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The Emergence of Alphabetic Writing: Tlahcuiloh and Escribano in Sixteenth-Century Mexico
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2020
Abstract
Over the course of the sixteenth century in Mexico (New Spain), alphabetic writing replaced pictography as the chosen form of written expression in indigenous communities. A new social role, that of the native language escribano (notary), emerged, eventually to become a principal cultural broker in the colonial period. Despite the indigenous escribano's importance, his origins and the source of his authority within the native sphere are poorly understood. This article offers a close reading of a corpus of hybrid pictographic-alphabetic documents, written in Nahuatl and created between 1553 and 1572 in the indigenous cabildo (town council) of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Within this important body, escribanos appear early in the documentary record; it was within the established indigenous ecosystem of governance that escribanos first found a niche.
Here, pictography flourished, as did performances unique to the indigenous sphere. The corpus reveals how escribanos worked side by side with indigenous tlahcuilohqueh, or painters, who drew on a long-established tradition of manuscript painting and cartography to create property maps. These maps adhered to established codes, both social and visual. Initially preeminent in itself, the work of the tlahcuilohqueh came to supply meaning and public authority to the work of the escribano in this crucial formative period.
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Footnotes
This essay grows out of presentations given at the panel “Paper Trails: The Materiality of Documentation in the Spanish Empire,” Latin American and Latino Studies Association Meeting, organized by Aaron M. Hyman and Matthew Goldmark in 2014; “Telling Stories: Discourse, Meaning, and Performance in Mesoamerican Things: In Honor of Elizabeth H. Boone,” Harvard University, organized by the Moses Mesoamerican Archive, Peabody Museum, and Davíd Carrasco in 2014; Tercera Sesión del Seminario de Cartografía Indígena, Benemérito Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Puebla, organized by Lidia Gómez García in 2015; the panel “Los indios en el sistema de poder de la Nueva España,” International Congress of Americanists, organized by María Castañeda de la Paz and Lidia Gómez García in 2018; and the annual Northeastern Nahuatl conference organized by Louise Burkhart and John F. Schwaller in 2019. My thanks to all the organizers for helping to shape my ideas. I thank the staff at the Archivo General de Nación, Mexico, for allowing me special access to the documents, particularly in 2014, when I was carefully allowed to examine the Confirmation of the lands of Diego Yaotl and his wife Isabel Tlaco, of Dec. 10, 1563, in person, and to Alma del Carmen Vázquez Morales and Diego Castillo, who helped chase down photographs, as did Jordana Dym. John Sullivan aided with knotty Nahuatl terms and translation. I am grateful to the reviewers of The Americas for their helpful criticisms. I dedicate this essay to Dana Leibsohn, my most constant and most perceptive critic.
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36. Beginning in 1586, a Miguel de los Angeles appears as an alcalde of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and also as a resident of the tlaxilacalli (sub-barrio) of Tequicaltitlan. I have not determined if he is the same person as the escribano. Luis Reyes García et al., Documentos nauas de la ciudad de México del siglo xvi (Mexico City: CIESAS and AGNM, 1996), 203, 204, and following.
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62. In contrast, in other works written by Nahua escribanos, a term like amatl (which can be translated as “paper”) is used for “textual document,” perhaps because it is a loaned concept.
63. Such use is consistent with the descriptions of maps from other places. See, for instance, the examples in Javier Eduardo Ramírez López, Documentos nahuas de Tezcoco, vol. 1 (Texcoco: Diócesis de Texcoco, 2018).
64. Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana [1571] (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1970), fol. 50v.
65. Allison Caplan (personal communication, 2019) suggests that the verbs may also refer to how the pigment lies on the page.
66. In the colonial period, friars used “machiyo” for the sign of the cross, so that “ninomachiyotia” (the “nino” being the first person reflexive), meant “I make the sign of the Cross on myself,” a meaning still in use among Nahuatl speakers today. Personal communication, Ofelia de la Cruz, July, 2014.
67. Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana, fol. 125r.
68. Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana, fol. 96r.
69. Machiyotl was also extended to apply to the imported technology of printing, in which a plate prepared with raised letters or images, then coated with ink, leaves its impression on a sheet of paper. The Nahuatl word coined for images taken from something else, including those produced by woodblock print, was tlamachiyantli. Molina, Vocabulario, 74v. And while the first instance of its use is not yet known to me, “machiote” is still used in Mexico today for the printed templates that notaries fill in with concrete data and for photocopies.
70. Ramírez López, Documentos nahuas, 64. I have normalized orthography. Benjamin Johnson's translation is “La tierra se extiende así, como mostrado en la pintura, en la figura.”
71. See AGNM Vinculos 279, exp. 1, fol. 38v, as well as documents reproduced in Reyes García et al., Documentos nauas de la ciudad de México.
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77. Confirmation of the lands of Agustín López and his wife, Ana Ocelo[yolli?], AGNM Bienes Nacionales 498, exp. 15.
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