Here in This Year: Seventeenth-Century Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley (review)

This is a simply a superb book. From the design of its cover to the quality of the introductory essays, the facing-page transcriptions and translations of the Nahuatl documents, and the detailed page footnotes, it represents a model of historical scholarship. The genre of annals selected and published here are seventeenth-century colonial representations of what in the pre-Hispanic period were titled xiuhpohualli, or yearly accounts, essentially what in the modern period would be termed diaries, of events considered significant enough to be recorded.

Camilla Townsend's forty-four page introduction sets the annals within their cultural context. She explains the variations within the genre, and their availability for the sixteenth century in several settlements in the central valley of Mexico, where unfortunately the tradition dies out in the next century, thus the significance of those of the Puebla-Tlaxcala region. The significant shift is noted--from the oral basis of the xiuhpohualli, when glyphs provided reminders of events that allowed their presenters to verbally expound the details from memory, to the Roman alphabetic colonial versions, often terse in their recorded observations. The significance of the altepetl, the corporate political entity where the annals were recorded, is described, as is the dual meaning of "nican" in Nahuatl—"here at this place or "here at this time"—when space and time coincide. The coordination of the Christian yearly calendar with that of the old count is a difficulty to be overcome in interpreting the annals. Who the anonymous authors were--clearly educated and bilingual members of the elite of the respective communities, is debated. Comparing the details of the annals with other documentary sources of the period is suggested as the best forensic means available in answering the question of origins and authorship.

Details are also provided of the changes affecting the cultural contexts of both the Puebla and Tlaxcala regions, vital to one's understanding of the role of the impact of the Catholic church, the generational shifts in socio-economic power groups, interest in the physical environment, and inter-settlement exchanges of fading myths and new sources of information worthy of note. Just how to record individuals: by title, by ethnic group, by political position—all were decisions that had to be carefully considered in the recording of the events and personages that populate the annals.

We are also fortunate to be provided with explanations of the problems facing translation of the annals—the challenge of using nuanced English idiomatic phrasing to render what the Nahua writers were trying to express—rather than the usual more stilted word-for-word literalism. Indeed, the elegance of the English translations is one of the book's hallmarks. Place names, ethnic terms and the terms for "commoner" and Christian are given special attention.

As if the author's guidance to the problems of interpreting the texts were not sufficient we are provided with comments on their language by one who initiated the study of such sources, and has done so much to stimulate their effective use: James Lockhart. The stages of Nahuatl development reflected in the Spanish-infected documents, word shifts, noun loans, naming patterns, regional dialects, differential verb meanings, evidence of pronunciation via the orthography—these and more enrich the reader's appreciation of what skilled textual analysis and linguistic forensics can offer.

And so to the content of these annals. First, with regard to those of sixteenth-century Puebla that begin in 1526, one notes immediately that no less than thirty-nine of the next fifty-four year are blank—have no entries whatsoever. The most significant entries relate to the arrival of the President of the Audiencia court, the new bishop (1530), the establishment of the settlement of Cuitlaxcohuapan/Puebla de los Angeles (1533 but really 1530), the...