Conflictos y alianzas en tiempos de cambio: Azcapotzalco, Tlacopan, Tenochtitlan y Tlatelolco (siglos XII–XVI)

Abstract

In Conflictos y alianzas María Castañeda de la Paz unravels the political and dynastic histories of the Mexica and the Tepaneca, two of the largest and most powerful ancestral groups among the Nahuatl-speaking peoples of Late Postclassic and early colonial Mexico. Yet this is no simple task, given the political and ethnic complexity of the Nahua world as well as the eclectic and contradictory nature of many historical sources. Beyond archaeology, much of Nahua political history is revealed in colonial-era artifacts, each requiring its own careful methodology and interpretive filter—from painted codices and pictorial manuscripts, to alphabetic texts in Spanish and Nahuatl derived from oral traditions and songs yet reflecting the influence of Spanish clergy, to colonial legal and administrative documents.It is in this regard that we should recognize Conflictos y alianzas as a considerable achievement. While “Aztec history” as a topic of inquiry is almost five centuries old, Castañeda’s project has only recently become possible, as it synthesizes the insights of two largely discrete traditions in contemporary Mesoamericanist research. The first involves the interpretation of Nahua codices and pictorial texts, most of which show the political interests and genealogical concerns of indigenous elites. This requires not only translation but also recontextualization, as the corpus is highly fragmented, often rendering opaque both the circumstances of a text’s production and its relationship to other records. The second is postconquest Nahua ethnohistory, which has revealed much about the shape and trajectory of Nahua society and culture before and after the arrival of Spanish conquerors. By uniting both, Castañeda effectively traces central Mexican political history by way of the diplomatic and dynastic pursuits of the most important scions of the Tepaneca and Mexica ruling lineages.Conflictos y alianzas tells at least four overlapping stories. First, it is one of the few political histories of the Nahuas that straddle the 1521 Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan and Tlacopan, drawing on recent ethnohistorical research uncovering the initial continuity of some Nahua political and diplomatic relationships into the colonial era. Second, it is an intimate history of four Nahua dynasties and their postconquest heirs: their victories, their entanglements, and their struggles. Third, it is by necessity a mapping and a genealogy of the sources themselves, which present enormous problems of interpretation. Castañeda carefully reveals the common origins of many seemingly discrete colonial sources and traces their links to the political and legal activities of contemporary noble families. As such sources frequently contradict one another, Castañeda notes the disagreements and weighs them transparently; even as this adds heft and narrative complexity to the book, it discloses broader truths about the ethnic and dynastic structures of the Nahua world, as well as illustrating how such legacies inflected indigenous politics and memories into the colonial era. In the process Castañeda corrects historical errors in the interpretation of certain codices, exposing instances in which misunderstandings persisted for centuries. Finally, a running endeavor in Conflictos y alianzas reverse engineers the development of many discrete Tepaneca and Mexica enclaves by way of their modern footprints, such as the boundaries and place-names of the parishes and neighborhoods of today’s Mexico City.As a multidisciplinary political history, a dynastic and genealogical history, and a comparative interpretation of the Nahua pictorial archive, Conflictos y alianzas most directly pertains to experts and scholars of Mesoamerica and colonial Mexico. Yet by systematically integrating such a broad variety of indigenous sources, it will also become a new reference about the empires of Late Postclassic central Mexico, their leaders, their colonial-era descendants, and the pictorial histories they produced.