Codex Sierra: A Nahuatl-Mixtec Book of Accounts from Colonial Mexico

Abstract

Accounting might seem a dull topic. The account books for just 14 years (1550–64) of a small Mixtec community, Santa Catalina Texupan, became the work of a lifetime for Kevin Terraciano. The 62-page codex, known as the Codex Sierra Texupan or, as Terraciano calls it at times, Codex Ñundaa (after the Mixtec name of the community), is remarkable in several ways that Terraciano skillfully explores. It has parallel pictographic, alphabetic, and numerical content and is in fact one of the longest and earliest alphabetic Nahuatl texts from Mexico, even though the community's primary and secondary languages were Mixtec (Ñudzahui) and Chocho (Ngiwa), respectively. A highlight of this volume is the exacting transcription and nuanced translation of the alphabetic Nahuatl text.The codex's pictographic, alphabetic, and numerical content testify to colonial change and Indigenous resilience and creativity. Terraciano argues that the pictorial text was primary both because of its position—on the left side of the page—and because it comprised an equal amount of space on the page as the alphabetic writing. Certainly, the luminous color plate reproductions of every page of the codex, which show the vivid cochineal red and seven other colors of the original's lively pictorial imagery, draw the eye to the left. Terraciano notes subtle clues in handwriting, phrasing, vocabulary, and pictorial style—such as unusual visual cues and puns to describe outsiders, Spaniards, and excess tribute—to suggest which elements were created by the same person and when different hands were involved. He uses Mixtec vocabulary throughout the book; when he uses Nahuatl terminology in key spots (such as chapter titles), he also provides the Mixtec equivalent elsewhere. Terraciano's thorough yet succinct consideration of the manuscript's form and content is a milestone in thoroughly understanding individual examples of Indigenous Mesoamerican writing that calls to mind Frances Berdan and Patricia Anawalt's analyses of the Codex Mendoza or Davíd Carrasco and Scott Sessions's analysis of the Map of Cuauhtinchan No. 2. Terraciano carefully distinguishes similarities and differences between his book and the much earlier (1906 and 1933) editions of the codex by Nicolás León. He chooses not to compare his book in great detail with that of Cecilia Rossell Gutiérrez and the late Hilda Aguirre Beltrán published in 2016.The Codex Sierra Texupan / Codex Ñundaa belongs to the genre of the libro de cuentas, the account books to record both income and expenditures in money of community funds (not labor or tribute of goods and services). In chapter 1 Terraciano gives a historical overview of this genre introduced from Europe. He then subverts common expectations about colonial economies when he demonstrates in chapter 6 that the community spent money on Mesoamerican items such as turkeys, cotton, and cochineal, while its income was largely from Spanish-style goods of silk, wool, and cheese. While Terraciano emphasizes throughout how long-established practices in Mesoamerican literacy paved the way for rapid and effective adoption of elements of European literary practices, he is more cautious about how the extensive heritage of Mesoamerican moneys influenced the swift adoption of European denominations of money within a generation after Spanish invasion. The resiliency of Mesoamerican monetization is indicated when he observes that Texupan residents rapidly took to using European coin alongside cacao and cloth moneys in cash transactions to buy both Mesoamerican and Spanish goods and services (such as husbandry of sheep and cheese making). Such resiliency can also be seen through accounts that record amounts of pesos, reales, and tomines both in Roman numerals and with Mesoamerican symbols and counting strategies, and through how people settled numerous kinds of community debts (stemming from both Mesoamerican and European practices) with the state and church. The income and expenditures together form a colonial socioeconomic mosaic that attests to the volatile boom-and-bust dynamics of prices and production.Texupan/Ñundaa had a relatively ample supply of money because of the community's involvement in the lucrative but volatile silk trade. The codex demonstrates that the town was a leading producer of silk grain across the rise and decline of the sixteenth-century silk boom. I was fortunate to get a preview in 2012 of a fascinating element of this book: the codex's silkworm and mulberry imagery. Terraciano participated in a workshop I organized on Indigenous Mesoamerican literacy supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, the latter of which also generously hosted the event; the workshop's papers were subsequently published as a special issue of Ethnohistory. I remember lively discussions during the workshop of the importance of mulberry leaves for silkworm cultivation. Terraciano's discussion of silk-related imagery is but one of several ways that he elucidates how the codex offers insight into the community of Texupan/Ñundaa and its key elements, the tecpan (palace) and teopan (church), including how they related to new Spanish forms of state and church.Terraciano writes clearly and explains important concepts enough that the book is appropriate for historians and students interested in Mesoamerican writing systems and the Spanish colonial world; the reproduction, transcription, and translation of the codex will appeal to Latin American specialists. This work shows that in Mixtec hands, accounting for money can be both vivid and beautiful.