The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl

Pre-Hispanic History, Religion, and Nahua Poetics

Jongsoo Lee

• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780826343390
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Nezahualcoyotl (1402-1472), the "poet-king" of Texcoco, has been described as one of the most important pre-Hispanic figures in Nahua history. Since the conquest, European chroniclers have continually portrayed him as a symbol of Aztec civilization and culture, a wise governor and lawmaker, poet and patron of the arts, and proto-monotheist. Their chronicles have served as sources for anthropologists, historians, and literary critics who focus on these contrived images and continually reproduce the colonial propaganda on Nezahualcoyotl. This, as Jongsoo Lee argues, subsequently leads to a misrepresentation of the history, religion, literature, and politics of pre-Hispanic Mexico that are altered to support such images of Nezahualcoyotl.

Lee provides a new assessment of Nezahualcoyotl that critically examines original codices and poetry written in Nahuatl alongside Spanish chronicles in an effort to paint a more realistic portrait of the legendary Aztec figure. Urging scholars away from sources that reinforce a Judeo-Christian perspective of pre-Hispanic history, Lee offers a revision of the colonial images of Nahua history and culture that have continued over the last five hundred years.

part one

The Sources

THE SCHOLARS WHO STUDY NEZAHUALCOYOTL AND HIS CITY, TEXCOCO, draw their information mainly from the chronicles of Spanish friars such as Toribio de Benavente (Motolinia), Andrés de Olmos, and Juan de Torquemada and some of the Texcoca chroniclers such as Juan Bautista Pomar and don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl. Most scholars, however, ignore the colonial context in which these chronicles were written and in which their primary indigenous sources were reproduced. By reviewing the possible sources and informants for the main chronicles about Nezahualcoyotl, chapter 1 demonstrates how the major chroniclers of Nezahualcoyotl selected and manipulated their sources according to European historical criteria and Texcoca regionalism in the context of colonial society.

CHAPTER ONE

THE SOURCES, COLONIAL IDEOLOGY, AND TEXCOCA REGIONALISM

Long before the European invasion, the natives of central Mexico, like other peoples of Mesoamerica, were already recording their history using pictorial script. The painter-scribes, tlacuiloque, painted or wrote the indigenous pictorial texts, tlacuilolli, either on native paper or on animal skin.¹ In addition, they preserved their history by memory, which could be either parallel or complementary to pictorial histories or independent accounts. After the conquest, this indigenous historical tradition survived and a large number of pictorial codices were produced following the pre-Hispanic historiographical tradition. In addition to producing pictorial codices and continuing their oral traditions, the indigenous people quickly adapted European alphabets to transcribe these texts. Moreover, there emerged a new hybrid textual tradition that combined native pictorial and European alphabetical modes, such as that exhibited in the Códice Aubin (1963).²

On the other hand, indigenous history written in Spanish from within the European historiographical tradition began with the conquest. In their letters and chronicles, the conquistadores included comments on native politics, religion, customs, and geography of the New World. As explained briefly in the introduction, this European historiography began more systematically with the arrival of Spanish friars who had been trained in sixteenth-century humanism. In the 1530s and 1540s, with the help of indigenous informants, these Spanish friars, such as Toribio de Benavente (Motolinia) and Andrés de Olmos, started writing indigenous histories based on pictorial codices and oral accounts.³ They also began to teach the European alphabet to the sons of the ruling class as part of their efforts to convert them. Under Spanish rule, then, alphabetic literacy spread to many indigenous people. As a result, by the end of the sixteenth century historical books solely in alphabetic script began to replace native pictorial codices. By the early seventeenth century, when major indigenous and Spanish chroniclers such as don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, don Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin, and Fray Juan de Torquemada produced their alphabetic texts, the pictographic mode had virtually disappeared (Glass 1975:4).⁴

The available sources used by the chroniclers to write pre-Hispanic indigenous history vary depending on the time period when they were writing. For instance, indigenous pictorial texts and oral traditions were the primary sources for Motolinia and Olmos in the 1530s and 1540s, while at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Torquemada, Alvarado Tezozomoc, and Chimalpahin drew from alphabetic texts in Nahuatl, as well as in Spanish, that European and Europeanized chroniclers had written, in addition to the surviving indigenous oral traditions and pictorial texts. As many scholars demonstrate (Adorno 1986, 1989a, 1989b; Florescano 1994:100–83; Klor de Alva 1989; Mignolo 1989a, 1989b, 1993a, 1993b), however, all the sources employed by the chroniclers were collected, painted, written, interpreted, and even transformed during the colonial period, and thus in one way or another they should be understood in that context. Only certain oral traditions and some pictorial texts survived and were reproduced after the conquest, while others were prohibited, and those who violated the prohibition were severely punished. At the same time, the primary indigenous historiographical traditions of pictography and oral performance lost their unique role and meaning. The form, historical values, and topics of indigenous historiography were evaluated according to the criteria of European historiography. This colonization of indigenous historiography is manifested especially in the indigenous history of Spanish friars because (1) they initiated the transpositioning of pictorial scripts and oral traditions into alphabetic texts; (2) they introduced a European methodology of collecting information exclusively based on European historiography; and (3) they established criteria to judge and record indigenous history and thus provided later chroniclers with a ideological framework for understanding indigenous history. The Spanish friars Olmos and Motolinia, who were the first chroniclers of indigenous history in alphabetic texts, described Nezahualcoyotl as a lawmaker and a religious skeptic, and they served as a model for later historians.

Motolinia and Olmos collected their data from the native informants who could read pictorial scripts or recite indigenous history by memory. As Louise Burkhart explains, the Spanish friars controlled all the processes of collecting the data by deciding what would be investigated and recorded:

In discussing their culture, the colonial Nahuas did not speak freely, for Europeans created the context within which information was set down. They sought answers to particular questions, determining not only what matters would be recorded but the form the records would take. Investigators, especially those who were priests, tended to respond to what they learned about indigenous religion with shock or zeal, depending on their own values. (Burkhart 1989:6–7)

The questions that the Spaniards asked constrained the responses by the indigenous informants, thus limiting the information collected to certain aspects of the past that happened to conform with European expectations. Burkhart (1989:7) also suggests that the indigenous informants intentionally modified the information that was explicitly solicited by the Spaniards: “Even if the Indians were encouraged to be honest, they soon understood what their interlocutors thought about some of their most cherished traditions.” Burkhart focuses on the context of the conversation between the colonizers and the colonized in which the latter could preserve their “cherished traditions” by disguising them as analogous or even equivalent to those of the colonizers. In addition to the asymmetrical power relationship between the Indians and the Spaniards, regional antagonisms between colonized indigenous groups themselves who were competing for political advantage within the colonial system also influenced the specifics of indigenous histories produced by the informants from different areas. Each indigenous group surely promoted its traditions as the best or the most representative of pre-Hispanic Mexico.

This indigenous history, doubly manipulated by the Spanish interlocutors and the indigenous informants, is frequently misleading. I present the representations of Nezahualcoyotl in the colonial chronicles as the most poignant example of this doubly manipulated indigenous history. Given what is known of the pre-Hispanic period and the religious and political context of the colonial period, the image of Nezahualcoyotl as a lawgiver, fair legal practitioner, and religious skeptic first formulated by the Spanish friars and further developed by later Texcoca chroniclers is speciously convenient and should raise serious questions about the sources of this image.

Motolinia (Toribio de Benavente), Andrés de Olmos, and Their Sources

As the first chroniclers of indigenous history, Motolinia and Olmos state that their accounts were based on indigenous oral traditions and/or pictorial codices. In the preface of his book, Memoriales, dedicated to the Count of Benavente, don Antonio Pimentel, Motolinia writes that the natives had their own way of recording their history:

Había entre estos naturales cinco libros, como dije de figuras y caracteres: el primero hablaba de los años y tiempos: el segundo de los días y fiestas que tenían en todo el año: el tercero que hablaba de los sueños y de los agüeros, embaimientos y vanidades en que creían: el cuarto era del bautismo y nombres que daban a los niños: el quinto es de los ritos, ceremonias y agüeros que tenían en los matrimonios. Los cuatro de estos libros no los ha de creer vuestra ilustrísima señoría como los Evangelios, porque ni los escribieron Juanes, ni Lucas, ni Marcos, ni Mateos, mas fueron inventados por los demonios. El uno, que es de los años y tiempos, de éste se puede tomar crédito, que es el primero, porque en la verdad aunque bárbaros y sin escrituras de letras, mucha orden y manera tenían de contar los mesmos tiempos y años, fiestas y días, como algo de esto parece en la primera parte del tratado y sexto [sic] capítulo. Asimismo escribían y figuraban las hazañas e historias de guerra [y también] del subceso de los principales señores, de los temporales y pestilencias, y en qué tiempo y de qué señor acontecían, y todos los que subjetaron principalmente esta tierra e se enseñorearon hasta que los españoles entraron. Todo esto tienen escrito por caracteres e figuras. (Benavente 1971:5)

There were among these natives five types of books, as I said, of figures and characters: the first book spoke of the years and times; the second, of the days and feasts that the natives had during the entire year; the third spoke of the dreams and the omens, trickery, and vanities in which they believed; the fourth book was of the baptism and names that they gave to the children; the fifth is of the rites, ceremonies, and omens that they had in their marriages. Your Illustrious Lordship must not believe that four of these books are like Gospels, because they were written neither by Johns, nor Luke, nor Mark, nor Mathew, but were invented by the demons. The first one, which is of the years and times, can be given credit because, although the natives were barbarian and without alphabetic writings, truly they had much order and a way to tell the same times and years, feasts and days, as something similar to this appears in the first part of the treaty and sixth [sic] chapter. They themselves also wrote and drew the exploits and histories of war [and also] of the events of the main lords, of the weather and pestilences, and in what time and under which ruler they occurred, and all those who principally subjected this land and took possession until the Spaniards entered. The natives have all this written by characters and figures. (author’s translation)

Motolinia was fully aware that the indigenous people had five different types of pictorial books, each of which was dedicated to a specific topic such as religion or history. Among the five types, the one that describes the achievements of the rulers may have been a source for the discussion of Nezahualcoyotl’s legal practice in Motolinia’s book. Along with the pictorial books, Motolinia was also aware that there existed certain indigenous people who could recite their history from memory without pictorial scripts. For his book, therefore, Motolinia needed indigenous informants who could either recite their history by memory or read pictorial scripts for him:

Estos indios; demás de poner por memorial las cosas ya dichas en especial el suceso y generación de los señores y linajes principales, y cosas notables que en sus tiempos acontecían, por figuras, que era su modo de escribir, había también entre ellos personas de buena memoria que retenían y sabían aun sin libro, contar y relatar como buenos biblistas o coronistas el suceso de los triunfos e linaje de los señores, y de éstos topé con uno a mi ver bien, hábil y de buena memoria, el cual sin contradicción de lo dicho, con brevedad me dio noticia y relación del principio y origen des estos naturales, según su opinión y libros. (Benavente 1971:9)

These Indians; in addition to recording the already mentioned things by figures, which was their way of writing, especially, the event and generation of the lords and principal lineages, and remarkable things that occurred in their times, there were also among them people of good memory who retained and knew, even without books, how to tell and to relate like good Bible readers or chroniclers the event of the victories and lineage of the lords. Among these people, I ran into one, in my opinion, capable and of good memory, who, without contradiction and with brevity, gave me information and an account of the beginning and origin of these natives, according to his opinion and books. (author’s translation)

Motolinia clearly states that these indigenous pictorial scripts and indigenous informants were the primary sources for his history. In the process of using these sources for his book, Motolinia seems to have functioned as a compiler and editor who formulated questions and organized information about indigenous history. The real author of most of Motolinia’s text then would have been the indigenous informants who recounted the history by memory or read the pictorial scripts for the Spanish priest. The reliability of this information, however, depended heavily on the regional origin or political interest of the informants or the painters of the pictorial scripts, because each of the major pre-Hispanic city-states had its own historical tradition. And, in fact, Motolinia seems to have distinguished the information from the informants or the pictorial scripts according to their regional origin. For instance, when he discusses the indigenous religious ceremonies, he divides them into several chapters, each of which is titled relative to the ceremonies of either Mexica or Tlaxcala or Cholula. However, whether Motolinia checked the reliability of the information that his informants provided or had sufficient knowledge to understand pictorial scripts is doubtful, nor did he have any intention of verifying the information as long as he found it useful for the purpose of his writing. Motolinia, a follower of Franciscan millennialism, collected and reorganized indigenous histories in order to demonstrate that the intellectual capacity of the natives was such that they were perfectly suited to the establishment of a Christian kingdom in the New World. As is evident in Motolinia’s description of Nezahualcoyotl, this process of collecting data on indigenous history reveals the regional political interests of the indigenous informants.

Motolinia (Benavente 1971:321–22, 352–59) describes Nezahualcoyotl as a fair legal practitioner during the pre-Hispanic period. According to Motolinia, Nezahualcoyotl introduced many just laws and administered them strictly but fairly. For instance, he executed his four sons who had sexual relationships with his concubines, and Motolinia makes an implicit comparison to King David who sentenced his own son to death due to the same type of misconduct. Motolinia must have acquired this information from Texcoca native informants and pictorial texts. I argue that these informants must have been Texcoca royal families, because after the conquest they would have been the only social group able to access pictorial texts about the history of their ancestral kings. According to Baudot (1995:284), the postconquest Texcoca rulers, such as don Hernando and don Antonio Pimentel Ixtlilxochitl, maintained a close personal relationship with Motolinia and furnished him with necessary codices and oral traditions. The Spanish friar himself actually reveals his relationship with the Texcoca nobles in his book. Motolinia (Benavente 1971:146–47) records that he attended don Hernando Pimentel Ixtlilxochitl’s Christian wedding in 1526 in Texcoco and enjoyed the netotoztli (dance) at the banquet after the wedding. In addition, the Spanish family name, Pimentel, that the Texcoca nobles adopted also demonstrates the close relationship between Motolinia and the Texcoca rulers. The family name actually came from Motolinia’s benefactor, the Count de Benavente Pimentel, to whom he dedicated his book. In addition, when Motolinia (Benavente 1971:322) describes Nezahualcoyotl’s legal system and practice, he introduces the Texcoca king as the grandfather of the Texcoca ruler Antonio Pimentel Ixtlilxochitl. Motolinia presents Nezahualcoyotl as a legislator solely based on Texcoca regional sources that the Texcoca noble class provided and interpreted for him.

The other Franciscan, Andrés de Olmos, whose works served as a basis for several other chroniclers in the sixteenth century began to present Nezahualcoyotl and his son, Nezahualpilli, as skeptics of indigenous religion. Olmos’s original description of Nezahualcoyotl, which is now missing, was collected in the later chronicles of Gerónimo de Mendieta, Juan de Torquemada, and Alonso de Zorita (Baudot 1995:75–81).⁵ These chroniclers clearly acknowledged Olmos’s text as their main source. I examine here Mendieta’s chronicle because it provides the most detailed version of Olmos’s original description of Nezahualcoyotl. According to Mendieta, Olmos employed the same methodology as Motolinia in writing his history:

Pues es de saber, que en el año de mil y quinientos y treinta y tres, siendo presidente de la Real Audiencia de México D. Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenreal (obispo que á la sazon era de la isla de Española), y siendo custodio de la órden de nuestro Padre S. Francisco en esta Nueva España el santo varon Fr. Martín de Valencia, por ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: The Sources
• Part Two: Revising Pre-Hispanic History
• Part Three: Revising the Study of Nahua Poetics
• Part Four: Revising the Study of Nahua Religion
• Notes
• Glossary
• References
• Index