The Search for the Codex Cardona: On the Trail of a Sixteenth-century Mexican Treasure (review)

This is essentially a detective story, one written by a well-known historian who recounts his search over some twenty five years, for a manuscript he first glimpsed in 1985 in the Crocker Laboratory of UC Davis. The "body" in question purported to be a sixteenth-century Aztec painted book called the Codex Cardona, named after one Captain Alonzo Cardona y Villaviciosa, an alleged member of Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza's entourage, who supposedly assembled the document between the years 1550 and 1556. Were this manuscript to be authentic it would be the most astounding historical find of several centuries, one to cause the re-writing of portions of colonial Mexican contact history. The questions that remained, of course, were many: who produced it, what was its provenance, was the paper of the correct date, were the hands of the various "painters" authentic, and were there contents that they could not have been known to a modern forger? To answer these and other questions led Bauer to shady book dealers, reticent auction houses, laboratories, archives, and dozens of interviews with key individuals who had been in touch with the mysterious agent for the seller. And all within a context of secrecy, anonymity, and non-responses, understandable when one hears that it had been offered to Stanford University for no less than six million dollars.

The manuscript originally "appeared" at Sotheby's, in 1982, listed as being owned by "a London resident of 'Hispanic descent'", and from that date until 2009, Arnold Bauer is the only person to have attempted to follow its path. The 427 folios of the manuscript and the more than 300 illustrations (of people, events, places), and the two detailed and extraordinary maps of Tlatelolco and Tenochtitlan, are all on amate (bark) paper, puzzling in the sense that if it was prepared by native scribes for the Spanish, normally they would have provided European parchment paper. PIXE tests on the paper and the pigments of the inks at the Crocker lab proved inconclusive in terms of accurate dating, the paper probably being affected by a heavy coat of varnish that had been applied, as well as other contaminants.

From the inspections (autopsies) of appropriate academic experts, called in by the auction houses, it was evident that the codex (or perhaps better described as a type of relación geográfica) contains data that could only have been known to residents of the 1550s; houses, canals, and murals that were only excavated in the 1980s are referred to in the document. Several hundred color slides were taken of sets of folios (including the maps) to facilitate such inspections. Provocatively Bauer suggest that any modern forger would have to be one of a handful of well-known early colonial Mexican specialists, but they would have to have forged it after the archaeological findings. Also relevant is the question of how long it would take to produce such a massive document. On balance it seems as though the document is original and authentic, and exceedingly valuable. It thus stands alongside such classics as the Codex Mendoza and the Codex Telleriano-Remensis.

Here enters yet another dimension of the puzzle: it is valuable in two senses, first as a unique view of early colonial Mexico with details and illustrations never before seen; and second as a piece of Mexican cultural patrimony. Its true "owners" are probably the community where it was produced (perhaps Milpa Alta), given that many such communities still proudly guard their land titles and other historic documents. But in any case to protect such a valuable piece it would normally be transferred to an official repository such as the national archives of the National Museum. Thus the question arises as to who have been the "possessors" of the piece since it was removed from Mexico...