All in the Family or, Midcentury Mexican Mythologies in Miguel León-Portilla's Visión de los vencidos

Current reception of Visión de los vencidos

Since its original publication in 1959, Mexican intellectual and translator Miguel León-Portilla's Visión de los vencidos – text comprised of disparate narratives dealing with the 1519 arrival of Spanish conquistadors and the subsequent fall of Tenochtitlán – has been re-edited 29 times and translated into 20 languages.¹ A modern-day classic, VDLV offers an easy-to-read history of the conquest of Aztec Mexico, starting with rich descriptions of the pre-Hispanic cosmos, before recounting the fateful meeting between Moctezuma and Hernán Cortés, and concluding with the sorrowful poetry – the so-called "flor y canto" – occasioned by the fall of the Aztec empire.² VDLV is weaved together from various sources: texts originally translated from Nahuatl into Spanish by Mexican priest and historian Ángel María Garibay (1892-1967), as well as a significant number of passages from Bernardino de Sahagún, the Franciscan friar who, in his Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, ambitiously translated into Spanish testimonies from indigenous informants regarding both the Aztec lifeworld and its destruction by Hernán Cortés. VDLV's selection of texts was organized into a cohesive narrative by Garibay's protégé, León-Portilla (b. 1926). Thus, at first glance, VDLV, said to be based on the veracious historical evidence and the honest testimony of indigenous informants, tells a straight story: VDLV presents itself as historically accurate – the work of an historian and a translator, rather than that of a fiction writer.

This interpretation, admittedly, has some purchase. VDLV undoubtedly argues for the existence of a philosophy and literature among the ancient Aztecs,³ and attempts to rescue, vindicate, and preserve for posterity Mesoamerica's original culture.⁴ As Ann de León explains, León-portilla's desire to fit Aztec writings into traditionally European academic disciplines (such as "literature" and "philosophy") was ultimately meant to "elevate" the work of Mexico's native peoples.⁵ Moreover, as historian Roberto Moreno de los Arcos notes in the "Presentación" of the digital version of León-Portilla's work, the author's objective with VDLV was primarily that of illustrating "la perspectiva y la imagen del otro" (3). Effectively, it is intimated that VDLV successfully cultivates an unmediated relationship with indigenous communities: the tome constitutes a cultural intervention, not a political one. Finally, León-Portilla has spoken about his personal and professional "conversion" to Náhuatl studies; he characterizes his motivations for writing VDLV as cultural, explaining his work as a translator in apolitical terms.⁶

With this article, I propose a different approach to León-Portilla's text. Mindful of Hayden White's focus on the "poetic elements" of historical narrative, I examine León-Portilla's rhetorical and, ultimately, political strategies in VDLV.⁷ My contention is that VDLV's rhetorical techniques – or, better said, León-Portilla's poiesis – task readers to understand Mexican identity as membership in a mestizo family with a shared, common heritage comprised of a noble but ultimately tragic indigeneity. My interpretation thus affirms the idea that translations, literary selections, and the editing process can be activated to promote distinctly political agendas.⁸

On one hand, interrogating the work of León-Portilla both in relation to its political ideology as well as translation accuracy is nothing new. John Bierhorst and Amos Segala fault the anthropologist's translations of Náhuatl sources – specifically, León-Portilla's Cantares mexicanos – as too freewheeling; the renderings Occidentalize inherently non-Western material.⁹ Ignacio Sánchez-Prado, in turn, signals yet other critiques of León-Portilla: "the reluctance he shows in some of his translations to distinguish between the Nahuatl text and the mediations and interpolations introduced by the Spanish friars" (43). Gertrudis Payàs, in turn, implies the deeply political elements of VDLV, situating León-Portilla's translations squarely within the hegemonic discourse of the Mexican state, showing how León-Portilla attempts to consolidate...