Conquered Conquistadors: The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, A Nahua Vision of the Conquest of Guatemala

Notes

Notes 259 Conquered Conquistadors Chapter 1. INtroduCtIoN 1. Other works I would particularly like to mention are Greenblatt (1993), Gruzinski (1993), and Thomas (1993). Gruzinski focuses on the representation of conquest events in indigenous pictorials. 2. Among these scholars are John Chuchak, Laura Matthew, Michel Oudijk, Matthew Restall, and Yanna Yannakakis. 3. The Escuela Galarziana follows the approach and method introduced by the Mexican scholar Dr. Joaquin Galarza to decipher indigenous pictorial writing. As Galarza proposed, the decipherment of Nahua pictorial writing should be done by means of a profound analysis of the elements of the writing system. Galarza considers pictography and text inseparable and states that glyphs are formed by grammatical-phonetic-plastic elements, combining to transcribe syllables, words, and short and long phrases that are associated in groups of paragraphs to form an account, which, in turn, is to be read in Notes Notes 260 Nahuatl. The basic methodology of the Galarza school consists of isolating the various elements in the pictography and analyzing them individually, with the purpose of coming to an interpretation of the whole. See Galarza (1972, 1978, 1992, 1995, for example). The main flaw in Galarza’s method is that it ignores contextualization. Using the Galarza method therefore leads to elaborate descriptive studies but not to readings and interpretations. 4. Aguirre Beltrán 1999; Brotherston 1994:114; Glass (1964:90); Glass and Robertson (1975:116); Brotherston 1994:144; Johnson 2000:584. 5. There are two reasons for this. First, for many, the concept of cultural “difference” or “otherness” was poison, and the two were long considered the equivalent of inferiority . The concepts of “otherness” and “difference,” as based on power relations, have been part of the theoretical and political agenda only in the past few years. I will not enter this discussion here. This topic is explored in Bhabba (1995) and Braidotti (2002), as well as in other works not cited. The second reason was the pictographs’ independence from speech, which caused the documents’ script to be categorized as nonwriting, and thus nonhistory, by some scholars. Presently, however, the Nahua script has come to be considered true writing by most. For a discussion of this topic, see Boone (1994, 2000). 6. Research into the iconography and pictography in old Mexican manuscripts can traditionally be divided into the studies of Nahua (Aztec), Ñuudzavui (Mixtec), Benizaa (Zapotec), and Maya writing systems. One of the first contributions to the study of Mexican iconography was that of Eduard Seler (1849–1922). His interpretations were very diverse: he considered lienzos to be “simple maps” (because he had not studied them thoroughly ), whereas he explained parts of codices in terms of complex symbolic displays of astronomic movements (a paradigm known as Astraldeutung; see Loo 1987). Nonetheless, he was a great iconographer, and his work has been indispensable to later studies. Seler’s interpretations were followed by an approach in which the question of whether scholars’ interpretations corresponded with the indigenous reality was not addressed. Around the same period, the historical-iconographical approach (1902–1935) was developed in the footsteps of the scholar Zelia Nuttall. This approach led to fundamental breakthroughs in the study of pictorial manuscripts. Historical persons were identified, and the indigenous and European chronologies were linked to one another (see, for example, Caso 1949, 1977–1979). Later, geographical, political, ideological, and religious aspects were increasingly included in study. Place-name glyphs were identified, and the relationships among religion, politics, ideology, and the analysis of pictorial conventions were established. In the past decades, many studies have been published on the decipherment of Mexican pictorial manuscripts. Excellent examples include the works of Smith, Anders, Troike, Jansen, Pérez Jimenez, Dibble, Berdan and Anawalt, Kirchhoff, Reyes García, Robertson, Glass, Boone, Doesburg, Roskamp, Oudijk, and Castañeda de la Paz. 7. The script has roots as early as 1000 B.C. and developed over time into the pictorial system found in well-known Nahua documents such as the Codex Mendoza, the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, the Mapas de Cuauhtinchan, and many others (see Glass 1975). 8. A few Relaciones Geográficas maps do contain the name of their creator. See Mundy (1996:62). 9. For more elaborate discussions of the lienzo and cartographic histories genres, refer to Boone (1991, 1992, 1998, 2000); Leibsohn (1993, 1994, 1996); Mundy (1996, 2001); Oettinger (1983); Smith (1973); Zborover (2002). Notes 261 10. Since 1975, several other lienzos have come to the attention of scholars...