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8. The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan: Interpretation
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The Lienzo de QuauhQuechoLLan: InTerpreTaTIon 203 Conquered Conquistadors In my study of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, I chose to employ the classical iconographic approach as the central method. In previous chapters I have dealt with the pictorial elements, the analysis of the meaning of those elements, and the identification of the scenes in their historical context (Panofsky’s first two steps). This chapter, in turn, focuses on an exploration of the rhetoric of the work and on the messages it conveys. The aim of this process is to come to a better understanding of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. I therefore analyze the narrative structure of the story and the ordering of its elements. I also discuss the layout of the document and the conventions used within the story and compare them to those of other sixteenth-century Mexican conquest and migration stories. 8. The Lienzo de QuauhQuechoLLan: InTerpreTaTIon The Lienzo de QuauhQuechoLLan: InTerpreTaTIon 204 narraTIve STrucTure and TexTual analySIS The narrative structure of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan is primarily defined by the roads, which serve as graphic links between scenes. These roads connect the elements of the story, and they lead the reader from place to place, from scene to scene, until eventually the sequences of events they present converge into a narrative. The journey and the events represented by the Quauhquecholteca authors are processes rather than concepts or static events. The lienzo is not about who the Quauhquecholteca were but about who they had become, how this was achieved, and how these changes and transformations are represented. Identity is a key issue here. The document is about migration, transformation, and adapting to new power relations (see also Braidotti 2002:1–2, 8). It serves as an explanation of the situation in which the main actors found themselves and of the identity they had established for themselves at the time the text was created. Figure 97. Map depicting the places represented in the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan (based on Kramer 1994:figure 1.1). [34.227.191.136] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:34 GMT) The Lienzo de QuauhQuechoLLan: InTerpreTaTIon 205 The use of a journey as a means to structure a narrative and to describe transformative processes can also be found in oral traditions and is present in all kinds of world literature, from the Bible to epics like Homer’s Odyssey and fantasies like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. The main actors in these stories are not only the doers of certain actions, but they also undergo personal development ; they “grow.” This process involves issues of identity, which, in turn, lead to issues of entitlement and power. The road system presented in the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan and the journey it represents constitute no more than a variant of this universal literary tool. It is one used, in this case, to show the journey of community members and to illustrate the evolution of the identity of both the community and the different subunits within it. The roads in the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan primarily indicate (1) origins (the main actors come from Quauhquechollan), (2) movement (including not only movement from one place to another—the total of which movements amounted, for this community, to a migration—but also movement on the smaller scale of the actions of the warriors in their campaign), and (3) a new identity (as conquistadors). The journey of the Quauhquecholteca proceeds in a direction that is not always linear in time, although in some parts the roads do represent a linear and chronological sequence of events. Because the roads do provide a relatively consistent guide to sequence, the textual description of the events and their historical sequence, presented in Chapter 7, is based largely on the directions of the roads. The narrative itself presents a large variety of themes and should be analyzed with care to respect its ambiguities. The key elements of the narrative represented in the lienzo are the actors, events, and time frame of the narrative and the space in which the narrative occurs. These elements are fully interwoven and inextricably bound up with each other. To come to a better understanding of the different layers and the messages conveyed by the document, it is necessary to identify these elements and to look at the way they are related to one another. 1. Actors. The actors in the story are Spaniards, Quauhquecholteca, an African slave, and indigenous enemy warriors (see Chapter 5). Among the main actors are Jorge de Alvarado and certain...