Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes

8. Migration Histories as Ritual Performance

8 Migration Histories as Ritual Performance Elizabeth Hill Boone In working wirh rhe pictorial codices that preseor the history of the Aztec migrarion from Azrlan to Tenochtirlan. I am struck by the very humanness ofthe migration story. It is not that the narrative is particularly personal in itself; in fact. the opposite is the case: Named individuals are only occasionally distinguished. Rather. the migration is a period of impersonal tribal movement and activiry guided by the deity Huitzilopochrli . It is the story ofa people rather than of persons. TheAztec pictorial manuscriprs. however. present the migration story in decidedly human terms. In order to record the movemeor ofthe Mexica through time and space. they depict the movement ofhuman figures. who appear and reappear at irregular intervals along the journey. The whole conception. and particularly the way the drama of the migration is preseored on a human level. recalls a play. In fact. the migration pictorials have the peculiar visual qualiry ofa stage set. as ifthey are rendering scenes in a play. The human figures drawn in the codices are the actors. whose actions bring the story line to life. The different episodes ofthe migration are like the individual dramatic scenes that convey both time and location. so that a change in scene signals a change in time. in location. or both. The journey itselfis the foundation ofthe narrative or the story line. with individual scenes or episodes defined and separated as they would be in a play. The pictorial codices narrate the migration story by showing the actors in their specific roles as the narration moves from scene to scene. What the narrative strategy of the pictorial manuscripts suggests is that the Aztec migration from Azrlan to Tenochtirlan is a drama. More than being a series ofevents that happened in the past. it has the qualities ofa performance. It can be thought ofas a historic::"! or narrative play. but 122 Elizabeth Hill Boone it is too ideologically and culturally important to be merely a secular play. It has all the trappings and stylizations ofa ceremony, and I think it most similar to a ritual performance - in particular a ritual performance of great social and ideological significance for the Mexica and for all of the latet Aztec world. Thus, I argue that the migration can effectively and revealingly be analyzed as a ritual, with the migration histories recording its performance. In this sense, the migration ritual is not altogether different from some of the monthly feast ceremonies at which the celebration carries the participants from place to place. In the migration, the Mexica move from location to location; they do things or things happen to them at some of these locations, and these ideologically significant events transform them. I will argue at the end that they return to their point oforigin, for I believe that Tenoehtitlan is a re-cteation in the Valley ofMexico ofAztlan.! Thus, like some ofthe monthly feast ceremonies. the Mexica travel in a vague circuit along a ritual path and are transformed in the process. The kind of ritual being enacted is a rite of passage, by which the Mexieas undergo a profound change in social and ideological status, from a small nomadic band to a people appropriate as rulers of Mesoamerica. The whole manner in which the migration is presented shows it to have great importance in validating Mexica rule. SOURCES FOR THE MIGRATION HISTORY The Aztec or Mexica migration is recorded pictorially and textually in a score ofdocuments preserved from the sixteenth centuty. All ofthem, like all existing Aztec manuscripts, were created after the conquest, but many are direct reflections of pre-Columbian codices or oral recitations. The fullest of the records arc those that fall within the specific gente of migration histories, and these migration histories themselves fall inca two general categories. First there are the pictorial codices that, although they were painted after the conquest, are largely native in their conception and presentation; at a minimum they preserve parts of the native tradition of manuscript painting. There are basically ten painted codices that pertain to the Mexican migration. The Codex Boturini, the CodexAzcatitlan, the Codex Mexicanus, the Codex Aubin, and the Mapa SigUenza are the most important, detailed, and complete, but the cognate codices Telleriano- Migration Histories as Ritual Perfonnanu 123 Remensis and Vaticanus NRios, the Tira de Tepechpan, and Fonds Mexicain numbers 40 and 85 also recount the migration in varying...