Nuestro pesar, nuestra aflicción: Tunetuliniliz, tucucuca, memorias en lengua Náhuatl enviadas a Felipe II por indígenas del Valle de Guatemala hacia 1572

Abstract

Indian communities in colonial Mesoamerica employed a wide variety of strategies to defend their interests, including the use of written petitions. Indigenous-language petitions, which appeared as early as the 1550s, were usually addressed to a high-ranking Spaniard, often the district magistrate but at times the viceroy or king. They sought to lighten tribute and labor demands, defend community lands, or rein in local priests and often initiated litigation. They had their own conventions and vocabulary. They addressed Spanish authorities in reverential language and referred to the petitioners, themselves often members of the indigenous high nobility, in humble, deferent terms, characteristic of preconquest speechmaking. Because petitions were generally longer, more varied, and less formulaic than more mundane genres of indigenous-language documents, they are extraordinarily rich as ethnohistorical sources. The editors view this edition as analogous to The Broken Spears, the well-known compilation of Nahua accounts of the Spanish conquest, edited by Miguel León-Portilla, in providing access to hard-to-hear indigenous voices.This edition is based on a collection of 20 Nahuatl (and 2 Spanish) petitions, originating from the city and environs of Santiago de Guatemala (Antigua) in 1572 and addressed to Philip II. The existence of documents written in Nahuatl in a region dominated by speakers of Cakchiquel Maya reflects a long history of central Mexican influence. In the late classical period, successive waves of migrants created communities of Nahuatl-speakers as far south as Nicaragua, whose descendants are known today as Pipiles. At the time of the Aztec empire, long-distance merchants, or pochteca, used Nahuatl as a lingua franca along the trade routes that reached into southern Mesoamerica. And in the early sixteenth century, colonies of central Mexican Nahuatl speakers accompanied the Spanish conqueror Pedro de Alvarado to Central America and the majority remained in or near the city of Santiago. After the conquest, the Spaniards themselves encouraged the use of Nahuatl as a lingua franca throughout Mesoamerica. The edition raises the question of what this history suggests about the authors of the 1572 petitions. Were they drawn from bilingual (Maya/Nahuatl) communities or did they represent a small group of interpreters who learned Nahuatl as a lingua franca?The edition has three parts. The first is an essay, written by historian Christopher Lutz, who introduces the historical context in which the petitions were written and their major concerns—a recent increase in tribute assessments, forced labor, mistreatment by local Spanish officials and settlers, and the sale of Indian orphans. The heart of the edition is the second part, presenting a facsimile reproduction of the petitions and then their transcription and (on the facing page) translation into Spanish. Specialists and non-specialists who read Spanish, including students, will benefit greatly from reading these primary documents. The third part, written by the accomplished Nahuatl linguist Karen Dakin, includes both a word list and a linguistic study of the language used in the petitions; both will be of tremendous interest to specialists.Based on linguistic analysis, Dakin argues that the Maya communities that produced these petitions were not bilingual and that the authors were not native speakers of Nahuatl. Rather, they employed a lingua franca, learned imperfectly and not in daily use. Furthermore, this lingua franca was neither Pipil nor any other dialect from the eastern Mesoamerican periphery, but appears to have been an archaic form of central Mexican Nahuatl, introduced long before the arrival of central Mexican migrants in the sixteenth century, probably along the trade routes of the pochteca. Thus, it was the antecessor to the classical Nahuatl encountered by the Spaniards in central Mexico when they arrived in the sixteenth century. The style of the petitions—simplified forms with a restricted vocabulary—also reflects a lingua franca and represents a regional tradition of Nahuatl writing far removed from the polished rhetoric and complex idiom typical of prominent towns in central Mexico, which this edition so effectively brings to our attention.