a bright orange sun signals east.

The map’s material condition played an important role in framing its message.

Zárate used a large piece of coarse linen fabric (88 x79 cm) and medium brown pigment for the background combining white, green, red, and violet colors to define mountains, streams, and buildings. His choice of materials reveals a distinct aspect of the map’s message. As Harley has argued, “all maps employ the common devices of rhetoric such as invocations of authority . . . and appeals to a potential readership through the use of colors, decoration, typography, dedications, or written justifications of their method.”358

The 1686 map followed pictorial traditions that required the application of specialized knowledge for the selection and preparation of organic and inorganic materials to paint, a distinct aspect of indigenous cartography throughout Oaxaca and other parts of

356 Frances Karttunen argues that sacred directions (east, north, west, south, and center) represented one of the most enduring aspects of pre-Hispanic culture during the colonial period, “After the Conquest: The Survival of Indigenous Patterns of Life and Belief,” Journal of World History 3 (1992), 242. I find Louise Burkhart’s assertion that the layout of native homes, “a microcosmic establishment of order, laid out to the four directions with the fire at the center of the house,” reflected indigenous ideas of spatial ordering found on maps, The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989), 59-60.

357 J. B. Harley, “Deconstructing the Map,” in The New Nature of Maps, 157.

358 Harley, “Deconstructing the Map,” 163. 193

Mesoamerica. The use of cloth and its size evoke a genre of native pictorial manuscripts known as lienzos, painted genealogies and elite histories usually made on linen material typically produced during the second half of the sixteenth century.359 Together, these elements gave the map a unique visual presence that intentionally summoned the past.

Indigenous maps did not strictly depend on spatial precision, relying often on the visual and symbolic elements that characterized their appearance. This rhetorical strategy appealed to an earlier period, a time immemorial when pictorial documents carried legal value in the Spanish courts helping native towns and individuals secure grants of land and social privileges.360 Yannakakis has observed that in the Zapotec sierra in northern

Oaxaca, the importance of a native title “rested on its form―a title that straddled the eras of their ‘gentility’ and colonialism and that legitimized political power and landholding by virtue of both local lineage and royal authority―and not on its specific content.”361 In the case of the map of Xoxocotlán, the actual site of the dispute, a mere five acres, was not as relevant to the town as the fact that they controlled specific territorial boundaries tied to a long line of nobles predating the arrival of the Spaniards. By deploying the map, the town council attempted to reinforce this notion.

359 I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer who recently pointed out the exceptions to this rule including the Lienzo of Analco, Lienzo of Tlaxcala, and the Lienzo of Quauhquechollan, all of which deal with the Spanish conquest. See Yannakakis, “Allies or Servants? The Journey of Indian Conquistadors in the Lienzo de Analco,” Ethnohistory 58 (2011): 653-682; Travis Kranz, “Visual Persuasion: Sixteenth- Century Tlaxcalan Pictorials in Response to the Conquest of Mexico,” in The Conquest All Over Again: Nahuas and Zapotecs Thinking, Writing, and Painting Spanish Colonialism, ed. Susan Schroeder (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2010); and Florine Asselbergs, Conquered Conquistadors: The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, A Nahua Vision of the Conquest of Guatemala (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2008).

360 See Cummins, “From Lies to Truth.”

361 Yannakakis, “Witnesses, Spatial Practices,” 176. 194

In a highly unusual act in the cartographic process, Domingo de Zárate inscribed two certifying texts at the bottom of each corner of the map. In the first (Figure 52) he stated the alcalde mayor approved the map on 25 October 1686; his rubric appeared below the inscription. The second gloss (Figure 53) reads, “By order of Captain Don

Antonio Abellán . . . I copied this map based on the original given to me; [I made it] according to the traditions of my art of painting without damaging or diminishing a single thing.”362 Mundy has observed that indigenous painters rarely signed their maps making

Zárate’s words the more revealing.363 For one thing, he understood the importance of his trade, his art of painting, a visual system with a distinct form and style that required the application of certain skills honed by masters in their craft. In another respect, Zárate’s written glosses as well as Abellán’s earlier commission bear witness to an exchange of services prompted by the demand for an indigenous map. At the end of the meeting,

Medina, the scribe, recorded the following in a separate folio:

I certify under oath that the natives of the town of Xoxocotlán, subject to the villa of

Cuilapa in this marquisate, presented two maps, one of them old, torn, and frayed with

the passage of time, the other copied and produced according to and as the ancient one by

Don Domingo de Zárate, cacique and a master of painting. [The map was] mandated and

licensed by Captain Don Antonio de Abellán y Carrasco . . . [to recognize] the borders

and boundary markers of this entire jurisdiction. Having seen and compared one with the

362 The original inscription reads, “Por orden del Capitan Don Antonio de Abellan . . . cupie [copie?] esta Mapa según su original que se me dio sin estrepar [estropear?] ni disminuir cosa Alguna según se acostumbra en mi arte de la pintura,” Map of Xoxocotlán (1686), AGN, No. 625.

363 Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 62.

195

other, his lordship declared it true and faithfully copied and detailed, seemingly with the

same boundary signs and expositions as the old one.364

The scribe’s words accredited the relationship between the Indian master painter, the native town, and the Spanish official in the process authenticating the map’s contents and bringing the exchange of this service to an end.

The act of certification represents an important element of mapmaking in Oaxaca.

Certification legitimized the use of native maps in a court of law. The lack of a proper certifying mark, usually in the form of a gloss and signature that verified the “true and faithful” depiction of a site could render a map worthless from a legal standpoint. “What is crucial,” notes Cummins of indigenous pictorial records in the sixteenth century “is that a forum for the presentation of non-European evidence could be constructed so as to be judged as ‘true.’”365 The copied map’s inspection in the late seventeenth century suggests a degree a familiarity between scribe, painter, official and the use of pictorial documents recalling legal practices from a century earlier.366 Admitting a map was an important part of the process but it did not guarantee the owner a victory in litigation.

Judges in Oaxaca during this later period “valued the written text above both orality and the image, especially where legal evidence was concerned.”367 In other respects judges seemed to have grown accustomed to native pictorial records so much so they could often

364 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 176.

365 Cummins, 158.

366 Elizabeth Hill Boone, “Pictorial Documents and Visual Thinking in Postconquest Mexico,” in Native Traditions in the Postcoquest World, ed. Elizabeth Boone and Thomas Cummins (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998), 149.

367 Yannakakis, “Witnesses, Spatial Practices,” 166. 196

identify titles of dubious origin.368 For Xoxocotlán, the alcalde mayor’s certification allowed the town to introduce the map into the proceedings.

The Copied Maps of Xoxocotlán

The 1686 map of Xoxocotlán has enjoyed little of the attention directed at the more popular copied maps of Xoxocotlán made in 1718 (Figure 54) and 1771.369 All three maps share some similarities yet the traces of logographic writing and the representations of Monte Albán has drawn the attention of pre-Colombianists much more closely to the 1718 and 1771 models than to the 1686 copy which has typically appeared as a footnote to the other two maps.370 According to the two copied maps made in the eighteenth century, an earlier model made in 1660 defined the town’s limits as a result of a survey ordered and approved by alcalde mayor Francisco de Lagunas Portocarrero. The western mountains of Xoxocotlán, an area that straddled the ceremonial site of Monte

Albán and also appeared in the 1686 map, included a series of animals and plants as well as various military and ritual objects. The original painter used an adaptation of the place-glyph, a Mesoamerican convention that combined a hill symbol with an animal or

368 On this point, see Sousa and Terraciano, 351.

369 Map of Xoxocotlán (1718), Mapoteca Orozco y Berra, MOB No. 1176-OYB-7272-A. Map of Xoxocotlán (1771), lost; image available in Smith, 338.

370 Smith, 202-210; Maarten Jansen, “Monte Albán y Zaachila en los códices mixtecos,” in The Shadow of Monte Alban: Politics and Historiography in Postclassic Oaxaca, Mexico, ed. Maarten Jansen, Peter Kröfges, and Michel Oudijk (Leiden: Research School CNWS, School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies, 1998); and Maarten Jansen, Dante García Ríos, Ángel Rivera Guzmán, “La identificación de Monte Albán en los códices Mixtecos: Nueva Evidencia,” paper presented at the VI Monte Albán Roundtable Conference, Oaxaca, Mexico. Enrique Méndez Martínez and Enrique Méndez Torres recently published the 1686 map with a transcription of the written glosses and a short passage of the court case between Xoxocotlán and Bartolomé Ruíz. See Historia de Zaachila, Cuilapan, y Xoxocotlan: Tres pueblos unidos por sus orígines (Oaxaca City: Instituto Cultural Oaxaqueno F.O.R.O., 2007), 432-440. 197

thing to express the name of a town. Below each glyph, the painter or a scribe wrote both

Nahua and Mixtec place names for every locality.371 Three warriors in loincloths—one holding a club known as a macana and a shield, the other two holding a bow and arrow— share the space with three clothed individuals. The teponaztle, a ceremonial drum, and a noble woman wearing a quesquémil and holding a club sit atop the town of

Ocelotepeque, ocelot hill. After successfully identifying the town’s mojones, the scribe returned the 1660 map to officials from Xoxocotlán.

The timing of this survey and the commission of the map came shortly after the

1659 amparo when Xoxocotlán litigated against Antonio Rendón. It seems likely native officials feared another legal battle with Rendón or some other neighbor and decided to add a map to their titles to strengthen their position in any future entanglements. A 1718 copy of the map (Figure 54) authenticated by a local scribe confirms Xoxocotlán used it after its original commission. The map inspection confirmed the copy faithfully resembled the model made in 1660. In 1771, the town commissioned another copy, this time based on the 1718 model. A comparison of the two reveals they differed in several ways. For instance, the painter’s choice of materials for the 1718 model included watercolors and European paper while for the1771 copy its painter opted for oil over a canvas sheet. The newer copy pictured more animals and flora including an assortment of trees, shrubs, livestock, and a laborer caring for a herd on the upper right hand corner.

The brushed quality of the 1771 version injects an element of European landscapes not noticeable in the earlier copy. While the written glosses on the 1718 map merely indicate

371 Mary Elizabeth Smith has argued the written glosses do not necessarily reflect the glyph sign used in each case, 204-210. 198

place names, the scribe’s intervention in the 1771 copy focused on the map’s surface where a certifying text just above the church of Xoxocotlán in the center, another to the right of it, and a large cartouche at the bottom of the page traced the map’s lineage.

These written elements tied each copy to its earlier model confirming the relationship between town and land. The comparison of the two pieces suggests nuances existed between maps and their copies, variations that accounted for a painter’s pictorial choices, a patron’s needs, and an official’s authority to legitimize documents.

The 1686 Map of Xoxocotlán in Circulation

The introduction of the map followed the Real Audiencia’s decision in 1686 to grant Xoxocotlán an appeal on the verdict issued in 1682 in Bartolomé Ruíz’s favor. An appeal meant mounting another full-scale inquiry including land surveys, presentation of written evidence, and witness testimony. In preparation for the upcoming legal battle, two regidores (councilmen) from Xoxocotlán presented the map to facilitate an impending survey. They claimed the map described the town’s territorial limits, its battered state impressing its age upon viewers and providing a unique memorial device to its holders. But the copy does not indicate with any precision the location of the disputed property. Instead, Domingo de Zárate, the map’s painter, represented a visual order from a century earlier that described the town’s spatial boundaries.

Indian maps aroused suspicion precisely because they interpreted the natural environment and its social relationships according to native traditions. In the case of

Xoxocotlán, Ruíz’s attorney questioned the officers’ use of the map stating that, 199

The reproduction of the map presented by the natives with the alcalde mayor’s

certification [and] its convenient comparison with the old painting, is useless. Without an

accompanying title, the map does not give, nor can it give [its holders] legitimate right

over land because it is an instrument that completely lacks the juridical authority to make

it valid; it depends entirely on the will of those who make it and those who commission

it.372

In fact, a decree issued by the crown in 1643 validated the use of pictorial documents, at least theoretically, in New Spain.373 Still, most officials could not make sense of an

Indian map unless guided by a native painter who could explain its content. Yannakakis has argued that patrons of indigenous maps and manuscripts lost control of their reception “especially if the readers of the maps and texts did not share the cultural assumptions and codes that the maps and texts expressed.”374 Accepting an indigenous map into a legal proceeding allowed parties to make claims on land, but that did not guarantee the map a favorable reception nor did all parties consider them appropriate forms of evidence. Despite the fact that Abellán y Carrasco, the alcalde mayor, certified the map and the copy’s inspection, the attorney’s comments challenged their authenticity.

After entering the public record, the 1686 map underwent further scrutiny in the hands of attorneys, magistrates, and other scribes who had access to it during

Xoxocotlán’s appeal. Juan López de Pareja, the town’s attorney, introduced it as evidence in Mexico City in the fall of 1687. By the time Ruíz’s lawyer petitioned the

372 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 184.

373 Florescano, Historia de las historias, 241.

374 Yannakakis, “Witnesses, Spatial Practices,” 166. 200

Audiencia in 1688 to drop the native’s suit, he had also inspected the map noting, “As a new copy it relies on the details of the ancient original that is not included [in the brief].

Even though [the original] could assist the natives [in their case], they refuse to exhibit it without a clear reason.”375 Authorities in Oaxaca mentioned the map in 1691 where it functioned as a guide during a vista de ojos, a boundary inspection, and a measurement of land in March of that year ordered by the Audiencia.376 Weeks later, authorities questioned witnesses for the native town about their knowledge of the five acres. Their testimony foregrounds the map’s role at the community level where its introduction by

Xoxocotlán’s political officers and its use during the case by Spanish authorities served to reinvigorate community ties and spatial boundaries.

Witnesses responded to questions about the location of the five acres and about the parties involved in the dispute. During the interrogation, authorities referred all witnesses to the map and the legal documents the town had collected over time. Six of them, including eighty-year old Juan Pérez, declared they had seen the map. Jacinto

Gómez, a native from Atzompa who relocated to Xoxocotlán after marriage and several others testified they had heard about the map. Two natives from neighboring San Pedro

Apostol testified they knew “[Xoxocotlán] had a mapa/pintura and titles,” both declaring they had “seen them and heard them read aloud, and they included the [disputed] piece of

375 “Porque como nuevo trasunto supone la pintura del original antiguo que no se haya presentado, que cuando pudiera aprovechar a dichos naturales, de necesidad precisa se reúsa exhibir,” AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 184.

376 AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 197. 201

land.”377 The testimony of the last two witnesses suggests the map may have served as a tool used by prominent elders to orally recount the history of the town during ritual festivities and other important occasions.378 But which map did witnesses reference, the original or the copy?

During the interrogation witnesses would have had access only to the copy because of the frail state of the original, the reason given for commissioning the copy in the first place. The two Indians from San Pedro, however, surely referred to the old map in their testimony, especially since up to that point in time the copy itself circulated primarily within the region’s legal channels. Others who had just heard about the map confirmed its existence during the deposition. In both instances, the act of viewing the

“true and faithful” copy established a symbolic link with the past setting a precedent that certified the town’s response to spatial threats regardless of the outcome of the case. The interplay between witnesses, native officers, translators, and Spanish officials to define the map’s use in a formal legal setting reveals the various stages of authentication, a joint effort between social actors with diverse, often conflicting interests.

Wither the Plum Trees

On May 12, 1691, the alcalde mayor of the Cuatro Villas Gerónimo Fernández

Franco ordered a measurement of the disputed five acres. He solicited persons

377 The scribe recorded virtually the same response for thirty-eight-year-old Joseph de Santiago, “Por constarle de que tienen mapa pintura y títulos que los ha visto y oído leer;” as he did for Lucas de los Santos, “que sabe este testigo que los susodichos tienen mapa y títulos por haberlos visto y oídolos leer y que en ellos se incluye este pedazo de tierra,” see AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 210-211.

378 Sousa and Terraciano, 351; and Yannakakis, “Witnesses, Spatial Practices,” 164. 202

knowledgeable in surveying, appointing two Spaniards with direct ties to the case. Juan de Almogabar and Joseph Rodríguez, the two men selected, had both testified a decade earlier during Xoxocotlán’s first embroilment with Bartolomé Ruíz. Even though

Almogabar had appeared on behalf of the native town, he had seemed reluctant to support their claim eliciting a warning from Xoxocotlán’s attorney that the witness surely feared

Ruíz. Joseph Rodríguez, a scribe and former alcalde mayor, had testified for the Spanish landholder questioning the timing of the Indian town’s suit. This obvious conflict of interest went unmentioned by Fernández Franco, the ranking official on the case. Two days later at seven in the morning, Spanish and native authorities, Ruíz, the surveyors, a translator, and assorted witnesses met at the town’s church to initiate the inspection. The alcalde mayor used a cordel, a rope that for the occasion measured 100 varas, assigning it to Almogabar and Rodríguez to mark distances after which he mounted his horse giving the order to begin the survey.

The group traveled west towards the old plum trees. When they arrived at the spot, the trees had withered. According to the scribe, the roots on the ground provided the only physical evidence of their existence,

We walked east to west nearly half a league from the town until we reached a

boundary marker for a maize field [that had been] recently harvested [“está en

rastrojo,” noted the scribe, “in stubble.”]. Both the natives and Captain Bartolomé Ruíz

said that was the location of the plum trees mentioned in the royal dispatch; you could

still find the trees’ noticeable roots.379

379 “Se fue caminando de oriente a poniente como media legua de distancia de dicho pueblo a llegar a un paraje [de] tierras de sembrado de maíz que está en rastrojo en donde dijeron así dichos naturales como el 203

For Xoxocotlán, the remainder of the inspection seemed to reflect the loss of the trees.

Almogabar and Rodríguez determined the distance between the town’s last house and the plum tree mojoneras measured 1,518 varas, well in excess of the fundo legal issued a few years earlier.380 “From what has been seen and inspected,” wrote the scribe, “the alcalde mayor finds that not only does the town possess the 600 varas mandated by the recent

Royal decree [real cédula], but it exceeds [the mandate] by 918 and one half varas.”381

This revelation seemed to weigh heavily on the alcalde mayor more than any argument over an old boundary. By the end of the inspection, the official declared he found

Xoxocotlán’s petition vague and unfounded, with so much access to land, he couldn’t understand why the Indian town would wish to penetrate the five acres of land. One year later, the Real Audiencia ratified the five acres in favor of Ruíz absolving the Spanish landholder from the accusations from the native town. The scribe who informed

Xoxocotlán of the formal verdict noted that they did not challenge the decision.

dicho Cap. Bartolomé Ruíz ser donde estaban los árboles de ciruelas que se contenían en dicho Real despacho de que se hallaban todavía las raíces patentes de dichos árboles,” AGN, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 213.

380 The decree directed officials in New Spain “to designate and give agricultural land to all Indian towns from all the provinces of New Spain, not just the 500 varas of land surrounding the town. The distance should be measured from the [town’s] last house, not from the churches . . . and not only will it be the aforementioned 500 varas, but one hundred more to equal six hundred [‘se dé y señale generalmente a los Pueblos de Indios de todas las provincias de Nueva España sus sementeras no solo las 500 varas de tierra del rededor de la Población y que estas sean medidas no desde las iglesias, sino de la última casa . . . y que no solo sean las referidas 500 varas sino 100 más a cumplimiento de 600’].” Authorities intended the Royal decree to curb Spanish encroachment of Indian lands: “Se van entrando los dueños de estancia y tienen la de los indios quitándoselas y apoderándose de ellas unas veces violentamente, y otras con fraude, por cuya razón los miserables indios dejan sus casas y pueblos (que es lo que apetecen,” AGEO, Alcaldías Mayores, leg. 62, exp. 12, 1687.

381 “Por lo que ha visto y reconocido dicho señor alcalde mayor halla que no tan solamente tiene dicho pueblo las 600 varas de ordenanza y nueva Real cédula sino que le sobran 918 varas y media hasta dichos mojones,” AGN, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 215. 204

Conclusion

To resolve conflicting interests, litigants were hard pressed to trace and document the origins of their claims, a process that often included the presentation of a variety of written and pictorial manuscripts as well as oral testimonies. In the case of Xoxocotlán, the period from 1643 to 1649 suggests Spanish officials recognized oral testimony as an appropriate form of evidence in a land dispute despite the presence of written titles in the case. By the 1680s, the lack of a written title to verify ownership of land worked against the town that then proceeded to introduce an old community map. By deploying a copy of that map, Xoxocotlán sought to establish a connection with the past in order to legitimate their use of land in the present. The copied map circulated across multiple settings including town councils and the local and regional courts of Oaxaca and Mexico

City where it was scrutinized by a range of officials, legal professionals, and witnesses.

In Oaxaca, a growing interest in the occupation of land for agricultural development and cattle ranching starting in the second half of the seventeenth century generated competition for natural resources. Entry into a land dispute involved following a set of rules and protocols including the use of scribes, cartographers and legal professionals, topographical surveys, ritual boundary walks, and the deployment of witnesses and manuscripts. Witnesses, especially elder Indian males functioned as carriers of knowledge who played important roles in defining spatial boundaries. Spatial boundaries relied on written titles but also included indigenous maps. Natives demonstrated considerable shrewdness navigating Spanish legal channels, though as the case of Xoxocotlán suggests, their efforts could sometimes go unrewarded. 205

CONCLUSION: A FINAL REMARK

As a legacy of the colonial period, indigenous mapmaking represents a set of experiences that left a deep imprint on the histories of local settlements across Latin

America. Legend has it that a man once strolled into Santa María Atzompa, a town in the

Valley of Oaxaca with roots that stretch as far back as the seventh century, with his sick horse in tow. The traveler asked the townspeople for help to care for his horse but they refused him assistance and the animal died shortly after. As retribution for their behavior, the man cut off a portion of a map (Figure 1) that described the town’s lands, a prized possession used as a symbol of local identity, an historical artifact, and at times, as a legal instrument. In fact the map has a large piece (Figure 55) missing that stretches from the center to the bottom right corner immediately below a key to the map’s components. The defacement of the map, itself a violent action against a treasured object, possesses a deep connection to the contested nature of land tenure. In the story, the act of cutting symbolizes not simply the loss of land but the struggle associated with accessing and defending it over time. This short but powerful anecdote circulates today among residents of the town not in the pages of a Novohispanic notarial manuscript such as the ones analyzed in the preceding pages.382 In many ways, it speaks to the challenges faced by historical actors across time to divide and negotiate the land and the strategies they developed to do so.

382 Jennifer Matthews, e-mail message to author, June 10, 2008. 206

Negotiating colonial rule included the effective use of the court system as well as gaining fluency in alphabetic writing. Nahuas, Mayas, Mixtecs, and Zapotecs not only learned to write with letters in Spanish but they applied the skill to express their own languages. Writing served to record communal histories, petition authorities in civil and criminal actions, and for local record keeping revealing the depth of change in systems of knowledge within Indian settlements. The New Philology has shown that natives met the rapid decline of pictographic writing with an equally significant increase in alphabetic writing.383 This key period marks the transition from a system of pictographic communication to an alphabetic one while witnessing the blending of symbols that resulted from contact, a practice increasingly reflected in the production of Amerindian maps.

Manuscript culture represented a strong aspect of the Hispanic world with roots stretching into the Middle Ages, when practices to remember gradually shifted from oral to written traditions. Across Spanish America, scribes, clerics and officials relied on record keeping addressing issues of imperial administration in the Indies. Notarial documents, manuscripts largely written by Spaniards for Spaniards to facilitate legal matters, recorded the activities of the subjects of the viceroyalty. Officials and scribes applied various social, administrative, and racial categories to make distinctions among those mentioned. As Walter Mignolo proposes, alphabetic writing served as the most important tool of power for Spain to dominate the New World. Royal officers, bureaucrats, clerics, and explorers recognized their system of literacy as the epitome of

383 See Lockhart, The Nahuas, 331; Terraciano, The Mixtecs, 15. 207

civilization, especially when compared to the non-alphabetic ones used in Mesoamerica and the Andes.384 The expression “reading against the grain,” a reference for the need to contextualize the written elements in a source represents a constant reminder to question the motivations of those whose voices we read, and to dig a little deeper into the experience of individuals as they negotiated relationships.

The tension between cultural attitudes towards others and the realities of social engagement in everyday life has been a central theme in this study. Consider the role of

Spanish scribes unfamiliar with native traditions. These individuals faced significant challenges interpreting pictorial documents of various kinds to negotiate aspects of viceregal rule associated with tribute, labor, rights and privileges, commerce, and land.

Despite their reservations, colonial officials, regional judges, and scribes during the last quarter of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth sought the services of native painters to map localities in order to assign land to natives and Spaniards alike, to award privileges, and to comply with efforts to survey imperial domains in the New World.

They developed tools based on notarial protocols and common sense that allowed them to make the maps legible, their annotations a permanent reminder of their participation in the mapmaking process but also a useful guide for future readers. It was exactly this type of practical experience that forced Europeans to challenge knowledge rooted in antiquity,

384 Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance. 208

to revise and establish new parameters with which to measure and interpret recent findings, and the most effective one used to build empires.385

As a tool of empire, cartography allowed cosmographers, surveyors, engineers, and officials to visually describe imperial domains. Maps, we know, encode a set of principles designed to organize and describe but they are never value free windows into spatial relationships. Maps, like any other document, carry the goals and attitudes of their makers and patrons. In the case of indigenous maps, both historical actors and contemporary scholars have leveled criticisms discrediting the practices of the natives who made them. For an earlier generation of historians of cartography, maps represented mathematical precision used to accurately determine the location of places and boundaries; not until the late twentieth century did scholars of cartography formulate cultural assumptions about the making of maps. For officials, lawyers, and those who stood to gain from rejecting their validity in court, maps were biased manuscripts designed to represent someone else’s worldview.

A painter’s experience took shape under a colonial regime faced with shifting social conditions linked to military aggression, disease, evangelization, tribute extraction, and forced labor. Throughout the sixteenth century, painters from different generations executed a range of pictorial documents that illustrated family genealogies, recorded tribute, described historical events, and mapped regions. Painters originated within the upper echelons of indigenous society where their hereditary status afforded them access

385 See Anthony Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1992), 4 209

both to European learning and customs, as well as traditional knowledge transmitted primarily through oral means. The social units that ordered their lives featured prominently in the maps they produced during the colonial period.

As practitioners of early modern botany and chemistry, painters have received short shrift in narratives of a history of science deeply rooted in the activities of

Europeans. Recent studies in the field have demonstrated the importance of Iberian achievements in cartography, medicine, botany, and astronomy, highlighting a vibrant intellectual culture in Spain and Spanish America but they have barely scratched the surface when it comes to contributions by indigenous people. By considering the skills used to make a map, we learn that painters applied botanical knowledge to manufacture the colorants and pigments that gave meaning to the region’s geographical features including rivers, mountains, and flora as well as the built environment and its temples, houses, and ranches. Painters in Oaxaca demonstrated versatility in their selection of colorants adapting to the introduction of European materials such as paper and ink. A map’s distinct material condition embodied indigenous identity, a feature that often generated mistrust among the elaborate network of scribes, judges, lawyers, Indian lords, landholders, and translators who controlled the production of handwritten documents required to engage in commercial and legal affairs.

Painters adapted visual techniques to cater to the needs of officials and patrons that sought to divide land in the region. Not unlike cultures in other parts of the world, land represents a key focus of indigenous mapping. Individuals bestowed upon it social, ritual, and economic value. Land included large pasture sites for cattle and livestock, 210

small tracts for household farming, shared properties between members of a corporate group, and entailed estates controlled by nobles. Mapping formed one component of a broad set of activities that combined Iberian legal and notarial principles, local geographical and botanical knowledge, ritual practices, witness testimony, oral history, and boundary walking used to define land.

By the eighteenth century, a shift in government and policies met the recovery of a native population faced with a fierce competition for land. Much like their Habsburg predecessors, Bourbon officials deployed scientific expeditions to assess natural and human wealth, they developed a new geographical survey project to gauge demographic growth and land tenure, and they attempted to curb the rise of local elites by restructuring the organs of government. Bourbon policies often conflicted with local power structures whose members faced exclusion from key administrative and judicial posts. The growth of the population and the competition for land and resources mandated a more precise system of representation to fulfill the needs that indigenous maps had once filled.386 In this period, surveying by professional topographers and cartographers played a much more significant role in the definition of spatial boundaries across the viceroyalty.

Despite these changes, indigenous mapmaking practices sometimes informed territorial disputes, certifications of land, compliance with new ordinates, and the occasional infrastructure project. During this time, painters reinvented older pictographic conventions to fit contemporary social and political needs just as the earlier generations

386 Elías Trabulse, “Científicos e ingenieros en la Nueva España: Don Diego García Conde en la historia de la cartografía mexicana,” in Una visión científica y artística de la Ciudad de México: El plano de la capital virreinal (1793-1807) de Diego García Conde (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios de Historia Condumex, 2002). 211

from the sixteenth century had done to accommodate Spanish colonization. The use of colorants continued to form an essential component of Indian mapmaking practices.

Technologies of replication based on ritual boundary walking, relationships between elder and junior males, and collective memory practices ensured the circulation of maps continued through the use copies. In effect, painters recast spatial relationships for their

Spanish audience according to local traditions and concerns challenging but also working within the channels of a complex imperial bureaucracy.

212

APPENDIX A: THE MAP OF SANTA CRUZ XOXOCOTLÁN (1686)

Map key, transcription and translation follows Figure 51:

1. Ocelotepec [Place of the ocelot] 2. Tree with red feather leaves 3. Moon (West) 4. Second moon; possible moon-faced hill 5. Villa of Oaxaca 6. Camino Real [The Royal Highway] 7. Villa of Cuilapa 8a. Double-mound boundary marker 8b. Boundary marker with cross 8c. Boundary marker with cactus 8d. Estancia ta 9. huee ñoho S crus [Temple of the land of Santa Cruz] 10. cuiti yuyucha noyoo [Xoxocotlán’s stone river hill] n 11. cuiti S Mi[gu]el [Hill of San Miguel] 12. ñooyud[z]a hui [Irrigated land] 13. nodzahui coyho [Depleted water hole] 14. ñoho miniyu[yu] [Temple of the stone lake] 15. cu[?]a sie[?][ta] [N/A] co 16. fran martin [Francisco Martín] 17. cuiti meeñoo [Middle hill] 18. ñoho cheeni sanoho cahuandu qun [waiting on translation] 19. cuiti coo caa [Rattlesnake hill] 20. cuiti sacuaa [Deer hill] 21. This site most likely refers to Masatepeque, “deer hill” in Nahuatl; no nicaa ydzu, “where there was dear” in Mixtec. Smith (1973: 210) notes a similar place sign on the 1718 and 1778 maps of Xoxocotlán. r 22. En Veinte y cinco de Octubre de 1686 años se aprouo esta mapa p el señor or Alcalde m y lo rubrique [rubrica] tan n o de or 23. Por orden del cap d Antt de Abellan Al M de las quatro Villas del Marquesado cupie [copie] esta Mapa según su original que se me dio sin estrepar [estropear] ni disminuir cosa Alguna segun se acostumbra en mi arte de la pintura que ba sierto y berdadero como co[n]stara por el original qnda[concuerda?] con esta y en o o caso nesesario y antepongo el Juramento nesess fh en Antequera octubre 25 de 1686 años Dn Domingo de sarate 24. Sun (East) 25. Stream [red line] 213

APPENDIX B: FIGURES

Figure 1. Map of Nuestra Madre del Rosario, Santa María Atzompa, 18th century. Municipio de Santa María Atzompa, Oaxaca (map lost).

214

Figure 2. Maps located in Mexican and US archives, 1570-1609.

Figure 3. Maps located in Mexican and US archives, 1610-1740. 215

Figure 4. The Valley of Oaxaca. Map courtesy of David Robinson and the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. 216

Figure 5. Map of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán, 1686. Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City (AGN), No. 0625, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 249.

217

Figure 6. Painter-scribe (detail), Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus I (aka Codex Vienna), c. 15th century, f. 48. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Austria.

218

Figure 7. Relación Geográfica Map of Teozacoalco, 1580. Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

219

Figure 8. Ordered pair detail, Relación Geográfica Map of Teozacoalco, 1580. Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

Figure 9. Large/great altar logograph, Relación Geográfica Map of Teozacoalco, 1580. Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

220

Figure 10. Coming of age scene, Codex Mendoza , f. 60, c. 1541. Bodleian Library, Oxford University.

221

Figure 11. Folio 3v, Codex Yanhuitlán, c. 1550. Biblioteca Histórica José María Lafragua de la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla.

222

Figure 12. Map of Cuestlahuaca, 1582. AGN, No. 1609, Tierras, vol. 2682, exp. 9, f. 8.

223

Figure 13. Albrecht Dürer, “The Holy Family with two angels,” c. 1503.

224

Figure 14. Map of Guaxilotitlán, 1586. AGN, No. 1726, Tierras, vol. 2702, exp. 2, f. 10.

225

Figure 15. Map of Santa María Guelacé, San Jerónimo Tlacochaguaya, and Santa Cruz Papalutla, 1690 [1778]. AGN, No. 0956, Tierras, vol. 1206, exp. 1, cuad. 8, f. 21.

226

Figure 16. Detail, Map of Santa María Guelacé, San Jerónimo Tlacochaguaya, and Santa Cruz Papalutla, 1778 [1690]. AGN, No. 0956, Tierras, vol. 1206, exp. 1, cuad. 8, f. 21.

227

Figure 17. Map of Santo Domingo Tepenene, 1617. AGN, No. 2225, Tierras, vol. 2812, exp. 11, f. 312.

228

Figure 18. Relación Geográfica Map of Tehuantepec, 1580. Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

229

Figure 19. Map of Tzanaltepec, Tonaltepec, and Oztutlán, 1580. AGN, No. 1903, Tierras, vol. 2729, exp. 4, f. 107v y 108.

230

Figure 20. Map of Tlapanaltepeque, 1585. AGN, No. 2391, Tierras, vol. 3343, exp. 20, f. 8.

231

Figure 21. Map of Tlapaltepeque, 1586. AGN, No. 1965, Tierras, vol. 2737, exp. 25, f. 29.

232

Figure 22. Map of Ixtepec and Zixitlán, 1598. AGN, No. 2084, Tierras, vol. 2764, exp. 22, f. 302.

233

Figure 23. Map of Santo Domingo Tepenene y Cuestlahuaca, 1590. AGN, No. 1904, Tierras, vol. 2729, exp. 5, f. 117.

234

Figure 24. Map of Tepenene, 1600. AGN, No. 1812, Tierras, vol. 2719, exp. 23, f. 9.

235

Figure 25. Map of Tolcayuca, c. late 17th/early 18th c. Jay I. Kislak Collection, Library of Congress.

236

Figure 26. Map of Teposcolula, 1590. AGN, No. 1711, Tierras, vol. 2696, exp. 21, f. 8.

237

Figure 27. Detail from Relación Geográfica Map of Teozacoalco, 1580. Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

238

Figure 28. Map of Cuquila, 1599. AGN, No. 2463, Tierras, vol. 3556, exp. 6, f. 175.

239

Figure 29. Patch of paper detail, Map of Cuquila, 1599. AGN, No. 2463, Tierras, vol. 3556, exp. 6, f. 175.

240

Figure 30. Map of Mistepec, Chicaguastla and Cuquila, 1595. AGN, No. 0867, Tierras, vol. 876, exp. 1, f. 122.

241

Figure 31. Map of Santa Ana and Santa Cruz, 1591. AGN, No. 0581, Tierras, vol. 56, exp. 5, f. 16.

242

Figure 32. Detail, Map of Santa Ana y Santa Cruz, 1591. AGN, No. 0581, Tierras, vol. 56, exp. 5, f. 16.

243

Figure 33. Map of Teotitlán, 1583. AGN, No. 0560, Tierras, vol. 35, exp. 7, f. 11.

244

Figure 34. Ink detail, Map of Teotitlán, 1583. AGN, No. 0560, Tierras, vol. 35, exp. 7, f. 11.

245

Figure 35. Verso, Map of Santo Domingo Tepenene, 1617. AGN, No. 2225, Tierras, vol. 2812, exp. 11, f. 312.

246

Figure 36. Key, Map of Nuestra Madre del Rosario, Santa María Atzompa, 18th century. Municipio de Santa María Atzompa, Oaxaca.

247

Figure 37. Town detail, Map of Nuestra Madre del Rosario, Santa María Atzompa, 18th century. Municipio de Santa María Atzompa, Oaxaca.

Figure 38. Father Crespo’s Hacienda, Map of Nuestra Madre del Rosario, Santa María Atzompa, c. 18th century. Municipio de Santa María Atzompa, Oaxaca. 248

Figure 39. San Lorenzo Cacaotepec, Map of Nuestra Madre del Rosario, Santa María Atzompa, c. 18th century. Municipio de Santa María Atzompa, Oaxaca.

249

Figure 40. Map of Miltepec, 1617. AGN, No. 1776, Tierras, vol. 2711, exp. 7, fs. 9v. y 10

250

Figure 41. Map of Justlaguaca, 1609. AGN, No. 1271, Tierras, vol. 1871, exp. 11, f. 11.

251

Figure 42. Map of Tlaxiaco and Cuquila, 1588. AGN, No. 1692.9, Tierras, vol. 2692, exp. 17, f. 8.

252

Figure 43. Map of Cuscatlan, 1607. AGN, Tierras, vol. 2682, exp. 4, f. 9.

253

Figure 44. Map of Zimatlán and Ocotlán, 1686 [1639]. AGN, No. 3009, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 85, exp. 4.

254

Figure 45. “Ojo” detail, 1686. AGN, Hospital de Jesús, leg. 85, exp. 4, f. 104.

255

Figure 46. Relación Geográfica Map of Amoltepeque, 1580. Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

256

Figure 47. Cataloguing inscription no. 1. Relación Geográfica Map of Amoltepeque, 1580. Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

Figure 48. Cataloguing inscription no. 2. Relación Geográfica Map of Amoltepeque, 1580. Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

257

Bishopric Viceroyalty Town “Cespedes” Ethinc states Region

Figure 49. Céspedes annotations, Relación de Teozacoalco y Amoltepeque (1580). Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin, Folder XXV-3.

258

Figure 50. Disputed land near Xoxocotlán, 1686.

259

Figure 51. Map of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán (1686), with interpretive key. AGN, No. 0625, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 249.

260

Figure 52. Certifying gloss no. 1. Map of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán, 1686. AGN, No. 0625, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 249.

Figure 53. Certifying gloss no. 2. Map of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán, 1686. AGN, No. 0625, Tierras, vol. 129, exp. 4, f. 249. 261

Figure 54. Copied Map of Xoxocotlán, 1718 [1660]. Mapoteca Manuel Orozco y Berra, Mexico City.

262

Figure 55. Cut piece, Map of Nuestra Madre del Rosario, Santa María Atzompa c. 18th century. Municipio de Santa María Atzompa, Oaxaca.

263

REFERENCES Archives and Libraries

AGN Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City MOB Mapoteca Orozco y Berra, Mexico City AGEO Archivo General del Estado de Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Mexico BFB Biblioteca Francisco de Burgoa, Oaxaca, Mexico AHN Archivo Histórico de Notarías, Oaxaca, Mexico LC Library of Congress, Washington D.C. BLAC Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin UASC University of Arizona Special Collections

Printed Primary Sources

Acosta, José de. Historia natural y moral de las Indias, en que se tratan las cosas notables del cielo, y elementos, metales, plantas, y animales dellas: y los ritos, y ceremonias, leyes, y gobierno, y guerras de los indios. Sevilla: Juan de León, 1590.

Alvarado, Francisco de. Vocabulario en lengua mixteca. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista and Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1962 [1593].

Blagden, Charles. Some Observations on Ancient Inks, with the Proposal of a New Method of Recovering the Legibility of Decayed Writings. London: s.n., 1787.

Burgoa, Francisco de. Geográfica descripción de la parte septentrional del polo ártico de la América, y nueva iglesia de las Indias occidentales, y sitio astronómico de esta provincia de predicadores de Antequera Valle de Oaxaca. Mexico City: Iuan Ruyz, 1674.

Cartas de Indias. Madrid: Ministerio de Fomento and Imprenta de Manuel G. Hernández, 1877.

Casanova, José de. Primera parte del arte de escribir todas formas de letras. Madrid: Por Diego Díaz de la Carrera, 1650.

Clavijero, Francisco Javier. Historia antigua de Mejico sacada de los mejores historiadores españoles, y de los manuscritos de los indios. Mexico City: Imprenta de Juan Navarro, 1853.

264

Codex Fejérváry-Mayer: M 12014 City of Liverpool Museums. Edited by C. A. Burland. Codices selecti, volume 26. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanst., 1971. The Codex Mendoza. Vol. 1-4. Edited by Frances Berdan and Patricia Anawalt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

The Codex Nuttall: A Picture Manuscript from Ancient Mexico. Edited by Zelia Nuttall. New York: Dover Publications, 1975.

Códice Baranda. Edited by René Acuña. Mexico City: Ediciones Toledo, 1989.

Códice Colombino: Interpretación del Códice Colombino por Alfonso Caso. Las glosas del Códice Colombino por Mary Elizabeth Smith. Mexico City: Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, 1966.

Códices cuicatecos Porfirio Díaz y Fernández Leal: edición facsimilar, contexto histórico e interpretación. Edited by Sebastían van Doesburg. Mexico City: Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2001.

Códice Dehesa, largo: 5 metros 20 centímetros; ancho: 17 centímetros; pintado por ambos lados; existente en el Museo Nacional de México. Mexico City, 1892.

Códice Yanhuitlán. Edited by Wigberto Jiménez Moreno and Salvador Mateos Higuera. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia and Museo Nacional, 1940.

Códice de Yucunama: Edición facsimilar, interpretación y análisis. Edited by Hermann Lejarazu, Manuel A. Mexico City: CIESAS, 2009. Córdova, Juan de. Vocabulario en lengua çapoteca. Mexico City: SEP and Ediciones Toledo, 1987 [1578].

Cruz, Martin. The Badianus Manuscript (Codex Barberini, Latin 241) Vatican Library: An Aztec Herbal. Edited by Emily Walcott Emmart. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1940. Diccionario de la lengua castellana, en que se explica el verdadero sentido de las voces, su naturaleza y calidad, con las phrases o modos de hablar, los proverbios o refranes, y otras cosas convenientes al uso de la lengua (Madrid: Imprenta de la Real Academia Española, por los herederos de Francisco del Hierro, 1737).

Gutiérrez de los Ríos, Gaspar. Noticia general para la estimación de las artes, y de la manera en que se conocen las liberales de las que son mecánicas y serviles, con una exhortación a la honra de la virtud y del trabajo contra los ociosos, y otras particulares para las personas de todos estados. Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1600. 265

Hernández, Francisco. Historia natural de Nueva España, vol. I-II. In Obras Completas, vol. II- III. Mexico City: UNAM, 1959.

Icíar, Juan de. Arte sutilísima, por la cual se enseña a escribir perfectamente. Zaragoza: Miguel de Çapila, 1553.

Interpretación del Códice Bodley 2858. Edited by Alfonso Caso. Mexico City: Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, 1960.

Interpretación del Códice Selden 3135 (A.2). Edited by Alfonso Caso. Mexico City: Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, 1964.

Jiménez Gómez, Juan Ricardo, ed. Un formulario notarial mexicano del siglo XVIII: La instrucción de escribanos de Juan Elías Ortiz de Logroño. Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro and Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2005.

Laguna, Andrés. Pedacio Dioscorides Anazarbeo, acerca de la materia medicinal, y de los venenos mortíferos. Antwerp: Juan Latio, 1555.

Manuscritos del Concilio Tercero Provincial Mexicano (1585). Volume I-II. Edited by Alberto Carrillo Cázares. Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán and Universidad Pontificia de México, 2006.

Molina, Alonso de. Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana. Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1944 [1571].

Monardes, Nicolás. Primera y segunda y tercera parte de la historia medicinal de las cosas que traen de nuestras Indias occidentales que sirven en medicina. Madrid: En casa de Alonso Escribano, 1574.

Moxon, Joseph. Mechanic Exercises, or, the Doctrine of Handy-Works. London: Printed for Joseph Moxon, 1677.

Navarro, Juan. Historia natural o jardín americano. Mexico City: UNAM, IMSS, and ISSSTE, 1992.

Recopilación de leyes de los reinos de las Indias. Madrid: Boiz, 1841.

Reyes, Antonio de los. Arte en lengua mixteca. Nashville: Vanderbilt University, 1976 [1593].

Robles, Antonio. Diario de sucesos notables (1665-1703), vol. 1. Edited by Antonio Castro Leal. Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1946.

266

Sahagún, Bernardino de. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España. Volume III. Edited by Ángel María Garibay. Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1977.

______. Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, Vol. II. Madrid: DASTIN, 1990.

Ximénez, Francisco. Historia natural del reino de Guatemala. Guatemala: Editorial José de Pineda Ibarra, 1967 [1722].

Secondary Sources

Acuña, René. Relaciones geográficas del siglo XVI: Antequera. Volume 2. Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de México, 1986.

Albro, Sylvia Rodgers and Thomas C. Albro II. “The Examination and Conservation Treatment of the Library of Congress Harkness 1531 Huejotzingo Codex.” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 29/2 (1990): 97-115.

Anderson, Arthur. “Materiales Colorantes Prehispánicos.” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963): 73-83

Anderson, Arthur. Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart, eds. Beyond the Codices: The Nahua View of Colonial Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Arellano Hoffmann, Carmen. “El escriba mesoamericano y sus utensilios de trabajo. La posición social del escriba antes y después de la conquista española.” In Libros y escritura de tradición indígena: Ensayos sobre los códices prehispánicos y coloniales de México. Edited by Carmen Arellano Hoffmann, Peer Schmidt, and Xavier Noguez. Toluca and Eichstätt: El Colegio Mexiquense and Katholische Universität, 2002.

Arellano Hoffmann, Carmen. Peer Schmidt and Xavier Noguez, eds. Libros y escritura de tradición indígena: Ensayos sobre los códices prehispánicos y coloniales de México. Toluca and Eichstätt: El Colegio Mexiquense and Katholische Universität, 2002.

Ares Queija, Berta and Serge Gruzinski, eds. Entre dos mundos: fronteras culturales y agentes mediadores. Sevilla: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1997.

Arroyo Ortiz, Laura. Tintes naturales mexicanos: Su aplicación en algodón, henequén y lana. Mexico City: Conabio and UNAM, 2008.

267

Asselbergs, Florine. Conquered Conquistadors: The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, A Nahua Vision of the Conquest of Guatemala. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2008.

Baird, Ellen T. “The Artists of Sahagún’s Primeros Memoriales: A Question of Identity.” In Work of Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-Century Aztec Mexico. Edited by Jorge Klor de Alva, H.B. Nicholson, and Eloise Quiñones Keber. Albany and Austin: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, the University at Albany, SUNY, and University of Texas Press, 1988.

Barickman, Bert J. “‘Tame Indians,’ ‘Wild Heathens,’ and Settlers in Southern Bahia in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.” The Americas 51/3 (1995): 325-68.

Bargellini, Clara. “Originality and Invention in the Painting of New Spain.” In Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521-1821. Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2004.

Barrera-Osorio, Antonio. Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006.

Bauer, Arnold. Goods, Power, History: Latin America’s Material Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Beyersdorff, Margot. “Covering the Earth: Mapping the Walkabout in Andean Pueblos de Indios.” Latin American Research Review 42 (2007): 129-160.

Bleichmar, Daniela. Paula de Vos, Kristin Huffine, and Kevin Sheehan, eds. Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500-1800. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.

Boone, Elizabeth H. “Aztec Pictorial Histories: Records without Words.” In Writing without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Edited by Elizabeth H. Boone and Thomas Cummins. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994.

______. “Pictorial Documents and Visual Thinking in Postconquest Mexico.” In Native Traditions in the Postconquest World. Edited by Elizabeth H. Boone and Thomas Cummins. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998.

268

______. Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.

Boone, Elizabeth H. ed. The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central Mexico. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1982.

Boone, Elizabeth H. and Thomas Cummins, eds. Native Traditions in the Postcoquest World. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998.

Boone, Elizabeth H. and Walter D. Mignolo, eds. Writing Without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994. Borah, Woodrow. Justice by Insurance: The General Indian Court of Colonial Mexico and the Legal Aides of the Half-Real. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Bouza, Fernando. Corre manuscrito: Una historia cultural del Siglo de Oro. Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2001.

______. Communication, Knowledge, and Memory in Early Modern Spain. Translated by Sonia López and Michael Agnew. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

Boyd-Bowman, Peter. “Otro inventario de mercancías del siglo XVI.” Historia Mexicana 20 (1970): 92-118.

______. “Two Country Stores in XVIIth Century Mexico.” The Americas 28 (1972): 237-251.

______. “Spanish and European Textiles in Sixteenth-Century Mexico.” The Americas 29 (1973): 334-358.

Brockington, Lolita G. The Leverage of Labor: Managing the Cortés Haciendas in Tehuantepec, 1588-1688. Durham: Duke University Press, 1989. Buisseret, David. The Mapmakers’ Quest: Depicting New Worlds in Renaissance Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Buisseret, David, ed. Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Burkhart, Louise M. The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth- Century Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989.

269

Burnett, Graham D. Masters of All They Surveyed: Exploration, Geography, and a British El Dorado. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Burns, Kathryn. “Notaries, Truth, and Consequences.” American Historical Review 110 (2005): 350-379.

______. Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Butzer, Karl W. “From Columbus to Acosta: Science, Geography, and the New World.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82/3 (1992): 543-565.

Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge. How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.

______. “Renaissance Mess(tizaje): What Mexican Indians did to Titian and Ovid.” New Centennial Review 2 (2002): 267-276.

______. Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Catálogo de ilustraciones, vol. 1-14. Mexico City: Archivo General de la Nación, 1979- 84.

Carmagnani, Marcello. El regreso de los dioses: El proceso de reconstitución de la identidad étnica en Oaxaca. Siglos XVII y XVIII. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988.

Carrera Stampa, Manuel. “The Evolution of Weights and Measures in New Spain.” Hispanic American Historical Review 29 (1949): 2-24.

Carvalho, David. Forty Centuries of Ink, or A Chronological Narrative Concerning Ink and Its Backgrounds. New York: The Banks Law Publishing Company, 1904.

Caso, Alfonso. “El mapa de Teozacoalco.” In Obras: El México antiguo, vol. 8 “Calendarios, códices y manuscritos antiguos.” Mexico City: El Colegio Nacional, 2007.

Castañeda, Carmen, ed. Del autor al lector: Libros y libreros en la historia. Mexico City: CIESAS, 2002.

Castelló Yturbide, Teresa. Colorantes naturales de México. Mexico City: Industrias Resistol, 1988. 270

Chevalier, François. Land and Society in Colonial Mexico: The Great Hacienda. Translated by Alvin Eustis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970 [1963].

Christian, William. Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Cline, Howard F. “The Relaciones Geográficas of the Spanish Indies, 1577-1648.” In Handbook of Middle American Indians. Volume 12. Edited by Robert Wauchope and Howard F. Cline. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972.

Confino, Alon. “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method.” American Historical Review 102 (1997): 1386-1403.

Contreras Sánchez, Alicia del Carmen. Capital comercial y colorantes en la Nueva España: Segunda mitad del S. XVIII. Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1996.

Craib. Raymond. “Cartography and Power in the Conquest and Creation of New Spain.” Latin American Research Review 35/1 (2000): 7-36.

______. Cartographic Mexico: A History of State Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.

Crane, Susan. “Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory.” American Historical Review 102 (1997): 1372-1385.

Cummins, Thomas. “From Lies to Truth: Colonial Ekphrasis and the Act of Crosscultural Translation.” In Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650. Edited by Claire Farago. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Darnton, Robert. “The Library in the New Age.” In The New York Review of Books, June 12, 2008.

De Vos, Paula. “The Science of Spices: Empiricism and Economic Botany in the Early Spanish Empire.” Journal of World History 17/4 (2006): 399-427.

______. “Natural History and the Pursuit of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Spain.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 40/2 (2007): 209-239.

Dean, Carolyn and Dana Leibsohn. “Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America.” Colonial Latin American Review 12 (2003): 5-35.

271

Díaz Álvarez, Ana G. “El Códice Dehesa: Reflexiones en torno a un documento mixteco colonial a partir de su análisis codicológico.” Revista Española de Antropología Americana 40/2 (2010): 149-165.

Donkin, R.A. “Spanish Red: An Ethnogeographical Study of Cochineal and the Opuntia Cactus.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 67 (1977): 1-84.

Douglas, Eduardo de Jesús. In the Palace of Nezahualcoyotl: Painting Manuscripts, Writing the Pre-Hispanic Past in Early Colonial Period Tetzcoco, Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.

Earle, Rebecca. “´Two Pairs of Pink Satin Shoes!!’: Race, Clothing, and Identity in the Americas (17th-19th Centuries).” History Workshop Journal 52 (2001): 175-195.

______. “Luxury, Clothing and Race in Colonial Spanish America.” In Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods. Edited by Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger. New York: Palgrave, 2003.

______. “Letters and Love in Colonial Spanish America.” The Americas 62 (2005): 17-46.

Edgerton, Samuel Y. Theatres of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001.

Edney, Matthew H. “Theory and the History of Cartography.” Imago Mundi 48 (1996): 185-191.

______. Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, vol. I-II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

______. “An Unacknowledged Revolution Revisited.” American Historical Review 107/1 (2002): 87-105.

El papel y las tintas en la transmisión de la información. Primeras jornadas archivísticas del 12 al 16 de mayo de 1992. Huelva: Diputación Provincial, 1994.

Enfeld, Georgina H. “‘Pinturas,’ Land, and Lawsuits: Maps in Colonial Mexican Legal Documents.” Imago Mundi 53 (2001): 7-27.

272

Erickson, Peter and Clark Hulse, eds. Early Modern Visual Culture: Representation, Race, and Empire in Renaissance England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

Farago, Claire, ed. Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Farriss, Nancy. Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

______. “Introductory Essay: The Power of Images.” Colonial Latin American Review 19/1 (2010): 5-28.

Few, Martha. Women who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion, and the Politics of Power in Colonial Guatemala. Austin: Texas University Press, 2002.

______. “Indian Autopsy and Epidemic Disease in Early Colonial Mexico.” In Invasion and Transformation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico. Edited by Rebecca Brienen and Margaret Jackson. Boulder: University Pres of Colorado, 2007.

Florescano, Enrique. Historia de las historias de la nación mexicana. Mexico City: Taurus, 2002.

______. “El canon memorioso forjado por los títulos primordiales.” Colonial Latin American Review 11/2 (2002): 183-230.

Galarza, Joaquín. Códices y pinturas tradicionales indígenas en el Archivo General de la Nación. Estudio y catálogo. Mexico City: Amatl and Libreria Madero, 1996.

Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

Gerhard, Peter. A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993 [1972].

Gibson, Charles. The Aztecs under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-1810. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964.

Glass, John. “A Survey of Native Middle American Pictorial Manuscripts.” Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 14. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975.

273

Glass, John, and Donald Robertson. “A Census of Native Middle American Pictorial Manuscripts.” Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 14. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975.

González Echevarría, Roberto. Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

González Salgado, José Antonio. “Contribución al estudio de la ortografía en el siglo XVI: La reforma del padre Flórez.” Dicenda: Cuadernos de filología hispánica 14 (1996): 149-158

Gosner, Kevin. Soldiers of the Virgin: The Moral Economy of a Colonial Maya Rebellion. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992.

Grafton, Anthony. New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1992.

Gruzinski, Serge. “Colonial Indian Maps in Sixteenth-Century Mexico: An Essay in Mixed Cartography.” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 13 (1987): 46-61.

______. Man-Gods in the Mexican Highlands: Indian Power and Colonial Society, 1550-1580. Translated by Eileen Corrigan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989.

______. La colonización de lo imaginario: Sociedades indígenas y occidentalización en el México español, siglos XVI-XVIII. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1991.

______. Images at War: Mexico from Columbus to Blade Runner (1492-2019). Translated by Heather MacLean. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.

______. The Mestizo Mind: The Intellectual Dynamics of Colonization and Globalization. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Gutiérrez, Ramón. When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991.

Harley, J. B. “Rereading the Maps of the Colombian Encounter.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82/3 (1992): 522-536.

______. The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography. Edited by Paul Laxton. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

274

Haskett, Robert. Indigenous Rulers: An Ethnohistory of Town Government in Colonial Cuernavaca. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991.

______. “Paper Shields: The Ideology of Coats of Arms in Colonial Mexican Primordial Titles.” Ethnohistory 43 (1996): 99-126.

Haude, Mary Elizabeth. “Identification of Colorants on Maps from the Early Colonial Period of New Spain (Mexico).” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 37 (1996): 240-270.

Herrera, Marta. Santiago Muñoz and Santiago Paredes. “Geographies of the Name: Naming Practices Among the Muisca and Páez in the Audiencias of Santafé and Quito, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Journal of Latin American Geography 11/S (2012): 91-115.

Herzog, Tamar. Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Hidalgo, Alexander. “A True and Faithful Copy: Reproducing Indian Maps in the Seventeenth-Century Valley of Oaxaca.” Journal of Latin American Geography 11/S (2012): 117-144.

Jacob, Christian. “Toward a Cultural History of Cartography.” Imago Mundi 48 (1996): 191-198

Jansen, Maarten. “Monte Albán y Zaachila en los códices mixtecos.” In The Shadow of Monte Alban: Politics and Historiography in postclassic Oaxaca, Mexico. Edited by Maarten Jansen, Peter Kröfges, and Michel Oudijk. Leiden: Research School CNWS, School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies, 1998.

Jansen, Maarten. Dante García Ríos, and Ángel Rivera Guzmán. “La identificación de Monte Albán en los códices mixtecos: Nueva evidencia.” Paper presented at the VI Monte Albán Roundtable Conference, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2011.

Jansen, Maarten, and Gabina A. Pérez Jiménez. Voces del Dzaha Zdavui: Análisis y conversión del Vocabulario de Fray Francisco de Alvarado (1593). Oaxaca City: Colegio Superior para la Educación Integral Intercultural de Oaxaca, 2009.

Jansen, Maarten. Peter Kröfges, and Michel Oudijk, eds. The Shadow of Monte Alban: Politics and Historiography in postclassic Oaxaca, Mexico. Edited by Maarten Jansen, Peter Kröfges, and Michel Oudijk. Leiden: Research School CNWS, School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies, 1998.

275

Johns, Adrian. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

______. “How to Acknowledge a Revolution.” American Historical Review 107/1 (2002): 106-25.

______. “Ink.” In Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe: Between Market and Laboratory. Edited by Ursula Klein and E.C. Spary. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Kagan, Richard. Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile, 1500-1700. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.

Karttunen, Frances. “After the Conquest: The Survival of Indigenous Patterns of Life and Belief.” Journal of World History 3 (1992): 239-256.

Kiracofe, James. “Architectural Fusion and Indigenous Ideology in Early Colonial Teposcolula: La Casa de la Cacica: A Building at the Edge of Oblivion.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas XVII/66 (1995): 45-84

Klein, Ursula and E.C. Spary, eds. Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe: Between Market and Laboratory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Klor de Alva, Jorge. H.B. Nicholson, and Eloise Quiñones Keber, eds. Work of Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-Century Aztec Mexico. Albany and Austin: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, the University at Albany, SUNY, and University of Texas Press, 1988.

Kranz, Travis. “Visual Persuasion: Sixteenth-Century Tlaxcalan Pictorials in Response to the Conquest of Mexico.” In The Conquest All Over Again: Nahuas and Zapotecs Thinking, Writing, and Painting Spanish Colonialism. Edited by Susan Schroeder. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2010.

Kubler, George. “On the Colonial Extinction of the Motifs of Pre-Colombian Art.” Essays in Pre-Colombian Art and Archaeology. Edited by Samuel Lothrop. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961.

Langfur, Hal. "Uncertain Refuge: Frontier Formation and the Origins of the Botocudo War in Late-Colonial Brazil." Hispanic American Historical Review 82/2 (2002): 215-56.

Lechuga, Ruth. El traje indígena de México: su evolución, desde la época Prehispánica hasta la actualidad. Mexico City: Panorama, 1982.

276

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1991.

Leibsohn, Dana. “Primers for Memory: Cartographic Histories and Nahua Identity.” In Writing Without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerican and the Andes. Edited by Elizabeth H. Boone and Walter D. Mignolo. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994.

______. “Colony and Cartography: Shifting Signs on Indigenous Maps of New Spain.” In Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650. Edited by Claire Farago. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

______. Script and Glyph: Pre-Hispanic History, Colonial Bookmaking and the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2009.

Lenz, Hans. El papel indígena mexicano. Mexico City: SEP-Setentas, 1973 [1948].

______. Historia del papel en México y cosas relacionadas (1525-1950). Mexico City: Miguel Ángel Porrúa.

Lockhart, James. The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.

______. “Encomienda and Hacienda.” In Of Things of the Indies: Essays Old and New in Early Latin American History. Edited by James Lockhart. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Long, Pamela O. Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

López, John F. “‘In the Art of My Profession’: Adrian Boot and Dutch Water Management in Colonial Mexico City,” Journal of Latin American Geography 11/S (2012): 35-60.

López Caballero, Paula, ed. Los títulos primordiales del centro de México. Mexico City: CONACULTA and Fondo Editorial Tierra Adentro, 2003.

López Piñero, José M., and José Pardo Tomás. “The Contribution of Hernández to European Botany and Materia Medica.” In Searching for the Secrets of Nature: 277

The Life and Works of Dr. Francisco Hernández. Edited by Simon Varey, Rafael Chabrán, and Dora B. Weiner. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Los códices de México. Mexico City: INAH and SEP, 1979.

Luján Muñoz, Jorge. “La literatura notarial en España e Hispanoamérica, 1500-1820.” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 38 (1981): 101-116.

Magaloni Kerpel, Diana. “The Traces of the Creative Process: Pictorial Materials and Techniques in the Beinecke Map.” In Painting a Map of Sixteenth-Century Mexico City: Land, Writing, and Native Rule. Edited by Mary Miller and Barbara Mundy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.

______. “Painters of the New World: The Process of Making the Florentine Codex.” In Colors between Two Worlds: The Florentine Codex of Bernardino de Sahagún. Edited by Gerhard Wolf, Joseph Connors, and Louis Waldman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Mallon, Florencia. Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru. Berkeley: University of California, 1995.

Marcus, Joyce. Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Martínez, Maximino. Catálogo de nombres vulgares y científicos de plantas mexicanas. Mexico City: Ediciones Botas, 1937.

Martínez, Oscar. Border People: Life and Society in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994.

Martínez Cortés, Fernando. Pegamentos, gomas y resinas en el México Prehispánico. Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1974.

Méndez Martínez, Enrique. Índice de documentos relativos a los pueblos del estado de Oaxaca. Ramo Tierras. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1979.

Méndez Martínez, Enrique, and Enrique Méndez Torres, ed. Límites, mapas y títulos primordiales de los pueblos del estado de Oaxaca: Índice del Ramo de Tierras. Mexico City: Archivo General de la Nación, 1999.

______. Historia de Zaachila, Cuilapan, y Xoxocotlan: Tres pueblos unidos por sus orígines. Oaxaca City: Instituto Cultural Oaxaqueno F.O.R.O., 2007.

278

Metcalf, Alida. Go-Betweens and the Colonization of Brazil, 1500-1600. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.

Mignolo, Walter D. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.

Miller, Mary and Barbara Mundy, eds. Painting a Map of Sixteenth-Century Mexico City: Land, Writing, and Native Rule. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.

Monaghan, John. “The Text in the Body, the Body in the Text: The Embodied Sign in Mixtec Writing.” In Writing Without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerican and the Andes. Edited by Elizabeth H. Boone and Walter D. Mignolo. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994.

Monmonier, Mark. How to Lie with Maps. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Mullen, Robert. Dominican Architecture in Sixteenth-Century Oaxaca. Tempe: Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona State University, 1975.

Mundy, Barbara. The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciones Geográficas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

______. “Mesoamerican Cartography.” In The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 3, Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Artic, Australian, and Pacific Societies. Edited by David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Mundy, Barbara and Dana Leibsohn. “Of Copies, Casts, and Codices: Mexico on Display in 1892.” Res 29/30 (1996): 326-343.

Mut Calafell, Antonio. “Fórmulas españolas de la tinta caligráfica negra de los siglos XIII a XIX y otras relacionadas con la tinta (reavivar escritos, contra las manchas y goma glasa).” In El papel y las tintas en la transmisión de la información. Primeras jornadas archivísticas del 12 al 16 de mayo de 1992. Huelva: Diputación Provincial, 1994.

Nader, Helen. Liberty in Absolutist Spain: The Habsburg Sale of Towns, 1516-1700. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

Nicholson, H.B. “The Temalacatl of Tehuacan.” El México Antiguo VIII (1955): 95- 134.

______. “The Mixteca-Puebla Concept in Mesoamerican Archeology: A Re- examination.” In Men and Cultures: Selected Papers from the Fifth International 279

Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. Edited by Anthony F.C. Wallace. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960.

______. “The Mixteca-Puebla Concept Re-visited.” In The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central Mexico. Edited by Elizabeth H. Boone. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1982.

Noguez, Xavier and Stephanie Wood, eds. De tlacuilos y escribanos: Estudios sobre documentos indígenas coloniales del centro de México. Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1998.

Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoir.” Representations 26 (1989): 7-24.

Nussdorfer, Laurie. “Writing and the Power of Speech: Notaries and Artisans in Baroque Rome.” In Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe (1500-1800): Essays in Honor of Natalie Zemon Davis. Edited by Barbara B. Diefendorf and Carla Hesse. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.

Olson, Todd. “Clouds and Rain.” Representations 104/1 (2008): 102-115.

Padrón, Ricardo. The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521-1821. Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2004.

Pedley, Mary Sponberg. The Commerce of Cartography: Making and Marketing Maps in Eighteenth-Century France and England. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005.

Pérez Fernández del Castillo, Bernardo. Historia de la escribanía en la Nueva España y del notariado en México. Mexico City: Colegio de Notarios del Distrito Federal and Editorial Porrúa, 1988.

Peterson, Jeanette F. “Synthesis and Survival: The Native Presence in Sixteenth-Century Murals of New Spain.” Special issue on “Native Artisans and Patrons in Colonial Latin America.” Phoebus 7 (1995): 14-35.

Pettas, William. “A Sixteenth-Century Spanish Bookstore: The Inventory of Juan de Junta.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 95 (1995): 29-188.

Piedra, José. “The Value of Paper.” Res 16 (1988): 85-104.

280

Pohl, John. M. D. “Mexican Codices, Maps, and Lienzos as Social Contracts.” In Writing Without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerican and the Andes. Edited by Elizabeth H. Boone and Walter D. Mignolo. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994.

Portuondo, María. Secret Science: Spanish Cosmography and the New World. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009.

Presta, Ana María. “Undressing the Coya and Dressing the Indian Woman: Market Economy, Clothing, and Identities in the Colonial Andes, La Plata (Charcas), Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries.” Hispanic American Historical Review 90/1 (2010): 41-74.

Quiñones Keber, Eloise. “Collecting Cultures: A Mexican Manuscript in the Vatican Library.” In Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650. Edited by Claire Farago. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Raj, Kapil. Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650-1900. London: Palgrave, 2007.

Rama, Ángel. The Lettered City. Edited and translated by John Charles Chasteen. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.

Ramos Pérez, Demetrio. “La junta magna de 1568. Planificación de una época nueva.” In La formación de las sociedades Iberoamericanas (1568-1700). Edited by Demetrio Ramos Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1999.

Rappaport, Joanne and Tom Cummins, eds. Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012.

Reko, Blas Pablo. Mitobotanica zapoteca. Mexico City: General León 9, 1945.

Reséndez, Andrés. Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Restall, Matthew. The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550-1850. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.

______. “Heirs to the Hieroglyphs: Indigenous Writing in Colonial Mesoamerica.” The Americas 54 (1997): 239-267.

______. “A History of the New Philology and the New Philology in History.” Latin American Research Review 38 (2003): 113-134. 281

Rivas Mata, Emma. “Impresores y mercaderes de libros en la ciudad de México, siglo XVII.” In Del autor al lector: Libros y libreros en la historia. Edited by Carmen Castañeda. Mexico City: CIESAS, 2002.

Robertson, Donald. Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period: The Metropolitan Schools. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994 [1959].

______. “The Pinturas (Maps) of the Relaciones Geográficas, with a Catalog.” In Handbook of Middle American Indians. Volume 12. Edited by Robert Wauchope and Howard F. Cline. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972.

______. “Techialoyan Manuscripts and Paintings with a Catalogue.” In Handbook of Middle American Indians. Volume 14. Edited by Robert Wauchope and Howard Cline. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975.

Romero Frizzi, María de los Ángeles. El sol y la cruz: Los pueblos indios de Oaxaca colonial. Mexico City: CIESAS, 1996.

______. “El título de San Mateo Capulalpan, Oaxaca. Actualidad y autenticidad de un título primordial.” Relaciones: Estudios de Historia y Sociedad 122 (2010): 21-54.

Romero Frizzi, María de los Ángeles, ed. Escritura zapoteca: 2,500 años de historia. Mexico City: CIESAS, INAH, and Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2003.

Rubio Sánchez, Manuel. Historia del añil o xiquilite en Centro América. San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 1976.

Russo, Alessandra. El realismo circular: Tierras, espacios y paisajes de la cartografía novohispana, siglos XVI y XVII. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 2005.

Sánchez Bueno de Bonfil, María Cristina. El papel del papel en la Nueva España. Mexico City: INAH, 1993.

Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1995.

Schiebinger, Londa. “Feminine Icons: The Face of Early Modern Science.” Critical Inquiry 14/4 (1988): 661-691.

Schroeder, Susan, ed. The Conquest All Over Again: Nahuas and Zapotecs Thinking, Writing, and Painting Spanish Colonialism. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2010.

282

Schroeder, Susan. Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, eds. Indian Women of Early Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

Scott, James C. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

______. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

______. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

Secord, James. “Knowledge in Transit.” Isis 95/4 (2004): 654-672.

Sepúlveda y Herrera, María Teresa. Procesos por idolatría al cacique, gobernadores y sacerdotes de Yanhuitlán, 1544-1546. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1999.

Siracusano, Gabriela. El poder de los colores: De lo material a lo simbólico en las prácticas culturales andinas. Siglos XVI-XVII. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005.

Smail, Daniel Lord. Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Late Medieval Marseille. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999.

Smith, Mary Elizabeth. Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico: Mixtec Place Signs and Maps. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973.

Smith, Pamela H. and Paula Findlen, eds. Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe. New York and London: Routledge, 2002.

Sousa, Lisa and Kevin Terraciano. “The ‘Original Conquest’ of Oaxaca: Nahua and Mixtec Accounts of the Spanish Conquest.” Ethnohistory 50 (2003): 349-400.

Spores, Ronald. “Mixteca Cacicas: Status, Wealth, and the Political Accommodation of Native Elite Women in Early Colonial Oaxaca.” In Indian Women of Early Mexico, ed. Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

Spores, Ronald, ed. Colección de documentos del Archivo General de la Nación para la etnohistoria de la Mixteca de Oaxaca en el siglo XVI. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Publications in Anthropology, 1992.

283

Spores, Ronald and Miguel Saldaña, eds. Documentos para la etnohistoria del estado de Oaxaca: Índice del Ramo de Mercedes del Archivo General de la Nación. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Publications in Anthropology, 1973.

Stoler, Ann Laura. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.

Sweet, David G. and Gary B. Nash, eds. Lucha por la supervivencia en América colonial. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987.

Taylor, William. Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972.

______. Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Terraciano, Kevin. The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca: Ñudzahui History, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Torre Revello, José. “Algunos libros de caligrafía usados en México en el siglo XVII.” Historia Mexicana 5/2 (1955): 220-227

Trabulse, Elías. “Científicos e ingenieros en la Nueva España: Don Diego García Conde en la historia de la cartografía mexicana.” In Una visión científica y artística de la Ciudad de México: El plano de la capital virreinal (1793-1807) de Diego García Conde (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios de Historia Condumex, 2002).

Traub, Valerie. “Mapping the Global Body.” In Early Modern Visual Culture: Representation, Race, and Empire in Renaissance England. Edited by Peter Erickson and Clark Hulse. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

Turnbull, David. “Cartography and Science in Early Modern Europe: Mapping the Construction of Knowledge Spaces.” Imago Mundi 48 (1996): 5-24.

Vaillant, George. “A Correlation of Archeological and Historical Sequences in the Valley of Mexico.” American Anthropologist 40/4 (1938): 535-573.

Van Young, Eric. Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth-Century Mexico: The Rural Economy of the Guadalajara Region, 1675-1820. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

______. “Mexican Rural History Since Chevalier: The Historiography of the Colonial Hacienda.” Latin American Research Review 18 (1983): 5-61.

284

______. “Material Life.” In The Countryside in Colonial Latin America. Edited by Louisa Schell Hoberman and Susan Migden Socolow. Diálogos Series. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.

Varey, Simon, ed. The Mexican Treasury: The Writings of Dr. Francisco Hernández. Translated by Rafael Chabran, Cynthia L. Chamberlin, and Simon Varey. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Wallace, Anthony F. C., ed. Men and Cultures: Selected Papers from the Fifth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960.

Widdifield. Stacie. The Embodiment of the National in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexican Painting. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996.

Wiedemann, H. G. and A. Boller. “Thermal Analysis of Codex Huamantla and other Mexican Papers.” Journal of Thermal Analysis 46 (1996): 1033-1045.

Wilson, Bronwen. The World in Venice: Print, the City, and Early Modern Identity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.

Wolf, Gerhard. Joseph Connors, and Louis Waldman, eds. Colors between Two Worlds: The Florentine Codex of Bernardino de Sahagún. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Wood, Stephanie. “Pedro Villafranca y Juana Gertrudis Navarrete: Falsificador de títulos y su viuda (Nueva España, siglo XVIII).” In Lucha por la supervivencia en América colonial. Edited by David G. Sweet and Gary B. Nash. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987.

______. “Don Diego García de Mendoza Moctezuma: A Techialoyan Mastermind?” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 19 (1989): 245-268.

______. “El problema de la historicidad de Títulos y los códices del grupo Techialoyan.” In De tlacuilos y escribanos: Estudios sobre documentos indígenas coloniales del centro de México. Edited Xavier Noguez and Stephanie Wood. Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1998.

______. “The Techialoyan Codices.” In Sources and Methods for the Study of Postconquest Mesoamerican Ethnohistory, Provisional Version (e-book), J. Lockhart, L. Sousa, and S. Wood (eds.), pp. 1-22. Eugene: Wired Humanities Project, University of Oregon, 2007. http://whp.uoregon.edu/Lockhart/Wood.pdf.

285

Yannakakis, Yanna. The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.

______. “Witnesses, Spatial Practices, and a Land Dispute in Colonial Oaxaca.” The Americas 65 (2008): 161-192.

______. “Allies or Servants? The Journey of Indian Conquistadors in the Lienzo de Analco.” Ethnohistory 58 (2011): 653-682.

Zeitlin, Judith Francis. “Ranchers and Indians on the Southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec: Economic Change and Indigenous Survival in Colonial Mexico.” Hispanic American Historical Review 69 (1989): 23-60

______. “El lienzo de Guevea y el discurso histórico de la época colonial.” In Escritura zapoteca: 2,500 años de historia. Edited by María de los Ángeles Romero Frizzi. Mexico City: CIESAS, INAH, and Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2003.