Nahuas and Mixtecs

Cihuatl, Xochitl y Cuicatl: Análisis textual de la mujer en los cantos nahuas, examina la agencia femenina como parte del análisis textual e iconográfico en la literatura precolombina y colonial mexicana. Además, este análisis es un aporte a las ramas de los estudios etnográficos, etnohistóricos, arqueológicos, antropológicos, históricos y de historia del arte. Siendo un análisis interdisciplinario, nos da una imagen más completa de la representación de las mujeres nahuas que describe la voz interlocutora femenina de los cantos. Así se destacan los diferentes roles que ejercía la agencia femenina en el ambiente público y privado de su vida cotidiana en la sociedad de los Siglos XV y XVI del centro de México. Desde un punto de vista literario y cultural, este estudio se basa en ocho cantos nahuas recopilados durante el Siglo XVI, en crónicas escritas durante los Siglos XVI y XVII de españoles y de mestizos, como también de varios códices precolombinos y de la post-conquista de los Siglos XV, XVI y XVII de México.

Es un estudio sobre las sentencias que emitió la real Audiencia de México en los primeros años de su fundación, hasta la creación del juzgado general de indios,  para analizar cómo se erigió la política de la Corona. La tesis muestra que los oidores frenaron el poder de la gran dinastía mixteca, los descendientes de 8 venados, para implantar la jurisdicción del rey. Se analizan los argumentos jurídicos que aludían al derecho mixteco y la sentencia que la invalidó. Además se reconstruye una serie de genealogías para comprender el caso mixteco y su naturaleza en la sucesión.

En 1584, el cacique de Tepexi de la Seda, don Joaquín de San Francisco, solicitó a la corona la exención de tributos por los méritos que don Gonzalo Mazatzin Moctezuma, su abuelo, había prestado al rey de España. Avalado por más de treinta testigos, don Joaquín relata que cuando Hernán Cortés se encontraba en Tlaxcala, su abuelo le envió embajadores para aliársele, jurando fidelidad al rey. Mientras Cortés partió al norte a someter Tenochtitlán, el nahua don Gonzalo Mazatzin, nombrado capitán, se dirigió al sur de Mesoamérica, y poco antes de que la ciudad mexica cayera, conquistó sin ayuda europea una veintena de pueblos de la Mixteca en nombre del rey de España.

The volume provides a reconstruction and analysis of the knowledge and practices concerning health, illness and therapy among the Nahua of Mexico, since the testimonies on Aztec medicine collected by the first conquerors, through documents of the colonial era, up to the present ethnography, based on a thirty-year research in the Sierra of Puebla. By examining the Nahua concepts of the person, the delicate balance on which health depends and the dangers that can cause illness, the book highlights the articulated spectrum of diagnostic categories of the indigenous medical tradition, as well as the therapeutic practices (which combine herbs and other substances, bodily manipulations and ritual acts) through which healing is pursued. The in-depth examination of Nahua medicine reveals the misunderstandings that – since the first contacts with European medicine - have characterized its assessment by non-indigenous people and which still persist today, when the health institutions have opened up new spaces of collaboration with native specialists. Precisely the critical comparison between the peculiarities of the various kinds of medical knowledge which co-exist in the current panorama of medical pluralism allows us to grasp the reasons for the vitality and persistence of indigenous medicine.

The Grolier Codex (Codice Maya de Mexico, CMM) is discussed in the context of the archaeoastronomy of the ancient Americas on pages 98-99 of the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson. One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. A numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depictes the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Other photos: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

In 'Time and the Ancestors: Aztec and Mixtec Ritual Art', Maarten Jansen and Aurora Pérez present new interpretations of enigmatic masterpieces from ancient Mexico. Combining iconographical analysis with the study of archaeological contexts, historical sources and living cultural traditions, they shed light on central symbols and values of the religious heritage of indigenous peoples, paying special attention to precolonial perceptions of time and the importance of ancestor worship. They decipher the meaning of the treasure deposited in Tomb 7 at Monte Albán (Oaxaca) and of artworks such as the Roll of the New Fire (Selden Roll), the Aztec religious sculptures and, last but not least, the mysterious chapter of temple scenes from the Book of Night and Wind (Codex Borgia).
[ For high quality open access of each chapter > https://brill.com/view/title/34471 ]

El siguiente articulo analiza iconográficamente el contenido del Lienzo de Analco, un manuscrito histórico-cartográfico producido por los aliados indígenas de los conquistadores de la sierra Norte de Oaxaca. Narra la historia multifacética de la conquista de la sierra durante un trascurso de al menos cinco décadas, partiendo de la entrada dual de Figueroa y Barrios, en 1526. Ilustra un panorama detallado de las condiciones históricas y sociales de la región, sirviendo de documento unificador y mérito de servicio para los indígenas que, de otro modo, se encontraron privados de derechos y enajenados por la autoridad colonial.

This selective Finding List is not intended as a bibliographical document; it is intended solely as a convenient jump-starter listing the URL's for major collections and for major and lesser known individual codices that have been made available for online consultation. The editors have tried to ensure the ongoing efficacy of the URL's as of the spring of 2019, but we realize that these are often in flux, and need perpetual updating, as the need may arise.

La tesis pretende responder la pregunta: ¿Cuál es la organización de la producción y las estrategias de distribución de los artesanos(a)s nahuas del bordado del municipio de Chicontepec, ubicado en el Estado de Veracruz en los años 2018 a 2020? La cuestión del párrafo anterior —se plantea responder— con la siguiente hipótesis: “si consideramos que hombres y mujeres de Chicontepec han empezado a buscar en la producción de textiles una forma de ganarse la vida, entonces es de suponer que, para lograr su inserción en el mercado nacional e internacional, necesitan valerse de diversas estrategias entre las que destacan, la conformación de redes de distribución para su producción y el apoyo de instituciones gubernamentales”. Para lo anterior se fijaron los siguientes objetivos generales de la investigación: 1.- Explicar la organización de la producción de los artesanos(a)s del bordado nahua de Chicontepec, Veracruz. 2.- Describir las estrategias de distribución de los artesanos(a)s del bordado nahua.

the Ñee Ñuhu (Sacred Skin) or codices are pictorial manuscripts made in the Ñuu Savi People (People of the rain) in the precolonial times. in the codices, the nchivi savi (People of the Land of the rain) registered their cultural memory. Few codices survived the spanish conquest and the external and internal colonialism of the coming centuries. today, the codices are not in the Ñuu Savi territory. the app to read mixtec codices is a technological support for the reintegration of this heritage by and for their cultural descendents, the nchivi savi.

Los Ñee Ñuhu (pieles sagradas) o códices son manuscritos pictóricos que se elaboraron en Ñuu Savi (Pueblo o Nación de la Lluvia) en la época precolonial. En ellos los nchivi savi (gente de la lluvia) registraron en escritura pictográ ca su memoria cultural. Pocos códices de tradición precolonial sobrevivieron al proceso destructivo de la conquista española y el subsecuente colonialismo externo e interno, por ello hoy en día ninguno está en el territorio histórico de Ñuu Savi. La aplicación para leer códices es un esfuerzo tecnológico de los pro- pios nchivi savi para reintegrar su patrimonio histórico-cultural a las comunidades de origen del pueblo de la lluvia.

The fourth known pre-Columbian Maya codex, the only one discovered in the twentieth century, was found by looters in the mid-1960s. First exhibited in New York in 1971, what has come to be known as the  Grolier Codex is half of a 20-page, 104-year divinatory hybrid-style Mesoamerican Venus Almanac, probably the physically oldest surviving pre-Columbian book, and with new radiocarbon dates that place it in the thirteenth century CE. It is likely to be the oldest surviving book on paper from the Americas as well as the only ancient Maya codex now residing in Mexico. Although most Mayanists have accepted it as authentic, based in part on the author’s 40 years of research, it remains an unacknowledged Mexican national treasure, as it has never been officially recognized. Mesoamerican Venus Almanacs were widely used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica to regulate practices of sacred warfare, the goal of which was to obtain captives for sacrifice, their blood shed to invoke the personified forces of rain and fertility. The  Codex offers unique images of 10 of the 20 manifestations of Venus, greatly enriching our knowledge of these traditions. The present study offers a brief history of accounts of the discovery of the Codex and allegedly associated artifacts; presents a documented photographic history; outlines the author’s comprehensive program of research, including several new scientific discoveries; and offers a new Latinized name that recognizes that the Codex Mayano-Mexicanus is an authentic ancient book deriving from the Maya culture and now properly residing in Mexico.


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This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

The famous Toltec historical figure Nacxitl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, in Yucatan known as Kukulcan and referred to as Nacxit in the Popol Vuh, appears in Mixtec historical codices and Lienzos of the Coixtlahuaca Valley as Lord 4 Jaguar, ruler of Cholula and important ally of the Mixtec ruler Lord 8 Deer. Different arguments for this identification are presented and the chronological implications are discussed in detail.

Esta disertación es un estudio decolonial de los manuscritos pictóricos del Ñuu Savi (Pueblo de la Lluvia), y busca el entendimiento de sus valores culturales a través del estudio holístico y diacrónico de su herencia viva e histórica-cultural, teniendo como base la reintegración de la memoria cultural con fundamento en la continuidad cultural, vinculando su pasado y presente a través de la lengua de la lluvia y desde la perspectiva del propio Ñuu Savi, en México, teniendo como fin último la re-apropiación de este conocimiento por las propias comunidades del Pueblo de la Lluvia.

This is a decolonial study about Ñuu Savi (Mixtec) pictorial manuscripts (codices), Mexico. The aim is the understanding of their cultural values through a holistic and diachronic way, studying living and historical-cultural heritage of Mixtec People, based on the re-integration of cultural memory and cultural continuity, linking the past and the present through the Mixtec language (or Sahan Savi) and from its own perspective. The final aim is the re-appropriation of this knowledge by the Ñuu Savi communities themselves.

This book centers on two inquisitorial investigations, both of which began in the 1540s. One involved relations of Europeans and Native Americans in the Oaxacan town of Yanhuitlán (in New Spain, today's Mexico). The other involved relations of Moriscos (recent Muslim converts to Catholicism) and Old Christians (people with deep Catholic ancestries) in the Mediterranean kingdom of Valencia (in the "old" Spain). Although separated by an ocean, the social worlds preserved in these inquisi-torial files share many things. By bringing the two investigations together, Hamann reveals how very local practices and debates had long-distance parallels, parallels that reveal larger entanglements of the early modern world. Through a dialogue of two microhistories, he presents a macrohistory of large-scale social transformation. We see how attempts in both places to turn old worlds into new ones were centered on struggles over materiality and temporality. By paying close attention to theories (and practices) of reduction and conversion, Hamann suggests we can move beyond anachronistic models of social change as colonization, and place early modern concepts of time and history at the center of our understandings of the sixteenth-century past. Overall, this project intervenes in major debates from both history and anthropology: about the writing of global histories, our conceptualizations of the colonial, the nature of religious and cultural change, and the roles of material things in social life and the imagination of time.

The pictographic codices from the Mixtec region (State of Oaxaca, Mexico) are fascinating examples of pre-colonial Mesoamerican historiography. The most important protagonist of these manuscripts is Lord 8 Deer 'Jaguar Claw' (A.D. 1063-1115). A crucial element in his dramatized biography is his interaction with a king of the Toltecs, called Lord 4 Jaguar. This article compares the codex scenes in which these personages are present with the information given by Central-Mexican and Maya chronicles on Toltec history. The Toltec capital mentioned by the Mixtec codices is identified as Cholula. The Mixtec description of Lord 4 Jaguar coincides completely with what other sources tell about the ruler of Cholula, known as Nacxitl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl or Kukulcan, who connected the Toltec realm with the Maya world in the Early Postclassic period.