In the Palace of Nezahualcoyotl: Painting Manuscripts, Writing the Pre-Hispanic Past in Early Colonial Period Tetzcoco, Mexico

2: Cemanahuactli Imachiyo, “The World, Its Model”

CEMANAHUACTLI IMACHIYO, “THE WORLD, ITS MODEL” 2 Mapping and Measuring Acolhuacan In 1966 Howard F. Cline published the Oztoticpac Lands Map,1 a sixteenthcentury , indigenous central Mexican property map (Fig. 2.1).2 Originally painted as evidence and testimony in a land-litigation trial, the map catalogues the size and ownership of numerous properties in the vicinity of Tetzcoco. The painter-scribe defines each plot as either transferable private property or inalienable patrimonial land tied to Tetzcoco’s tecpancalli , or palace, and royal family.3 Cline recognized the map’s connection to Nezahualpilli’s son don Carlos Ometochtzin Chichimecatecatl, for it is his lands that are at issue. Painted in 1540, the year after don Carlos’s execution , and thus almost certainly the earliest extant example of Tetzcocan manuscript painting, the Oztoticpac Lands Map argues for an indissoluble link between royal blood and royal land. Don Antonio Pimentel Tlahuiloltzin, cacique of Tetzcoco from 1540, commissioned the Oztoticpac Lands Map in an attempt to retrieve the lands that Bishop Juan de Zumárraga had had confiscated from his halfbrother don Carlos and later sold to Alonso de Contreras, a Spaniard.4 Don Antonio and his relatives joined forces with Pedro Vásquez de Vergara, a Spaniard who had formed a business partnership with don Carlos, and together they contested the legality of Zumárraga’s sale and Contreras’s purchase of palace lands (in Nahuatl, tecpantlalli).5 Vergara petitioned for the return of the European fruit trees and grafts (Fig. 2.1, lower left) that he had provided, but neither given nor sold to his business partner as part of their joint venture, a venture which makes manifest the convergence of interests and frequent alliances between indigenous aristocrats and wellpositioned Spanish colonists during the first century of New Spain’s existence .6 For his part, don Antonio hoped to demonstrate that the majority of the confiscated land was not private property but tecpantlalli that don Carlos had held in usufruct. At the upper left of the map (Fig. 2.1), above the Oztoticpac palace complex, a Nahuatl-language scribe wrote: “Oztoticpac belongs to the palace, the tlahtocayotl [cacicazgo], not Don Carlos’s Book 1.indb 41 Book 1.indb 41 1/19/10 10:10:27 AM 1/19/10 10:10:27 AM In the Palace of Nezahualcoyotl 42 property”; and a Spanish-language scribe added: “This belongs without doubt to the seignory [the cacicazgo].”7 The Oztoticpac Lands Map translates the physical world into linear measurements and economic qualifications.8 In order to do so, the painter employed the mathematical graphemes of pre-Hispanic economic and land documents such as cadastres, property plans, and tribute lists.9 Imaging land according to quantitative and legal criteria, the Oztoticpac Lands Map constitutes an ostensibly objective plan that Spaniards as well as Nahuas could comprehend. In contrast, the Codex Xolotl (Plates 1–10), the Quinatzin Map (Plates 11–17), and the Tlohtzin Map (Plates 18–25), cartographic histories rather than property plans, conceive Acolhua land in terms of narrative: discourse rather than numeration. The painters recorded the actors and actions because of which places had meaning for a specific group of people. To quote Dana Leibsohn, “[t]he map establishes a nexus where history and landscape conjoin.”10 And, as Barbara E. Mundy has observed about cartographic histories in general, “each represents the community by showing its common bounded territory and its shared history.”11 figure 2.1. Oztoticpac Lands Map, ink and color on amatl, 75 x 84 cm., circa 1540, from Tetzcoco, Mexico. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Photo: courtesy and copyright Library of Congress. Book 1.indb 42 Book 1.indb 42 1/19/10 10:10:27 AM 1/19/10 10:10:27 AM Cemanahuactli Imachiyo, “The World, Its Model” 43 Like the Oztoticpac Lands Map, the Codex Xolotl, the Quinatzin Map, and the Tlohtzin Map make claims to land. The litigation map quantifies land and asserts its status as property, while the three histories configure and fuse the human community and its territory. The expressive content of the works parallels their cartographic grain and scope: the Oztoticpac Lands Map assumes and insinuates a history; the Xolotl, Quinatzin, and Tlohtzin offer fully fleshed out depictions of human agents and actions. The two indigenous cartographic strategies, one primarily descriptive and quantitative, the other...