Portraying the Aztec Past: The Codices Boturini, Azcatitlan, and Aubin

Abstract

Portraying the Aztec Past examines three interrelated Mesoamerican manuscripts created by sixteenth-century Nahua tlacuiloque (artist-scribes): the codices Boturini, Azcatitlan, and Aubin. The author, Angela Herren Rajagopalan, provides close analysis of each manuscript while also examining their intersections with and departures from one another. Through this comparative approach we learn the ways their creators utilized Indigenous and European modes of representation, writing, and making to communicate identity and sociopolitical alliances.Chapter 1, the introduction, discusses the state of scholarship on each manuscript and the author’s unique contributions, which include close analysis of their materiality, production, and, most importantly, the relationship between the three manuscripts.Chapter 2 focuses on what the author calls the “pictographic paradigm” of Codex Boturini, alternatively titled the Tira de la peregrinación de los Mexica. The codex, which remains unfinished, displays traditional Indigenous features in the use of amatl paper in a screen-fold format, and features black and red as dominant colors. Rajagopalan’s hands-on expert knowledge of the manuscript really shines through here with her examination of erasures, pentimenti, and various adjustments made by the tlacuilo over time. These clues lead to hypotheses about the author’s sources (pictographic or oral) and how the annals of Mexica history were carefully crafted to highlight Aztlan as their place of origin, the tutelary patron god Huitzilopochtli, and the celebration of the fifty-two-year calendar cycle with the New Fire Ceremony, all touchstones of Mexica identity. This chapter’s findings are particularly important for Codex Boturini’s relationship to the Codices Azcatitlan and Aubin, which unfold in subsequent chapters.Chapters 3 through 5 examine Codex Azcatitlan from various angles. Chapter 3 delves into a connoisseurship of Mesoamerican manuscript making that reveals a long and close familiarity with the objects. Rajagopalan differentiates between two hands, and the well-placed illustration details help the reader to quickly gain acuity. Curiously, the author refers to the tlacuiloque as male throughout the book. Scholars such as José Rabasa (2011: 2–3) have suggested that women were also artist-scribes, and he used female pronouns for the tlacuiloque of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. Whatever their gender, Rajagopalan’s third chapter allows the reader a look into the period eye and hand of the tlacuiloque. By differentiating the hands, we are able to discern the various voices in the manuscript. The author attributes the manuscript to a master/apprentice relationship likely fostered at the Colegio de Santa Cruz Tlatelolco. She argues that the manuscript’s explicitly Tlatelolca-centered version of the Mexica past was drawn from Codex Boturini but was manipulated, perhaps through improvisation, or perhaps inspired by the tlacuilo’s knowledge of the Annals of Tlatelolco.Chapter 4 further cements the Tlatelolca voice of Codex Azcatitlan by focusing on the cosmic hero Don Martín Ecatl (or Ecatzin), a Tlatelolca warrior who famously captured a Spanish flag in combat. Rajagopalan spends some time comparing the codex with other sixteenth-century sources, which reveals that the Azcatitlan tlacuilo “celebrated indigenous victory and presented indigenous defeat as the inevitable result of cosmic destiny” (9). Chapter 5 delves deeper into the final postconquest pages of Codex Azcatitlan, dated 1521–27. Of particular interest is the manuscript’s relationship to oral traditions and the use of Indigenous, cyclical conceptions of time in recording the postconquest period.The final body chapter shifts to Codex Aubin, with particular interest in the ways in which the tlacuiloque was influenced by printed books. The section in this chapter titled “The Impact of Epidemic Disease” feels almost prescient in light of the current coronavirus pandemic. Here Rajagopalan highlights the individual voice of the tlacuilo, who records personal entries during the plague of 1576. During the epidemic at least two other hands appear in the manuscript, revealing the tlacuilo’s urgency to complete the annals history under the threat of disease and death. Our current pandemic, coupled with the violence by the dominant power against Black lives (a violence perhaps also familiar to the Indigenous tlacuilo), has created a similar sense of urgency, ultimately catalyzing a revolution focused on dismantling systemic racism. Beyond this compelling section, the chapter delves into the literary world of early colonial Mexico, examining the manuscript’s European codex-style construction, end papers, Latin sources, and the influence of the printed book. She argues that to protect the Indigenous subject matter within from perceived heresy, the tlacuilo deliberately adopted features of typical European books. This, perhaps the most compelling chapter in the tome, beautifully brings to life the educational context and training as well as the social factors, most notably the establishment of the Inquisition (1571), that impacted the tlacuilo and the manuscript itself.Overall Rajagopalan’s book is an excellent contribution to Mesoamerican manuscript studies and a compelling read for specialists and a more general audience alike. It is particularly notable for the focus on the materiality of the manuscripts, the artist and intended audience, and the social and political machinations that prompted their creation.