Memories of Conquest: Becoming Mexicano in Colonial Guatemala 0807835374, 9780807835371

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Memories of Conquest

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Laura E. Matthew

Memories Conquest of

Becoming Mexicano in Colonial Guatemala

First Peoples New Directions in Indigenous Studies

The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill

Publication of this book was made possible, in part, by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

© 2012 The University of

North Carolina Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Sally Fry and set in Arno Pro by Rebecca Evans. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Matthew, Laura E. Memories of conquest : becoming Mexicano in colonial Guatemala / Laura E. Matthew. p. cm.—(First peoples: new directions in indigenous studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8078-3537-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Indians of Central America—Colonization— Guatemala—Ciudad Vieja. 2. Indians of Central America—Guatemala—Ciudad Vieja—History— Sources. 3. Indians of Central America—Guatemala— Ciudad Vieja—Government relations. 4. Spain— Colonies—America—Administration. 5. Ciudad Vieja (Guatemala)—History—Sources. 6. Ciudad Vieja (Guatemala)—Colonization. 7. Guatemala— Foreign relations—Spain. 8. Spain—Foreign relations—Guatemala. I. Title. F1465.1.C57M37 2012 972.81v62—dc23 2011037428 16 15 14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1

Contents Acknowledgments / ix Note on Terminology / xiii Introduction / 1 1. Indigenous Invasions Mexicans & Maya from Teotihuacan to Tollan / 13

4. The Primacy of Place Ciudad Vieja as Indian Town & Colonial Altepetl / 132

2. Templates of Conquest Warfare & Alliance in the Shadow of Tenochtitlan / 39

5. Creating Memories Militias, Cofradías, Cabildos, & Compadres / 178

3. Indian Conquistadors Conquest & Settlement in Central America / 70

6. Particularly Ladinos Language, Ladinization, & Mexicano Identity / 231 Conclusion / 269 Bibliography / 287 Index / 309

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Illustrations, Maps, and Table Illustrations Sihyaj K’ahk’ on Uaxactun Stela 5 in Teotihuacano warrior costume, ca. 378 a.d., and Yaax Nu’n Ahyiin on Tikal Stela 31 in the same costume, ca. 379 a.d. / 24 Warrior costumes provided as tribute to the Aztec empire from the altepetl and dependencies of Tzicoac / 47 Lienzo de Tlaxcala, scene 80, “Ytzcuintepec” (Escuintla, Guatemala) / 65 Mapa de Cuauhtlantzinco or Codice Campos, scene 5 / 67 Lienzo de Quauhquechollan / 74 Title page of Justicia 291, R.1, N.1, “Los yndios mexicanos . . . ” / 76 A Quauhquecholteca woman grinding corn / 91 The alliance between Hernando Cortés and the Quauhquecholteca lords / 94 Jorge de Alvarado leads a Spaniard dressed in Quauhquecholteca warrior costume and four Quauhquecholteca warriors on the road toward Guatemala / 99 Jorge de Alvarado receives information from Quauhquecholteca pochteca / 100 The glyphs for Zapotitlán and Quetzaltenango / 101 Chimaltenango, whose glyph is a round shield topped by a wall / 103 Spanish dogs attacking Kaqchikel at Pochutla while a Spaniard watches / 104

Center portion of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan / 105 The Cuchumatanes at Tecolotlán, with scenes of fighting / 106 The Pacific coast and the torn border of the lienzo / 107 Figures of the Spaniards Quirijol and Portocarrero from the Baile de la Conquista de Guatemala, as performed in Ciudad Vieja in 2005 / 193 Francisco Cisneros, “Indios de Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala,” ca. 1835 / 246 Eagle warrior from the battle of Tecolotlán / 272 Francisco Cisneros, “Indios de Ciudad Vieja en paseo o fiesta de Sta. Cecilia,” ca. 1835 / 273 Float during the convite (parade) of the festival of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Ciudad Vieja, Sacatepéquez, 2010 / 277

Maps 1. Classic and Postclassic Mesoamerica / 18 2. The Tenochca Empire / 43 3. Conquest Routes of the Alvarados in Central America / 82 4. Santiago en Almolonga/Ciudad Vieja / 149

Table Tributary Counts (1752) vs. Militia Membership (1777) in Ciudad Vieja / 203

Acknowledgments After more years than I am willing to count, it is time to say thank you. To the institutions and people who safeguard the historical records that are the foundation of this book and make it possible for me to use them: Anna Carla Ericastilla Samayoa and the staff at the Archivo General de Centroamérica in Guatemala City, who greet me warmly no matter how long since my last visit or how short my current one; the staff at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain, especially Socorro Prous Zaragoza, Teresa de Sande, and María Pía Senent Diez; the Archivo Histórico Arquidiocesano in Guatemala City, which was briefly open to scholars in 1997, especially Hector Concohá Chet and José Chaclán; the Family Archives of the Church of Latter Day Saints in Guatemala City; the American Philosophical Society, especially Joseph-James Ahern; the University Museum Library and Van Pelt Library of the University of Pennsylvania, especially Joe Holub and John Weeks; the Latin American Library at Tulane University, especially David Dressing and Hortensia Calvo; and the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin, especially Margo Gutierrez and Michael Hironymous. To the public and private granting agencies that have seen value in my work: the Pan American Round Table of Texas; the U.S. Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Grant for Research Abroad; the Research Institute for the Study of Man in New York City; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Newberry Library in Chicago; the Office of Research and Development at Marquette University; and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee funded by the U.S. Department of Education. To my mentors: Howard Miller, Virginia Garrard-Burnett, and Susan Deans-Smith at the University of Texas at Austin; Michael Zuckerman and Ann Farnsworth-Alvear at the University of Pennsylvania; Mary Lindemann, Michael Miller, Guido Ruggiero, and Richard Godbeer at the University of Miami; James Grossman, James Epstein, Leon Fink, and Bruce Calder at the Newberry Library; and James Marten, John Krugler, and Michael Fleet at Marquette University. Special thanks are due to Nancy

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Farriss at the University of Pennsylvania for her scholarship that inspired me in the first place, her guidance through graduate school, and her support of my efforts since. I hope you like the book! I also owe a great deal to Christopher Lutz, dean of Guatemalan colonial studies in the United States and constant guide, critic, and friend. Chris read multiple drafts, recommended the project to others, could be counted on to catch every stray fact, and pointed me toward my cover art. Susan Schroeder encouraged me at an early stage, read several drafts, and continued to open doors for me over the years. Her steady interest mattered almost as much as the precision she demanded of anything I wrote. To those who provided support, advice, knowledge, and friendship along the way, in no particular order: Yanna Yannakakis, Joan Bristol, Anne Pushkal, Daniel Greene, Traci Ardren, María Casteñeda de la Paz, Robinson Herrera, Hugh Thomas, Stephen Webre, William Fowler, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, Franz Binder, Marcie Mersky, Alfonso Arrivillago Cortés, Oscar Peláez Almengor, Joel Hernández Sánchez, Edgar Chutan Alvarado, Lucky Ramírez, Shannon and Rodolfo Hernández, Timothy Hawkins, Margaret Hurdlik, George Lovell, Pablo Picatto, Xochitl Medina, Jordana Dym, Christophe Belaubre, Catherine Komisaruk, Gabriela Ramos, Gene Ogle, Mike Hesson, Deborah Augsberger, Conard Hamilton, Nancy Midthun, Todd Little-Siebold, Christa Little-Siebold, Sophie White, Karen Dakin, Barbara Knoke de Arathoon, Juan Pedro Viqueira, Rodolfo Pastor H., Antonio Feros, María de los Ángeles Romero Frizzi, Ruben Reina, Martha Few, Ellen Baird, Sara Austin, Frank Valadez, Dana Velasco Murillo, Jovita Baber, Karen Graubart, Lisa Voigt, Yarí Pérez Marín, Aims McGuiness, Jasmine Alinder, Ellen Amster, Tony Pasinski, Matthew Restall, John Chuchiak, Sherwin Bryant, Nestor Quiroa, Coralia Gutiérrez Álvarez, Kittya Lee, and my phenomenal colleagues in Marquette University’s History Department. Special thanks are owed to a few without whose specific contributions this book would be far poorer. Oralia de León read and transcribed hundreds of pages of documents in Guatemala for this project. Chapter 6 could not have been written without her assistance. Quite beyond her identification and analysis of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan that is highlighted in Chapter 3, Florine Asselbergs has been an ideal partner in our parallel search for things Mexicano or Quauhquecholteca. Florine also put me in contact with Michel Oudijk, a model of scholarly energy, generosity, and hospitality (along with María and Yago), whose meticulous transcription of Justicia 291 made word searches a million times easier.

Acknowledgments / xi

Hector Concohá Chet passed along documents from his own work that turned out to be critical, kept me connected to Guatemala when I was unable to travel, and has been a constant friend and colleague. Wendy Kramer shared documents and ideas as well as some very pleasant days working together in Philadelphia’s Old City. Sergio Romero provided Nahuatl translations and his own keen thoughts on the relationship between language and history; I also thank his family for their warm welcome into their home, often on very short notice. John Sullivan lent his practiced eye to several Nahuatl translations. Luis Enrique Sam Colop (may he rest in peace), Ruud van Akkeren, and Luis Pedro Taracena commented on various aspects of my argument with marvelous frankness; I am especially grateful for Luis Pedro’s efforts late in the project. They may not agree with all my final conclusions, but I hope they will see some of their good influence. Ricardo Castillo graciously allowed me to reproduce the Universidad Francisco Marroquín’s marvelous digital restoration of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, with particular and tireless assistance from Ana Lucía Ortíz Moscoso. Dan Johnson of Marquette University spent hours helping me select the images I wanted. Joel Brown’s photographs of the Festival of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception in Ciudad Vieja surpass anything I could have done. Michel Dagnaud, secretary-general of the Société de Géographie, went out of his way to help me locate the Juan Galindo prints on a very short schedule one June day in Paris. To all I send my heartfelt thanks, with the caveat that I alone am responsible for any errors. In Ciudad Vieja, Walter Ortíz spent several years fielding my email queries, sharing his knowledge, arranging interviews, guiding me through Ciudad Vieja’s local prehispanic ruins on private lands whenever I visited in 2005–9, and in 2010 keeping me updated after tropical storm Agatha. He also provided photographs of the 2010 convite I was unable to attend; a shot of one float commemorating the disastrous mudslide that followed Agatha appears in the Conclusion. I also thank Hugo Leonel Vásquez Sánchez, Benjamín Parada Morales (Don Mincho), José Juventino Paredes Galindo, and Viviana Paredes for their hospitality and interest in my work, and Doña Graciela Castellanos Miranda for her good care whenever I dropped in. In 1997, Monseñor Gustavo Paredes allowed me to work in the parish archives (a special kindness since he temporarily gave up his desk), and sacristans Jorge Gonzales Minas and Felix Reyes Parada took time from their work to answer questions about old baptismal registers. I am very grateful to the anonymous reviewers at University of North

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Carolina Press, who read the full manuscript not once but twice and improved it, I hope to their satisfaction. Mark Simpson-Vos, Zachary Read, Tema Larter, Paula Wald, John Wilson, and Heidi Perov at University of North Carolina Press were always available with good advice and patient help. My parents, Deanna D. Matthew and Earl B. and Lonnie Matthew, held my hand via telephone along the way and never openly questioned what I was doing from the moment I got on that bus from Austin to Guatemala City in 1989. They also acted as private granting agencies, as did my inlaws Roberta Bannister and Wes and Victoria Bannister. (Special thanks to Wes and Victoria for putting me in proximity to the Bibliothèque nationale de France.) Thank you all for your support and love. Writing this book has become part of my personal history. Simon— thank you for the memories of parenthood in Guatemala and Spain, and I  promise not to measure the time elapsed since beginning any future books by your birthday. David— thank you for making me stop staring at the computer even when I pouted, and for planting flowers with me in Philadelphia and Milwaukee. Michael— I’m proud to have finished but more proud of our boys and our life together. I couldn’t have done it without you; may the next adventures be happy ones.

Note on Terminology In Guatemala today the term indígena is preferred to indio, which historically has been used in derogatory ways against the Maya and other indigenous peoples of the region. Because “indigenous” translates awkwardly and the term “Indian” has fewer negative connotations in English, I use the latter but limit its use as best I can to colonial and national-era classifications— for instance, the satellite towns around the Spanish city of Santiago, Guatemala, are referred to as Indian towns because they were created and classified as such in the colonial period. Whenever possible, I identify people labeled Indians in colonial-era documents based on their linguistic and/or ethnic affiliation (i.e., Tlaxcalteca, Mexica, Zapotecs, Guatemalan Maya, K’iche’ Maya, etc.). I also avoid using the term “Indian” in the first two chapters that deal exclusively with the pre-Columbian and conquest periods— because, of course, before Columbus and Cortés labeled them as such, the peoples of the Americas were not Indians at all. The Mexicanos themselves present even more formidable problems of terminology, for they were not all Mexica from the cities of Tenochtitlan or Tlatelolco, nor even Nahuas from central Mexico. Nor, obviously, were they from the nation-state of Mexico; what became Mexico after independence was called New Spain during the colonial period. In Chapter 1, following common usage among archaeologists, I use the modern terms “Mexican” and “Maya” to contrast two of many broad culture areas within Mesoamerica. In Chapter 2, I use generally accepted terms for different groups associated with certain language groups or city-states, such as “Mexica Tenochca,” “Zapotecs,” “Mixtecs,” “Cholulteca,” “Acolhua,” “Quauhquecholteca,” and so on. As the colonial period and the history of Ciudad Vieja proper get under way in Chapters 3 and 4, these heterogeneous groups whose descendants lived in Guatemala begin to be grouped under ever more general monikers, the primary one being Mexicano. The process by which this happens is the central concern of the book. The associated shifts in terminology, from more to less complex but never becoming completely homogeneous, should be clear as the reader follows the Mexicanos’ emergence as a unique group in colonial Guatemala.

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Memories of Conquest

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Introduction

T

he conquest of largely Maya territory by foreign invaders in the years 1524–28 is perhaps the most important story of their history for the people of contemporary Guatemala. The invasion followed on the heels of viruses that would kill millions of native K’iche’, Mam, Pipil, and other southern Mesoamericans over the following century. It destroyed the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel Maya cities of Utatlán and Iximché, and laid the foundations of Spanish American cities in their stead. It precipitated half a millennia so far of colonial and neocolonial rule over Central America by people of largely European descent. Over time, it created a new people out of the resulting mix of Native Americans, Africans, Europeans, and Asians: the Ladinos who make up roughly half of Guatemala’s population today. The Guatemalan experience resonates, too, as a chapter in a much larger tale. With local variations, it repeats the story of European conquest throughout the Americas— in Cuba, Mexico, Massachusetts, Virginia, Chile. Individually and collectively, these conquests symbolize one of the most dramatic moments in world history: the meeting of the “old” and “new” worlds, the demographic collapse of indigenous American popula-

2 / Introduction

tions, the birth of the world economy, the beginning of modernity. Such grand phrases are commonplace in tales of the conquest of the Americas told in classrooms, history books, cartoons, rock music, opera, political manifestos, and novels. Different characters are cast as heroes or villains, scenes start at different points, and the moral of the story may shift. The basic outline, however, remains the same. But there are other ways of telling the story, which can make European conquest look like something else altogether. Such are the memories of conquest presented in this book. Many thousands of indigenous allies from central Mexico and Oaxaca invaded Central America alongside a few hundred Spaniards in 1524–28. Hundreds remained behind as colonists. In a small town called Ciudad Vieja in central Guatemala, the descendants of these warriors and colonists gradually became Mexicanos: a local group of Mesoamericans subjugated as Indians by the colonial system, but who enjoyed privileges not available to their Maya neighbors based on their identity as conquistadors. The extent of these Nahuas’ and Oaxacans’ participation in the invasions of 1524–28 undermines the very notion of a Spanish conquest. Their lives as Indian conquistadors in Guatemala suggest that we still have a long way to go to understand the lived experience of colonialism by the American continents’ indigenous peoples. To understand the Mexicanos’ memories of conquest requires a reimagining of the conquest itself. Historians have traditionally asked, sometimes with a heavy dose of amazement, how so few Europeans conquered tens of millions of people. Implicitly, the earliest military confrontations between Europeans, their indigenous allies, and various foes (who subsequently themselves often became allies) are taken to represent European colonization as it was accomplished over hundreds of years, with varying degrees of control and success and with the terrible aid of epidemic disease. Attempting to see things from the Mexicanos’ point of view, however, suggests that “how the Europeans did it” may be the wrong question to ask of these initial diplomatic encounters and military clashes. The Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja did not remember their role in the conquest as auxiliary, nor the Spaniards as being in total control of military campaigns. Instead, they remembered the invasion of Guatemala as a joint affair and their own role in it with pride. The Mexicanos’ mostly triumphant recollections of the period are not hegemonic. Like all memories they are selective, woven and rewoven into stories of the past that, in this case, explained and justified the Mexicanos’ superior position in colonial Guatemala. They cannot represent the experiences of the Tz’utujil Maya who surrendered in

Introduction / 3

1524 (and today often emphasize their peaceful reception of the invaders), or the Kaqchikel who fought a bitter guerrilla war between 1524 and 1530 (and today celebrate their resistance), or the Central American Nicarao taken as slaves and forced to participate in the invasions of Yucatan in the following decade. They do not even represent a unified Mexicano viewpoint; archives, by their nature, winnow out much of what is unofficial, individual, difficult to classify, or merely undocumented. Nevertheless, the Mexicanos’ surviving memories of conquest remind us of a fact that many Europeans at the time and subsequent historians recognized: that without native allies, Spanish expansion throughout Mesoamerica would not have been possible. Indeed, when the leadership roles and overwhelming numbers of the allies are taken seriously, it becomes difficult to think of this as Spanish expansion at all. The historian’s question then becomes, why did so many Mesoamericans work willingly with the Europeans? Is this a story of treason and collaboration? Of profound misunderstanding and miscalculation? Or of something else altogether, that forces us to dismantle and reassemble traditional narratives of European conquest? It is impossible to answer these questions from the vantage point of European history alone, without taking indigenous America’s history into full account. This requires displacing Europeans from the center of the narrative— a more difficult task, perhaps, than merely acknowledging indigenous allies’ participation in the military campaigns. In the United States, writing Native American-centered history has often meant a geographical reorientation that destabilizes the still-powerful idea of the western frontier in the Anglo-American imagination. Daniel Richter contemplates the meeting of Europe and America “facing east from Indian country” rather than from the shores of the Atlantic looking west. Pekka Hämäläinen reenvisions central Texas not as a far-off borderland where Europeans found it difficult to impose their will, but as the center of the Comanche empire whose power and aggressive expansion prevented others from gaining a foothold in the region. In Mesoamerican history the reorientation is more temporal: a rejection of rigid divisions between archaeological or ancient history and the colonial period, and an insistence that Mesoamerica’s pre-Columbian past is not simply background or worse, prehistory, but essential for understanding what happened after contact with Europe, Africa, and Asia.1 This is possible, in part, because of 1. Recent exemplars of this approach in the Anglo-American academy include Zeitlin, Cultural Politics; Leibsohn, Script and Glyph; and Megged, Social Memory. Also note-

4 / Introduction

the richness and comparative abundance of Mesoamerican sources— not only historical texts, but also information from archaeology, anthropology, art history, epigraphy, and linguistics. In particular, the historical reimaginings of Nahuatl-speaking people in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, while products of their own unsettled times, provide a complex picture of central Mexican politics and society in the two hundred years or so prior to European colonialism. Situating the conquest period within this broader, indigenous American timeline reveals that Mesoamerican patterns of alliance, warfare, and colonization helped shape the invasion of Guatemala just as surely as Iberian ones. Going one step further, it is worth asking whether the sixteenth-century invasion of the Maya highlands by largely northern, Nahua forces was simply the latest example of many such intrusions, albeit carried out this time with particular violence and a fateful new ally in the Spanish. Mesoamerican history writ long and large also helps us understand the Mexicanos’ experience as both colonists and colonial subjects in Guatemala. At its inception, Ciudad Vieja existed to protect the fledgling Spanish city of Santiago. In form and function, however, it paralleled the garrison colonies that secured frontier regions under Aztec imperialism. As they had in prior wars of conquest, Mesoamerican conquistadors-turnedcolonists divided their settlement into ethnic wards. They welcomed new immigrants from their homelands and forged lasting relationships with locals. Ciudad Vieja’s spatial and social arrangements in Guatemala echoed those of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century native settlements in central Mexico. Religious and civic rituals followed Mesoamerican as well as European formulas. A common language, Nahuatl, marked the Mexicanos’ difference from the Maya whose territory they had invaded (even as it masked ethnic differences among themselves, most notably between Nahuas and Oaxacans). Long after the colonial system was formally dis-

worthy is Robert Carmack’s body of work on Guatemala, which pioneered the interdisciplinary methodology known as “ethnohistory” and consistently treats the history of Guatemala’s indigenous people as an uninterrupted progression from ancient times to the present day. The attempt to bridge the precolonial-colonial divide is also predicated on a long tradition of Mexican scholarship centered mostly on the Nahua region, most recently represented by scholars such as Enrique Florescano, Hildeberto Martínez, Andrea Martínez Baracs, Miguel León Portilla, Alfredo López Austín, Leonardo López Luján, and Luis Reyes García.

Introduction / 5

mantled in the early nineteenth century, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja still remembered their descent from Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors. Historians of Mesoamerica looking for threads of continuity with the precolonial past, newly rewoven into the fabric of colonial society, will find them easily in Ciudad Vieja. In myriad ways, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja maintained a persistent, dynamic memory of their particular Mesoamerican history. But it is important not to overstate the case for continuity. Europeans fundamentally shaped the process of becoming Mexicano in colonial Guatemala, in all the usual ways: through foreign institutions like town councils, confraternities, and Catholic marriage rites, and new spiritual concepts like sin and angels. All these were imposed upon and transformed by the people the Spanish labeled Indians. Historians have quite rightfully pointed out that the Europeans, too, were transformed in this cultural exchange. But to what extent did Europeans have the upper hand, despite being a minority of the population? The Mexicanos seem to have clearly recognized that the emerging colonial system was eroding their options and limiting their status within a few decades of the invasion of Guatemala. To defend their position, they chose not only to conform to colonialism but also, perhaps incidentally, to bolster it. Being Mexicano in Ciudad Vieja meant claiming a conquistador heritage that was increasingly defined by Europeans and their descendants in America, not by Mesoamericans. To act outside or challenge the colonial order meant risking the original alliance that had made the Mexicanos conquistadors in the first place and all the privileges that came with it. For the entirety of the colonial period, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja maneuvered within a system that both safeguarded and restricted their position in colonial society. Self-consciously and purposefully or not, they and their counterparts throughout Mesoamerica helped create a colonial order that all Mesoamericans had to manage, often from a disadvantaged position. In the process, at least to some extent, the Mexicanos themselves were created by Spanish colonialism. This book thus attempts a delicate balance between change versus continuity of indigenous culture under colonial rule, and between the power of colonial institutions versus the sometimes surprising potency of everyday life to shape a collective consciousness. Over the course of three hundred years of living in colonial Guatemala, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja acquired overlapping and often counterintuitive identi-

6 / Introduction

ties. They were both indigenous and foreign, Indians and conquistadors. They were Ladinos in the early colonial sense of the Spanish term of being Europeanized Indians, but not in later, racialized definitions of Ladinos as anyone who did not fall under an idealized European-Indian rubric. They did not, and do not, fit easily into seductive oppositions between victor and vanquished or oppressor and victim. And yet, the Mexicanos’ experience reveals the longevity, evolution, and practical applicability of all these categories of colonial rule. Straddling so many of them at once and sitting significantly outside the standard narratives, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja are well-positioned to help us reexamine our own memories of European conquest and colonialism in the Americas. At stake is not only the possibility of finer understandings of the Mesoamerican colonial experience, but the building of alternative narratives that can compete with stories whose raison d’etre is to explain European dominance over the Americas. This is not to deny that millions of Mesoamericans were victims of contact and conflict with Europeans— for who could possibly do so? Nor is it to throw out European-centered narratives and replace them with indigenous ones. Rather, my goal is to reiterate the old maxim that there are many sides to every story and to assert that this one contributes something important and previously overlooked: the perspective of Mesoamericans who embraced the colonial project and found themselves both protected and limited by it. At the heart of this book is something that sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in the 1930s termed “social memory.” Halbwachs suggested that the individual recalls his or her past, and defines his or her present, as part of a larger social group. Put together, these individual yet social memories can potentially create something larger: a group consciousness passed down and refashioned from generation to generation. In Ciudad Vieja, the most salient social memory was that of being Indian conquistadors. But how was this passed down and refashioned over time? What did being Mexicano mean, if anything, in any particular situation? Most accessibly and obviously, people transmit social memory by telling stories about their shared past. Such stories may crystallize in and around what Pierre Nora famously called “sites of memory”— subway maps, paintings, textbooks, monuments, anything that provides an opportunity to reimagine the past. They may emerge out of social gatherings (family reunions, veterans’ groups, religious communities, ethnic clubs)

Introduction / 7

or become part of consumer culture (antique shops, Disney films, published memoirs).2 Sometimes a story of the past becomes both iconic and contentious. The famous Bayeux tapestry created in the twelfth century, whose embroidered panels pictorially recount the Norman invasion of England in 1066, inspires competing English and French interpretations. Colonial Mesoamericans also created visual narratives of the past, on painted sheets of paper or leather that sometimes stretched across entire walls. Painted lienzos (cloth sheets), tiras (rolls), codices, and maps, such as the Mapas de Cuauhtinchan, employed traditional techniques to narrate local histories reaching far into the Mesoamerican past, rarely mentioning Europeans. Often used as mnemonic devices, they invited ceremonial retellings of the epic journeys of ancestors or the genealogies of royal families. Mesoamericans also transcribed their narratives of the past into the Europeans’ alphabetic script, as in the Guatemalan K’iche’ Maya’s Popol Wuj, the Yucatec Maya’s Books of Chilam Balam, and the annals-style histories of the Nahua historian Chimalpahin. They adopted European forms of history-telling wholesale, as in the works of the seventeenth-century mestizo chronicler from the city-state of Texcoco in central Mexico, Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, or created histories that fit uneasily between indigenous and foreign genres, as in the alphabetic-pictorial Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca. In the Mexicanos’ case, a painted map known today as the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan and an 846-page Spanish-style petition for tribute exemption— both discussed in detail in Chapter 3— offer two versions of the same conquest-era events that, despite their considerable technical differences, are remarkably alike in tone and message. These histories of mythic journeys, ethnic consolidation, imperial might, and royal lineage offer the most direct evidence of how Mesoamericans remembered their collective pasts during the colonial period. But like most written documents, they reflect the viewpoints of those with the means, either financial or technical, to create them. The same can be said of what historian James Lockhart has called “mundane” native-language documentation— bills of sale, minutes of local council meetings, wills, and so on— but these have the advantages of being more widely produced over the course of the colonial period and of reflecting a broader range of 2. See the varied essays collected under Nora, Realms of Memory; Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country; Mires, Independence Hall in American Memory; Horowitz, Confederates in the Attic; Brear, Inherit the Alamo.

8 / Introduction

Mesoamerican experiences and viewpoints in their own languages.3 Far fewer native-language colonial documents have survived in Guatemala than in Mexico; for this study, I found only five from Ciudad Vieja in the Guatemalan Mexicanos’ predominant native language of Nahuatl. In their relative absence one is left with mostly secondhand, filtered representations of the Mexicanos’ words and lives in colonial Guatemala. A courtappointed notary records the recollections of a Nahua who journeyed to Guatemala with the Spanish conquistadors. An eighteenth-century Spanish American bishop notes Ciudad Vieja’s bilingualism. A family dispute between a Mexicano father and his daughter yields a detailed list of household goods submitted to a colonial judge, while a conflict between neighborhoods instigates an inspection of boundaries still recognizable in the hills around Ciudad Vieja today. Such details tucked away in bundles of legal documents or the narratives of colonial-era chronicles allow a sideways glimpse at “the continuing activity of collective memory as new inputs occur, and as material is remembered, transmitted, and remembered again.”4 In colonial New Spain, the Franciscan friar and scholar Bernardino de Sahagún worked with Nahua student-scholars to produce an entire volume of specifically Tlatelolca memories of conquest and many other volumes more generally detailing Nahua history, religion, and ritual practice. Historians of ancient Mexico approach Sahagún’s work with caution but also with gratitude for the chance to interrogate it. Historians of Central America are even more suspicious of the writings of the hyper3. James Lockhart encouraged a generation of students in the 1980s and 1990s to focus on these sorts of native language documents. Their approach emphasizes historical rather than poetic analysis and insists that native voices be made as central to modern historywriting about the indigenous past as possible; see Restall, “History of the New Philology.” The disinterest that some of these texts exhibited toward the Spanish, perhaps most surprisingly when recalling the fall of Tenochtitlan and its aftermath, led some to question to what extent Mesoamericans at the time viewed the Spanish as the principal enemy, or the conquest as the most pivotal event in their histories. Others using Spanish texts and/ or Mesoamerican pictorial sources have come to similar conclusions. See Lockhart, We People Here; Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest; various works of Schroeder, the most recent being Chimalpahin’s Conquest (with Roa-de-la-Carrera and Tavarez); Restall, Seven Myths; Wood, Transcending Conquest; Asselbergs, Conquered Conquistadors; Matthew and Oudijk, Indian Conquistadors; and Oudijk and Restall, La conquista de Mesoamérica. For a slightly different approach that emphasizes the unpredictable yet transformative and often punitive power of colonialism (in this case, the translation of religious concepts from one language and set of genres to another), see Hanks, Converting Words. 4. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History, 166.

Introduction / 9

patriotic seventeenth-century Guatemalan creole chronicler, Francisco Fuentes y Guzmán.5 Nevertheless, Fuentes y Guzmán is the best source available for descriptions of occasional reenactments of the conquest of Guatemala, in which the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja played a central role. Finally, social memory is traceable through the actions that such documents suggest rather than the words they reveal. This takes us beyond narrative and toward what Paul Connerton has argued are the most powerful conduits of social memory: rituals, gestures, and habits.6 Commemorative ceremonies like that of the conquest of Guatemala do not just recall the past, writes Connerton— they reenact it, with familiar actions and at regular intervals. An obvious example of this kind of bodily memory is found in the Catholic church’s celebration of Easter, whose rituals remind participants and observers of their connection not only to God but to one another and past generations of Christians. But Connerton argues that collective memory is just as powerfully located in learned, repeated, everyday gestures such as posture, table manners, gesticulations, or habits of dress. “Both commemorative ceremonies and bodily practices . . . contain a measure of insurance against the process of cumulative questioning entailed in all discursive practices,” he writes. “This is the source of their importance and persistence as mnemonic systems. Every group . . . know(s) how well the past can be kept in mind by a habitual memory sedimented in the body.”7 Present-day examples suggest how embodied social memory might function in practice. The West River Apache of central Arizona transmit and refashion their ancestral past by traveling and narrating the landscape in which they live. Place-names recall particular events; changes in the landscape record the passage of time. Telling stories along familiar routes recalls the past for future generations, and physical, routine knowledge of particular places is essential for remembering. The municipal archive in the small Nasa community of Cumbal, Colombia, where anthropologist Joanne Rappaport worked in the 1980s, serves a similar mnemonic purpose. The content of the documents matter less than the physical, material connection they provide to real experiences of past generations. In the Mexican town of Santo Tomás Ajusco, local authorities preserve, 5. The best commentary on Fuentes y Guzmán remains Martínez Peláez, La patria del criollo. 6. Connerton, How Societies Remember. 7. Ibid., 102.

10 / Introduction

recite, and ritually transfer a copy of a colonial-era speech detailing the European conquest of the area on a regular basis. In the Aymara town of Santa Bárbara de Culta in modern-day highland Bolivia, residents travel what anthropologist Thomas Abercrombie calls “memory paths” as they perform the particular rituals of maintaining hamlet boundaries, libation ceremonies, and saints’ festivals, as well as more everyday rituals. All these examples come from contemporary Native America, but there is nothing peculiarly modern, indigenous, or American about the phenomena.8 This book traces the echoes of social memory in colonial Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala, discernable in direct narratives, secondhand accounts, and recorded actions. Commemorations of the conquest re-enacted the Mexicanos’ claim to territory in foreign lands. Mexicano militias and confraternities assigned particular tasks and rituals to the town’s ethnic subgroups, the routine fulfillment of which recalled and reinforced their ancestors’ heterogeneous origins. The ancestral past was embedded and thereby remembered in the very place-names of Ciudad Vieja’s colonial-era neighborhoods. Some memory paths were purposefully trod— when the conquest was invoked to claim community lands, for instance, or when a defendant in court proclaimed his ethnic identity in self-protection. Others were part of a habitual memory recalled when a campesino walked daily across another neighborhood’s land boundaries to his own fields, or identified himself as a Mexicano or Tlaxcalteca to the census-taker or priest, or supplied the candles for Holy Week ceremonies as part of his confraternity duties. Some habits, like dress and food, are even more difficult to access but were surely as profound and enduring in their familiar, reflexive routines. My aim in tracing these social memories is to understand what being Mexicano meant in colonial Ciudad Vieja over time. Being and also becoming, because the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja did not exist as such when thousands of Nahuas, Mixtecs, and Zapotecs invaded the Maya

8. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places; Rappaport, Cumbe Reborn; Wood, Transcending Conquest; Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power. For non-Native American comparisons, see Altman, Transatlantic Ties; Moya, Cousins and Strangers; Thomas, The English and the Normans; Matsumoto, Farming the Home Place; Hardgrove, Community and Public Culture. The idea of social memory intersects strongly with an academic literature on ethnicity, migration, and immigration. Indeed, as Anthony Smith has said, ethnic groups “are nothing if not historical communities built up on shared memories” (Ethnic Origin of Nations, 25).

Introduction / 11

highlands in 1524. To be Mexicano in colonial Ciudad Vieja did not imply an essentialist, static identity, nor even a single, overarching ethnicity. It did not mean the same thing in the sixteenth century as it did in the nineteenth. I would also not claim that being Mexicano was the most important aspect of any resident of Ciudad Vieja’s existence. Indeed, the underlying assumption of this book is that on a day-to-day and individual level it mostly did not matter. Even the Mexicanos’ most explicit renderings of their collective identity, such as their annual participation in conquest commemorations, surely meant many things beyond identification with a particular, cohesive group. Marching into the cathedral in Spanish military costume as the Mexicanos did every November provided a chance not only to reenact a story of a shared past, but also to celebrate, get drunk, dress up. And this is the very essence of what I wish to explain: how the idea of being Mexicano— a fundamentally Mesoamerican yet also evolving and colonial identity— was sustained and reinvigorated over time, despite being in the background rather than the forefront of most people’s everyday lives.

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1. Indigenous Invasions Mexicans & Maya from Teotihuacan to Tollan

Why do all the invaders come from the north? — Guatemalan graphic artist José Manuel Chacón, aka Filóchofo, La otra historia (de los mayas al informe de la Comisión de la Verdad) (1999)

O

ne could logically begin an account of the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja with the sixteenth-century invasion of Guatemala. This, in fact, is where the colonial-era Mexicanos often started their own story. But their history belongs not to colonial New Spain, much less to the modern nation-states of Mexico or Guatemala, but to Mesoamerica as a whole. Trade, diplomacy, war, and conquest connected those whom we might carelessly label Mexicans and Maya long before the Spanish arrived on the scene. Such connections shaped that violent meeting and what followed. Multiple volumes have attempted to unravel ancient relationships across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec during the first millennium and a half a.d. Very often, people from the Gulf coast or the Basin of Mexico are depicted as dominant players. Some scholars of ancient Mexico, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, suggested that the central Mexican city of Teotihuacan created a Mesoamerican empire in the fourth century a.d. that overshadowed Maya civilization. Others have claimed that the Classic Maya learned the craft of state-building from their Mexican counterparts and have attributed the traditions reflected in famous colonial-era texts like the K’iche’

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Maya Popol Wuj and the Yucatec Maya Books of Chilam Balam either to Mexican invaders of highland Maya territory in the thirteenth century or to Mexicanized Maya of the Gulf coast region led by central Mexican rulers. On the opposing side (because people studying Maya history often felt compelled to defend their academic territory), ancient Maya rulers were portrayed selectively adopting certain Mexican styles of architecture and religious symbolism while remaining thoroughly Maya. Some have argued that the Maya had a greater influence on Mexican polities than the other way around.1 Many of these ideas, and the resulting sharp dichotomy between Mexican and Maya, have been complicated by recent work in Mesoamerican archaeology and epigraphy. But the Mexican/Maya dichotomy lives on despite scholarly qualifications. Since this book could be read as an account of Mexican peoples who invaded highland Maya areas in the sixteenth century, it is worth sorting out whether the Spanish conquest of 1524–28 was, from a Mesoamerican perspective, just the latest invasion of Maya territory by people from the west and north. In Guatemala at the time of this writing, it is widely accepted on the basis of the aforementioned academic debates that some of the most numerous and politically active Maya groups today, such as the K’iche’ and the Kaqchikel, have Mexican or “Toltec” heritage. Opponents of indigenous rights movements in Guatemala have used this notion to argue that the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel and others like them are not truly Maya, but Mexican or a Mexican-Maya hybrid. An extreme example comes from a 2005 newspaper editorial decrying the lack of attention to those suffering from Hurricane Stan, in which columnist Jorge Palmieri noted, in an aside, that the K’iche’ “say they are descendants of the Maya, but it is known that they descend from the Toltecs who integrated themselves into the Spanish troops captained by the bloodthirsty Pedro de Alvarado after he killed around 25,000 Aztecs in Tenochtitlan.”2 A 1997 article in the cul1. Braswell’s introduction and Demarest’s foreword to The Maya and Teotihuacan summarize these debates. 2. Palmieri, “Ahora o nunca”: “No me refiero solo a los campesinos indígenas de la etnia quiché, que se dicen descendientes de los mayas, pero se sabe que descienden de los toltecas que se integraron a las tropas españolas que capitaneó el sanguinario Pedro de Alvarado después de que, en Tenochtitlán, mató a cerca de 25 mil aztecas durante ‘La noche triste,’ por lo cual lloró Hernán Cortés, sino me refiero a los millones de indios, mestizos y ladinos que comparten la miseria, como se pudo comprobar en Camotán y otros lugares.” Camotán, a town in the largely Ladino department of Chiquimula, was severely affected by Hurricane Stan. I thank Luis Enrique Sam Colop for alerting me to this column.

Indigenous Invasions / 15

tural magazine Crónica expressed the same idea in more muted tones. Ricardo Sotomora von Ahn— arguing for national unity around the notion of being, like the United States, a nation of immigrants— wrote that “although indigenous people are trying to revive their Maya heritage, it is widely known that when the Spanish conquistadors arrived at Guatemala, the principal tribes like the K’iche’s and Kaqchikeles were dominated by elite priest-warriors who . . . were ethnically Toltecs.”3 By these arguments, the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel cannot claim pure descent from the much-romanticized Classic Maya, whom commentators (echoing both colonial and neocolonial racial theories) say disappeared and left only the most degraded remnants to be dominated by the Mexican invaders. Nor can they claim rights as indigenous peoples, since as the descendants of foreign (i.e., Mexican) invaders and native Maya, they are no different from Ladinos of European, African, or Asian heritage who may also have mixed with the Maya or other Mesoamericans. Palmieri goes further, equating the allegedly Toltec Maya with the Nahua allies who invaded Guatemala alongside the Spanish in the sixteenth century— the very subjects of this book. From both a modern political perspective and a historical one, it is important to clarify: Who exactly were the Toltecs? Are they the same as the Mexicans or the Aztecs? When did they first arrive in Guatemala, if ever, and what was their relationship to the Maya? Understanding the invasion of Maya territory by peoples labeled “Mexicanos” in the sixteenth century requires us not to bypass centuries of previous Mexican-Maya interaction, nor to use broad ethnic labels like “Mexican” and “Maya” thoughtlessly. The first premise of this book, then, is that the Ciudad Vieja Mexicanos’ history is not merely colonial, but must be situated within a much longer, profoundly Mesoamerican past. Geographically bounded by the limits of agriculture in modern Mexico to the north and the border between modern Nicaragua and Costa Rica to the south, Mesoamerica is home to an extraordinary diversity of peoples who nevertheless share a common cultural base. To a great extent, Paul Kirchhoff ’s 1943 definition of Mesoamerica as a civilization connected by a broadly shared culture and history still stands.4 All Mesoamericans have depended for over 3,000 3. Sotomora von Ahn, “Nobleza de Guatemala.” I thank Oralia de León for this reference. 4. Kirchhoff, “Mesoamerica”; see also Pohl, “Introduction: Mesoamerica?”; and Carmack, Gasco, and Gossen, Legacy of Mesoamerica, 28–35.

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years on the cultivation of maize, beans, squash, and chile peppers; have maintained a complex system of astronomy and calendrics that links the circular movement of the planets and stars to cosmic cycles of creation and destruction; and have based their spatial and social organization on the four cardinal points. Ancient Mesoamericans developed hieroglyphic writing on folded paper, deerskin, and monumental stone stelae, played their famous ball game on sanctified courts, and honored the cycles of life, death, and rebirth through bloodletting and human sacrifice. Archaeologists have located the oldest traces of this uniquely Mesoamerican culture in modern-day Veracruz and Oaxaca. Not surprisingly, a major geographical and cultural boundary occurs precisely at this point: the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a land bridge stretching from the Pacific coast of Oaxaca to the Gulf coast of Tabasco and Campeche, Mexico. In popular and some generalist scholarly writing in English, the peoples living west of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec are commonly labeled “Mexican” and those living to the east and south, “Maya.” Both labels emerged during the colonial period, primarily as Spanish administrative tools. “Mexican” originally comes from the Mexica Tenochca, leaders of the Aztec empire centered on the city of Tenochtitlan. For the colonial-era Spanish, mexicano most specifically referred to this group of people or those affiliated with them. More often and less specifically, mexicano was understood to mean any native speaker of Nahuatl, the widespread language of the Aztec empire. The term is further muddled by its association with the nation-state of Mexico (also named for the Mexica Tenochca), whose contemporary borders contain the ancient lands and cultures of central and northwestern Mesoamerica but also some lands to the east and south where speakers of various Mayan languages lived. Archaeologists, whose terminology I follow in this chapter, use “Mexican” to reference a culture area most strongly associated with Uto-Aztecan speakers in central Mexico, but also including the peoples of northern Mexico, MixeZoque speakers from Oaxaca and Veracruz, and Otomanguean speakers in Oaxaca.5 Likewise, colonial-era Spaniards dubbed the area east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec “Maya” based on stories they heard about the city of Mayapan, which dominated the Yucatan Peninsula in the fifteenth century.6 But the Maya area goes far beyond Yucatan, extending into much 5. Campbell, American Indian Languages. 6. Gabbert, “On the Term Maya.”

Indigenous Invasions / 17

of Central America and including parts of the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, and Campeche in the modern nation-state of Mexico. What is Maya thus follows linguistic and cultural criteria rather than national boundaries. Linguists trace all Mayan languages to a single, Proto-Mayan idiom that began to branch out around 2000 b.c. In the lowlands of the Gulf coast, Yucatan, and El Petén, Guatemala, people spoke Yucatecan and Huastecan languages. In the highlands of modern Chiapas and Guatemala, a more complex situation evolved from four major language families. Today, over 30 Maya languages are still spoken in Chiapas and Guatemala, including Chontal, Tzeltal, Mam, Kanjobal, K’iche’, and Kaqchikel—a number that only hints at the linguistic complexity of earlier times. As in the Mexican west and north, many native languages in the Maya east and south have become extinct with the passage of time, the disappearance and migration of peoples, and the influence of Spanish. Not everyone fits neatly into this scholarly Mexican-Maya schema. At Izapa along the modern border between Chiapas and Guatemala, artists in the third century b.c. carved some of the earliest depictions of important Maya deities. Yet the Izapans likely spoke a Mixe-Zoquean rather than a Maya language.7 Half a millennium later, Maya lords at Tikal claimed kinship with the kings of the central Mexican city of Teotihuacan. In Teotihuacan, meanwhile, the predecessor of the famous feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl was depicted in Maya style in the Tetitla murals, and central Mexican Nahua lore in the sixteenth century held that Quetzalcoatl came from the eastern direction of the Maya.8 The Pipil of modern Guatemala and El Salvador are not Maya, but descend from Nahuatl speakers who, archaeologists believe, migrated to Central America in waves from central Mexico and/or the Gulf coast in the early centuries of the first millennium a.d. And in the Spanish colonial period, the Mexicanos of Guatemala themselves confounded the strict categories of west/north and east/ south, Mexican and Maya. It is perhaps best, then, not to draw too harsh a dichotomy between Mexican and Maya, but to think instead in terms of Mexican-Maya relationships over time. From a Mesoamerican perspective, the invasion of highland Maya territory in 1524 marked a continuation as much as a break with ancient history, not necessarily in the dominance of Mexican over Maya but in a persistent pattern of connections across the Isthmus of 7. Coe, Maya, 67–69. 8. Taube, “Tetitla and the Maya Presence,” 291.

Culture Areas

GU L F OF M E X ICO Northwest lf Gu ast Co

Central Mexico

Maya

Oaxaca

PAC I F I C OC E A N

Language Areas 1 2 3 4

Maya Uto-Aztecan Mixe-Zoque Otomanguean

GU L F OF M E X ICO Yucatec Maya

Huasteco 2

1 Itza’ 1

4 2

Otomi Nahuatl

4

Zapotec, Mixtec

PAC I F I C OC E A N

K’iche’, Kaqchikel, etc.

2 3

Ch’orti’ 4

1

2 3 Xinca

2

4 2

Pipil Lenca

Map 1. Classic and Postclassic Mesoamerica

Classic-era Sites

GU L F OF M E X ICO

Teotihuacan

El Mirador Nakbé La Venta Matacapan

PAC I F I C OC E A N

Calakmul

Uaxactun Tikal Quirigua Copán Izapa Kaminaljuyú Montana Balberta Palenque

Postclassic-era Sites

GU L F OF M E X ICO

Texcoco Chichén Itzá Tula Tlaxcala Uxmal Tenochtitlan Cholula Cuauhtinchan Cacaxtla Xochicalco Teotenango Zacualpa Rax Ch’ich

PAC I F I C OC E A N

Xoconusco Ku’markaaj Q’oja Ixtepeque

Rab’inal Iximche’ Escuintla Cotzumalguapa

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Tehuantepec. Two epochs of ancient Mesoamerican history in particular bear on the later, sixteenth-century invasion of Maya lands. First is a brief period in the fourth and fifth centuries a.d., when the central Mexican city-state of Teotihuacan appears to have influenced or even violently interfered in Maya politics. Second is the much longer period to which the Guatemalan K’iche’ Popol Wuj refers, from the twelfth century to the arrival of Christianity to Mesoamerica in the sixteenth, the time of Tollan Zuyuán.

Teotihuacan and the Maya The first hint in the archaeological record of significant Mexican influence in Maya areas, after many centuries of seemingly equal exchange between cities and peoples of the two regions, comes with the rise in central Mexico of Teotihuacan. For nearly 800 years, Teotihuacan was one of the largest and most enduring cities anywhere in the ancient world. It emerged as a major settlement in the Basin of Mexico rather abruptly around 150 b.c., and by the first century a.d. had absorbed most of the Basin’s local population. At its height, Teotihuacan covered some 20 square kilometers and provided residence to as many as 200,000 people. Its enormous Sun Pyramid was constructed around the same time that the city’s population began to boom, around 100 a.d. Some 20 other pyramid complexes followed, many of them connected to the north-south Avenue of the Dead that culminated in the Ciudadela, a rectangular complex built by the third century a.d. This complex includes the famous Feathered Serpent Pyramid, one of the city’s last monumental constructions built in the taludtablero style often hailed as a hallmark of Teotihuacano architecture.9 The Feathered Serpent Pyramid also marks one of the earliest expressions of the famous Quetzalcoatl cult, iconographically linking royal authority and fertility with warfare and the celestial cycles of Venus. Teotihuacan subsequently dominated the Basin of Mexico for some 500 years. Areas north and east of the city fell under its direct political control. Colonists were sent west into Guerrero, south toward Texcoco, to the Gulf coast city of Matacapan, and perhaps even further afield to trade and gather natural resources. This expanding economic network relied on tameme (porters), a system that would continue in the Spanish colonial 9. Carrasco, Jones, and Sessions, Mesoamerica’s Classic Heritage; López Austin and López Luján, Mexico’s Indigenous Past; Florescano, “Memoria indígena.”

Indigenous Invasions / 21

period. Teotihuacan became a cosmopolitan city with sizeable foreign resident populations organized into their own barrios, including some Maya.10 Despite occasional internal strife, the city’s preeminence continued more or less unabated until the main temples and elite residences of its city center were violently and rapidly destroyed sometime between 550 and 700 a.d. Teotihuacan remained home to tens of thousands of people, but religious and political power shifted elsewhere after the city center’s destruction. Much of the material culture associated with Teotihuacan also dramatically disappeared at this moment from the city’s archaeological record.11 Teotihuacan’s art and architecture drew upon already-existing Mesoamerican traditions that linked astronomy, mythic world-creation, and urban-based state formation. Earlier sites in both Mexican and Maya regions, such as the Olmec center La Venta in Veracruz and the Maya sites Uaxactun, Tikal, Nakbé, and El Mirador, all exhibited built-in manifestations of the Mesoamerican division of the world into the underworld, earth, and heavens vertically, and the four cardinal points horizontally.12 Likewise, Teotihuacan’s Sun and Feathered Serpent pyramids were built atop sacred caves and tunnels— some natural, others manmade— fed by underground springs. Surrounded by plazas that became inundated by water during the rainy (and agricultural) season running from June through November, a series of pyramids at the city’s center re-created sacred mountains emerging from a watery underworld from which the land and its products, including maize and humans themselves, first emerged into sunlight to feed and worship the gods. A perpendicular east-west avenue marked the path of the Pleiades on the day of the solar zenith each spring, signaling both the annual shift in seasons and the occasional renewal of the 52-year calendrical cycle common throughout Mesoamerica. What made Teotihuacan different from other, contemporary Mesoamerican cities was both the massiveness of its urban construction and the extent to which it re-created all these elements of the cosmos in a single urban plan. It was, as Davíd Carrasco, Lindsay Jones, and Scott Sessions put it, the “quintessential instantiation of a set of cosmological concep10. López Austin and López Luján, Mexico’s Indigenous Past, 114. 11. Millon, “Last Years of Teotihuacan”; Rattray, “Fechamientos por radiocarbono en Teotihuacan.” 12. Broda, “Calendrics”; Cabrera Castro, “Teotihuacan Cultural Traditions”; Florescano, Memoria indígena, 118.

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tions that was embraced both well before and long after the Classic era.”13 And there were innovations as well, not least of these being the cult of the Feathered Serpent that appears to have crystallized here, lending powerful cosmogenic (and coercive) authority to Teotihuacan’s rulers. More than 200 warriors were sacrificed and buried near elite tombs during the Feathered Serpent Pyramid’s dedication ceremony. The water often shown flowing from the Feathered Serpent’s mouth on the pyramid and on the city’s murals and ceramics is sometimes painted red, as if it were blood. Saburo Sugiyama has suggested that the pyramid’s iconography, the warrior sacrifice at its inauguration, and the military-themed grave goods scattered in its tombs indicate a “state-executed program” that linked “divine rulership with the ritual display of warfare and human sacrifice on an unprecedented scale.”14 Although the Feathered Serpent is rarely depicted in an overtly military fashion within Teotihuacan itself, it would often appear connected with blood, heart sacrifice, military costume, and political authority in metropolitan and foreign contexts. The cult’s consolidation signaled the beginning, perhaps, of a more widespread Mesoamerican politico-religious complex that associated divine authority with war and human sacrifice, the Feathered Serpent (later known to the Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl), and Teotihuacan itself as birthplace of the gods and of time. Although many questions remain, archaeologists and art historians are beginning to agree that Teotihuacan’s undeniable influence throughout Mesoamerica was linked to the power of this militaristic ideology. Which brings us to the controversy over Mexican-Maya relations at this moment in Mesoamerican history. Precisely during Teotihuacan’s ascendance in the Basin of Mexico, signs of its influence appear in Maya areas far to the east and south. In the Pacific lowlands of modern-day Escuintla, Guatemala, trade with Teotihuacan bolstered the small city of Balberta between 200 and 400 a.d., when it was abandoned. Concurrently, a new regional power emerged: the nearby city of Montana, whose massive architecture is unique on the lower Pacific coast in both size and style. Montana’s material remains include unusually large quantities of Teotihuacanostyle domestic and ritual goods throughout the site. Such Teotihuacano goods ceased to be manufactured or used at Montana around the time of Teotihuacan’s demise, and the city fell into a permanent decline. Frederick 13. Carrasco, Jones, and Sessions, Mesoamerica’s Classic Heritage, 14; see also Broda, “Calendrics.” 14. Sugiyama, “Teotihuacan,” 128–30.

Indigenous Invasions / 23

Bove and Sonia Medrano Busto, archaeologists who worked at both Balberta and Montana in the 1990s, suggest that sizeable numbers of Teotihuacanos migrated to the Pacific coast around 400 a.d. and established a coastal colony at Montana, at least in part through military confrontation with local Maya. These colonists’ success and word of other Teotihuacano victories further afield may have fueled Maya elite interest in the militaristic ideology associated with Teotihuacan.15 Montana’s short history contrasts in interesting ways with Kaminaljuyú, an extremely ancient highland Maya city some 75 kilometers to the northeast. Kaminaljuyú thrived from approximately 900 b.c. to 200 a.d. Its stelae, which date from 300 b.c., preserve some of the earliest Maya hieroglyphs including the bird god 7 Macaw and the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque who later famously appear on Classic-era stelae and pottery from El Petén and in the colonial-era Popol Wuj. Around 200 a.d. Kaminaljuyú’s population dispersed, and monuments ceased to be created for its rulers. But the city revived around 400 a.d., and its rejuvenation appears clearly linked to Teotihuacan. Elite tombs built in talud-tablero style were constructed in the center of the complex, containing central Mexican-style or imported goods and distinctively Mexican warfare paraphernalia on the bodies themselves. Stable isotope analysis suggests that the dead elites were highland Maya, but at least one of them spent time in central Mexico as an adolescent. On the basis of these isotopic analyses and on the sparse distribution in ritual contexts only of Teotihuacanoassociated material remains, most archaeologists no longer believe (as was once the case in the mid-twentieth century) that Kaminaljuyú was a Teotihuacano colony. Instead, they suggest that Kaminaljuyú’s Maya elites adopted Teotihuacano goods, styles, and perhaps even a Teotihuacan-based cult associated with warfare and the Feathered War Serpent to bolster their own authority.16 The well-studied lowland sites of Tikal in El Petén, Guatemala, and Copán in Honduras speak more directly to Mexican-Maya relationships during the fourth and fifth centuries. At Tikal in 378 a.d., the Maya king Chak Tok Ich’aak (Great Jaguar Paw) died on the same day that a stranger from the west, Sihyaj K’ahk’ (Smoking Frog or Fire Is Born), arrived. Stela 5 at nearby Uaxactun is the only remaining contemporary stela commem15. Bove and Medrano Busto, “Teotihuacan, Militarism, and Pacific Guatemala.” 16. Popenoe de Hatch, Kaminaljuyú/San Jorge, 94–100, and “Los K’iche’s-kaqchikeles”; Braswell, “Dating Early Classic Interaction.”

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Sihyaj K’ahk’ (Smoking Frog or Fire Is Born) on Uaxactun Stela 5 in Teotihuacano warrior costume, ca. 378 a.d. (left), and Yaax Nu’n Ahyiin (Curl Snout) on Tikal Stela 31 in the same costume, ca. 379 a.d. (right). Drawings by Linda Schele, © David Schele, courtesy of Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., www.famsi.org.

orating the battle; it displays the first known Maya representation of what Linda Schele and David Friedel call the “Tlaloc War Costume” exhibiting Teotihuacano warrior paraphernalia: a tail bundle, balloon headdress, and atlatl (spearthrower), all similar to the warrior imagery appearing on Teotihuacan’s murals beginning a century prior.17 Just shy of two years later, in 379 a.d., stelae at Tikal recorded the ascension of a new ruler, Yaax Nu’n Ahyiin (Curl Snout). He, too, is depicted in Teotihuacano warrior garb and in a very different artistic style from earlier Tikal stelae. This new iconography, the building of new ballcourts where political and military dominance would have been asserted, and occasional but distinctive Teotihuacano-style and imported artifacts found in elite burials, all sug17. Schele and Freidel, Forest of Kings, 146–47.

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gest some sort of relationship of Tikal’s rulers with the central Mexican city during this time.18 Neither archaeological nor textual evidence, however, indicates a massive intrusion into the Maya lowlands by Mexican Teotihuacanos in the fourth century. The events at Tikal do not appear to have foreshadowed the sixteenth-century invasion of Maya territory by thousands of Nahuas, Zapotecs, and Mixtecs.19 So what happened in 378? Were Sihyaj K’ahk’ and/or Yaax Nu’n Ahyiin Teotihuacanos who used their foreign status and relation to the famous city to create alliances, usurp power, and intermarry with Maya elites? If so, were they acting on their own or at the behest of rulers in Teotihuacan? Or were they Maya, local interlopers who drew power from Teotihuacan’s distant but famous religious-military complex to challenge the established ruling lineage at Tikal? The answers remain elusive, as researchers continue to excavate new sites and decipher new texts. In any case, the lords of Tikal iconographically proclaimed their links to Teotihuacan for less than 70 years before reverting to a more traditionally Maya iconography and artistic style that downplayed or avoided Teotihuacano militaristic imagery altogether.20 At Copán, Honduras, a contemporaneous and similar story of MexicanMaya interaction emerges. The parallels with Tikal’s dynastic history are, as Robert Sharer notes, “as obvious as they are intriguing.”21 K’inich Yaax K’uk Mo’ (Great Sun Quetzal-Macaw) founded a Copán dynasty in 426 that would endure over 16 generations and 400 years. Isotopic analysis suggests that Yaax K’uk Mo’ spent most of his youth somewhere in El Petén. His arrival at Copán happened roughly one generation after the overthrow of Tikal’s ruler Chak Tok Ich’aak. Both Yaax Nu’n Ahyiin of Tikal and Yaax K’uk Mo’ of Copán are called strangers and “paramount rulers” from the west; both are adorned with the characteristic goggles of the Teotihuacano warrior; and both were buried in distinctively Teotihuacano-style talud-tablero temples. At Copán, however, Teotihuacano ideology and imagery was integrated into a local, Maya artistic tradition even more quickly than at Tikal. Within a decade of the dynasty’s founding, Yaax K’uk Mo’s son and successor downplayed Teotihuacano iconography in the historical record of his rule. Mexican iconographical references do not reappear 18. Sharer and Traxler, Ancient Maya, 321–33. 19. Ponce de Léon, “Problematical Deposits.” 20. Borowicz, “Images of Power.” 21. Sharer, “Founding Events,” 163.

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on Copán’s stelae until much later in the eighth century a.d., integrated into a thoroughly Maya art style well after the collapse of Teotihuacan itself. And as at Tikal, there is no evidence of significant changes in people’s everyday lives at Copán despite Teotihuacan’s intermittent importance to the elite.22 Taken as a whole, what does the latest archaeological and epigraphic research suggest about Mexican-Maya connections during the ascendancy of Teotihuacan? In the century following the construction of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid and continuing for another two hundred years at most, Teotihuacan briefly extended its reach toward specific sites in the Maya east and south such as Montana, Kaminaljuyú, Tikal, and Copán. It increasingly appears that these Maya cities were themselves linked by their contact with or emulation of the Mexican city, and that their rulers used the real and perceived power of Teotihuacan to challenge other Maya city-states (such as Calakmul and Quirigua) where little to no Teotihuacano influence has been detected. Kaminaljuyú revived after centuries of decline, perhaps as a result of its connections with the newly founded Montana. The new lineage heads at Tikal may have been Maya, or they may have come from Teotihuacan or Montana; regardless, their attempts to dominate the Maya lowlands followed the establishment of a new dynasty that glorified a central Mexican warrior complex. Sharer speculates that Copán’s new dynasty head, K’inich Yaax K’uk Mo’, was in fact the lord K’uk Mo’ from Tikal sent to shore up the southeastern edge of the lowlands.23 The existence of Maya residential barrios, murals, and funerary objects at Teotihuacan further suggests elite Mexican-Maya contacts, including perhaps the sending of Maya elite sons to be trained or receive legitimation at the Mexican city.24 Teotihuacan’s direct influence in Maya territory, however, was both narrow and brief. There is no evidence at any site besides Montana of significant migration of peoples from central Mexico into Maya areas during the fourth and fifth centuries a.d. Nor is there evidence of massive military invasion from the west (although this is more difficult to gauge archaeologically). Maya commoners, both highland and lowland, appear to have seen no perceptible change in their material culture or settlement patterns 22. Stuart, “Foreign Past”; Sharer, “Early Classic Royal Power,” and “Founding Events,” 163–65. 23. Sharer and Traxler, Ancient Maya, 348. 24. Braswell, “Understanding Early Classic Interaction,” 136–41.

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during this period. Indeed, most contemporaneous Maya sites show little or no evidence of contact with Teotihuacan at all, even at the elite strata. And at Tikal and Copán, where the ruling class clearly valorized its Teotihuacano connections, the visual iconography of the west was nevertheless rapidly incorporated into a distinctly Maya view of royal kingship quite different from that at Teotihuacan. Individual rulers continued to be celebrated on Maya stelae, in stark contrast to the absence of historical records naming kings or depicting succession rituals in central Mexico. In the end, Teotihuacan’s most lasting impact on the Maya region— and throughout Mesoamerica— appears to have been ideological. Long after the central Mexican city had been abandoned, Maya leaders continued to make reference to it in order to bolster their own complex of divine kingship. As David Stuart has put it, Teotihuacan became “an idealized concept, a paradigm through which Maya leaders could define themselves and their historical pedigree.”25 The largest city in Mesoamerica during the first millennium a.d., Teotihuacan represented not just the possibilities of empire but of urban life on an unprecedented scale. As its temples became ruins and its streets converted to farmland, the memory of this ancient city from a distant past persisted: the place of reeds and of seven sacred caves, the epicenter of the cosmos, where rulers gained legitimacy and participated in high culture.

Tollan Zuyuá and the “Toltecs” The second period of Mexican-Maya interaction that concerns us begins around 1000 a.d. and extends to the sixteenth century. It is commonly understood, but also contested, that Mexican Toltecs invaded the Maya highlands during this period and set up ruling lineages that still dominated the area when the Spanish arrived. Even more so than at Tikal, Kaminaljuyú, and Copán, where we have stelae and extensive archaeological excavations to guide us, the nature and extent of Mexican-Maya interaction during this period in Guatemala is controversial. It is also terribly important, not only for imagining how the Guatemalan Maya might have confronted invading forces from the west and north in the sixteenth century, but also for clarifying who we mean by “Mexicans” and “Maya” on the eve of European colonialism. The second millennium a.d. ushered in what scholars commonly label 25. Stuart, “Arrival of Strangers,” 506.

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the Mesoamerican Postclassic, a time of tremendous social and political reorganization in the region. Climactic changes combined with overpopulation and warfare to precipitate significant migrations: of the nomadic “Chichimeca” from the arid northern deserts into central Mexico, and of drought-stricken lowland Maya into Yucatan and the Guatemalan highlands. New cities filled the power vacuums left by the decline and/or abandonment of Teotihuacan, Tikal, Palenque, Kaminaljuyú, and other major sites. Gulf coast peoples, always heavily engaged in trade and whose culture mixed Maya and Mexican traditions, traveled widely across the region. We have far more information about this era than about earlier ones, because Mesoamericans retold their more recent histories in colonial-era documents like the K’iche’ Popol Wuj, the Yucatec Books of Chilam Balam, and the Nahua Historia tolteca-chichimeca. Ironically, however, these texts have often made things less clear rather than clearer, for what Mesoamerican elites wrote down contradicts not only the archaeological and linguistic record but also academic expectations about how history is told. A principal source of confusion has been the tendency across all texts to associate elite authority with Postclassic migrations from a place variably called Tulan, Tullan, or Tollan Zuyuá, the place of the reeds. According to two of the most important colonial-era Guatemalan K’iche’ Maya texts to have survived, the Popol Wuj and the Título de Totonicapán, K’iche’ ancestors traveled to Tulan Zuyuá from a place called Seven Caves, Seven Canyons, to receive their patron gods. They then traveled west across a sea or causeway toward the Guatemalan highlands. Their sons, the lords of the second generation, returned to the east on a pilgrimage to receive investiture from Nacxit, the Feathered Serpent god-king. The Kaqchikel Maya Memorial de Sololá similarly claims that the ancestors of the Kaqchikel Xajil lineage came from “the other side of the sea. In the place called Tulan we were produced and made by our mothers and fathers.”26 In these and other Guatemalan Maya texts, migrants descend from the wild forests to battle settled native peoples and establish ruling lineages in their new homeland. After the introduction of Christianity, Catholic equivalents of Tulan were sometimes incorporated into the story. In two documents published by Adrián Recinos as Las Historias de los Xpantzay, Kaqchikel elites from Tecpán Guatemala claimed descent from Tulan Zuyuá, Canaan, and Babylon, simultaneously. Likewise, the Historia Quiché de Don Juan Torres relates how the nine houses 26. Otzoy, Memorial de Sololá, 155.

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of the K’iche’ came from the east, “from the other side of the lake, the other side of the sea, when they left from there, from that place called Babylon.”27 Similar stories come out of central Mexico and Yucatan. The Historia tolteca-chichimeca from Cuauhtinchan, Puebla, relates the migration of the barbarian Chichimeca to the Basin of Mexico, first to the Place of the Reeds called Tollan, then to Cholula. They are led by four “first fathers,” two of whom are particularly powerful priests whose names (Quetzaltehueyac and Icxicoatl) and personages evoke the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl. These priests lead the Chichimeca out of the Place of the Mountain of the Ancestors, the Place of the Seven Caves. They teach them to eat maize and speak Nahuatl, and initiate them as warriors. They then guide the Chichimeca into battle against the settled natives of their new homeland in Lake Texcoco. In doing so, the Chichimeca learn the arts of civilization and become “Toltecs.”28 Likewise, the Yucatec Books of Chilam Balam associate Tollan with the Xiu lineage of the city of Uxmal, who “were at West Zuyuá for four eras; the land they came from was Tulapan . . . the land and home of Nonoual.” The Xiu’s main rivals, the Itza’ of Chichén Itzá and Mayapan, are portrayed in the Books of Chilam Balam as natives of the area who defended their position against the foreign Xiu. As in the K’iche’ and Nahuatl versions of this myth-history, the Xiu are portrayed as barbaric outsiders, wild men, or men of the forests, who conquer a sedentary people and in the process become civilized themselves.29 But where was Tulan/Tullan/Tollan Zuyuá? And who were the Toltecs? For much of the twentieth century, scholars read texts like the Historia tolteca-chichimeca and the Popol Wuj literally. They searched for a specific city from which a particular people, the Toltecs, could have migrated in all directions— a city that was assumed to lie somewhere in central Mexico, thereby connecting the abandoned city of Teotihuacan with the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. In the 1940s, Wigberto Jiménez Moreno suggested that the theory proposed by nineteenth-century French traveler Désiré Charnay was correct: Tula, Hidalgo, was the primordial Tollan of early colonial texts.30 Subsequent excavations unearthed a city considerably smaller than either Teotihuacan or Tenochtitlan, but nevertheless home to 27. Recinos, Cronicas indígenas de Guatemala, 25. See also Braswell, “K’iche’an Origins.” 28. López Austin and López Luján, “Myth and Reality of Zuyuá.” 29. Restall, “Ethnohistorical Evidence”; Edmonson, Ancient Future of the Itzá, 4–5, 16, and Heaven Born Merida, 37. 30. Jiménez Moreno, “Tula y los Toltecas.”

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some 30–40,000 residents in its heyday. Within the Basin of Mexico, Tula appeared to have enjoyed a brief but spectacular rise based primarily on aggression against its neighbors. The city emulated Teotihuacan’s architecture and propagated a militaristic cult under its founder and ruler priest, Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl.31 Contradictions, however, immediately presented themselves. Most obviously, the site’s archaeological remains did not match the glorious descriptions of the city in colonial-era texts like the Historia tolteca-chichimeca. While the authors of the Historia and other Nahuatl texts (like the Tlatelolca informants of Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún) described the Toltecs as the most wise, artistic, cultivated, and cultured peoples anywhere, the art and architecture of Tula is, as Lindsay Jones puts it, “conventionally dismissed as the bad art of a difficult time, a shallow and unappealing conception paired with a lackadaisical execution.”32 Nor did Tula stand alone in the Basin of Mexico. Xochicalco, Cacaxtla, and Teotenango all share with Tula the iconography of the Feathered Serpent cult, talud-tablero architecture, and an artistic emphasis on warfare.33 Cholula was also labeled “Tollan” in the Historia tolteca-chichimeca, and remained an important pilgrimage and investiture site dedicated to the Feathered Serpent long after Tula had been abandoned.34 Further afield, the Yucatec Maya city Chichén Itzá shared so many architectural and artistic features with Tula that for many years its style was termed Mexicanized Maya. Indeed, scholars spent decades in the twentieth century trying to sort our how the Maya of Chichén Itzá had been Mexicanized. Recent studies, however, have shown that Chichén Itzá’s stereotypically Toltec style both predates and outshines Tula’s. The Maya city’s influence reached south into the Guatemalan highlands and north to central Mexico, and as at Tula, Xochicalco, and Cholula, was predicated in large part on Feathered Serpent worship. It now seems possible that some of the most distinctive features shared by Chichén Itzá and Tula, such as reclining chac mool and supporting atlantean statuary, originated in Yucatan and were adopted in central Mexico rather than the other way around.35 31. Smith and Montiel, “Archaeological Study of Empires”; Florescano, Myth of Quetzalcoatl; Davies, Toltecs; Mastache, Cobean, and Healan, Ancient Tollan. 32. Lindsay Jones, Twin City Tales, 315. 33. López Austin and López Luján, “Myth and Reality of Zuyuá,” 42–43; Lindsay Jones, Twin City Tales, 408–12. 34. McCafferty, “Tollan Cholollan.” 35. Ringle, Negron, and Bey, “Return of Quetzalcoatl”; Andrews, “Fall of Chichén Itzá”; Ringle et al., “Decline of the East”; Lindsay Jones, Twin City Tales, 384–87.

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In Guatemala, too, scholars have sought the literal Tollan of the Popol Wuj and the Memorial de Sololá. J. Eric S. Thompson, Robert Carmack, John Fox, and Dennis Tedlock proposed in the 1970s and 1980s that foreign invaders— variously labeled Mexican, Mexicanized Chontal or Putun Maya, Toltec, or epi-Toltec— established themselves over the native Maya around 1250 a.d. and dominated the highlands until the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century.36 In accord with the emphasis on Tula in scholarship of the time, the Tollan of these Mexican invaders was located in modern Campeche or Tabasco, described as eastern in the Popol Wuj because it lay east of Tula, Hidalgo. Fox envisioned “leapfrog” migrations of male lineage heads from Tula to the Chontal or Putun Maya Gulf coast in the 800s, then toward Chichén Itzá, and eventually Chiapas and Guatemala. As archaeologists rethought Chichén Itzá’s relationship with Tula, however, many rechristened Chichén Itzá the Tollan of the K’iche’, Kaqchikel, and other Maya groups like the Itza’.37 Tedlock, meanwhile, suggested in 1994 that the Tollan of the Popol Wuj was actually Copán, based on textual references to the bat glyph also recorded on stelae there.38 As in Yucatan and central Mexico, however, contradictions abound. Significant population movement and the construction of defensive hilltop sites throughout the Guatemalan highlands predate the proposed invasion by Gulf coast Putun Maya around 1200 a.d. Mexican architecture and imported goods appear later, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.39 Archaeologists and anthropologists such as Kenneth Brown, Ruben Reina, Marion Popenoe de Hatch, Matilde Ivic de Monterroso, Frederick Bove, and Geoffrey Braswell have all commented on the lack of evidence for foreign invasion and on Postclassic continuities in settlement and consumption patterns throughout the region. They increasingly point to the Pacific coast as a likely source of Mexican influence in Postclassic Guatemala, possibly from central Mexican or Pipil settlements established at

36. Thompson, Maya History and Religion; Carmack, Quiché Mayas of Utatlán; Fox, Maya Postclassic State Formation; Popol Vuh. 37. Florescano, Memoria indígena, 150; Grant Jones, Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom, 7–13. 38. Tedlock, Breath on the Mirror, 13, 237. 39. Navarrete, “Elementos arqueológicos”; Braswell, “K’iche’an Origins,” 298. See also chapters by Marion Popenoe de Hatch, Mathilde Ivic de Monterroso, María Josefa Iglesias Ponce de León, Marie Charlotte Arnauld, and Edwin M. Shook in Lújan Muñoz et al., Historia general de Guatemala, vol. 1.

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sites like Montana and Cotzumalguapa during the Classic period, with new influxes of migrants.40 With so many discrepancies among and between historical texts and thegrowing archaeological and linguistic record in both Maya and Mexican regions, the search for a single Tollan has been largely abandoned. Instead, scholars from all disciplines have begun to speak of Tollan as the prototype of a classic migration story found throughout Postclassic and colonial-era Mesoamerican pictorial and alphabetic texts. At its most basic level, suggests Elizabeth Boone, Tollan was “a place of fertility and abundance, a place of origin, and a place where many people lived— a metropolis.”41 Teotihuacan was remembered, perhaps, as the model: multicultural, cosmopolitan, imbued with cosmological power, and highly complex. But Tollan could also, simultaneously, be Tula, Chichén Itzá, Cholula, or any other place that Postclassic migrants associated with divinely sanctioned rulership and high civilization. Likewise, the Toltecs were not a specific ethnic group, but referred to all those who, in Nahuatl, had toltecayotl, which to Miguel León Portilla implies “all forms of intellectual and material perfection.”42 Geoffrey Braswell, Frauke Sachse, and Allen Christenson argue that Tollan was essentially mythical, a metaphorical otherworld where the ancestors were born and resided.43 Enrique Florescano suggests that Tollan was neither a single city nor a mythical place but referred in each instance to a particular regional site that was a “magical center of power, the place where military, economic, and religious force was concentrated” and where authority could thus be legitimately bestowed by a priest associated with Quetzalcoatl.44 Alfredo López Austin and Leonardo López Luján envision a pan-Mesoamerican Zuyuán system that flourished in the Postclassic, the hallmarks of which included “a hegemonic patron of political control” associated with the Plumed Serpent, Quetzalcoatl (also called Nacxit, Kukulcán, and Gucumatz); many ethnicities living under the rulership of this patron; and the belief that all Zuyuáns originated from 40. Brown, “Prehistoric Demography”; Reina and Hill, Traditional Pottery of Guatemala; Popenoe de Hatch, “Analysis of the Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa Sculptures”; Ivic de Monterroso, La influencia del centro de México; Bove and Medrano Busto, “Teotihuacan, Militarism, and Pacific Guatemala.” 41. Boone, “Venerable Place of Beginnings,” 378. 42. León Portilla, Aztec Image of Self and Society, 24–25. 43. Braswell, “K’iche’an Origins”; Sachse and Christenson, “Tulan and the Other Side of the Sea.” 44. Florescano, Myth of Quetzalcoatl, 62.

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the primordial Tollan Zuyuá. In some cases foreign invaders introduced this ideology. In others, it was imposed by locals. When invasion was the catalyst, “with the passage of time they [the Zuyuáns] became assimilated to the local cultures to the degree of losing their own language.”45 Framing Tollan and the Toltecs in such pan-Mesoamerican terms disassociates them from a necessarily Mexican origin site or ethnic group. To insist that the central Mexican city of Tula is the only Tollan, or to speak of the Guatemalan K’iche’ and Kaqchikel as Toltecs or the Yucatec Maya as Mexicanized, seems increasingly anachronistic. But a more complex reading of Tollan does not deny the possibility of significant connections between particular highland Maya lineages and the peoples and/or cultures of central Mexico during the Postclassic. Ethnohistorian Ruud van Akkeren has traced some of these in his study of the K’iche’an dance-drama Rab’inal Achi, from Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.46 He very usefully dispenses with ethnic generalizations based on language like “K’iche’” and “Kaqchikel,” focusing instead on the specific lineage groups identified in colonial-era texts. He also rejects the notion of a single, concentrated wave of Gulf coast migrations to the Guatemalan highlands in the 1200s. Instead, Van Akkeren identifies multiple invasions from different directions beginning as far back as the late Classic period and likely building upon even earlier exchanges. Like many archaeologists, Van Akkeren pinpoints the Pacific coast as a major source of Mexican influence in Postclassic Guatemala. By his analysis, Nahua immigrants brought Mexican culture to the Guatemalan highlands early via Mexican colonies such as Ixtepeque, a well-established Pacific coastal site that had once provided obsidian to Copán.47 From Ixtepeque, the Q’anil lineage migrated in the early Postclassic to the site of Q’oja in the Mam area near modern Quetzaltenango. A related priestly lineage with strongly Nahua lineage gods, the Toj, migrated around the same time from an unknown location first to the area north of Zacualpa, then to Baja Verapaz. But Van Akkeren also finds Mexican influences in early Postclassic Guatemala arriving from other directions. The Poqom Maya, with close ties to both the Pacific coast and Teotihuacan-influenced Kaminaljuyú, invaded Q’eqchi territory in Verapaz from the south around 800 a.d. 45. López Austin and López Lújan, “Myth and Realty of Zuyuá,” 68. 46. Van Akkeren, Place of the Lord’s Daughter. 47. Ibid., 186–90; Aoyama, “Classic Maya State”; Andrews and Fash, “Issues in Copán Archaeology,” 408.

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A separate intrusion of Nahua merchants via the Gulf coast occurred in Verapaz some two hundred years later. Van Akkeren argues that these Gulf coast Nahuas participated in Feathered Serpent worship and enjoyed particular prestige in Postclassic Verapaz. Their town of Rax Ch’ich may have even been a local Tollan where the region’s various lineage heads traveled for investiture, according to the K’iche’ Título de Ilokab’.48 All these lineages— born out of early migrations of and alliances between highland Maya, Pacific coast Pipil, and Gulf coast peoples— constituted the native people, or amaq, against whom the protagonists of the Popol Wuj battled. As for the authors of that famous document, Van Akkeren traces their roots to a later migration of Yucatec Maya, probably Itza’, in the thirteenth century.49 In Van Akkeren’s reconstruction, then, the various lineages living in Postclassic highland Guatemala had complex, multicultural roots. Lineage heads formed alliances with each other, sometimes on the basis of their common origins, sometimes through intermarriage or as a matter of convenience. They also broke those alliances, as the enmity between the K’iche’ and the Kaqchikel when the Spanish arrived makes clear. The K’iche’an Popol Wuj, says Van Akkeren, recounts Postclassic origins, migrations, and alliances from the perspective of the Kawek and Kejney lineages, whose roots lie in Yucatan. It describes earlier migrants like the Q’anil and the Toj as native peoples whom the intruders have to subdue. A different perspective is provided in the Kaqchikel Memorial de Sololá, whose authors remembered their connections to earlier migrations from the Pacific coast and thus located their Tollan not to the east as in the Popol Wuj, but to the west. The Toj of Verapaz, where Van Akkeren thinks settled lineages from the coast and highlands and later intruders from Yucatan confronted each other in the thirteenth century, tell their story in the Rab’inal Achi. Each colonial-era manifestation of the Tollan story from Guatemala is thus tied to a particular history of migrations and political alliances, a particular set of lineage heads and gods, and a particular geography. Whether or not van Akkeren is altogether correct in his reconstruction of Postclassic Maya history, he joins a growing scholarly chorus that moves us yet further from the model of a single Mexican invasion of the Guatemalan highlands from the Gulf coast in the thirteenth century. Three important points emerge from this survey of Mexican-Maya 48. Van Akkeren, Place of the Lord’s Daughter, 76–98. 49. Ibid., 176–230.

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connections during the Mesoamerican Postclassic. First, while the ideology of Tollan and the Toltecs may have been rooted in Teotihuacan, by the end of the Postclassic it was widespread throughout Mesoamerica. The Feathered Serpent cult did not emanate from a single, often presumed central Mexican, city, but was adapted to local gods, traditions, and political exigencies. Second, Toltec ideology in Postclassic Guatemala was facilitated, and perhaps even driven, by the uninterrupted presence of Nahuatl-speaking peoples on the Pacific coast reaching as far back as archaeologists have been able to dig. This was as true during the Classic period (for instance, in connections between the coastal site of Montana and the Maya cities of Kaminaljuyú, Tikal, and Copán) as it was during the Postclassic. Third, Mexican influence in Postclassic Guatemala was neither confined to nor encompassing of all K’iche’ and Kaqchikel speakers. Scholars increasingly pinpoint Chichén Itzá and/or Yucatan as the source of the “Toltec” influence seen in the Popol Wuj, and trace central Mexican influences in highland Guatemala to earlier contacts with the southern Pacific coast. In addition, many other linguistically Maya groups besides the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel, such as the Mam and Poqom, had contact with and were influenced by Nahua or Pipil peoples during the Postclassic, while not all lineages within the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel claimed Toltec heritage. So did the K’iche’, Kaqchikel, and other major linguistic groups in Guatemala “descend from the Toltecs who integrated themselves into the Spanish troops captained by the bloodthirsty Pedro de Alvarado”? Were they “dominated by elite priest-warriors who . . . were ethnically Toltecs”? Such notions equate the Toltecs with central Mexico, either directly or via the Gulf coast, and reify early theories of a thirteenth-century Toltec invasion of Maya territory. But scholarship of the past quarter century suggests that to be Toltec in the Postclassic period meant subscribing to a pan-Mesoamerican idea of civilization rather than descending from a certain ethnic group. Tollan, the origin place of the Toltecs, was both metaphorical and multiple, referencing places as varied as Cholula and Tula in central Mexico, Chichén Itzá in Yucatan, Ixtepeque on the Central American Pacific coast, and Rax Ch’ich in Verapaz. The many peoples claiming Toltec heritage in colonial-era texts from Guatemala, in other words, were not necessarily Mexican nor even foreign. Likewise, the Feathered Serpent and other deities may have originally come from central Mexico, but by the Postclassic period had been transformed at such powerful religious centers as Chichén Itzá and Cholula. In Guatemala, they melded with Maya gods to become part of localized religious practice. Thus in

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the Popol Wuj, stories of the Maya Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque appear alongside stories of Tollan. Finally, archaeological and ethnohistorical investigations strongly suggest that Mexican-Maya connections in Guatemala reach at least as far back as the early Classic period. Any influx of foreigners from Yucatan or elsewhere in the thirteenth century was no novelty, but another interaction on the heels of so many others. The longue durée of Mesoamerican history preceding the arrival of Europeans sets the stage for what is to come. Viewed from this longer historical perspective, the invasion of the Maya highlands by peoples of central and southern Mexico in 1524 appears somewhat less extraordinary. Scholars who do the slow, difficult work of excavating and preserving archaeological sites, analyzing stelae, and combing through colonial-era documents rightly caution that our vision of the ancient Mesoamerican past is a work in progress. Still, it seems safe to say that Mesoamericans had been crossing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec as diplomats, envoys, merchants, migrants, warriors, and priests for thousands of years before Europeans arrived on the scene. Most directly, Mexicans established colonies through war or more often through trade and political diplomacy. On the Pacific coast, migrants from central Mexico and the Gulf coast settled over many centuries at Montana, Cotzumalguapa, and Ixtepeque. These towns and their inhabitants remained architecturally, linguistically, and culturally distinct from the Maya. Other Mexican colonies were so small as to hardly qualify as such, remaining confined to particular lineages in the Guatemalan highlands like the Toj and Q’anil, who intermarried with and assimilated into the culture of their Maya neighbors while still remembering their particular “Toltec” heritage. Another type of Mexican-Maya interaction involved the spread of ideologies ultimately connected to the Classic-era city of Teotihuacan in central Mexico. But this ideological influence was mitigated by time and distance, whether we are speaking of the short-lived impact of Teotihuacano conquest upon Tikal and Copán during the Classic or the development of Tollan myth-histories in the Postclassic. Finally, some interactions, such as the arrival of Yucatec or Petén Maya migrants to the Postclassic Guatemalan highlands, do not fit into the Mexican-Maya dichotomy at all. Such intrusions were no less disruptive for not being “Mexican,” reminding us that what mattered most in all these Mesoamerican interactions was local territory and lineage history, not the amorphous and often imprecise categories created by scholars and politicians.

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A century before the arrival of Europeans to Mesoamerica, a new city in the Basin of Mexico recalled the splendors of Teotihuacan. A late-arriving group of northern migrants, the Mexica Tenochca, founded the city of Tenochtitlan on an island in Lake Texcoco. With the Acolhua lords of the city-state of Texcoco, they successfully waged war against the Tepanec of Atzcapotzalco in 1428. The Tepanec of Tlacopan entered into the alliance in 1431, and a new political order was established in central Mexico: the Triple Alliance, eventually dominated by Tenochtitlan. By the sixteenth century, the Triple Alliance had subjugated most of the Basin of Mexico and built an empire whose reach extended into modern-day Guatemala and Chiapas. Tenochtitlan’s art and architecture evoked memories of Tula and, by extension, Teotihuacan. Temples and statuary from both ancient cities were consciously imitated or even looted and restored in the new imperial city. For the lords of Tenochtitlan, Teotihuacan was the birthplace of the Fifth Sun at the beginning of the present creation. Tenochtitlan’s Templo Mayor dedicated one sanctuary to Tlaloc, the ancient central Mexican warrior-rain god who had so frequently appeared in Maya adaptations of Teotihuacano war imagery during the Classic period. The other sanctuary honored Huitzilopochtli, related to the Mexica priest-god of the same name who led his followers into the Basin of Mexico from the legendary Aztlan.50 Home to around 200,000 people, divided into four quadrants with central plazas and administrative centers, and laced with aqueducts, canals, and causeways, Tenochtitlan was the most impressive urban center to be built in central Mexico since Classic-era Teotihuacan. It is hardly farfetched to suggest that the Nahua allies of the Spanish derived some of their status in early colonial Guatemala from their connections, real or imagined, to the high civilization embodied by both of these great Mexican cities. For their part, the Maya of Guatemala lived relatively unbothered by the Triple Alliance for most of the fifteenth century. Their highland populations had grown steadily since the abandonment of late Classic-era sites, and new centers of power had emerged. A K’iche’-led alliance centered at Gumarcaaj successfully increased its territory and authority through conquests in the northern highlands. Mam speakers living in and around Zaculeu to the west appear to have held off the K’iche’, while the Kaqchikel to the south split with their former K’iche’ allies and established a 50. Florescano, Myth of Quetzalcoatl, 182–85; Broda, “Templo Mayor as Ritual Space”; Umberger, “Art and Imperial Strategy.”

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capital at Iximche’. The K’iche’ may have been obliged to pay some tribute to Tenochtitlan after the Mexica conquered the cacao-producing lands around Xoconusco in 1486; the Título de Totonicapán describes the establishment of a defensive border against the Nahuatl-speaking colonies there.51 Contacts increased in the early sixteenth century. The Títulos de la casa Ixquin-Nehaib describe the rather inaccurate-sounding scenario of the K’iche’ sending gifts to Tlaxcala, “which is where the said Montezuma was.”52 The Kaqchikel Memorial de Sololá notes the arrival in Iximche’ in 1510 of a number of emissaries, messengers “from Culhuacán” who were “many in number,” sent by Moctezuma II.53 Carlos Navarette has suggested that in the early sixteenth century, the Triple Alliance was poised to conquer Guatemala in a “violent intervention interrupted by the Spanish Conquest.”54 Still, relations between the highland Maya and the Triple Alliance remained relatively peaceful in 1519, the year Hernando Cortés landed at Veracruz. This would rapidly change after the defeat of Tenochtitlan in 1521, and the beginning of joint Nahua-European military campaigns beyond the borders of the former Aztec empire.

51. Carmack and Mondlach, Título de Totonicapán, 200, 263–64; Voorhies, “Whither the King’s Traders?” 52. Recinos, Crónicas indígenas, 84. 53. Otzoy, Memorial de Sololá, 121–22, 182–83. 54. Navarrete, “Elementos arqueológicas,” and “Influencias mexicanas.”

2. Templates of Conquest Warfare & Alliance in the Shadow of Tenochtitlan He who esteems the Indians but a little, and who judges that the advantage that the Spanish had in their persons, their horses, and their offensive and defensive weapons could have conquered any particular land and nation of Indians, is much mistaken. — Guatemalan chronicler Francisco Fuentes y Guzmán, quoting the Jesuit José de Acosta, Recordación florida (1690)1

The Indian empire was in a manner conquered by Indians. — U.S. historian William Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843)2

W

hen Guatemalan Maya lords recorded their histories in the Roman script they learned from Catholic friars, the Nahua-Spanish invasion of 1524 appeared as one confrontation among many others, if it appeared at all. Only two of the dozen or so indigenous-authored histories from colonial Guatemala include the invasion of 1524, within much longer accounts of regional migrations, wars, and alliances.3 This is not because the Maya failed to recognize the importance of what had happened. Indeed, rewriting their histories in ways acceptable to the Catholic church and Spanish imperial bureaucracy was an act of both historical rescue and resistance. As the carefully anonymous authors of the Popol Wuj put it, “We shall write about this now amid the preaching of God, in Christendom now. We shall bring it out because there is no longer a place to see it, a Council book . . . There 1. Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:301. 2. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, 818. 3. Maxwell and Hill, Kaqchikel Chronicles, 256–75; “Títulos de la casa Ixquin-Nehaib” in Recinos, Crónicas indígenas, 85–92.

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is the original book and ancient writing, but he who reads and ponders it hides his face . . . there is no longer a place to see it.”4 Perhaps the Maya neglected the Spanish invasion because to do otherwise would have been counterproductive, or even dangerous. Nevertheless, their texts warn us once again against treating the pre-Columbian past as a mere prelude to European colonialism. In their myth-histories, the Maya recalled Postclassic migrations from Classic-era cities and the arrival of newcomers from faraway lands. They remembered in more specific detail the genealogies, battles, and alliances of their ancestors in the two centuries prior to contact with Europeans. These multilayered memories are the historical framework into which the Maya placed the devastations of the sixteenth century. Warfare, disease, and abuse left their mark; but history neither ended nor began with the Spanish invasion. The Nahua and Oaxacan founders of the Guatemalan colony of Ciudad Vieja failed to produce any known accounts of their pre-Columbian history. This is fundamentally because before 1524 (and for some years afterwards), the Guatemalan Mexicanos did not exist. In the early sixteenth century, those who would become Mexicanos in colonial Guatemala were the lords and subjects of rival polities spread across central and southern Mexico. Their heterogeneity would reemerge in the urban layout and social structure of colonial Ciudad Vieja, a town subdivided into nine wards named after some (but not all) of the original Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors’ homelands: Tlaxcala, Cholula, Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, Otumba, Xochimilco, Quauhquechollan, Tlatelolco, and Tehuantepec. Ciudad Vieja’s ceremonial militias, also divided by these ethnically named wards, would don ancient warrior dress to annually celebrate the conquest at public events into the nineteenth century. Certain groups would grow in power and prestige, their collective memories enshrined in the institutional and religious life of the town. Others’ pasts would gradually be erased or would fade away. Just as for the Maya, it is impossible to understand the colonial experience of the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja without reference to the places from which their ancestors came, and to their mutual relationships before the Spanish arrived on the scene. Nor can one fully understand the sixteenth-century Central American conquests without taking Mesoamerican patterns of warfare and alliance into account, most especially those of the Tenochca (also known as the

4. Popol Vuh, 71, 227.

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Aztec or Mexica) empire.5 Resistance to Tenochca imperialism led hundreds of thousands of disaffected central Mexican Nahuas to join forces with the Spanish to defeat Tenochtitlan in 1521. Afterwards, their nobility rushed to fill the resulting power vacuum. These same noble Nahuas provided counsel, elite warriors, and auxiliary forces to the Spanish for the Central American campaign a few years later. The Tenochca themselves became newly subordinated but still highly trained, politically powerful, and therefore valuable partners. Nahua warriors eagerly adopted Spanish swords in the Central American campaigns, and perhaps some tactical innovations in the art of war. But in the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, a native pictorial of the conquest of Guatemala discussed at length in Chapter 3, scenes of war are thoroughly Mesoamerican. Nahuas dress in traditional cotton and feathered armor with backracks. Official merchant-spies meet with Spanish and Nahua leaders on the road that leads to Maya territory. Spaniards sit passively as their Mesoamerican allies perform dances in honor of their own war dead. Conquests of rival local groups precede entry into Maya territory, appearing independent of the primary campaign. It should not come as a surprise that the invasion of Guatemala in 1524 echoed to a very large degree the methods and trajectories of Aztec imperialism, but under a Spanish banner and with Tenochtitlan’s former rivals at its head. The rise and fall of Tenochtitlan set the stage for thousands of Nahua and Oaxacan warriors to march southwards toward Guatemala in 1524, and for hundreds to remain in Ciudad Vieja as colonists and neighbors. Prior relationships forged in the shadow of Tenochtitlan’s dominance shaped their alliance with each other as much as with the Spanish. It behooves us to take a closer look.

Tenochca Imperialism, 1428–1521 Tenochca expansion began with the formation of the Triple Alliance in 1428 and intensified during the reigns of Moctezuma I (1440–68) and 5. “Mexica” refers to the ethnic affiliation shared between Tenochtitlan and its sister city in Lake Texcoco, Tlatelolco. The Mexica Tenochca and the Mexica Tlatelolca considered themselves of shared origin, but had split into two groups and maintained distinct identities in central Mexico. The term “Aztec” originated with the nineteenth-century Prussian scholar Alexander von Humboldt, who adapted it from Aztlan, the primordial homeland of the Mexica.

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Ahuitzotl (1486–1502). Under Moctezuma II (1502–20), the empire extended into what are now the modern states of Puebla, Veracruz, Chiapas, and Oaxaca to the east and south, to the edge of Michoacan in the west, and into Hidalgo to the north. Important pockets of resistance to imperial expansion remained, however, when the Spanish arrived in 1519. Tlaxcala, Cholula, and Huejotzingo to the southeast of Tenochtitlan retained their independence, as did the Tarascan kingdoms in Michoacan, the Yopi territories of Guerrero, the Otomi of Tototepec, and various polities in modern Tabasco, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Guatemala.6 Some of these independent polities would be instrumental in the defeat of Tenochtitlan in 1521, most famously Tlaxcala in its alliance with the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés. Others— for example, the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel of Guatemala— would become the object of renewed efforts at conquest under the Spanish banner. At the center of the empire, the Tenochca extended their influence through interdynastic marital alliances, control of economic networks, and religiously inspired spectacles of human sacrifice and ritualized battles at temple sites. Appropriating the symbolism of both Tula and Teotihuacan, they built the great city of Tenochtitlan on an island in Lake Texcoco: for them, the axis mundi of the empire and the universe.7 Here, Tenochca tlatoque (Nahuatl for “kings”; sing., tlatoani) oversaw the ritualized maintenance of cosmic order. Human beings fed the gods through bloodletting and sacrifice. Some were ritualistically transformed into gods themselves in the process. The renewal of time, the cycles of life and death, and the passage of the sun, moon, stars and planets, all depended on regular, regulated acts of supplication. Complicated and often violent symbolism accompanied rites like the Feast of the Flaying Men, which honored the god Xipe Totec through the ritual sacrifice of hundreds of war captives whose body parts then traveled in prescribed ways throughout the city. In their fundamentals, such rituals were pan-Mesoamerican.8 But while human sacrifice had long been a necessary part of maintaining the Mesoamerican cosmic order and reinforcing political authority, in Tenochtitlan it became an instrument of imperialistic political control and even terror. Ingesting, wearing, and displaying sacrificed captives’ body parts transferred the 6. Pedro Carrasco, Tenochca Empire, 5. 7. Broda, “Templo Mayor as Ritual Space”; David Carrasco, City of Sacrifice; Umberger “Antiques, Revivals, and References.” 8. Lindsay Jones, Twin City Tales; Van Akkeren, Place of the Lord’s Daughter, 385.

GU L F OF M E X ICO Meztitlan/Hueyacocotlan/Tototepec

Tarascans of Michoacan

Tlaxcala/Cholula/Huejotzingo

Tenochtitlan

Yopi Mixtecs of Tututepec

PAC I F I C OC E A N

Xoconusco

Otumba

Basin of Puebla-Tlaxcala Lake Texcoco Tlacopan Huitzilopochco Coyoacan Culhuacan

Texcoco

Tlatelolco Tenochtitlan Tlaxcala

Ixtapalapan

Volcán Matlalcueitl

Mexicatzinco

Lake Chalco-Xochimilco

Xochimilco

Cuitlahuac Chalco

Mizquic

Basin of Mexico

Tlalmanalco

Huejotzingo

Volcán Itzaccihuatl Volcán Popocatepetl

Quauhquechollan

Map 2. The Tenochca Empire

Cholula

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sacrificed warriors’ energy to young Tenochca warriors and other city residents and reminded them of the empire’s political domination of conquered peoples. The message must also have been clear to enemy tlatoque who were summoned by Moctezuma II, according to fray Diego Durán, and forced to watch the sacrifice and heart extraction of captive warriors before they “dispersed full of ‘temor y espanto,’ fear and dread.”9 The maintenance of cosmic and political power at home was backed by Tenochca military might abroad. Venturing outward from central Mexico, Tenochca political envoys and/or pochteca (merchants) often made first contact with unconquered polities or provinces.10 Pochteca specialized not only as traders in high-status goods, but also as imperial diplomats, advisers, and spies. Only pochteca from certain core altepetl (ethnic states) around Tenochtitlan were allowed to travel outside the boundaries of the empire. Their arrival in an outlying province signaled imperial encroachment. According to the Spanish chronicler Alonso de Zorita, those who “greeted the imperial army with presents of great value and agreed to accept the empire’s god” were asked to give tribute “not as vassals but as friends,” usually in the form of sumptuous gifts sent annually to the Tenochca king.11 Those who hesitated might receive several increasingly threatening visits before battle ensued, although a clear rejection of Tenochca overtures (for instance, if a pochteca was killed) might justify an immediate call to war. Polities that capitulated quickly preserved a measure of their local autonomy under imperial rule, while those that resisted might see their lands taken over, their surviving populations enslaved, and their rulers punished or killed. These patterns would be repeated in early sixteenth-century diplomatic overtures between the Kaqchikel and the Spanish, the violent subjugation and enslavement of the defiant K’iche’ and Pipil, and the relatively more peaceful incorporation into the Spanish empire of the Tz’utujil and the Poqomam (the latter apparently deemed friendly enough to provide important matrimonial alliances for the colonizing Nahuas of Ciudad Vieja). An impressive infrastructure provided the human resources, training, and organization necessary for Tenochca conquests. Young men from both the pipiltin (nobility) and macehualtin (commoners) trained in the mar-

9. Davíd Carrasco, City of Sacrifice, 144–45, and ch. 5. 10. See Berdan, “Tributary Provinces.” 11. Pedro Carrasco, Tenochca Empire, 209.

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tial arts at their respective schools (the telpochcalli and calmecac) beginning at age 15. Younger students accompanied departing armies as tameme (porters), to witness their battles. Older students were apprenticed to a veteran warrior and began participating in combat around age 20. The highest military orders were composed of seasoned noble warriors from powerful ethnic states at the heart of the empire, including Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and the “Chinampa” altepetl— named for the man-made agricultural islands created with soil from the lake bottoms (chinampa)—of Xochimilco, Cuitlahuac, and Mizquic. But military achievement was also measured by the number of captives taken, and commoners could raise their status through exceptional performance. Successful campaigns held the promise of property gains, as elite warriors received land and labor rights in the territories they helped conquer. While some were surely coerced to serve, it also appears that thousands of hopeful commoners immigrated to Tenochtitlan and Texcoco to raise their fortunes through military service. In the early sixteenth century, the Tenochca could thus call upon some 25,000 highly trained warriors at any given time, as well as hundreds of thousands of untrained commoners who helped protect the elite guard and weaken the enemy’s defenses.12 This military infrastructure would be put to good use in the aftermath of Tenochtitlan’s defeat, when thousands of Nahua and other Mesoamerican warriors from the former empire would embark on new conquests in anticipation of the customary rewards. Preparation for war began at the local level, a fact that would later be reflected in the multiethnic divisions of colonial-era Ciudad Vieja. Nobility gathered warriors at the request of the Tenochca tlatoani and distributed insignias and cloaks. Runners and priests traveled ahead of squadrons of anywhere from 20 to 400 men organized by ward (calpolli) and altepetl, often marching under the banners of both. The military elite wore suits made of cotton, animal skins, and feathers, and wood helmets also decorated with feathers. They carried shields made of wood or cotton, cane, and leather, and oak broadswords and/or spearthrowers. Less seasoned warriors wore less decorated suits of maguey fiber, while commoners (who were usually archers) wore only loincloths— the same range of fighting gear evident in the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, a Nahua pictorial

12. Hodge, “Political Organization of the Central Provinces”; Pedro Carrasco, Tenochca Empire, 404–6; León Portilla, Aztec Image, 143, 156; Hassig, War and Society, 141–42, 250n. 23.

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depicting the Guatemalan invasion.13 If traveling far, the imperial troops could expect free passage, supplies, and weapons from subject towns en route. They might pick up additional warriors and tameme from military districts like Citlatepec and Quauhquechollan just outside the center of the empire, and from more farflung subject or allied towns like Acatlan (whose ruler was of Tenochca ancestry) or Coaixtlahuacan (whose only tribute obligations were military) in Oaxaca.14 These towns cultivated special fields for military use and manufactured portable provisions such as toasted tortillas, chía seeds, and cacao beans ground with maize flour. They also provided weapons and manpower from their own ranks of elite and commoner warriors. Their role would be no different when Nahuas and Spaniards passed through Oaxaca in the 1520s and 1530s to pick up supplies, warriors, and auxiliaries on their way to Central America. Likewise, the methods of Tenochca warfare anticipated later invasions in alliance with the Spanish. If the presence of an imperial army did not convince local lords to acquiesce to the empire’s demands, fighting commenced. Archers, spearthrowers, and footmen bearing slingshots released long-range projectiles to confuse the enemy and weaken its defenses. Warriors engaged in hand-to-hand combat using spears, knives, wooden clubs, and oak broadswords tipped with obsidian or stone blades and wooden knobs. In Mesoamerican depictions of later Nahua-Spanish conquests, such armaments are augmented by European metal swords. Much has been made of the terrible power of the sword to cut down unprepared Native Americans in the sixteenth century, and clearly Mesoamericans perceived great advantages in this new technology.15 Acknowledging this 13. Hassig, War and Society, 139–41; Hodge, “Political Organization,” 25–26. The Codex Mendoza portrays Tepeaca’s prisoner of war tribute on folio 42r; see Berdan and Anawalt, Codex Mendoza, 3:91. On the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, see Chapter 3 and Asselbergs, Conquered Conquistadors. 14. Pedro Carrasco, Tenochca Empire, 398. 15. For example, Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, ch. 5; see also Lamana, Domination without Dominance, ch. 1. Camilla Townsend, taking a cue from Diamond, has recently privileged technology (broadly defined to include maritime as well as military technology) as the primary explanation for Tenochtitlan’s defeat and for European dominance over the Americas in general. Mesoamericans were eager to ally with the Spanish, she writes, because the Spanish were “the one group everyone had reason to fear more than they had ever feared any other” (Townsend, Malintzin’s Choices, 113; see also her “Burying the White Gods”). This seems exaggerated; many sources indicate that Mesoamericans and other Native Americans found European technologies at least as attractive as they were frightening. See for instance the Lienzo de Analco (in Yannakakis, “The ‘Indios Con-

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Warrior costumes provided as tribute to the Aztec empire from the altepetl and dependencies of Tzicoac, from Codex Mendoza, f. 54r. Tracing by Jean Cuker Sells, courtesy of Frances Berdan and Patricia Anawalt.

fact should not, however, blind us to the violence of Mesoamerican warfare before the Spanish sword was made available, nor to the continuities in how war was waged by Mesoamericans even in the so-called Spanish conquest. Tenochca imperialism may have emphasized the capture of prisoners for the personal glory of the individual warrior and sacrifice to the gods, but this did not mean that casualties were typically minimal or noncombatants necessarily protected. Even in the “flowery wars” between Tenochtitlan and Tlaxcala, Huejotzingo, and Cholula—discussed in more detail below, and generally understood to be highly ritualized— thousands of warriors died on the battlefield. In outlying conquests, entire towns were sometimes wiped out in the fighting.16 Occupation and colonization followed conquest. In easily subjugated quistadores’ of Oaxaca’s Sierra Norte”); the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan (in Chapter 3 of this volume and Asselbergs, Conquered Conquistadors); the Segesser I painting and “Navajos” from 1851 (in Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 121–123, 294); and Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire. More fundamentally, I disagree with Townsend that technology was more important than epidemic disease or native politics in the conquest of Tenochtitlan, and that Spanish success is the primary issue to be explained. Nevertheless, the impact in this era of the steel sword, whether through fear or attraction, is undeniable. 16. For example, Oztoman and Alahuiztlan in the Balsas Basin of modern-day Guerrero when they were attacked by imperial forces during the reign of Ahuitzotl. See Pedro

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and allied provinces, the imperial presence was usually limited to bureaucratic stewards, called calpixque, who collected tribute, directed cultivation, and oversaw mass production of certain tributary products like textiles. In less-secure situations, warriors occupied the area under the command of a high-ranking military governor, usually Tenochca, whose authority superseded that of the calpixque of more pacified provinces. (This was the case in both Tehuantepec in Oaxaca and Xoconusco in Chiapas, whose Tenochca leaders remained in place after the fall of Tenochtitlan and would lend support to the Tlaxcalteca-Cholulteca-Spanish alliance that passed through their provinces on the way to Guatemala in 1523–24). By the early sixteenth century the Tenochca had established at least 43 garrisons throughout the empire. Triple Alliance warriors, colonists, and their families settled into separate wards according to their places of origin. Others settled within conquered towns, again in their own wards. Military colonists received free provisions from the conquered peoples of the area and were exempted from the tribute payments expected of the native population. They typically brought their wives and other relatives; according to the Franciscan fray Juan de Torquemada, imperial warriors “anywhere in these Indies used to take their wives with them, so that the kings could keep them there more securely.”17 In many cases, imperial colonists remained for generations in the regions they helped pacify. A century after bloody Tenochca conquests of the Balsas Basin in modernday Guerrero, for example, Spanish administrators reported sizeable neighborhoods and even entire towns of Nahuatl-speaking populations in this former border region of the Aztec empire, descendants of those “who were Moteuczoma’s garrison people.”18 Carrasco, Tenochca Empire, 407; López Austin and López Luján, Mexico’s Indigenous Past, 232. On Aztec warfare, see Clendinnen, “‘Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty,’” and somewhat more imaginatively, Aztecs: An Interpretation, 112–21; Hassig, War and Society, 140–41; and Issac, “Aztec Flowery War.” 17. Umberger, “Aztec Presence and Material Remains”; Pedro Carrasco, Tenochca Empire, 396, citing Juan de Torquemada, Monarquía indiana, 1:286. 18. Pedro Carrasco, Tenochca Empire, 271, from the relacion geográfica of Ichcateopan in Acuña, Relaciones geográficas del siglo XVI, 6:285–91. The relaciones geográficas were royal questionnaires administered in the 1580s throughout the Spanish empire, to gather information about the Spanish crown’s dominion in the Indies. In the Balsas Basin region, the relaciones reported Nahuatl-speaking populations of descendants of Aztec military colonists (as well as more recent immigrants from the Basin of Mexico) in Tepecuacuilco, Acapetlahuayan, Teloloapan, and Cocollan.

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As would also be the case in early colonial Guatemala, thousands of nonmilitary Mesoamericans also migrated to the outlying edges of the empire to help stabilize the local situation, forge alliances, and integrate the empire. In the 1450s, Moctezuma I transformed the political landscape of the central valley of Oaxaca by sending 6 Tenochca noblemen to settle different areas of the newly founded colony of Huaxyacac. They were accompanied by 600 families from Tenochtitlan, 60 each from Texcoco and Tlacopan, and others from Xochimilco and the other Chinampa towns. The new neighborhoods were again organized by ethnicity, and the sixteenth-century Tenochca chronicler don Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc claimed that these immigrants went “very content and happy.”19 Similar colonizations occurred in the Huaxtepec tributary province southwest of Tenochtitlan in the 1470s, and in Guerrero in the 1480s. Settlers sent to Veracruz coastal towns and other more extreme regions of the empire may have left less willingly. According to the Spanish historian Antonio Herrera y Tordesillas, Moctezuma II “would transport 8,000 families from Mexico and other large towns to settle in areas depopulated by disease, giving the people houses and land, and making them free from tribute payments for a number of years. Thus he could repopulate the coast whenever necessary, with people who would not be needed in the towns from which he had taken them.”20 Tenochca imperialism thus involved significant population movement in and out of the Basin of Mexico. In the empire’s central provinces, the possibility of recruitment into the imperial army or of being sent as a colonist to a newly conquered region, voluntarily or not, was ever present. But relocation to another part of Mesoamerica usually did not mean absolute separation from family and isolation from one’s altepetl. Soldiers fought in troops organized by calpolli or altepetl and were led by their own nobility. Those who colonized other parts of the empire often brought their families with them or had them sent later and were settled in ethnically organized neighborhoods. For some, military service and settlement on the frontier meant opportunity. Warriors and nobility received personal land and labor rights in the regions they helped conquer. Colonists received 19. Pedro Carrasco, Tenochca Empire, 406; Terraciano, Mixtecs, 335; Chance, “Urban Indian.” There is some controversy over whether Huaxyacac was founded under Moctezuma I or under Ahuitzotl. 20. Umberger, “Aztec Presence and Material Remains,” 155n. 7. The Inka of Peru engaged in similar colonization practices, sending entire families— the mitimae—away from their homelands to perform a military, religious, or other function for the empire.

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land and homes, enjoyed a higher status than their indigenous neighbors, and were exempt from the tribute all other subjects had to pay to the Triple Alliance. All these patterns would repeat themselves in the invasion of Central America under the Spanish banner. The establishment of alliances; the gathering of the conquistador army; the creation of military garrison towns and ethnic organization of neighborhoods; the arrival of nonmilitary settlers; the awarding of land rights to military captains; and the expectation of exemption from tribute and forced labor— all echoed Postclassic methodologies of imperial expansion. Michel Oudijk and Matthew Restall have pushed the observation even further, noting not only the Spaniards’ dependence on Mesoamerican advice, warriors, and supplies, but also the close correlation between Aztec trade routes and the conquest campaigns of the 1520s. The Spanish conquest, they write, was “modeled to some extent on the conquests that created the Mexica [Tenochca] empire.”21 And Ciudad Vieja was in essence a garrison colony created in the mold of Tenochca imperial outposts.

Unlikely Allies, Future Neighbors The indigenous conquistadors who invaded Guatemala in 1524 may have been recruited and organized largely as they had been during Tenochtitlan’s ascendance, but politically their alliance represented a dramatic departure from imperial campaigns of the immediate past. In their sixteenth-century petition for privileges (discussed at length in Chapter 3), the Nahuas and Oaxacans of Ciudad Vieja divided themselves into four groups: the “tlaxcaltecas, cholultecas, mexicanos, y zapotecas.”22 The Tlaxcalteca and Cholulteca from the Basin of Puebla-Tlaxcala took centerstage most often in this and other colonial-era documents, while the Tenochca and their allies in the Basin of Mexico were numerous but not superior. The term “mexicano” sometimes referred to the Tenochca alone, but just as often indicated their Nahuatl-speaking former subjects in central Mexico. Some of these so-called Mexicanos had rebelled against the Triple Alliance and/or Tenochtitlan immediately prior to the arrival of the Spanish. Others joined the onslaught on Tenochtitlan led by the 21. Oudijk and Restall, “Mesoamerican Conquistadors,” 31, 49. 22. Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain (hereafter cited as AGI), Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, “Los yndios mexicanos, taxcaltecas, çapotecas y otros con el fiscal de S.M. sobre que se les livertase de pagar tributos” (1564).

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Tlaxcalteca and Spanish in 1519–21. The Zapotecs, meanwhile, were described by the leaders of Ciudad Vieja in sixteenth-century Guatemala as independent warriors rather than servants of the Triple Alliance, while the Mixtecs were not mentioned at all (although we know Mixtecs also participated in the Central American invasions). Political and military partnerships shifted frequently in Postclassic Mesoamerica, and altepetl leaders were often divided on matters of strategy. Typically, the losers of one battle fought on the side of the victor in subsequent campaigns, however grudgingly. Even so, from the vantage point of 1519 these were unlikely allies who had fought bitterly against each other just a few years earlier. Their presentation of themselves to the Spanish as four cohesive groups belied this complexity and reflected major shifts in the political landscape of central Mexico after the defeat of Tenochtitlan. Ciudad Vieja’s nine ethnically named parcialidades, or colonial-era wards— Tascala (for Tlaxcala), Cholula, Tenustitan (for Tenochtitlan), Tatelulco (for Tlatelolco), Chinampa (likely for Xochimilco and its environs), Quahquechula (for Quauhquechollan), Teguantepeque (for Tehuantepec), Tescuco (for Texcoco), and Otumpa (for Otumba)— also simplified the heterogeneity of the early garrison colony. Nevertheless, they provide a convenient starting point for exploring just how significant, if not exactly surprising, the composition of the invading forces of Guatemala truly was. Most immediately incongruous is the partnership between the Tenochca and the Tlaxcalteca. For generations, the major polities of the Basin of Mexico had competed with those of the Basin of Puebla-Tlaxcala—in particular, Huejotzingo, Cholula, and Tlaxcala, known as the “tramontane kingdoms”— for political and economic control of the region’s resources. Moctezuma I (1440–69) instituted annual “flowery wars” particularly against Tlaxcala and Huejotzingo, which Ross Hassig argues were designed to wear down resistance of these implacable foes and thereby permit expansion into their territories.23 Flowery wars against Tlaxcala intensified during the reign of Moctezuma II in the early sixteenth century, as did skirmishes between the Tlaxcalteca and the Tenochca’s subjects along the Tepeacac frontier. By the time the Spaniards arrived, Tlaxcala was completely encircled by Aztec tributary and strategic provinces.24 Much has been made of Tlaxcala’s enmity with Tenochtitlan and its allies, primarily to explain the Tlaxcalteca’s eager partnership with 23. Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest, 37. 24. Gibson provides a good summary, in Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century, 14–15.

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the Spanish, who were as much recruited by the Tlaxcalteca as the other way around in their cooperative bid to destroy Tenochtitlan in 1521. The relationship between Tlaxcala and Cholula was nearly as fraught. Although these two tramontane kingdoms were both under pressure from Tenochtitlan, they were rarely on peaceable terms with each other in the late Postclassic period. In 1519, Cholula’s economy flourished while Tlaxcala’s foundered. An ancient center for the cult of Quetzalcoatl, Cholula was a major pilgrimage site and destination for foreign nobility, including those from Tenochtitlan, to receive political legitimation.25 Wealth flowed through the polity as pochteca spent large sums on religious ceremonies. Never as staunch an enemy of Tenochtitlan as Tlaxcala, Cholula was encouraged (along with Huejotzingo) to send raiding parties against Tlaxcala by the Triple Alliance, and appears to have been moving toward direct partnership with the Tenochca in the years immediately preceding the Spaniards’ arrival. The Jesuit Francisco Clavigero recounts an early sixteenth-century Cholulteca ambush of Tlaxcalteca warriors on behalf of Tenochtitlan that resulted in a “horrible massacre [horrible estrago]” of the vanguard of Tlaxcala’s military forces.26 In revenge, he suggests, the Tlaxcalteca may have been responsible for the massacre of thousands of Cholulteca during the first Tlaxcalteca-Spanish march into Tenochtitlan, in October 1519. At this point, Cholula became an ally in the Tlaxcaltecaled campaign against Tenochtitlan. But its nobility remained divided in their loyalties, and its assistance had been procured at a high human cost.27 Surviving documentation fails to reveal whether the Cholulteca allies who settled in Ciudad Vieja represented any particular faction of this large, powerful altepetl. Other altepetl that would later participate in the conquest of Central America and lend their names to Ciudad Vieja’s parcialidades remained firmly under Tenochca domination when the Spanish arrived in Mesoamerica. This was particularly true of the Chinampa towns of the southern lake district, most specifically Xochimilco, Mizquic, and Cuitlahuac, but also Itztapalapan, Mexicatzinco, Huitzilopochco, and the important religious center of Culhuacan.28 Before the Tenochca rose to power, these seven towns constituted their own political confederation and were 25. McCafferty, “Tollan Cholollan.” 26. Clavigero, Historia Antigua de México, 3:79. 27. Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest, 94–98. 28. Pedro Carrasco, Tenochca Empire, 99.

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among the first to be absorbed into the newly formed core of the Triple Alliance. Xochimilco was particularly vital to public works projects around Lake Texcoco and in the defense of the frontier with unconquered Huejotzingo.29 Culhuacan’s elite had blood ties with the Tenochca nobility. And the Chinampa cities were an essential part of the military expansion of the empire. In any given campaign, warriors always came first from Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Xochimilco “with all of the Chinampan.”30 The betrayal of these towns as the Tlaxcalteca-Spanish alliance closed in on a weary and disease-ridden Tenochtitlan in 1521 would be deeply felt by the Tenochca, at least according to their brethren, the Mexica Tlatelolca, who wrote down their memories of the conquest some forty years later in fray Bernardino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex.31 Quauhquechollan’s relations with Tenochtitlan fluctuated more than those of the Chinampa towns. In the tributary province of Tepeacac on the border between the basins of Mexico and Puebla-Tlaxcala, Quauhquechollan supplied military goods and warriors for defense against the tramontane kingdoms and for campaigns to the Gulf coast and Oaxaca. Both geographically and historically, it was a natural ally against the tramontane kingdoms of the Basin of Puebla-Tlaxcala. Not only did it lie in the frontier zone, but it also nursed longstanding enmities with Huejotzingo, which had gradually taken over much of Quauhquechollan’s land in a series of fourteenth-century conflicts. Early in the fifteenth century, Quauhquechollan ceded its homelands to Huejotzingo and was forced to relocate.32 Some of Quauhquechollan’s militarism on behalf of Tenochtitlan in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, however, was coerced— it was required to pay tribute to Tenochtitlan in prisoners of war from Tlaxcala, Cholula, and Huejotzingo. Its support of the Triple Alliance was less certain than that of the Chinampa towns. By the time the Spaniards arrived in central Mexico, Quauhquechollan’s position in the empire seems to have shifted from ally to enemy. The villages it had once lorded over had become part of Xochimilco’s political domain, and some of these were required by the Triple Alliance to wage war against their former rulers at Quauhquechollan.33 29. Berdan et al., Aztec Imperial Strategies, 236; Pedro Carrasco, Tenochca Empire, 407–8. 30. Davies, Aztecs, 84, 113; Hodge, “Political Organization,” 20. 31. Lockhart, We People Here, 202–209. 32. Asselbergs, Conquered Conquistadors, 41–44. 33. Berdan et al., Aztec Imperial Strategies, 273 (Province 15: Ocuituco).

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Even at the heart of the Triple Alliance, shifting loyalties predominated. Texcoco was both Tenochtitlan’s main political ally in the Triple Alliance and its major rival. It had taken the lead in many of the earliest conquests of the Aztec empire. But the aggressive expansionism of the Tenochca ruler Ahuitzotl (1486–1502) threatened Texcoco’s position. Ahuitzotl’s successor, Moctezuma II, attempted to further consolidate power not only by intensifying the conflict with Tlaxcala, but also by subordinating Texcoco. During a flowery war with Tlaxcala, Moctezuma II arranged the ambush of the Acolhua (as the people of Texcoco were labeled) army of the tlatoani Nezahualpilli. He used the Acolhua’s defeat to revoke their rights to tribute from the Chinampan cities, and claimed total rulership of the Triple Alliance. This caused the Acolhua nobility to split into pro- and anti-Tenochca factions, and severely strained the Triple Alliance’s central partnership between Tenochctitlan and Texcoco.34 The leader of the rebellious faction, Nezahualpilli’s son Ixtlilxochitl, would later ally with Hernando Cortés. Not incidentally for our purposes, Ixtlilxochitl established his court at Otumba, the administrative center for the Otomi populations east of Lake Texcoco. According to Ixtlilxochitl’s great-grandson, the mestizo chronicler don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Otumba was one of Texcoco’s greatest enemies. The Acolhua viewed the Otomi as peasantry, and evicted them from Acolhua towns and cities during the reign of Techotlalatzin (c. 1377–1409). Ixtlilxochitl wrote, “This was how the Otomis ended, for Techotlalatzin could not accept that this nation, nor any of their descendants, should live within the republics, because these people were low and miserable.” Under the Triple Alliance Otumba was made a tribute-paying dependency of Texcoco, responsible for cleaning and supplying Texcoco’s royal residences for half of each year with the other “peasant” towns it helped administer.35 It is perhaps a sign of persistent political and/or ethnic tensions that although Otumba in the 1520s remained a seat of Acolhua power, nonetheless the Otomi and Acolhua would settle in separate parcialidades in colonial Ciudad Vieja. So, too, the Mexica Tenochca and Mexica Tlatelolca were divided in both late Postclassic central Mexico and colonial Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala. The Tlatelolca split from the Tenochca in the early fifteenth century. 34. Offner, Law and Politics in Aztec Texcoco, 236–41. 35. Ixtlilxochitl, Obras históricas, 1:380, 535, quoted in Pedro Carrasco, Tenochca Empire, 158.

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Under the Triple Alliance their altepetl became a dependent kingship of Tenochtitlan and the empire’s commercial center. Tlatelolca craftspeople and merchants maintained close relationships with their counterparts from Tenochtitlan, and together they monopolized certain trade and political relationships within the empire.36 The altepetl’s only tribute in kind was military, in portable foodstuffs (it was the only central polity to produce ground cacao beans mixed with maize flour for the army), warrior costumes, and blankets. Nevertheless, the Tenochca’s and Tlatelolca’s common Mexica heritage divided them more often than not. During the fifteenth century two Tlatelolca kings were killed by their rivals in Tenochtitlan, and in 1473 a civil war between the two cities erupted. The Tlatelolca mockingly built replicas of the Tenochtitlan Templo Mayor and other Tenochca pyramids to announce their rebellion. But the Tlatelolca tlatoani Moquihuix was killed by the Tenochca tlatoani Axayacatl, the Tlatelolca dynasty replaced by Tenochca military governors, and the Tlatelolca humiliatingly required as part of their reestablished tribute to clean and maintain Tenochtitlan’s temple of Huitznahuac while their own was left in disrepair.37 The Tlatelolca dynasty was not restored until 1517, and tensions clearly persisted after that date. Many years after the fact, the Tenochca Cantares Mexicanos blamed a failed campaign under Axayacatl against the Tarascans of Michoacan on the “fastidious Tlatelolcas,” who fought alongside the Tenochca but were captured.38 Alvarado Tezozomoc also expressed the continued rivalry between the two Mexica groups: “But Tlatelolco will never take it [the account of their past] away from us, because in truth it is not their legacy. This ancient oral account, this ancient account painted in the codices, they left it for us in Mexico to be preserved here.”39 All these rulers and subjects of the Triple Alliance— in our sample, those from Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, Tlatelolco, Otumba, the Chinampa towns, and Quauhquechollan— would be lumped together as “Mexicanos” by Spanish bureaucrats in colonial Guatemala, and in some instances by the leaders of Ciudad Vieja themselves. The term not only masked the 36. Voorhies, “Whither the King’s Traders?” 44; Hodge, “Political Organization,” 31; Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 9:91. 37. López Luján, “Recreating the Cosmos,” 176–87; Umberger, “Art and Imperial Strategy,” 96–97; Pedro Carrasco, “Territorial Structure of the Aztec Empire,” 101, and Tenochca Empire, 108–9. 38. León Portilla, Aztec Image, 109–10; cf. to Bierhorst, Cantares Mexicanos, 73v–74r. 39. León Portilla, Aztec Image, 80, from Alvarado Tezozomoc, Crónica Mexicáyotl, 4–6.

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diversity of the invading forces, but also the particular assistance each group may have provided to the Central American invasion. At the height of the Triple Alliance, Texcoco, Xochimilco, Otumba, and Tenochtitlan were among only twelve central polities from which pochteca and tealtianime (merchants who were also purifiers of victims of sacrifice) were exclusively drawn. Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Xochimilco raised the core of the imperial army. Xochimilco and Quauhquechollan guarded the frontier with Tlaxcala. Tlatelolco and Quauhquechollan supplied military provisions. The subject kingdoms of Tlatelolco, Xochimilco, and Otumba ruled over other centrally located dependencies, and their status at the core of the empire was reflected in the rituals surrounding kingship in Tenochtitlan (for instance, none is listed amongst the towns required to send stewards to the inauguration of the Tenochca tlatoani Tizoc in 1481).40 We are left to wonder the extent to which the specific contributions of these altepetl to the Central American invasion derived from or inverted the roles they had typically played under Aztec imperialism. The “tlaxcaltecas” of early colonial Ciudad Vieja constituted a distinct group from the “mexicanos,” but this ethnic label likely masked internal divisions as well. By one account, for example, half as many Huejotzinga as Tlaxcalteca traveled with Pedro de Alvarado in 1524.41 But no parcialidad called Huejotzingo was ever founded in colonial Ciudad Vieja. Tlaxcala and Huejotzingo were themselves rivals in the late Postclassic, Tlaxcala being the less powerful of the two kingdoms throughout most of the fifteenth century. Huejotzingo switched alliances frequently between Tenochtitlan and Tlaxcala until a decisive war in 1504, in which Tlaxcala asserted its dominance over Huejotzingo and the two provinces repelled a major campaign against them by Moctezuma II. Huejotzingo’s status at the time of Tenochtitlan’s defeat is unclear; it may have remained under Tlaxcalteca rule, or may have recently been conquered by Tenochtitlan.42 In either case, tensions between the two altepetl persisted. This is apparent in the Huejotzinga’s famous letter to the king of Spain, written in 1560, which protested that they were the king’s original allies while “those Tlaxcalteca” made war against the Spanish and harbored mutinous 40. Pedro Carrasco, Tenochca Empire, 412–15. 41. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 171. 42. See Issac, “Aztec Flowery War,” for a standard chronology of Huejotzingo’s political history from 1484 to 1521 based on sixteenth-century chronicles; but see also Pedro Carrasco, Tenochca Empire, 48.

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lords.43 Tensions between Huejotzingo and Tlaxaca may account for the absence of a parcialidad named after Huejotzingo in Ciudad Vieja, and for Huejotzingo’s omission from most conquest-era documents about the Indian conquistadors in Guatemala (in which Tlaxcala and Cholula figure prominently). In sixteenth-century Guatemala, the Tlaxcalteca appear to have supplanted the Huejotzinga as major political players. Perhaps warriors and settlers from Huejotzingo were categorized in Ciudad Vieja as Mexicanos; more likely, they were consolidated within the parcialidad of Tlaxcala and were officially classified as Tlaxcalteca. Similarly, we know that both Zapotecs and Mixtecs from Oaxaca joined the Nahua-Spanish invasion of Central America and settled in Ciudad Vieja, in San Gaspar Vivar northeast of Ciudad Vieja founded around 1530, and elsewhere.44 Yet the single ward associated with Oaxacan populations in colonial Ciudad Vieja was named after Tehuantepec, the seat of Zapotec rulership on the Oaxacan Pacific coast in the early sixteenth century. The Mixtecs are also conspicuously absent from the fourfold division created by the indigenous allies themselves in sixteenth-century petitions to the crown, between “mexicanos, tlaxcaltecas, cholultecas, y zapotecas.” Why? The simplest answer is demographic. With 25,000 or more mostly Zapotec inhabitants, Tehuantepec in the early sixteenth century was the largest settlement in the Isthmus of the same name.45 Pedro de Alvarado passed through it on his way to Guatemala, picking up many allied warriors as he did so. Perhaps this is all the explanation we need. But it is worth digging a little deeper to understand the apparent exclusion of the Mixtecs from political preeminence in early colonial Ciudad Vieja. Both Mixtecs and Zapotecs from the northern highlands and valley of Oaxaca migrated toward the Pacific coast in the fifteenth century. In the process, they competed for land and political power and progressively displaced coastal Zapotecs, Huave, Zoque, and others. In his study of Oaxacan lienzos, Michel Oudijk has identified numerous instances of strategic intermarriage between Zapotec and Mixtec royal houses in

43. Lockhart, We People Here, 292–93. 44. Archivo General de Centroamérica, Guatemala City (hereafter cited as AGCA), A1, leg. 4084/exp. 32406, “Contra Gaspar Pérez, indio preso en la carcel del corte, sobre que le acusa ser casado dos veces siendo viva la primer muger” (1589); Lutz, Santiago de Guatemala, 28; Herrera, Natives, Europeans, and Africans, 226n. 46; Sherman, Forced Native Labor, 71; Kramer, Encomienda Politics, 220. 45. Zeitlin, Cultural Politics, 36.

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fifteenth-century Oaxaca, which consolidated elite power among various lineages in important emerging city-states like Zaachila, Tehuantepec, Teozacualco, and Tlaxiaco. But elite cooperation sometimes backfired, as Tehuantepec’s own history makes clear. Tehuantepec existed as a seat of Zapotec leadership because a strategic marriage between Mixtec and Zapotec ruling families failed to resolve tensions between their lineages. When the Zapotec lord of the valley town Zaachila died without an heir in the mid-fifteenth century, his wife’s Mixtec family took over the dynasty. The competing Zapotec branch, led by a lord named Cosijopii, left Zaachila and migrated to Tehuantepec to establish a rival court. In the late fifteenth century, another strategic marriage paired king Cosijopii’s son and heir Cocijoeza with the daughter or sister of Moctezuma II— a bid by the Zapotec royal house, perhaps, to safeguard its political autonomy and even gain power over its neighbors in an alliance with the powerful (and encroaching) Tenochca empire. The tale of Cocijoeza and the Tenocha princess, called Cotton-Puff (Copa de Algodón) for her reputed beauty, is sometimes given a romantic spin.46 But from a political point of view, once again the strategy backfired. After Cocijoeza’s death in the early sixteenth century, his young son Bichana Lachi became king of the Tehuantepec Zapotecs. A Tenochca regent named Xolotl was assigned to exercise political power on Bichana Lachi’s behalf. After the fall of Tenochtitlan, coastal Mixtecs would resist the first small expeditions of Nahuas and Spaniards who passed through the region in 1521. Xolotl, however, would cooperate with Pedro de Alvarado in exchange for the Spaniard’s assistance in putting down both the Mixtecs and a rebellion of local Zapotec lords in March 1522. Alvarado would later receive the Mixtec city of Tututepec and the center of the Zapotec rebellion against Xolotl, Xalapa, as encomiendas (grants of towns) from the crown. Xolotl and Bichana Lachi would also host Pedro de Alvarado’s largely Nahua invasion force in Tehuantepec in December 1523 and contribute significant numbers of their own warriors to the campaign. Meanwhile, some Nahuas remained in Tehuantepec and strengthened Xolotl’s hand. For the next 14 years, Tehuantepec would be administered by these Nahua colonists, a situation that eventually sparked a rebellion led by Bichana Lachi himself. During this same period, the parcialidad of Teguantepeque was founded in what would become Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala. Per-

46. Zeitlin discusses various versions of the story in ibid., 4–26.

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haps most of the original colonists living in Ciudad Vieja’s Teguantepeque were indeed Zapotecs from the Pacific coast. But the parcialidad’s name, and the primacy accorded to the Zapotecs in Ciudad Vieja’s political pronouncements of the 1560s, may also reflect the close cooperation between the Tenochca regent Xolotl, his young charge the Zapotec king Bichana Lachi, and Pedro de Alvarado at the moment the Guatemalan colony was founded.47 In Postclassic Mesoamerica, the needs of the altepetl and the strategic aims of local elites narrowly determined political loyalties and military alliances. Nevertheless, differences between peoples could run deep, reinforced by years of warfare. This was particularly so for the peoples of the basins of Mexico and Puebla. In 1519, the Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan in the Basin of Mexico remained intact and continued to extend its imperial reach, despite the disproportionate power of Tenochtitlan and an internal Acolhua revolt. The most powerful kingdoms of the Basin of Puebla-Tlaxcala— Tlaxcala, Cholula, and Huejotzingo— continued to challenge the Triple Alliance’s regional hegemony, even as they competed with each other for whatever leverage they could muster against Tenochtitlan. The defeat of Tenochtitlan in 1521 upended this unequal balance of power between the various valley kingdoms of central Mexico. The hierarchical division of Ciudad Vieja’s sixteenthcentury leadership into “tlaxcaltecas, cholultecas, mexicanos y zapotecas” thus reflects a political reordering of no small importance: the former imperial masters and their Zapotec allies subordinated to the Tlaxcalteca and Cholulteca. A significant social reordering is also implied in sixteenth-century Ciudad Vieja’s nine parcialidades. For the indigenous allies of the Spanish, sending warriors and colonists to conquer outlying lands was hardly unusual. That some of the allies might have been former enemies united by their mutual obligations to an imperial power, be it Tenochtitlan or Castile, was also typical of Postclassic Mesoamerican politics.48 Nevertheless, it is worth pausing to contemplate the realpolitick involved in these rather striking alliances of Tenochca and Tlaxcalteca, Quauhquecholteca and Huejotzinga, Zapotecs and Mixtecs only a few years after the fall of 47. Flannery and Marcus, Cloud People, 290–362; Whitecotton, Zapotec Elite Ethnohistory; Oudijk, Historiography of the Benizàa; Terraciano, Mixtecs, 338. 48. For a discussion of this point, see Oudijk and Restall, “Mesoamerican Conquistadors” and more fully, La conquista indígena de Mesoamérica.

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Tenochtitlan. Thus far, no documentation has shed light on the intricate relationships between the captains, warriors, and auxiliaries of competing or defeated altepetl that marched south under the Spanish banner in the 1520s. Without such information, we can only guess at how strained their alliance was, how difficult it might have been to leave old enmities behind. I would simply point out the potential for both competition and cooperation that existed between the Nahua, Zapotec, and Mixtec conquistadors of Guatemala, based on longstanding relationships that predated, and perhaps overshadowed, the arrival of the Spanish.

Mesoamericans in Early Conquest Campaigns, 1519–1545 The defeat of the Mexica of Tenochtitlan was a watershed event in Mesoamerican history and created the circumstances that would lead to the invasion of Guatemala in 1524. I am hardly the first to question whether it was truly, in the moment, a Spanish conquest. Even the much-maligned nineteenth-century historian William Prescott, often criticized for his tendency to glorify Cortés, noted that “the Indian empire was in a manner conquered by Indians.”49 After their initial alliance in September of 1519, the Tlaxcalteca and Spanish entered Cholula and shortly thereafter massacred thousands of Cholulteca residents, including the tlatoani whom Cortés replaced on the advice of his Tlaxcalteca allies. As Ross Hassig puts it, “in this coup, a Spanish hand was on the sword but Indian minds guided it, as only they understood the distribution of power in Cholollan and who would support the insurgent (i.e., anti-Aztec) position.”50 (It is surely significant that this initial Tlaxcalteca-Cholulteca partnership with the Spanish, however coerced on the part of the Cholulteca, parallels the hierarchy that existed in the first generations of political leadership of Ciudad Vieja and seems to have endured in some form throughout the colonial period). After entering/occupying Tenochtitlan in November 1519, under escort by the Acolhua tlatoani Cacama who remained loyal to Moctezuma I, the insurgents were forcibly ejected in June 1520. Almost im49. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, 818. See also Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest; Lockhart, We People Here, 5–7; Townsend, “Burying the White Gods”; and Restall, Seven Myths, for examples among many current reinterpretations of the “Spanish” conquest. 50. Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest, 81.

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mediately these allies planned a new assault on the imperial city and spent the subsequent year securing support from outlying subject towns such as Xochimilco and Coyoacan. They were aided by the rival Acolhua tlatoani Ixtlilxochitl, who had set up a separate court at Otumba in revolt against Tenochca control of his altepetl. By June of 1521, weakened by a smallpox epidemic inside the city, Tenochtitlan was besieged. The Tenochca fled to Tlatelolco where, in August 1521, their tlatoani Quauhtemoc surrendered. (Moctezuma I had died during the insurgents’ expulsion from Tenochtitlan the previous year.) Spanish and native accounts agree that hundreds of thousands of native allies fought against the Tenochca in 1521, dramatically outnumbering the 600 or so Spanish fighters and horsemen who began the march toward the city in December 1520. All told, Hassig estimates that perhaps a thousand Spaniards died in the nine-month effort, in comparison with “unknown numbers of Aztec and Indian allies, which surely ran into many tens of thousands on each side.”51 Taking such enormous numerical differences between Nahua and Spanish conquistadors seriously, Hassig argues, means viewing the Nahuas as primary actors in the conquest of Tenochtitlan— and not only in the fighting itself, but in the conquest’s strategy and tactics. Given the Spaniards’ lack of understanding of Mesoamerican politics and warfare, the Nahuas were manipulating the Spanish as much as the other way around.52 The Tlaxcalteca contribution to the conquest of Tenochtitlan is most famous, and justifiably so. In the letters of Cortés, whose purpose was to emphasize Spanish (and more specifically, his own) valor, it is nevertheless impossible not to notice the degree to which the Spanish were being guided both militarily and politically by the Tlaxcalteca. But the conquest of Tenochtitlan also depended on a rapidly expanding army of warriors from Texcoco, Cholula, Huejotzingo, Chalco, Cuitlahuac, Mizquic, Culhuacan, Acolhuacan, Quauhquechollan, and other central Mexican altepetl.53 During the siege of Tenochtitlan, these native warriors filled the waterways of Lake Texcoco, burned buildings, and seized captives. Even the Xochimilca, whose support of Tenochtitlan appears to have been stalwart in the years immediately prior to the Spanish invasion, abandoned the Tenochca. The sense of betrayal is 51. Ibid., 175. 52. Ibid., 5. 53. See the Annals of Tlatelolco in Lockhart, We People Here, 265; Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, 1:304.

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palpable in the version of the conquest told by the Tenochca’s last allies, their kinsmen the Tlatelolca, to fray Bernardino de Sahagún in the 1550s: Afterward the Mexica were angry over all, saying, “The Xochimilcans live here among us, mixed with us, and make their homes here; are they not telling tales there [in Xochimilco]? Well then, we abandon them, they can just perish.” When this judgment had been made, the women, the old women included, and the able-bodied men were apprehended, and were all killed; not a one remained, because the people of Xochimilco and Cuitlahuac told false tales on them, and worked against them when they came saying they wanted to help us.54 After Quauhtemoc’s surrender of Tenochtitlan, the victors’ attention turned to securing the core of the former Tenochca empire and surveying outlying regions. Again, the Spanish depended on native nobility (including the Tenochca) to both advise and support them and spoke highly of this assistance in their letters and memoirs. The number of native allies recounted by the Spanish conquistadors, while difficult to confirm, is often impressive. Alonzo Morzillo, a witness for the official inquiry into Pedro de Alvarado’s conduct in the conquest, recalled that 30 Spaniards and 24,000 native auxiliaries took part in Alvarado’s campaign to Xalapa, Oaxaca.55 In his letters to Charles V of Spain, Cortés notes the cooperation of a “captain general whom I had known in the time of Mutezuma” and other “chieftains” with whom he worked to rebuild and repopulate Tenochtitlan. He claimed to have had more than 100,000 native allies in the spring of 1522 and specifically mentioned 40,000 who accompanied him to pacify the region of the Pánuco River (and to drive away another Spanish conquistador, Francisco de Garay). More often, however, Cortés referred simply to the “many skillful warriors” who accompanied the Spanish on their campaigns into outlying areas— a vagueness that many have attributed to Cortes’s own vainglory.56 Díaz del Castillo, famous for his admiring and lively portraits of the Mesoamerican allies, varies in his estimations of the allies’ contributions. 54. Lockhart, We People Here, 206. 55. Rayón, Proceso de residencia contra Pedro de Alvarado, 47. 56. Cortés, Letters from Mexico, from the second, third, and fourth letters, pp. 159, 279– 80, 293, 317, 319.

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His Historia verdadera de la conquista de México tends to mention large numbers of Mesoamerican warriors only for campaigns that responded to uprisings or rebellions within the Spanish ranks, and sometimes fewer even than were reported by Cortés. In the Pánuco campaign, for example, Díaz del Castillo’s Historia notes only 8,000–10,000 “mexicano” allies, in contrast to Cortes’s 40,000. Describing another of Cortes’s campaigns against a rival Spaniard in Honduras, Díaz del Castillo mentions 3,000 Mesoamerican allies.57 He supplies much lower numbers in the hundreds, or more typically no numbers at all, for other campaigns— especially, it would seem, those in which Díaz del Castillo himself participated. Nonetheless, the actions of the “indios amigos” stand out in Díaz del Castillo’s recollections of the conquest years. In the Historia, Nahuas in particular are constantly clearing roads, carrying food, fighting on the battlefield, and dying in Michoacan, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Guatemala, all in service of the Spanish crown. Díaz del Castillo, like Cortés, also identifies by name a number of high-ranking lords who fought alongside the Spanish, such as the Tenochca don Juan Velasquez, a “captain of Quauhtemoc” who traveled throughout Central America with Pedro de Alvarado and Díaz del Castillo and died on the return trip to Mexico City.58 The Spanish sources thus leave no doubt that native allies were crucial not only to the fall of Tenochtitlan but also to the numerous and often protracted battles that followed. Mestizo descendants of the native nobility confirmed this in their own chronicles, but from a rather different perspective. No less than the Spanish, they celebrated— and exaggerated— their ancestors’ participation in the conquest. Don Fernando del Alva Ixtlilxochitl, the mestizo great-grandson of the conquest-era tlatoani of Texcoco, Ixtlilxochitl, describes the lords of Texcoco and Tenochtitlan as the primary instigators of the conquest of Central America: In the year [15]23, Ixtlilxochitl and Quauhtemoc had heard that those of Guatemala, Utatlán, Chiapas, Xoconusco, and other provinces of the southern coast subject to the three cabeceras [head towns] were in the early stages of rebellion, and made war against those who were part of the Christians. . . . [And they gave] notice to Cortés, who decided to send certain Spaniards to explore the land . . . and [Cortés] 57. Restall points out the irony of this largely native army campaigning under Cortés against Cristobal de Olíd, in Seven Myths, 51. 58. Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, 1:424, 434, 572.

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said the lords should command their vassals to give aid to Alvarado to subjugate [these provinces]. Quauhtemoc and Ixtlilxochitl, who had already prepared their vassals, put together 20,000 warriors, and experts in the military affairs and lands of the coast, each sending a general with 10,000 warriors, who went with Alvarado, who took more than 300 Spaniards.59 Days later, Ixtlilxochitl writes, 20,000 more warriors were dispatched to aid Diego de Godoy in Chanolan. Five to six thousand Tlaxcalteca joined yet another 20,000 Acolhua several months later to conquer Oaxaca with Rodrigo Rangel. In that conquest, one of the tlatoani Ixtlilxochitl’s brothers served as general.60 In the great-grandson Ixtlilxochitl’s version of the conquest, the lords of Texcoco and Tenochtitlan— still allies as part of the “three cabeceras,” and now also “part of the Christians”— react to reports of violence against their own people stationed in the south and engage the aid of the Spanish to help stop the rebellion. Indigenous armies numerically overwhelm the paltry bands of Spaniards that accompany them. Similarly and more famously, the mestizo chronicler Diego Muñoz Camargo from Tlaxcala celebrated the Tlaxcalteca warriors who served under the Spanish, both in the text of his Historia (or Descripción) de la ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala and in the accompanying panels of the painted Lienzo de Tlaxcala. In full-feathered and cotton armor, Tlaxcalteca warriors adorn dozens of pictorials depicting various conquest battles (probably copied by native artists from earlier paintings).61 The Tlaxcalteca warriors appear in full regalia, in contrast to the often rudimentary clothing and weapons of their opponents. In battle, the Spanish appear sometimes in front of or above the Tlaxcalteca, at other times behind or below them, and sometimes alongside them; they are not obviously superior to the Tlaxcalteca in either placement or position. Muñoz Camargo 59. Ixtlilxochitl, Obras históricas, 1:487. 60. Ibid., 1:490. For a discussion of Ixtlilxochitl’s rhetorical stances, see Adorno, “Arms, Letters, and the Native Historian.” 61. The earlier lienzo may be the copy of the Lienzo de Tlascala known as the Texas Manuscript at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection (University of Texas at Austin). Other early colonial lienzos have recently been analyzed as depictions of central Mexican participation in the conquest, including the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan showing the conquest of Guatemala, and the Lienzo de Analco showing the conquest of Oaxaxa. See Asselbergs, Conquered Conquistadors; Yannakakis, Art of Being In-Between; Kranz, “Tlaxcalan Conquest Pictorials”; and Jeanne Gillespie, Saints and Warriors.

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Lienzo de Tlaxcala, scene 80, “Ytzcuintepec” (Escuintla, Guatemala). From Antigüedades mexicanas.

does not quantify how many warriors were involved in these conquests, referring only to their “great numbers.”62 But the sheer repetition of the pictorial scenes and apparent equality between Tlaxcalteca and Spanish relay a very different image of the conquest than Cortés’s letters or Díaz del Castillo’s Historia. The Lienzo de Tlaxcala also underscores the difficulty with which both central Mexico and outlying regions were pacified after 1521. No fewer than 81 of the battles depicted postdate Quauhtemoc’s surrender of Tenochtitlan. Many of them also show the Tlaxcalteca’s defeat of former imperial tributaries that would later send warriors to help invade Guatemala in 1524. Finally, the native allies described their willing participation in the conquest of Tenochtitlan and subsequent campaigns in Spanish-style petitions, probanzas (a legal proof of merits and services in anticipation of 62. Muñoz Camargo, Descripción de la ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala.

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royal favors), and letters to the crown produced as early as the 1530s.63 Some were composed on behalf of the allies’ altepetl. The lords of Huejotzingo claimed that their warriors participated in the conquests of Michoacan, Jalisco, Culhuacan, Pánuco, Oaxaca, Tehuantepec, and Guatemala.64 The lords of Xochimilco likewise recalled in 1563 that they had provided Cortés with 2,000 canoes and 12,000 men in the conquest of Tenochtitlan, 1,500 men each for the campaigns in Central America and Pánuco, and 600 for Nuño de Guzmán’s army in Jalisco. Jealously, they noted that they deserved the favor of the crown just as much as the Tlaxcalteca.65 Individual members of the native elite also recalled their aid to the Spanish. In his probanza of 1564, the governor of San Juan Teotihuacan had three Spaniards attest that he had accompanied the viceroy don Antonio de Mendoza to the rebellious provinces of Nueva Galicia in 1541: “Many caciques and lords went with him [Mendoza], and many of their people, and [this witness] saw them in procession with their weapons and with swords and shields and flags, and among them was the said don Francisco Verdugo who brought many Indians from his town to serve in this war . . . and he was there until the area was pacified.”66 As Emma Pérez-Rocha and others have pointed out, such claims of participation in the Spanish conquest were de rigueur in communications by Mesoamerican nobility to the Spanish crown in the mid-sixteenth century.67 Like the claims of Hernando Cortés and Bernal Díaz de Castillo, they may have been exaggerated, dramatically different when seen from another perspective, or even fraudulent. The more important point is that by claiming their place in conquest history and advertising their loyalty to the Spanish crown, the nobility of central Mexico asserted their pri63. Pérez-Rocha and Tena, La nobleza indígena, 16. Pérez-Rocha and Tena have transcribed and published 40 documents written on behalf of native caciques between 1532 and 1621, from archives in Mexico City, Paris, and Seville. The vast majority refer to native assistance in the conquest, in various degrees of detail. 64. Reproduced in Lockhart and Otte, Letters and People of the Spanish Indies, 163–72. 65. AGI Patronato 185, R. 50, “Carta de don Pedro de Santiago y de los principales de Xochimilco al rey Felipe II” (1563), reprinted in Pérez-Roche and Tena, La nobleza indígena, 281–86. 66. AGI Audiencia de México 96, “Probanza en favor de don Francisco Verdugo Quetzalmamalitli” (1558), reprinted in Pérez-Rocha and Tena, La nobleza indígena, 209–10. 67. Ibid.; see also MacLeod, “Self-Promotion.” Kathryn Burns’s observation of the constructed nature of notarial reality applies to the probanzas as well; see “Notaries, Truth, and Consequences.”

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Mapa de Cuauhtlantzinco or Codice Campos, scene 5. Courtesy of Manuscripts Collection, The Latin American Library, Tulane University.

macy within the European king’s new lands— a primacy they expected would be recognized and made official by the granting of lands, tribute exemption, the right to bear arms or ride horses, and so on. Documents created for local audiences and less grand aims also describe the conquest as something in which Mesoamericans participated rather than something to which they succumbed. The late seventeenth-century Mapa de Cuauhtlantzinco depicts four conquest-era caciques in the Basin of Puebla-Tlaxcala willingly converting to Christianity and then subjugating their neighbors, forcing them to convert as well. Even more so than in the pictorials of the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, Mesoamericans are the protagonists here. The “Nahua Christian warriors” (as Stephanie Wood has dubbed them) fight against other Nahuas and lead Christianity, and the Spanish, to victory.68 The relaciones geográficas produced in central Mexico in the late sixteenth century— bureaucratic surveys created for the Spanish crown— are similarly ethnocentric, focusing on local history rather than European conquest. Wood notes that many native informants equated the Spanish term “conquistador” with the Nahuatl term tlalmaceuhqui, or “land-deserver.” 68. Wood, Transcending Conquest and “Nahua Christian Warriors.”

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Rather than identify the Spaniard whose name the questionnaire undoubtedly sought, the relaciones geográficas often provide a name from the local cacique’s lineage as the conquistador of their province.69 Two documents created by Nahua colonists in Oaxaca also depict the sixteenth-century conquests as events dominated by Mesoamerican warriors. The Lienzo de Analco, a sixteenth-century cartographic history from the Villa Alta region, portrays overwhelming numbers of Tlaxcalteca warriors fighting alongside the Spanish in a dizzying maze of battles against the local Mixtecs and Zapotecs.70 A century or so later, the descendants of the Nahua conquistadors and settlers of San Martín Mexicapan on the outskirts of Antequera portrayed their ancestors as victorious warriors not only over the Mixtecs, but also over their Spanish allies! In this “primordial title”— so labeled by scholars because it re-created or mimicked an older document upon which certain legal claims would be made— a sixteenth-century Zapotec noblewoman describes how the Nahuas and Cortés together repelled the aggressions of her Mixtec neighbors, against whom the leaders of San Martín were litigating over land in the seventeenth century. The Zapotec noblewoman says, “they came bearing log drums, shields, obsidian-blade clubs, and arrows. It was done joyously through war, as they wished. They were recognized as the truly famous Mexicans.” The narrative voice of the document later switches to that of the caciques of San Martín and two other garrison towns in 1525. These caciques describe their conquest first of the Mixtecs, and then of the Spaniards themselves after a challenge by Cortés. Defeated, Cortés reaffirms his alliance with and admiration of “the famous Mexican people.” (Intriguingly, the seventeenth-century Nahua creator of this document was married to a woman from Analco, the Nahua garrison colony that produced the Lienzo de Analco.)71 In this primordial title from Oaxaca— as in the works of Diego Muñoz de Camargo and Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, the lienzos of Tlaxcala 69. Wood, Transcending Conquest, 117. One gets a similar sense from certain Guatemalan documents produced during the colonial period, that the Spanish term “conquistador” is being used to describe Maya authority established before the Spanish conquest; see for example AGCA A1.24.15, leg. 4646/exp. 39606, “De amparo de privilegios y fueros a favor del indígena Pedro Tomás García, San Juan Amatitlan” (1669). 70. Asselbergs, “Conquest in Images”; Yannakakis, Art of Being In-Between. 71. Sousa and Terraciano, “Original Conquest of Oaxaca.” The literature on primordial titles is vast; for an overview see Haskett, “Primordial Titles,” http://whp.uoregon.edu/ Lockhart/HaskettTitulos.pdf, and Florescano, “El canon memorioso forjado.”

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and Analco, and the probanza of San Juan Teyteguacan’s Indian governor— Mesoamerican conquistadors and their descendants continued to remember the conquest wars not just with pride, but also with a sense of ownership. Especially in the outlying areas of empire, where the various Nahua conquistadors appear to have squeezed even more status out of their alliance with the Spanish than their counterparts in central Mexico were able to do, the conquest would be remembered as theirs. The rhetoric of the Oaxacan Mexicanos of colonial San Martín Mexicapan bears striking resemblance to that of the Guatemalan Mexicanos of colonial Ciudad Vieja. They, too, would remember the conquest with pride and their ancestors as the original conquistadors. But first, the invasion.

3. Indian Conquistadors Conquest & Settlement in Central America

This witness was a child when the Adelantado Don Pedro de Alvarado left from Mexico for Guatemala . . . and he saw that there were in his company the said Indian captains and they brought with them many family members and commoners, and he saw them in military procession at the time of their departure from Mexico, and this he knows and saw. — Testimony of Joan Montejo, native of Tlaxcala, Mexico, and resident of Gracias a Dios, Honduras, 15651

I

n an essay published in 2007, the Jakaltec Maya anthropologist Victor Montejo criticized how Guatemalan schoolchildren typically learn about the sixteenth century. Guatemalan elementary-school textbooks, he charged, repeat many of the same myths of the Spanish conquest that Matthew Restall has recently pointed out in English-language histories and popular media.2 A very few Spaniards enter a land inhabited “only by indigenous people divided into kingdoms.” The K’iche’ lord Tecún Umán is wounded and then killed, “signifying that with the death of the chief of the Indians the freedom of his race would also die.” Montejo writes, “Since this is the version of history written by 1. “Que este testigo hera pequeño quando el adelantado don pedro de alvarado salio de mexico para guatimala . . . e vido que venyan en su companya los d[ic]hos capitanes yndios y trayan consigo muchos parientes y maçeguales y les vido hazer alarde a los d[ic] hos capitanes al tiempo de la partida de mexico y esto sabe e vydo.” Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain (hereafter cited as AGI), Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, “Los yndios mexicanos, taxcaltecas, çapotecas y otros con el fiscal de S.M. sobre que se les livertase de pagar tributos” (1564), f. 178r. 2. Restall, Seven Myths.

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the conquerors themselves, the other side of the story is hidden. The myth of the ‘few invincible Spaniards’ may be accepted without criticism, but fortunately the natives themselves have also written ethnohistorical documents and drawn pictures that depict the Spanish invasion.” Besides noting the devastation from disease that preceded the military invasion of Central America, Montejo points out that “even in the destruction of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, by Pedro de Alvarado (in the absence of Cortés), some twenty thousand Tlaxcaltecas, a Mexican group in conflict with the Aztecs, joined the Spaniards. Tlaxcaltecas and other Mexican allies accompanied Alvarado on the invasion of Guatemala in 1524. They were at the front of every battle as the principal allies of the Spaniards during every war of conquest in this region.”3 Montejo is right. And although his interests lie with the Maya whose lands were invaded, the “Tlaxcaltecas and other Mexican allies” have their own story to tell. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of indigenous allies from central and southern Mexico invaded Central America between 1524 and 1536. Many of these were captains, warriors, and porters who traveled to the region in separate military campaigns, in alliance with each other and with the Spanish. Others were colonists: women sent to join their husbands, fathers, and uncles, and entire families sent to help establish colonies in the conquered areas. They were not only Tlaxcalteca, nor even Tlaxcalteca, Cholulteca, and Tenochca (as the Spanish conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo later recalled in his Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España), but also Tlatelolca, Otomi, Quauhquecholteca, Xochimilca, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and representatives of many other altepetl in central Mexico and ñuu (local states) in Oaxaca. Simply taking seriously the numbers of Nahuas and other non-Maya who invaded Central America— dramatically outnumbering the Spanish, and forming important interethnic alliances among themselves— suggests a very different view of the period than that offered in Montejo’s school textbook. Listening to these Nahua and Oaxacan allies’ earliest memories of conquest calls into question whether they viewed the invasion of Central America, contemporaneously or in retrospect, as a Spanish endeavor at all. Of course, there is no single indigenous or Mesoamerican view of the conquest. As the Spanish became embroiled in civil wars and imperialistic invasions across Mesoamerica, indigenous peoples counted as both 3. Montejo, Maya Intellectual Renaissance, 54–58.

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invaders and the invaded. Who belonged to which of these dichotomous categories frequently broke down at a regional, local, and perhaps even a familial and individual level (though we are rarely if ever privy to those sorts of details).4 Even to talk about supposed ethnic groups by linguistic affiliation— as we do for the Nahuas, Kaqchikel, and Zapotecs, for example— obscures how different lineage groups reacted to the appearance of Europeans and the defeat of Tenochtitlan. What I attempt in this chapter, then, is necessarily specific: to reconstruct a particular history of the conquest of Central America from the perspective of the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors who settled in Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala. Spaniards commented on the role of their original allies in probanzas, letters, and administrative documents. These provide useful, and often surprising, information. But as Montejo points out, we are not forced to rely on Spanish accounts alone. The Maya narrated their own versions of conquest history in sixteenth-century documents like the Kaqchikel Memorial de Sololá. The Tlaxcalteca-Spanish chronicler Diego Muñoz de Camargo did the same in the Lienzo de Tlaxcala. And from Ciudad Vieja we have two especially important sources: the painted Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, and a probanza filed in the Archivo de Indias in Seville, Spain, as Justicia 291.5 The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan depicts the 1527 invasion of Guatemala 4. For an unusually detailed account, see Oudijk and Restall, La conquista indígena de Mesoamerica. 5. Florine Asselbergs publicly identified the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan’s Guatemalan subject matter in 2002; see “La conquista de Guatemala” and Conquered Conquistadors. The lienzo was digitally restored by the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala City in 2007 (http://lienzo.ufm.edu/); all images in this book come from the digital restoration. A comparison of the digital restoration with the original lienzo can be viewed using the “swipe” tool under Restoration, http://webmaplienzo.ufm.edu/lienzo/. See also Van Akkeren, La visión indígena. Historians have been analyzing Justicia 291, on the other hand, for decades. In the 1980s, archaeologist William Fowler used it to compare the size of Pedro de Alvarado’s army with local Nahua-Pipil populations. See Fowler, Cultural Evolution of Ancient Nahua Civilizations, 135. A partial copy of Justicia 291, archived at the AGI in Seville as Contratación 4802, provides the basis for Andrea Martínez Baracs’s important, early essay on Tlaxcalteca colonies throughout Mesoamerica, “Colonizaciones tlaxcaltecas,” and is also featured in her multivolume compendium of Tlaxcala’s history written with Carlos Sempat Assadourian, Tlaxcala: Textos de su historia, 6:512–26. Pedro Escalante Arce’s Los tlaxcaltecas en Centroamérica uses Contratación 4802 among many other documents to focus on the Tlaxcalteca in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Most recently, Michel Oudijk and Matthew Restall base their analysis of continuities in Mesoamerican imperialism before and after the Spaniards’ arrival in part on Justicia 291; see “Mesoamerican Conquistadors.”

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led by Jorge de Alvarado, brother of the more famous Pedro de Alvarado, from the perspective of his Quauhquecholteca allies. A wall-size painting on fifteen rectangular pieces of cloth sewn together (totaling 2.35m x 3.25m), it is one of only a few visual conquest narratives in this Mesoamerican style. It is also the oldest surviving map of Guatemala and an unparalleled source for understanding how one group of Nahua warriors perceived their role in the invasion of Guatemala. We do not know precisely where and when the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan was made, nor how it ended up in a museum in Puebla, Mexico, near the present-day town of Huahquechula. According to Spanish-language documents, something very like it was created in Ciudad Vieja sometime before 1564. Perhaps this was in fact the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, the original or a copy of which was carried back to Quauhquechollan by warriors returning home. For the moment this remains speculation, because the next documentary reference to the lienzo comes from Mexico over three hundred years later. In 1892, scholars in Mexico City commissioned a copy of the only known sixteenth-century original, held by the Academía de Bellas Artes in Puebla, Mexico, for display in that year’s Columbian Exposition in Madrid. Another, better copy was made in 1933. Both copies are housed in the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico City. Sometime before 1964, the Museo Casa de Alfeñique in Puebla acquired the original lienzo, where it remains today. Since then, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan has been catalogued in John Glass’s Catálogo de la Colección de Códices and the Handbook for Middle American Indians, exhibited numerous times in Mexico, and was the focus of a major study by Hilda Judith Aguirre Beltrán in 1999. Its Guatemalan subject matter remained a mystery, however, until identified by Dutch ethnohistorian Florine Asselbergs in 2002. My description and analysis of the lienzo in this chapter relies to a large extent on Asselbergs’s meticulous work.6 Equally as important is the indigenous conquistadors’ own probanza, over 800 manuscript pages long, archived as Justicia 291 in the Archivo de Indias in Seville, Spain. As we have seen, probanzas detailing services to and seeking reward from the crown were standard issue for both Spaniards and Mesoamericans in sixteenth-century New Spain. Mesoamerican probanzas often claimed to speak not only on behalf of individual nobles, 6. The fullest summary of this is Asselbergs, Conquered Conquistadors. Beyond the impressive scope of that work, I am grateful to Florine Asselbergs for her generous collaboration and many suggestions over the years.

Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. Digital restoration Universidad Francisco Marroquín/Banco G&T Continental. © 2007 Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala. Images are available under the Creative Commons license Attribution-NoncommercialShare Alike.

76 / Indian Conquistadors Title page of Justicia 291, R.1, N.1, “Los yndios mexicanos y taxcaltecas y çapotecas y consortes con el fiscal de S.M. sobre que pretenden ser libres de pagar tributos” (1564). Courtesy Goberino de España, Ministerio de Cultura, Archivo General de Indias.

their families, or the native nobility in general, but also for the interests of entire altepetl. In 1564, the Nahua and Zapotec conquistadors living in Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala, went one step further, presenting a petition that included all the Nahua and Oaxacan allied warriors and settlers then living in Chiapas, Xoconusco, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. In a legal battle resolved only in the 1620s, the leaders of Ciudad Vieja insisted that they, their compatriots throughout Central America, and all their descendants be granted exemption from tribute and forced labor in perpetuity. The surviving documentation from this petition provides some of the most abundant and precise information we have about these indigenous warriors’ role in the conquest. Taken together and in combination with other, shorter documents, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan and Justicia 291 offer some significant twists to the basic chronology of the conquest period. More important, they reveal the early experiences of the Nahuas and Oaxacans who participated in the invasion and then settled in Guatemala as colonists, often in astonishingly personal ways. The fact that both documents were created in and/or depict Ciudad Vieja means that the circumstances of their making, the format in which they were presented, how their audience responded to them, and where they traveled all become as significant as the information they

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provide. By not only mining the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan and Justicia 291 for data but also treating them as material objects with their own history, we can better understand what the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors living in Ciudad Vieja expected from their alliance with the Spanish and whether those expectations were ultimately met.

Nahuas and Oaxacans in the Invasions of Central America The 1524 invasion of Guatemala was one of the first long-distance campaigns attempted by the Mesoamerican and Spanish allies after the fall of Tenochtitlan. Central America attracted the Nahua nobility for the same reasons it always had: as a source of tribute, particularly in valuable items like cacao, quetzal feathers, and obsidian. (For the Spaniards, the lure was precious metals. Central America would ultimately disappoint.) The southwestern highlands of Guatemala lie just beyond the cacao-rich region of Xoconusco, where the Tenochca had established military garrisons during the reigns of Ahuitzotl and Moctezuma II.7 Besides providing a regional market for the port of trade at Xoconusco, the Guatemalan highlands traded in obsidian, salt, and other local products with the Pipil regions of what is now El Salvador and Nicaragua to the south, Chiapas to the north, and the southern Pacific coast. The Popol Wuj and the Memorial de Sololá both hint that the Tenochca-led empire of the Triple Alliance was extending toward Guatemala under Moctezuma II. A chronicler of the Kaqchikel Xahil lineage remarks in the Memorial that Moctezuma sent messengers to the K’iche’ in 1510, while the Títulos de la casa Ixquin-Nehaib reports that the K’iche’ began paying tribute to Mexico at this time.8 Such encroachments were briefly interrupted by the war against Tenochtitlan in 1520–21, but not for long. According to both Bernal Díaz del Castillo and don Fernando Alva de Ixtlilxochitl, actions against “the Christians” provoked the invasion of Guatemala and other provinces to the south beginning in 1523. Both credit Cortés with the decision to invade K’iche’ territory. Alva de Ixtlilxochitl adds, however, that the Acolhua tlatoani Ixt7. See Voorhies, Ancient Trade and Tribute; Gasco, “Polities of Xoconochco”; Gasco and Berdan, “International Trade Centers”; and fray Diego Durán’s telling of the Tenochca’s orders to protect merchants “who travel to and from Xoconochco and Guatemala and all the lands, because these are the ones that enrich and ennoble,” quoted in Hildeberto Martínez, Codiciaban la tierra, 36. 8. Otzoy, Memorial de Sololá, 183; Recinos, Crónicas indígenas, 84.

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lilxochitl and Tenochca tlatoani Quauhtemoc informed Cortés of the supposed rebellion and had already assembled 10,000 warriors each for the campaign in advance of Cortés’s announcement.9 The original troops from central Mexico were gathered from across the region. According to Alonso López, a native of Tlalmanalco near Chalco who later settled in Gracias a Dios, Honduras, the leaders of his town gathered and announced that the “great captain who had captured Mexico was sending don Pedro de Alvarado to conquer the province of Guatemala,” and that they would receive the captains, warriors, and auxiliaries who had to go with him from each of the towns of Mexico and Tlaxcala. Asked for more information, López repeated that Cortés “brought together in Mexico all the chiefs and lords of the entire province of Tlaxcala and Mexico and ordered that Indians from each town be brought, and so a large number of Indians came.”10 Spanish participants in this first campaign also recalled how the civic and military leaders of each Central Mexican province recruited and organized soldiers into squadrons by altepetl, led by local captains who coordinated the troops’ movements.11 The captains traveled through their provinces, assembling warriors who marched through the streets in military procession. The warriors brought their own weapons— bows and arrows, clubs, and broadswords— and were adorned in traditional warrior garb of cotton and feathered armor, with insignias marking their altepetl affiliation.12 It was an impressive event, capable of inspiring volunteers not only in the moment but many years later as well. Joan Montejo was a boy in Tlaxcala when the original army was recruited; he migrated to join the forces of Francisco de Montejo in Honduras a decade later. Even as an old man, he remembered vividly the Mesoamerican captains gathered with all their families and servants, preparing for the journey south and parading through the streets.13 Pedro de la Lona of Texcoco was around 20 years old when Pedro de Alvarado’s army of Spaniards rode through his altepetl. There, as in Tlaxcala, a Mesoamerican captain recruited “a great number” of soldiers and led them in 9. Ixtlilxochitl, Obras históricas, 1:490. 10. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 174–74v, testimony of Alonso López. 11. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 68r, testimony of Nicolao López de Ybarraga; f. 144v48, testimony of Francisco de Oçelote; f. 156, testimony of Cristóbal de Campos; ff.3v–5v (section 2), especially testimony of Juan de Aragón, Nicolao López, and Juan Gómez. 12. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 144, testimony of Manuel Hernández; 7r (section. 2), testimony of Antonio de España. 13. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 178r, testimony of Joan Montejo.

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procession. Lona described this captain, “don Juan,” as his “lord,” and continued to recognize don Juan’s authority over him at the time of his testimony some thirty years later, as did others who indicated their continued devotion to their captains many years after their military service had ended.14 Alvarado left Mexico Tenochtitlan between mid-November and December of 1523, at the beginning of the 6- to 8-month dry season that traditionally saw the start of new military campaigns in Mesoamerica. Accompanying him, according to Díaz del Castillo, were some 400 Spaniards, 200 Tlaxcalteca and Cholulteca, and 100 “mexicanos” (implying that these Mexicanos, whom Díaz del Castillo describes as subordinates in the invading army, were the defeated Tenochca and/or their subjects).15 Cortés echoes this account, reporting in his letter to the king on 15 October 1524, that several hundred Spaniards departed with Alvarado with “some chieftains from this city and from other cities in the vicinity, although not many, because the journey will be so long.”16 These oft-quoted estimates of the allied forces seem low. Perhaps Cortés and Díaz del Castillo were suppressing the numbers to favor the Spanish, although Cortés’s additional explanation would seem unnecessary. More likely, only a few hundred Nahua allies did in fact accompany Alvarado on that particular date in December, planning (as Ixtlilxochitl suggests and other Spanish sources confirm) to meet other troops and pick up reinforcements on the way. For his part, Ixtlilxochitl claims much higher numbers of Acolhua and Tenochca leaving central Mexico for this campaign— up to 20,000— and ignores the contributions of the Tlaxcalteca and Cholulteca altogether, another sign of the continuing power struggles between still-powerful former members of the Triple Alliance and their rivals from the Basin of Puebla-Tlaxcala.17 14. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 181r, testimony of Pedro de la Lona; see also f. 170, testimony of Francisco Oçelote. 15. The most commonly cited date is 6 December, from Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María’s transcription of Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, 456–57. The Guatemalan manuscript of the Historia verdadera dates Alvarado’s departure on 13 November 1523; see José Antonio Barbón Rodriguez’s transcription of Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, 566–67. In addition to claiming a much larger indigenous presence in this campaign, Ixtlilxochitl emphasizes the old Triple Alliance’s hand in its planning, this time with the Acolhua ascendant over the defeated Tenochca, but studiously ignoring the Tlaxcalteca and Cholulteca. Ixtlilxochitl, Obras históricas, 1:487. 16. Cortés, Letters from Mexico, 317. 17. Ixtlilxochitl, Obras históricas, 1:487.

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In any case, the invading army likely numbered a few thousand by the time it left Tehuantepec a month or so later. Francisco Oçelote, a young Tlaxcalteca probably in his twenties at the time, was one of those Nahuas who joined Alvarado’s campaign in Oaxaca. (Later, Oçelote would accompany Alvarado to Honduras, help found the city Gracias a Dios, and settle in the allied barrio on the city’s outskirts.) In 1564, Oçelote recalled that 800 Tlaxcalteca, 400 Huejotzinga, and 1,600 “Mexicanos from Tepeaca” gathered in Oaxaca with Alvarado and 200 Spaniards, along with many more soldiers from other formerly Aztec provinces and many of their families and servants.18 Oçelote’s recollection matches that of the Nahua and especially Tlaxcalteca leaders of Ciudad Vieja, who wrote in a 1547 letter to the Spanish king that more than 1,000 of them had served in the campaigns of Pedro de Alvarado, Pedro de Puertocarrero, and Jorge de Alvarado.19 As the army continued to Xoconusco and along the Pacific coastal plains to the K’iche’ town of Xetulul (Zapotitlán) in the first week of February 1524, it picked up Zapotecs and Mixtecs as well as more Nahuas from the Aztec outpost at Xoconusco.20 By the time the army reached Xelajuj (Quetzaltenango) and Utatlán in March, 1524, it probably numbered in the thousands and was comprised mostly of Mesoamerican allies from central and southern Mexico.21 It is a testament to the difficulty of the Guatemalan campaign and the resistance of the highland Maya that this substantial invading force was unable to defeat the K’iche’ Maya without the assistance of as many Kaqchikel Maya allies sent by the lords of Iximche’.22 18. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 171. 19. AGI Guatemala 52, “Carta de los yndios Tlaxcalteca y mexicanos al Rey sobre ser maltratados” (1547). 20. Archivo General de Centroamérica, Guatemala City (hereafter cited as AGCA), A1, leg. 4673/exp. 40148, iv, Gall, “Probanzas de méritos y servicios de Diego de Usagre y Francisco Castellón,” 147. 21. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 43–46, testimony of Gonzalo Ortiz. 22. How many Kaqchikel joined the invading forces against the K’iche’ is unclear. Adrián Recinos’s translation of the Memorial de Sololá says that 2,000 Kaqchikel warriors participated in the defeat of the K’iche,’ and mentions no dissent. Simón Otzoy reads the number wo’much’ in the text as 200, followed by “But only those men of the city went, as most warriors refused to obey their lords”; see Otzoy, Memorial de Sololá, 186. Maxwell and Hill read this as “400 warriors went to kill the K’iche’ winäq. Just those of the town went; he [Alvarado] did not require all the warriors of the lords” (Kaqchikel Chronicles, 259). Alvarado, in his second letter to Cortés (11 April 1524), said that 4,000 Kaqchikel warriors joined him; see Escalante Arce, Cartas de relación y otros documentos, 23. Ixtli-

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From Utatlán, Alvarado traveled in March 1524 to Iximche’ and Lake Atitlán. The invading forces, including some K’iche’ likely acting as porters and slaves, swiftly defeated the Kaqchikel’s neighbors and rivals, the Tz’utujil. This may have been more a diplomatic than a military victory; Tz’utujil leaders would claim in 1571 to have welcomed the invading forces and to have joined them in campaigns into Honduras the following year, which if true represents a typically Mesoamerican strategy of choosing quick capitulation and alliance with a stronger enemy over bloody war and possible enslavement.23 In May 1524, Alvarado turned south with an army of around 6,000, the entirety of his able-bodied forces at this point.24 The invaders traveled first to Izcuintepeque (Escuintla), in response to information that the lords there were planning resistance to the Spanish. After burning the town and threatening more damage if its residents did not capitulate, the Spanish army continued on toward Cuscatlán, the Pipil capital, conquering on the way the towns of Atiquepeque, Tacuilula, Taxisco (where they were attacked from the rear and many were killed), Nancintla (where allied troops fought alongside Jorge de Alvarado and Pedro de Puertocarrero for eight days), Pasaco, Nopicalco, Acatepeque, Acajutla on the Pacific coast (where Pedro de Alvarado was wounded), Tacuscalco (along with Gonzalo Gómez and Jorge de Alvarado), Azacualpa (Miaguatlán), Atehuan, and finally Cuscatlán.25 This violent campaign into the Pipil territory of modern Guatemala and El Salvador caused significant casualties and only partially subdued the area. It would later loom large in recollections of the Nahua and other non-Maya allies’ services.26 Upon his return to Guatemala from Cuscatlán in July 1524, Pedro de Alvarado founded the first Spanish capital of Santiago at the site of the Kaqchikel city Iximche’ on 25 July and distributed the first encomiendas. lxochitl agrees, claiming that it was the Mexicano and Acolhua captains who went to the “Guatemaltecas” (i.e., the Kaqchikel) to request their aid, and received 4,000 more fighters; see Ixtlilxochitl, Obras históricas, 1:488. 23. See AGI Guatemala 53, “Los principales del pueblo de Atitlan” (1 February 1571), transcribed in Asselbergs, Conquered Conquistadors, 267–70. This memory of peaceful reception lives on in the Tz’utujil town of Santiago Atitlán today; see Christenson, Art and Society, 126. 24. Alvarado, Account of the Conquest of Guatemala, 74–75; Recinos, Pedro de Alvarado, 85, 89. 25. Recinos, Pedro de Alvarado, 85; Kramer, Encomienda Politics, 33–36; Kramer, Lovell, and Lutz, “La conquista española de centroamérica,” 30–36. 26. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 64–67, testimony of Juan de Aragón; ff. 67–71, testimony of Nicolao López de Ybarraga; ff. 249–51, testimony of don Antonio de Ceynos.

Map 3. Conquest Routes of the Alvarados in Central America

Spanish town Mesoamerican town

GU L F OF M E X ICO

Mexico Tenochtitlan Tlaxcala Cholula Quauhquechollan

Ciudad Real de Chiapa (1528)

CA R IBBEA N SEA

Tehuantepec Xoconusco

PAC I F I C O C E A N

Cochomatlán Huehuetenango Totonicapán Puerto Caballos (1536) Rab’inal Utatlán Olintepeque Iximche’ Gracias a Dios (1536) Quetzaltenango Chimaltenango Retalhuleu Comayagua (1537) Petapa Zapotitlán Escuintla GULF OF FONSECA L AKE ATITL ÁN Santiago en Almolonga (1527) San Salvador (1525–27) L AKE AMATITL ÁN Cuscatlán Acajutla San Miguel (1530)

Pedro de Alvarado (1524–26, 1536) Jorge de Alvarado (1527) Gonzalo de Alvarado (1525) Diego de Alvarado (1524–25, 1527, 1536) Gómez de Alvarado (1528–30)

GU L F OF M E X ICO

CA R IBBEA N SEA

PAC I F I C O C E A N

GULF OF FONSECA

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According to Ixtlilxochitl, an unknown number of Nahua allies were sent home at this time, carrying letters to Cortés that detailed the campaign up to that point.27 Within months, however, the Kaqchikel had turned on the Spanish, chafing under Pedro de Alvarado’s demands for gold and his mistreatment of them despite their alliance. The moment represented a dramatic turn of events for the Spanish, Nahuas, and other allied invaders. Suddenly surrounded by hostile forces and diminished in numbers, they left a small garrison force in Iximche’ and set up a new base at Olintepeque, near Quetzaltenango, in the fall of 1524. At this critical moment, Alvarado took a small contingent to Chiapas, hoping to meet Cortés, who was traveling to Honduras to challenge Cristóbal de Olid. The mission was a dismal failure— the terrain was difficult and Cortés never found— and the forces returned to Olintepeque injured and half-starved.28 A fresh wave of soldiers arrived, unexpectedly perhaps, while Alvarado was traveling toward Chiapas. The Spanish captain Pedro de Briones, who had defected from Cristóbal de Olid’s campaign against the claims of Cortés in Honduras, arrived in Guatemala from Honduras with his own army of Mesoamericans who reinforced the weakened allied presence at Olintepeque.29 With these reinforcements, the Kaqchikel were momentarily defeated. A second expedition to Cuscatlán by Pedro’s cousin Diego de Alvarado was organized in the months spanning 1524–25. It lasted approximately three months and was joined by Pedro de Alvarado after his return from Chiapas. The first Villa de San Salvador was founded sometime before May, 1525.30 It seems, however, that few if any invaders remained in El Salvador at this time. Don Marcos Çiguacoatl, a Nahua (probably Tenochca) governor of Xoconusco who joined the Spanish forces during the original invasion of 1524, remembered that some 300 warriors and aux27. Ixtlilxochitl, Obras históricas, 1:490–91. Many of the individual nobles who returned to Mexico from Central America recalled their experiences in probanzas and letters, as did some Tlaxcalteca who testified for the petition for privileges assembled in Tlaxcala in the 1570s; see Pérez-Rocha and Tena, La nobleza indígena, and AGI Patronato 74, N. 1, R. 13, “Méritos y servicios: habitantes de Tlaxcala, Nueva España” (1575). 28. Kramer, Encomienda Politics, 42; Polo Sifontes, Los Cakchiqueles, ch. 5. Cortés was accompanied by 140 Spaniards and 3,000 Mexicanos (Nahuas?) to Honduras in 1525; see Kramer, Lovell, and Lutz, “La conquista española de centroamérica,” 28. 29. Gall, “Probanzas de méritos y servicios,” 146; AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 72r–v. Pedro Cerón, a witness in the probanza of Diego de Usagre, came with Briones, as did Juan Gómez of Justicia 291. See also Recinos, Pedro de Alvarado, 111–13. 30. Barón Castro, Reseña histórica de la Villa de San Salvador, 23–25.

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iliaries from Xoconusco accompanied Diego de Alvarado to San Salvador. Around 140 returned to Guatemala alive. The rest, he said, died in the campaign.31 Later in 1525, Gonzalo de Alvarado led a successful expedition against the western highland Mam of Huehuetenango with a force made up largely of Nahua allies and Maya auxiliaries, and Pedro de Alvarado defeated the Poqomam of Mixco “with a large force of Spaniards and Tlaxcalteca.”32 Despite these apparent gains in 1525, Alvarado seemed inclined at the beginning of 1526 to abandon Guatemala entirely. But at Cortés’s request, Alvarado instead left with the remnants of his men for an expedition to Honduras, again planning to join Cortés. Many of the warriors participating in this expedition, which was reportedly brutal, seem to have been K’iche’. This followed the usual pattern of picking up allies among recently defeated but powerful polities and also suggests that the available able-bodied Nahua forces were by then diminished.33 In August 1526, Pedro de Alvarado decided to go to Spain via Mexico to consolidate his position with the king, leaving Pedro de Puertocarrero and Hernán Carrillo in charge in Guatemala and sending another Alvarado brother, Jorge, to join them as his replacement. Jorge de Alvarado’s invasion of Guatemala in March 1527 marked not only a major turning point for the Spanish in Central America, but also the largest influx of Nahuas into the region at any one time during the conquest wars. An invading force of some 5–6,000 indigenous warriors and tameme reinforced the embattled conquistadors stationed at Olintepeque on or around 20 March 1527, an event recorded by the Spanish council of the besieged “city.” The allies entering Central America with Jorge de Alvarado came from many of the regions represented in Pedro de Alvarado’s original campaign of 1524, including Tlaxcala, Cholula, Coyoacan, and 31. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 88v. In pre-Columbian central Mexico, the cihuacoatl was second in command to the tlatoani; the term “Ciguacoatl” continues to appear as a hispanized surname into the sixteenth century in central Mexican town councils; see Haskett, Indigenous Rulers, 95. Xoconusco was a military garrison of the Aztec empire and may have been administered by Nahuas before the invasions of the 1520s; see Gasco, “Polities of Xoconochco,” 287. 32. Recinos, Pedro de Alvarado, 108–11, quoting from Zaragoza edition of Fuentes y Guzmán, Historia de Guatemala, 3:109–29. 33. AGI Guatemala 39, R. 2, N. 6, “Carta de Andrés de Cereceda al rey” (1536), f. 8v; AGI Guatemala, 9A, R. 8, N. 13, “Carta del licenciado Pedraza, obispo, al rey sobre las primeras conquistas en Guatemala” (1539), ff. 4r, 8v–9r.

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various other central Mexican polities, as well as Oaxaca.34 But the army also included a significant number of newcomers from places like Quauhquechollan, Jorge de Alvarado’s encomienda. Within a week of Jorge de Alvarado’s arrival and investiture as lieutenant governor, the allied forces appear to have abandoned Olintepeque to establish a new base camp in or near the market town of Chimaltenango. On 28 March, the Spanish council noted in its cabildo (council) book a pronouncement regarding tax relief for the beleaguered conquistadors “in this royal [site] that is called Chimaltenango.”35 In the following months, the reinforced Nahua-Spanish forces launched various campaigns from Chimaltenango, primarily against the resisting Kaqchikel. Wendy Kramer has identified many battles fought during this important period, using the probanzas of Spaniards Hernán Méndez de Sotomayor, Cristóbal de Salvatierra, Cristóbal Lobo, Gaspar Arias, Hernando de Chaves, Pedro González Nájera, Diego de Usagre, Francisco Castellón, and Francisco de Utiel. In these probanzas, Spanish and Nahua witnesses alike testified to violent confrontations in Jalpatagua (modern-day department of Santa Rosa); in Zacualpa, Tecocistlán, Teculutlán (modern-day Verapaz); Sacapulas and Uspantlán (modern-day El Quiché); and Aguacatlán and Poyumatlán/ Santa Eulalia (modern-day Huehuetenango).36 In later Spanish-American memory, Pedro de Puertocarrero— who is sometimes credited with the founding of the invaders’ base at Chimaltenango— was particularly remembered for persistent but unsuccessful expeditions to capture the Kaqchikel lords Kaji’ Imox (known to the Spanish as Sinacan) and B’eleje’ K’at (known as Sequechul) in the area of Pochutla during these months.37 Maya and Nahua sources agree with much of this information. The Kaqchikel Memorial de Sololá notes the recommencement of hostilities and a major defeat at Chi Xot, or Comalapa, on 27 March 1527, only one day before the first mention in the Spanish council books of the move to Chi34. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 253v, testimony of Diego Elías, “natural que dixo ser de la ciudad de mexico y vezino de ciudad vieja”; 255r, testimony of Diego de Galicia, “yndio natural de cholula y morador y rresidente en la ciudad vieja de almolonga.” See also Gall, “Probanzas de méritos y servicios,” 146. 35. Libro viejo, 22–29. 36. Kramer, Encomienda Politics, 66–67. 37. Gall, Diccionario geográfico 1:695; Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:348; Fuentes y Guzmán claimed that the two Kaqchikel lords were caught and imprisoned, but Polo Sifontes and others have convincingly shown this to be incorrect; see Polo Sifontes, Los Cakchiqueles, ch. 5.

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maltenango.38 The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan also depicts a fierce battle at Comalapa after the Quauhquecholteca and Spanish leave Olintepeque. Approaching the center of the lienzo, Chimaltenango appears prominently displayed with various campaigns leaving it in all directions. The market appears above the Chimaltenango glyph. The Spanish do not mention the market per se in their documents, but they adopted the Nahuatl name for market (tianquiztli) to describe this area, which they called Tianguecillo.39 In October 1527, Pedro’s and Jorge’s brother Diego de Alvarado reestablished the abandoned Villa de San Salvador. On 21 November, the festival day of St. Cecilia on the Catholic calendar, the Spanish town council led by Jorge de Alvarado formally voted to reestablish the city of Santiago in “the valley of Almolonga” rather than in Tianguecillo. Santiago en Almolonga would be built along the northern slope of the Volcán de Agua, on the site of the modern-day cantón of San Miguel Escobar. The Nahua and Oaxacan allies who remained in Central America settled at the base of the volcano, a mile or so west of the Spanish city. Their colony, called simply Almolonga, would later be known as Ciudad Vieja.40 Warriors and colonists from central and southern Mexico would continue to enter and move through Central America by the hundreds, to fight, die, or settle there, for another decade at least. Pedro de Alvarado’s nephew Luis de Moscoso, yet another brother Gómez de Alvarado, and other Spanish captains spent much of 1528 fighting in Honduras and El Salvador, with Nahua allies at the forefront of the fighting.41 San Miguel de la Frontera, El Salvador, was founded in 1530, and most of El Salvador pacified by 1533. Despite some success against the Kaqchikel in earlier confrontations, unrest continued in the central valley of Guatemala until 1535 when the Kaqchikel lord Kaji’ Imox was captured and imprisoned. In 1536, Pedro de Alvarado gathered many of the Mesoamerican allies and slaves living in and around Santiago— perhaps as many as 1,500 Nahuas, Oaxacans, and Maya— into an army that invaded Honduras and founded 38. Recinos, Memorial de Sololá, 105; Maxwell and Hill, Kaqchikel Chronicles, 274–75. 39. Asselbergs, Conquered Conquistadors, 149–52; Libro viejo, 32–40. The Libro viejo casts a small shadow of doubt on the identification of Tianguecillo as the site near Chimaltenango; the cleric Juan Godínez mentions in his statement “the flatlands of Sucutenango, which is the Tianguez” (35). However, all other indications, including material from the Memorial de Sololá and the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, point to Chimaltenango. See also the discussion by Saénz de Santa María in Libro viejo, xxi–xxii. 40. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 153v; 154v; 155r; 187r; and 255v. 41. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 69.

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the city of Gracias a Dios. Nahua and possibly Oaxacan warriors and tameme assisted other Spanish captains like Alonso de Cáceres, Cristóbal de Cueva, Diego de Alvarado, and Joan de Mendoza in subsequent campaigns.42 Francisco de Montejo, who campaigned in the 1530s in Honduras and Nicaragua, depended heavily on many hundreds of Nahua warriors.43 As well, Nahua warriors defended newly founded Spanish ports such as Puerto de Caballos against the French, fought the Lacandon Maya in the jungles of Chiapas, and traveled with Pedro de Alvarado to Peru.44 Several hundred accompanied Alvarado on his final campaign to Nueva Galicia and Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1540, where he was fatally wounded.45 In all these campaigns, some indigenous conquistadors were seasoned warriors now living as colonists in Central America. This was the case of Francisco Oçelote, the native of Tlaxcala who joined Alvarado’s original campaign in 1524 from Oaxaca, and who eventually settled in Gracias a Dios after fighting in Alvarado’s Honduran campaign in 1536. Others, like Joan Montejo of Tlaxcala and Pedro de la Lona of Texcoco, came as fresh recruits to the campaigns of the 1530s, stopping off first in Almolonga where they made contacts with the Nahua community there. These new recruits were often 10–15 years younger than the men who had come to the region in the 1520s.46 Thus by the second decade of Spanish presence in Central America, a significant generational breadth had developed amongst the Nahuas and other non-Maya allies living in the region. Just how many indigenous conquistadors from Mexico fought in Central America during the sixteenth century? Contemporary accounts varied wildly. The most frequently cited estimates come from Díaz de Castillo. As already suggested, these numbers are clearly too low, failing to take into account either those who joined Alvarado’s troops along the road to Guatemala in 1524 or any of the other waves of allies who entered 42. Polo Sifontes, Los Cakchiqueles, 93–94; AGI Guatemala 44, 44B, N. 38, “Carta del cabildo secular de Gracias a Dios al rey” (21 December 1536), f. 1r; AGI Guatemala 39, R. 2, N. 6, “Carta de Andrés de Cereceda al rey” (1536); AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 110–15, testimony of Joan de Cabrera, and f. 10v (section 2), testimony of Álvaro de Paz. 43. AGI Guatemala 9A, R. 8, N. 15, “Carta del adelantado Montejo al rey sobre la pacificación de la provincia de Honduras” (1 May 1539), f.  2–2v. For a full discussion of Montejo’s various campaigns in Yucatan, see Chuchiak, “Forgotten Allies.” 44. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 113–15v, 244r. 45. Recinos, Pedro de Alvarado, 190–92. 46. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1), ff. 170–80, testimonies of Francisco de Oçelote and Joan Montejo.

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the region in subsequent expeditions. At the other extreme, the AcolhuaSpanish chronicler Ixtlilxochitl claimed that 20,000 Acolhua and “mexicanos” (presumably Tenochca) came to Alvarado’s aid in the original campaign. By the battle of Acajutla, El Salvador, in 1524, Ixtlilxochitl said, only around 7,000 of these allies remained, the rest having either been killed or injured and left behind in Guatemala.47 While high, these numbers are not impossible given the population density that existed in central Mexico and reflect the standard practice of both Postclassic and conquest-era military campaigns in Mesoamerica. The population of Tlaxcala in the early sixteenth century, for instance, included around 100–150,000 male heads of households, from which around 6,000 Tlaxcalteca participated in the first Spanish entry into Tenochtitlan, and 15–20,000 in the final attack on the city.48 In Central America, a typical expedition led from the central highlands might include 2,000 warriors and 60 Spaniards, as was reported for Juan de Chaves’s campaign into Honduras in 1536.49 Nonetheless, Ixtlilxochitl’s numbers can no more be taken at face value than Díaz del Castillo’s. Both chroniclers had reason to either exaggerate or downplay the numbers of Mesoamerican conquistadors in their narratives. Reports from the actors themselves speak of thousands of warriors, porters, and colonists arriving in Central America not in a single burst, but in waves and even trickles between 1524 and 1542. In 1547, the “tlaxcaltecas y mexicanos” living in Ciudad Vieja wrote to the king, somewhat poetically and thus not very usefully for an accurate count, that “a thousand and more men and combatants” had joined Alvarado in the conquest of Guatemala.50 The leaders of Xochimilco— one of Pedro de Alvarado’s encomiendas, and to whose labor he therefore claimed rights— said in 1563 that 2,500 of their men had gone to Guatemala and Honduras with Alvarado.51 One of the most precise recollections of the early conquest 47. Ixtlilxochitl, Obras históricas, 1:487. Alvarado claimed that there were 5,000–6,000 auxiliaries with him in total in Acajutla, some of whom certainly must have been Maya rather than Nahua; see Alvarado, Account of the Conquest, 80. 48. AGI Patronato 74, N. 1, R. 13, “Méritos de los de Tlascala” (1575); Gibson, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century, 22; Martínez Baracs and Sempat Assadourian, Tlaxcala, 9:71; Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest. 49. AGI Patronato 58, R. 5, “Gonzalo de Chaves Alvarado . . . solicita en gratificación de lo que ha servido se le encomienden en Guatemala algunos indios” (1542–72), f. 21. 50. AGI Guatemala 52, “Carta de los yndios Tlaxcalteca y mexicanos al Rey sobre ser maltratados” (1547). 51. Pérez-Rocha and Tena, La nobleza indígena, 281.

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years comes again from the Tlaxcalteca soldier Francisco de Oçelote, who said that in the original campaign alone, more than 2,800 Nahuas divided by region into various units had gathered in Oaxaca with Alvarado in 1524. Similarly, the Spanish captain Pedro Gonzáles Nájera, who spoke Nahuatl and acted as an interpreter during the original campaign, reported in 1564 that approximately 7,000 allies from central and southern Mexico had participated in the invasions of the period.52 This was not a single instance of population movement, but a series of incursions that occurred in spurts, over a twenty-year period, and in the midst of continued contact between the indigenous allies and their home regions. Some of the invasion forces were large and are thus more easily identified, such as the campaigns led by Pedro de Alvarado in 1524 and Jorge de Alvarado in 1527. But between these large influxes came tricklings of both military allies and settlers only tenuously connected with the armed invasion. Hernando de Yllescas, sent from Guatemala to Mexico by Pedro de Alvarado in the 1530s to bring back a contingent of Spaniards for the conquest of Honduras, returned not only with Spaniards but with some 600 Tlaxcalteca as well.53 Significant numbers of Nahua and perhaps Oaxacan allies must have also accompanied Diego de Rojas and 50 other Spaniards sent by Cortés to Guatemala in the summer of 1524, and both Cristóbal de Olid and Cortés himself in their rival campaigns to claim Honduras that same fall.54 Nahua allies also returned to Guatemala from Honduras with Pedro de Briones during this same time period. In the years immediately following, families and friends followed the indigenous conquistadors into Central America, sometimes as part of the military campaigns, sometimes afterwards as colonists. Women and children traveled with the conquering armies, providing essential services preparing food, carrying supplies, and helping maintain the bases at Iximche’, Olintepeque, and Chimaltenango.55 A conservative estimate, then, would be that 10–12,000 warriors from central and southern Mexico participated in the various invasions of Central America, oftentimes accompanied or followed by their families and friends.

52. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 171, 239. 53. AGI Patronato 62, R. 3, “Méritos y servicios de Hernando de Yllescas” (7 December 1559), see f. 1 (section 1) and f. 2 (section 2, Información de oficio de Nuñez, question 5). 54. On Diego de Rojas, see Kramer, Encomienda Politics, 41, 54. 55. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 125–25r, testimony of Bartolomé de Santiponçe; 155v, testimony of Pedro Cerón; 184, testimony of Alonso Polo; 20v–21v (section 2). See also Herrera, “Concubines and Wives.”

Indian Conquistadors / 91 A Quauhquecholteca woman grinding corn. Detail of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. Digital restoration Universidad Francisco Marroquín/Banco G&T Continental. © 2007 Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala. Images are available under the Creative Commons license Attribution-NoncommercialShare Alike.

Years later in the mid-sixteenth century, more than one Spaniard reflected that the conquest of Central America would have been impossible without the participation of these Nahua and Oaxacan allies. Most obviously, the indigenous conquistadors provided an enormous boost in manpower and weaponry to the Spanish. Indeed, without them the Spanish forces were a far less significant threat. Mesoamericans served in the forefront and the rearguard of the troops, protecting the Spaniards against precipitous losses and thereby suffering the brunt of the casualties inflicted on their side. Some were wounded or killed not in battle, but in more targeted acts of violence intended as messages of defiance. Such was the case of the two Nahua warriors wounded in retaliation for Alvarado’s having taken the K’iche’ lords of Utatlán prisoner in 1524. Less famously, but not uniquely, two Nahuas were sent as emissaries by Cristóbal de la Cueva to demand the surrender of a small unconquered Honduran town called Colquin. The town’s reply was clear: its residents killed the two Nahuas immediately.56 The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan portrays a number of campaigns led and prosecuted completely by Nahuas, with no Spanish involvement at all. The lienzo also shows simultaneous campaigns departing from the invaders’ base camp at Chimaltenango or, later, Santiago en Almolonga. Although Spanish accounts tend toward linear

56. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 11–11v (section 2). This may have occurred in 1534, when Jorge de Alvarado sent de la Cueva to Honduras; see Chamberlain, The Conquest and Colonization of Honduras, 33. For a different example, see García Peláez, Memorias del Antiguo Reyno de Guatemala, 1:66–67: “En esta sazón había sido lanzado Diego de Alvarado de Sacatepéquez, con algunos castellanos y tlascaltecas que componían la guarnición, quedando prisionero uno de los primeros y dos de los segundos, que fueron sacrificados a los ídolos.”

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chronologies that follow single personages from battle to battle, when compared to each other these individualized narratives confirm what the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan so ably displays on a single canvas: that multiple campaigns entered Central America in the 1520s and 1530s, of varying strengths under various leaders and with unpredictable results, but always with Mesoamerican warriors. Just as important as their military service, however, was the allies’ everyday labor in the journey from Mexico to Central America. The noncombatants who accompanied the soldiers— often women and children— acted as porters, carrying the army’s supplies and weaponry, its wounded, and even “carriages” of able-bodied Spaniards, “for better defense.” When the army came to impassable rivers or swamps, Nahua, Zapotec, and Mixtec footsoldiers and tameme constructed bridges and created trails to allow safe passage. Often, when faced with difficult or mountainous terrain, they were burdened with the packhorses’ loads as well as their own. They foraged and hunted for food to feed themselves and the Spaniards, as well as prepared it. Without this very basic assistance, said the Nahua lord don Marcos Çiguacoatl of Xoconusco in 1564, the Spaniards would surely have perished from hunger.57 From beginning to end, the military conquest of Central America was a joint venture: planned, coordinated, guided, and fought by thousands of Nahuas, Zapotecs, and Mixtecs and a few hundred Spaniards, in the name of their home altepetl and deities, Christianity, and the Spanish crown.

A Closer Look: The 1527 Campaign and the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan How did the invasion look to the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors? What did it mean to them? Justicia 291, which records the testimony of Nahua conquistadors living in Central America in the 1560s and to which 57. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1. For military theatres, see f. 129, testimony of Diego de Mançanares; f. 146v, testimony of Manuel Hernández; and f. 11 (section 2), testimony of Antonio de España. For Nahua casualties, see f. 56, testimony of Diego López de Villanueva. For particular services, see ff. 13–14r (section 2), especially testimony of Pedro Gonzáles Nájera, Juan de Aragón, Antonio de España, and don Pedro Tlacatecute; and f. 49v, testimony of Alonso de Loarca; f. 61, testimony of Pedro de Ovid; ff. 144–46, testimony of Manuel Hernández; and f. 177v, testimony of Joan Montejo; ff. 12–13r (section 2), testimony of don Marcos Çiguacoatl, don Pedro Tlacatecute, and Antonio de España; and f. 69v, testimony of Nicolao López de Ybarraga.

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we will return, provides some clues. But it is worth pausing first over the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan as analyzed by Florine Asselbergs. For while Justicia 291 filters the indigenous conquistadors’ memories through foreign interpreters and scribes, writing in Spanish and using European bureaucratic formulas, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan turns this epistemological problem on its head. Here, Quauhquecholteca warriors are the main characters, their story one of migration from an ancient homeland to conquer and colonize new lands. To be sure, Europeans and their influence are apparent. A double-headed eagle fuses the power of the Habsburgs with that of the Quauhquecholteca polity, and a European coat-of-arms is incorporated into the traditional tepetl (hill) symbol. Spaniards and a single African appear, as do their weapons and horses. Slips of paper translate ideographic writing into Roman script and identify Spaniards whose names do not translate directly into Nahuatl.58 All of these European elements, however, meld into a tale that is fundamentally Mesoamerican in both form and content. The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan is a prototypical Nahua cartographic history that identifies places with logographs, motion with footprinted paths, and moments in history with specific geographies. It places the Quauhquecholteca conquistadors on stage, front and center, while the Spanish are treated as honored and powerful but nevertheless auxiliary partners. The lienzo’s early date of creation increases its usefulness as a source of the indigenous conquistadors’ perspectives of the invasion of Guatemala. There are good reasons to believe it was painted very soon, perhaps even within a decade, after the events it depicts. The center of the lienzo shows the Spanish city Santiago en Almolonga founded by Jorge de Alvarado in 1527, along with the Volcán de Agua and the expedition’s earlier base of operations, Chimaltenango. Absent, however, are Santiago en Almolonga’s destruction by torrential rains and a landslide in 1541 and the Spanish city’s subsequent relocation to the valley of Panchoy.59 Also notable is the lienzo’s lack of Christian churches and symbols. Crosses appear only on the banners of the Spanish, a striking omission when compared to other 58. The digital restoration by the Universidad Francisco Marroquín eliminated these slips; they can be viewed using the “swipe” feature that reveals the original lienzo at http://webmaplienzo.ufm.edu/lienzo/. 59. Ruud van Akkeren disagrees, arguing that the erupting Volcán de Agua in the lienzo is not a stylized pictograph, but a representation of the 1541 disaster. Van Akkeren, La visión indígena, 124.

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The alliance between Hernando Cortés (with his translator Malintzin directly behind him) and the Quauhquecholteca lords, with the fused European-Nahua coat-of-arms. Detail of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. Digital restoration Universidad Francisco Marroquín/Banco G&T Continental. © 2007 Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala. Images are available under the Creative Commons license AttributionNoncommercial-Share Alike.

mid-sixteenth century mapas and lienzos produced in Mexico, and also given the allies’ own reputation (discussed further in Chapter 4) as willing Christian converts. Quite possibly the lienzo was painted before 1541, or even before the Spaniards’ Catholic cathedral was finished around 1537.60 On the other hand, the latest probable date of the lienzo’s creation is 1564. In that year the Spaniard Juan Fernández Nájera, a nahuatlato (interpreter of Nahuatl) who frequently translated for the people of Ciudad Vieja, appeared as witness in two probanzas for Spanish conquistadors. In one, for Diego Sánchez de Santiago, Fernández Nájera reported being shown a “painted cloth that some Indians had brought to this city [of Santiago], in which they showed the conquistadors and the journeys they made” and 60. Lamadrid, “Bishop Marroquín-Zumárraga’s Gift,” 336.

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on which, he said, Sánchez appeared.61 In the other, for Pedro Gonzáles Nájera, Fernández Nájera testified that he knew “the Taxcalteca and Mexicano governors and Indian principales who went on behalf of Your Majesty in the conquest and pacification of this land, with whom this witness has communicated as the interpreter in this land . . . and through this witness as interpreter they showed the governors and presidents and judges of this land figures and paintings, so they would be granted privileges as conquistadors.”62 These are the most specific references we have to the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan or something very like it having been created by Nahua conquistadors in the valley of Guatemala, most of whom lived in Almolonga/Ciudad Vieja, sometime before 1564. Finally, unlike Justicia 291, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan’s content and form suggest that it was created for a primarily indigenous audience. Few Europeans in the first half of the sixteenth century would have been able to readily decipher the lienzo’s iconography nor the historical narrative embedded in its design. Furthermore, Juan Fernández Nájera reported that he and other Spanish officials merely “saw” a lienzo depicting the conquest, not that it was submitted to Spanish authorities. Nor does any reference to a painted map emerge in Justicia 291, the most complete probanza available of the indigenous conquistadors in Central America (initiated, significantly, the same year as Juan Fernández Nájera’s reference to a painted map made in Ciudad Vieja). The implication seems to be that a lienzo depicting the conquest was shown but not submitted to Spanish officials in Santiago de Guatemala by the Mesoamerican conquistadors as part of their campaign to secure privileges from the Spanish crown. There is no evidence thus far that the lienzo left Guatemala in Spanish hands. 61. AGI Patronato 66-1-7, “Ynformacion de servicios de Francisco Hernández de Yllescas vecino de Guatemala” (1564), f. 108–10v, testimony of Juan Fernández Nájera. “Y ansi este testigo vido un paño pintado que traxeron a esta ciudad unos yndios en que señalaban los conquistadores y los viajes que abian hecho a los que en las dhas conquistas mas se abian señalado y servido y entre estas mejores estaba pintado el dicho diego sanchez de santiago.” Wendy Kramer was the first to locate this reference. 62. AGI Patronato 66A, N. 1, R. 3, “Probanza de los méritos y servicios de Pedro Gonzáles Nájera” (6 December 1564), f. 5, testimony of Juan Fernández Nájera. “De los gobernadores e indios principales Taxcaltecas y mexicanos que fueron por parte de S.M. en la conquista y pacificación de esta tierra con quien este testigo ha comunicado por ser como es intérprete de esta tierra haber pasado asi como en la pregunta se contiene y por sus figuras y pinturas que mostraban a los gobernadores y presidentes / 5v / y oidores de esta tierra para que se les hiciese merced como a tales conquistadores lo mostraba asi por relación y escrituras dichas mediante este testigo como intérprete.”

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Asselbergs has suggested that perhaps two copies of the lienzo were made. One could have remained in Ciudad Vieja, while the other was sent to Quauhquechollan to narrate the brave exploits of the home altepetl’s warriors, perhaps carried by returning veterans of the conquest wars. The indigenous form of the lienzo, its early date of creation, and its primarily Nahua audience make it the most direct account surviving of the invasion of Central America from the Nahua conquistadors’ perspective. While it depicts the conquest of Guatemala, in its style and language the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan hews closely to the writing traditions of central and southern Mexico. Art historian Elizabeth Boone separates pictorial manuscripts from the Basins of Mexico and Puebla and the southern regions of Oaxaca into three categories.63 Res gestae pictorials present events in sequence without reference to a specific time or place, like a cartoon. Year-count annals highlight the passage of time, with events being of secondary importance. Cartographic histories tell a narrative fixed in a particular geography. In practice, scribes throughout central Mesoamerica combined features of all three genres. Nevertheless, particular genres appear more or less commonly in different regions. The res gestae formula dominates surviving Mixtec screenfolds from Oaxaca, recording the genealogies, origins, and deeds of royal dynasties in a regulated sequence. Mixtec tiras (rolled parchments) and lienzos communicate within a single frame rather than through a controlled sequence of pages, and add elements of time and space. They maintain, however, the typically Mixtec focus on elite lineages. Nahua accounts from the basins of Mexico and Puebla-Tlaxcala, by contrast, focus less on royal genealogies and more on corporate altepetl identity. Famous annals histories like the Codices Aubin, Mendoza, Boturini, and Telleriano-Remensis all function rather like almanacs or chronicles, treating the collective history of Tenochtitlan and the Tenochca exclusively or in relation to other altepetl. Boone believes these were developed as an official history of the Aztec empire. Nahua cartographic histories, finally, are more widespread and variable than the year-count annals. Presented primarily as single-frame maps or lienzos, they tend to focus on the migration stories of particular altepetl. Some begin from the altepetl’s primordial and historical origins to its establishment in central Mexico. Others concentrate on some event or series of events within that larger migration story. Nahua cartographic histories may identify the lead63. Boone, Stories in Red and Black and “Aztec Pictorial Histories.”

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ers of these migrations, the lords of other altepetl, or individuals whose marriage alliances augment the power of the altepetl. But mostly they describe a collective experience and history, as representative figures fight battles, cross rivers, request land, or pay tribute. The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan is an exemplary Nahua cartographic history, with a distinctive twist: its migration story begins in central Mexico and ends in Guatemala. Here and in what follows, I rely primarily on the interpretations of Asselbergs, who has done the most thorough work on the lienzo to date.64 The lienzo covers fifteen pieces of cotton cloth sewn together to create a single sheet measuring approximately 8 by 11 feet. The surviving original is smaller than it once was. The righthand side has been torn away, removing perhaps as many as a third of the panels. (Asselbergs notes that this section was lost sometime before the 1892 exposition in Madrid, whose catalog reproduction reveals the same tear.) A painted blue “water” border frames the bottom and left side of the lienzo, full of sea creatures and waves. The water border highlights the simultaneous mythical, historical, and geographical functions of the map, referencing the origins of the Quauhquecholteca out of a primordial sea, the historical beginning of their migration to Guatemala in 1527, and their geographically accurate route along the Pacific coast. While the water hugs the Pacific coast along the bottom and left edges of the lienzo, a sharp right-hand turn also follows the correct path east toward the allies’ homeland, Quauhquechollan. A mass of intersecting roads dominates the center of the map, all marked with the characteristic Mesoamerican icon of movement— black footprints— indicating direction of travel. Colors and many details are naturalistic: trees and water are green and blue while the land is brown and yellow, a pineapple has thorns, a volcano erupts. Spaniards ride horses and sit in chairs, while Quauhquecholteca warriors wear elaborate headdresses and jaguar-skin costumes in battle. Tameme use tumplines to bear their cargo as they travel. Other details, however, are more iconographic and typically Mesoamerican, for instance, stylized blue bands for streams, circular configurations for markets, identical thatched huts for settlements, and logographic toponyms that incorporate the hill-like tepetl symbol. Although one can enter the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan’s narrative at 64. Michel Oudijk and Ruud van Akkeren have also influenced my understanding of the lienzo. For the latter, see Van Akkeren, La visión indígena, which summarizes Asselbergs’ findings but takes issue with some of her identifications of place-names.

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any point, several key scenes catch the eye. The largest lies in the upper left-hand corner of the lienzo, marking the logical beginning of the Quauhquecholteca’s story. Beneath the Spanish-Quauhquecholteca fusion of double-headed eagle, coat-of-arms, and the tepetl symbol for Quauhquechollan, a Spaniard and a Quauhquecholteca lord embrace. The Spaniard, most likely Hernando Cortés, is portrayed with a beard and wearing European clothing. He is accompanied by another Spaniard holding a horse, and an indigenous woman who is undoubtedly the translator Malintzin. The Quauhquecholteca lord is also accompanied by a high-ranking assistant. Both wear feathered regalia. This alliance scene between Quauhquecholteca and Spanish mirrors similar depictions in the Tlaxcalteca Lienzo de Tlaxcala, or the Escudo de Armas de Tzintzuntzan as copied into the Lienzo de Carapan and the Lienzo de Páztcuaro of Michoacan. In all these Mesoamerican pictorials, Asselbergs notes, the moment of military and diplomatic alliance with Europeans is recorded “not as a humiliating subjection of one force by the other, but instead, as a gathering of two military forces who both sought advancement.”65 From this friendly scene of alliance in the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, a road descends. Two Spaniards, one on horseback, lead five warriors dressed in native gear. The first warrior is bearded like a Spaniard, but wears a feathered backrack and native armor. Asselbergs suggests he represents the “integration of the Spanish and the Quauhquecholteca armies.”66 Three more Quauhquecholteca warriors follow in Mesoamerican armor. A final figure is elaborately dressed in a full-body costume of the elite military Order of the Eagle. After the first two Spaniards, everyone carries a Mesoamerican shield and Spanish swords. In the original lienzo, at least six of the seven figures are identified on cloth tags with Roman alphabetic writing sewn to the lienzo’s surface next to their painted figures. The first figure’s tag seems to end with the letters “ado”; the rest of the tags are illegible. To the right of this band of warriors are the logographs for various altepetl, perhaps those that contributed warriors to the campaign under Quauhquecholteca leadership. To the left, several battles rage. In these, the parties appear with similar dress and weaponry. Although the Quauhquecholteca are portrayed as superior warriors and usually emerge victorious, as indicated by their adversaries’ lack of backracks and 65. Asselbergs, Conquered Conquistadors, 131; Roskamp, “Los títulos primordiales de Carapan,” 325. 66. Asselbergs, Conquered Conquistadors, 131.

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Jorge de Alvarado leads a Spaniard dressed in Quauhquecholteca warrior costume and four Quauhquecholteca warriors on the road toward Guatemala. In the digital restoration, separate slips sewn onto the original lienzo with Spanish identifications of altepetl symbols and important people such as Alvarado have been removed. Detail of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. Digital restoration Universidad Francisco Marroquín/Banco G&T Continental. © 2007 Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala. Images are available under the Creative Commons license Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike.

subordinate position below the Quauhquecholteca, no one uses Spanish swords. Further south, Quauhquecholteca warriors fight again with Spanish swords against enemies with very dark skin, long hair, and less elaborate shields. This appears to have been a difficult battle, and it is not clear who won. The two sides face each other front on, rather than one being placed above the other as would have been the convention in portraying a military victory. In none of these scenes do Spaniards appear. Reaching the bottom of the lienzo and its water border, the road turns right. In two separate episodes, Spaniards seated on chairs speak with Mesoamerican messengers, perhaps pochteca informing them of conditions ahead. In the second scene a Spaniard sits next to a large tree-andriver logograph representing Retalhuleu, the city on the Pacific coast where Jorge de Alvarado entered K’iche’ territory in March 1527. A cloth tag next to the figure considerably bolsters the case that the lienzo portrays Jorge de Alvarado’s 1527 campaign, for it appears that this seated Spaniard

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Jorge de Alvarado, seated on a chair, receives information from Quauhquecholteca pochteca at Xoconusco (far left), and upon entering Guatemala at Retalhuleu, signified by a tree glyph (far right). The arrow shot through the tree indicates conquest. Detail of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. Digital restoration Universidad Francisco Marroquín/Banco G&T Continental. © 2007 Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala. Images are available under the Creative Commons license Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike.

is Alvarado himself. The large, dark writing on the cloth tag clearly says “arado” at the end. An “o” is prominent in the first part of the tag, and Asselbergs notes that the 1892 copy says “Jorj-” here. This more legible slip under the Retalhuleu logograph also permits us to more confidently identify the mounted figure first seen leading the warriors out of Quauhquechollan as Jorge de Alvarado, although his identifying tag only reads “ado” at the end. The road beyond Retalhuleu winds back up to the right, along an internal seam that separates the Mexican and Central American territories depicted on the lienzo (with the exception of Retalhuleu itself, perhaps singled out as the entrance point into Guatemala, which lies directly to the left of the seam). The road follows the same path forged by Pedro de Alvarado’s invading forces of 1524. By 1527, according to the lienzo, this region was no longer a war zone. Instead of battles with Maya enemies, we see a confrontation between two mixed groups of Spaniards and in-

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The glyphs for Zapotitlán (left) and Quetzaltenango (right). Details of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. Digital restoration Universidad Francisco Marroquín/Banco G&T Continental. © 2007 Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala. Images are available under the Creative Commons license Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike.

digenous allies. Asselbergs suggests that this is an internecine quarrel, either within Jorge de Alvarado’s forces or against the remnants of Pedro de Alvarado’s troops. Here and throughout the lienzo, the Quauhquecholteca tlacuiloque (painter-scribes) crafted logographs for Maya places based on what the Nahua invaders called them. Sometimes this process of naming involved direct translations from Mayan to Nahuatl; for instance, the K’iche’ place-name Xetulul, meaning “under the zapotes,” is translated into a logograph for the Nahuatl place-name Zapotitlán. In other cases, Nahuas invented their own names based on their impressions of a place or famous events that occurred there. The most well-known example of this— the renaming by the Nahua allies of the city Xelajuj, meaning “under ten–mountain” in K’iche’, as “Quetzaltenango,” meaning “feathered wall or fortress” in Nahuatl— is represented in the lienzo by a series of feathers atop a wall. Also prominent in this section of the lienzo is Olintepeque, the base camp where the Nahua-Spanish forces led by Pedro de Alvarado retreated after the Kaqchikel turned against them. Olintepeque’s logograph first appears next to a ceremonial dance performed by the allies in front of two

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seated Spaniards. Perhaps they are preparing to fight the Kaqchikel or other Maya groups. Traveling upward, the logograph for Olintepeque appears again just before the road turns sharply right and begins to divide into multiple, overlapping roads signifying various campaigns in different parts of the highlands. (This area of the map corresponds to a major crossroads that survives today in Guatemala as Los Encuentros, connecting the major cities of the western highlands with Guatemala City in the central valley.) Finally, the Olintepeque logograph appears once again along the road to a battle near Comalapa. It seems that the fresh forces arriving in 1527 under Jorge de Alvarado continued to use Olintepeque as a base camp and defensive retreat until they expanded further into Kaqchikel territory. From Los Encuentros, the single road splits into several. Most eventually curve back toward what was likely the center of the original, full-sized lienzo, marked by a large, erupting volcano. To the left of the volcano, a prominent logograph identified by Asselbergs as Chimaltenango is surrounded by a dense combination of scenes: a Maya being hanged, a marketplace, a ballcourt, a thatched house perhaps signaling an allied colony, a riderless white horse, and a seated Spaniard. The ballcourt could be any number of ancient ruins that had long been abandoned by 1527, but which dotted the area around Chimaltenango and Almolonga. (Many of these sites are well-known to locals today, while others which have only recently been uncovered by construction projects, and perhaps still others remain buried).67 Several roads leave Chimaltenango and lead to battle scenes in Utatlán, Petapa, Tzonteconapán, Pochutla, and Escuintla. The Mesoamerican governor of the former Aztec tributary town of Mapastepeque in Xoconusco, don Pedro de León, later recalled these same campaigns, which he said left from a base camp at the recently conquered Chimaltenango to fight in nearby Quilizinapa (shown on the lienzo as a lake with a bird inside it to the right of Chimaltenango), Escuintla, and Petapa.68 On the lienzo, only a few armed confrontations or logographs are drawn in the area below the crossroads and to the left of Chimaltenango. Multiple pits lined with pointed sticks, Kaqchikel traps for the unsuspecting, are set, some with unfortunate victims inside. Two naturalistic trees may represent, in Assel67. See Borhegyi, “Estudio arqueológico”; Robinson and Pye, “Investigaciones en Rucal, Sacatepéquez”; and Perrot-Minnot, “Más antiguos que La Antigua.” Thanks to Walter Ortíz for these references, for guiding me through Pompeya and Los Terrenos, and for his ideas on the relations of these ruins to the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. 68. Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 97v-98r, testimony of don Pedro de Leon.

Indian Conquistadors / 103 Chimaltenango, whose glyph is a round shield topped by a wall. A Kaqchikel lord is hung directly above the glyph. Below the glyph is an unidentified ballcourt. At the right is a typical presentation of a Spaniard seated in a chair. The characteristic depiction of a river or stream is at the upper right, and the characteristic circular symbol for a market is at the upper left. Detail of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. Digital restoration Universidad Francisco Marroquín/Banco G&T Continental. © 2007 Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala. Images are available under the Creative Commons license Attribution-NoncommercialShare Alike.

bergs’s estimation, the forests where the Kaqchikel lords Kaji’ Imox and B’eleje’ K’at hid according to the Memorial de Sololá.69 The road winds south and then veers right to parallel the lower water border, which we can surmise also brings us back to the Pacific coast. At a battle site identified by Asselbergs as Pochutla, the Kaqchikel are attacked by dogs. Nearby, pineapples and a logograph surrounded by the symbol for a lake suggest that we are in the region of Escuintla and/or Lake Amatitlán. The center of the lienzo has inspired the most controversy. Quite clearly, it portrays the central valley of Guatemala surrounding and to the south of Chimaltenango. Asselbergs and Van Akkeren agree that the volcano is the Volcán de Agua, but they disagree on the location of Almolonga. Asselbergs identifies it as a large green circle lying approximately the same distance as Chimaltenango from the volcano on the other side, with a house, a pyramid, and a structure with stairs within it. Van Akkeren 69. Asselbergs, Conquered Conquistadors, 161, using the Otzoy translation of the Memorial de Sololá, 188–89.

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Spanish dogs attacking Kaqchikel at Pochutla while a Spaniard watches. Detail of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. Digital restoration Universidad Francisco Marroquín/Banco G&T Continental. © 2007 Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala. Images are available under the Creative Commons license Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike.

locates Almolonga in a more geographically plausible location where the town of Ciudad Vieja lies today, sandwiched closely between the Volcán de Agua to the southwest and the (now dry) Lago de Quilizinapa to the northeast. In this scenario, Chimaltenango represents due north on the lienzo. The prominence of the Volcán de Agua and the absence of any depiction of other major volcanoes in the area suggest that Agua was particularly significant to the Quauhquecholteca tlacuiloque. Van Akkeren wonders whether the depiction of Agua spewing debris specifically references the rains and landslide off the volcano that destroyed Santiago en Almolonga in 1541, while Asselbergs sees a typical stylization of an important landmark. In Mesoamerican understandings this mountain-volcano would have become a source of sacred power for the new colony of Almolonga, and a symbol of its birth as both settlement and political entity.70 70. Umberger, “Imperial Inscriptions,” 196, quoting López Austin, Tamoanchan, Tlalocan, 259: “When a town was established, the patron gods occupied hills or changed themselves into hills . . . Taking possession of a territory implied extending the different manifestations of divine force to it.”

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Center portion of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, with the Lago de Quilizinapa on the left (circle with bird) and Almolonga, according to Van Akkeren (market circle and thatched houses). At the center is the Volcán de Agua, with scenes of fighting. Almolonga, according to Asselbergs, is at the upper right (thatched huts and pyramid in circle). Digital restoration Universidad Francisco Marroquín/Banco G&T Continental. © 2007 Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala. Images are available under the Creative Commons license Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike.

At the top and center border of the lienzo, the tlacuiloque painted highland campaigns that followed the defeat of the Kaqchikel and the settlement of the valley of Guatemala by the invaders. Going left, or west, the road veers toward the Cuchumatanes mountains. Battles along this road are recorded at Tequicistlán (present-day Rab’inal) in the modern Guatemalan state of Baja Verapaz; Uspantlán and Sacapulas in modern El Quiché: and Aguacatán, Poymatlán (Santa Eulalia) and possibly Huehuetenango in modern Huehuetenango. Going right, or east, more battles ensue along the road until it falls away at the torn right edge of the lienzo. Other roads enter the surviving lienzo panels from the opposite direction, their origins lost with the missing section. At the bottom and center-right portion of the lienzo, multiple groups of tameme and slaves loaded down with goods travel to and from the missing panels on the torn right side. While both tameme and battle scenes appear in both the top and bottom halves of the surviving right-side panels, the proportions are inverse. The lienzo

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The Cuchumatanes at Tecolotlán, with scenes of fighting. Note the warrior costume, swords, and light skin of the Quauhquecholteca, versus the more primitive costumes, bows and arrows, and dark skin of the Maya. Detail of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. Digital restoration Universidad Francisco Marroquín/Banco G&T Continental. © 2007 Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala. Images are available under the Creative Commons license Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike.

thus agrees with documentary sources that from 1527 to 1529, the western highlands remained a contested battleground while the central highlands and the Pacific coast were more rapidly colonized by the invaders. Here, too, we can see the potential wealth that drew Nahuas, Oaxacans, and Spaniards to Central America in the first place, being carried back toward the central valley of Guatemala. Taking stock of the entire lienzo, we can return to our original question: how did the indigenous conquistadors, in this case Quauhquecholteca, view the conquest and their participation in it? First and foremost, the lienzo portrays the Quauhquecholteca as the main protagonists. This may seem obvious— isn’t everyone the hero of their own story?— but exactly how the Quauhquecholteca tlacuiloque communicated the idea is telling. The map physically marks the division of time before and after the conquest of Central America. Its left-hand side, representing probably a third of the entire lienzo and sewn on separately, is devoted to the places and peoples of the Quauhquecholteca’s ancient homeland in central

Indian Conquistadors / 107 The Pacific coast and the torn border of the lienzo. Note the tameme carrying goods into the heart of Central America led by a Spaniard on his horse and the pineapples indicating the changed tropical environment. The only African depicted in the lienzo appears at the top, center. Detail of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. Digital restoration Universidad Francisco Marroquín/Banco G&T Continental. © 2007 Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala. Images are available under the Creative Commons license Attribution-NoncommercialShare Alike.

Mexico and the events leading to their invasion of Central America. At this very seam, the passage into Guatemala is marked by an arrow through a tree, a sometime Mesoamerican ideogram for the transition from one time period to another.71 The events represented on the remaining twothirds of the lienzo all occur in Central America, and no one is shown returning to the “past.” The geographic and narrative center of the lienzo is the valley of Guatemala, where the Quauhquecholteca were based when they defeated the Kaqchikel, created their own colony, and quite possibly commissioned the lienzo. Many key sites portrayed in the lienzo are also mentioned in Spanish accounts of the conquest. However, the Quauhquecholteca emphasize the places important to their own story, like Retalhuleu, Chimaltenango, and the Volcán de Agua, while the Spanish focus on the official establishment of Spanish cities at Iximche’ and 71. Thanks to Michel Oudijk for this observation, June 2007.

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Almolonga. Nor do Spanish sources tend to mention landscape features painted on the lienzo such as sacred caves, markets, and ballcourts. Like many Mesoamerican migration stories, the lienzo’s narrative begins with a foundational event: the alliance between Hernando Cortés and the lords of Quauhquechollan. According to Díaz de Castillo, the Quauhquecholteca approached Cortés while he was stationed at Tepeacac in 1519–20, asking for his assistance in attacks against the Tenochca.72 Cortés later gave the town of Quauhquechollan in encomienda to Jorge de Alvarado, who leads the Quauhquecholteca warriors southward in the lienzo’s next scene. The native captains marching south with Alvarado wear the regalia of the highest military orders. As would the Xochimilca, Tlaxcalteca, and Acolhua in their own letters, petitions, and chronicles, the Quauhquecholteca here recall sending their finest, noblest warriors on this epic journey. The tlacuiloque maintained this distinction between captains and the Quauhquecholteca rank and file throughout, through costume, battle positioning, and the recurrence of a few key figures. Such distinctions clearly mattered to the tlacuiloque in the telling of the story. So did distinctions between the Quauhquecholteca and their Maya adversaries, who are portrayed with brown skin, simple weaponry like bows and arrows, and no shoes. Visually marking a difference between the conquered as primitives and the conquistadors as civilized is a common convention in Mesoamerican pictorials, seen for example in the fifteenthcentury sacrificial stones of Tenochca tlatoani and the sixteenth-century Lienzo de Tlaxcala. In these pictorials, as in the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, defeated peoples wear simple dress and wield uncomplicated weaponry. Costume and body painting also commonly distinguished Mesoamerican peoples from one another in the pictographic tradition, although the Spaniards’ and Quauhquecholteca’s matching skin tone seems an unusually strong assertion of their alliance in the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan (missing, for example, from two other recently studied pictorial depictions of European-Mesoamerican alliances, the Lienzo de Analco and the Mapa de Cuauhtlantzinco).73 The Quauhquecholteca-Spanish relationship in the lienzo is more complicated. We have already noted the original alliance between the lords of Quauhquechollan and Hernando Cortés, depicted as an agree72. Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera (ed. Barbón Rodríguez), 375. 73. See Yannakakis, “The Indios Conquistadores; and Wood, “Nahua Christian Warriors.”

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ment between partners. The Spanish do not force the Quauhquecholteca to serve them in this scene. Quite the opposite, the Quauhquecholteca literally embrace the Spanish and are empowered by them. In the fusion of the Habsburg coat of arms with the traditional Quauhquecholteca logograph, the eagle grips two Spanish swords. Quauhquecholteca warriors do the same in the lienzo’s battle scenes, reaffirming this sense of augmented power. The Quauhquecholteca’s opponents, meanwhile, continue to rely on traditional Mesoamerican weapons and are never shown using European technology. Clearly, the tlacuiloque viewed swords as a significant advantage gained by the Quauhquecholteca through their alliance with the Spanish. The Spanish, however, are mostly bystanders to these battles, which are directed and carried out entirely by Quauhquecholteca while the occasional Spaniard watches or travels between scenes. When Spaniards do militarily engage the Maya, they usually fight as individuals confronting isolated Maya figures, often from atop a horse along a road. In one scene near Santiago en Almolonga, a lone Spaniard fires a musket at several frightened or wounded Maya. In another scene near Chimaltenango, a Spaniard blows a trumpet. In the fierce campaigns of the western highlands in the upper part of the lienzo, Spaniards hardly appear at all. The tlacuiloque drew both parallels and distinctions between the Quauhquecholteca and their European allies. Both use swords. Both have light skin in contrast to most of their enemies; the only exception occurs in battle scenes preceding the army’s entrance into Guatemala at Retalhuleu. Here, the Quauhquecholteca fight alone without Spanish assistance, and their adversaries are drawn with the same light skin and similar though less ornate warrior costumes. (The logographs identifying where and against whom these early confrontations happened have not been deciphered. It may be that these were also Nahuatl-speaking peoples, and that their conquest was viewed somewhat differently from the conquest of Oaxacan or Maya groups.)74 But key differences also distinguish the Quauhquecholteca and Europeans from each other. The Spanish appear as they do in other sixteenth-century pictorial manuscripts, often riding 74. Although ethnicity in Mesoamerica was highly local, larger distinctions between peoples based on language and/or geography are simultaneously apparent in some codices. For instance, in the Mixtec Codice Zouche-Nutall, the Nahua peoples of central Mexico are identified with characteristic black paint around their eyes. This corresponds to the word in Mixtec for “mexicanos” in the 1593 Vocabulario en lengua Mixtec by Francisco de Alvarado, sami nuu, which means “burnt eye.” See Anders, Jansen, and Pérez Jiménez, Crónica Mixtec, 197; and Terraciano, Mixtecs, 331–32.

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horses or sitting in distinctive chairs. Only once does a Spaniard wear Mesoamerican warrior costume, as the original expedition departs from Quauhquechollan. In all other instances, the Spaniards’ beards and clothing set them apart from the Quauhquecholteca.75 Some of the characteristics assigned to the Spanish suggest, if not a strictly hierarchical relationship between the two parties, at the very least a place of honor for the newcomers. Jorge de Alvarado rather than a Quauhquecholteca captain leads the expedition out of central Mexico. Jorge de Alvarado also receives counsel from Quauhquecholteca pochteca before the expedition enters K’iche’ territory. Once in Guatemala, the figure of a Spaniard seated on his characteristic chair appears in multiple contexts: watching Quauhquecholteca drummers and dancers; observing (or perhaps supervising) the punishment of Kaqchikel by dogs; witnessing a battle; or seated in isolation, often near a stone structure. Overall, the lienzo’s message seems to be, “we entered Guatemala to battle the Kaqchikel and other peoples with our powerful allies the Spanish led by Jorge de Alvarado, under whose leadership we served, whose weapons contributed much to our success, and whose friendship we value.” But explaining the Quauhquecholteca-Spanish relationship is not the main aim of the lienzo. At its heart, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan tells how a group of Quauhquecholteca warriors founded a colony in the Guatemalan highlands, very likely the Parcialidad de Quahquechula in Almolonga/Ciudad Vieja. All the action on the left side of the lienzo— the alliance with Cortés, the march to the south, the entry into Guatemala, the initial battles with both rivals and enemies— leads to the central valley encircling the Volcán de Agua, where the Quauhquecholteca warriors and colonists would settle. All subsequent battles deeper into the western highlands, El Salvador, and presumably Honduras, depart from this same central valley, moving visually to the north, south, and east but never crossing back into Oaxaca or central Mexico. The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan tells a very Mesoamerican tale of migration, conquest, and settlement, a tale related to the myth-history of Tollan and repeated (with different geographies, historical details, and aims) in the K’iche’ Popol Wuj, the Tenochca Mapa de Sigüenza, the Cholulteca Mapa Cuauhtinchan No. 2, and the Kaqchikel Memorial de Sololá, among many other examples. Through war, Quauhquecholteca warriors subdued the native peoples of the cen75. See Boone, Stories in Red and Black, 229–36, for a general discussion of typical features of Spaniards in other pictorial documents.

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tral valley of Guatemala and settled in dominion over them— a dominion shared with their new allies, the Spanish.

The Sixteenth-Century Campaign for Privileges In return for their military and colonizing services, the indigenous conquistadors of Central America received privileges similar to those granted to Mesoamerican allies elsewhere. At least one Tlaxcalteca captain in Central America, Juan de Tascala, received half of the town of Citala and/or Siquinalá (possibly in the Escuintla region) in encomienda from Pedro de Alvarado.76 Similar grants of small Maya towns were granted to the allies collectively. Almolonga, for instance, received parcels of land for cultivation outside Santiago.77 In 1532, the Spanish queen officially exempted the “Indians from Mexico and Taxcala and their districts” living in Almolonga from the encomienda and repartimiento, thus freeing them from the obligation to pay tribute, food, and labor to individual Spaniards. The edict emphasized the allies’ singular status among the indigenous population as loyal vassals of the Spanish monarchy and vecinos (roughly translatable as “citizen-subjects”), a term associated with urban residence and normally reserved for Spaniards in the sixteenth century.78 The crown reaffirmed this edict as construction began on the new Santiago in the valley of Panchoy in 1543, again singling out those allies living in Ciudad Vieja.79 Spaniards and Nahuas alike regularly used the term policía—connoting urbanity, civilized comportment, and crucially, Christian conversion— to describe non-Maya allies in Spanish-language documents of the period. In medieval Iberia, writes historian Richard Kagan, the borderland towns between Christian and Muslim regions were “the vanguard of empire, their citizens tantamount to soliders enlisted in the great battle to further 76. AGI Justicia 296, “Segundo legajo de la Residencia del expresado Adelantado Don Pedro de Alvarado” (1537–39), ff. 80v and 87, testimony of Luys de Vivar; also AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 152–52v, testimony of Pedro Cerón; ff. 246v–49, testimony of Diego Lopez de Villanueva. 77. AGI Guatemala 168, “Carta de fray Francisco de la Parra al Rey Carlos V” (1549); Remesal, Historia general de las Indias, 1:99; see also Sherman, “Tlaxcalans,” 133–35. 78. AGCA A1.23, leg. 4575, f. 9, “No es aceptado el plan sobre dar en repartimiento a los indígenas Tlascaltecas y Mexicanos, asentados en las afueras de la ciudad” (1532); AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 198. 79. Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas, 67, quoting Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 3:224.

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the dominion of Christ . . . Similar arrangements pertained in the Indies where, once again, the town provided the antidote for what Spaniards perceived as an alien environment inhabited by hostile peoples. In this context the town, no matter how small, was synonymous with civic order, justice, and religion.”80 Many Spaniards seem to have associated the Nahuas and other non-Maya allies from Mexico with this same civilizing, Christianizing mission in early colonial Guatemala. Whether the allies lived within or immediately outside Spanish cities like Santiago and San Salvador, or as garrison forces pacifying the area around major conquered Maya cities like Totonicapán, many Spaniards distinguished them from the conquered peoples of Central America. In Chiapas, the Spanish-run city council of the villa that would become Ciudad Real requested in 1528 that 200 Nahua families be recruited to settle around the town, “because they would make up a large part of the population and maintenance of this villa and would serve in the pacification of all these lands.” Tellingly, as Gudrun Lenkersdorf points out, the request coincided with another concerning the local Maya: that city residents be formally allowed to round up and enslave them.81 A decade later, the Dominican fray Bartolomé de las Casas recruited some of the Nahua allies and their descendants to help him evangelize and pacify the Verapaz region.82 Alonso Poncé de León, a Spaniard living in Oaxaca, observed in 1548 that the natives of Mexico were more “diligent” and “intelligent” than those of Guatemala.83 The 80. Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 27; see also María Elena Martínez, “Space, Order, and Group Identities.” In AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, see for example ff. 244v (Francisco de la Cueva), 240v (Pedro Gonzáles Nájera), and also question 12 of the 1564 interrogation first noted on f. 40v: “Si saben que muchos años y tiempos que estan pobladas la çiudad de guatimala e la çiudad de sant salvador y villas de sant myguel y de la chuluteca que estan en la provinçia de guatimala que los d[ic]hos yndios e sus capitanes ayudaron a poblar e conquystar e paçificar donde se a sembrado la doctrina xpiana y los naturales de los thermy[n]os dellos son xpianos y tienen toda doctrina e puliçia en sus prinçipales çiudades y pueblos digan los testigos lo q[ue] saben.” For an example of local Maya also appropriating this language to assert their deservedness of good treatment under the colonial regime, see AGI Guatemala 53, “Ynformacion de servicios de don juan mexia cacique del pueblo de cuxutepeque” (1564), transcription in Asselbergs, Conquered Conquistadors, 271. 81. Lenkersdorf, Génesis histórica de Chiapas, 206. 82. Ximénez, Historia de la provincia, 238–39. 83. AGI Justicia 289, N. 2, “Las ciudades y villas de la provincia de Guatemala sobre la suplicación que interpone de la cédula que se dió para que no se alquilasen los indios de la dicha provincia por los encomenderos” (1548), 26.

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“mexicanos y taxcaltecas” were good Christians, reported Nicolás López de Ibarraga of Santiago in 1573, who lived upright, lawful lives in close contact with the Spanish, and whom he had “never seen . . . presenting a bad example to the natives [of this land].”84 Their customs and manner were distinct from those of Central American natives, said Pedro Gonzáles Nájera of Santiago, “like Spaniards.”85 Despite these approving comments from some of their Spanish allies, the Mesoamerican conquistadors’ position in the colony was by no means secure. Juan de Tascala’s encomienda was removed and reassigned by Pedro de Alvarado sometime before 1537, as were the towns collectively granted in encomienda to the “mexicanos y tlaxcaltecas” of Almolonga.86 The queen’s 1532 edict was issued in response to a request by local Spaniards that they be permitted to use the indigenous conquistadors as an urban labor force in Santiago. While exempting the allies from forced labor, the edict nonetheless required them to work of their own “goodwill” for Santiago’s maintenance.87 The indigenous conquistadors’ special status as vassals and vecinos did not make them equal to the Spanish conquistadors, who were never instructed to perform manual labor and who expected all such tasks to be done by native or African slaves. Las Casas, writing on behalf of the Nahua allies in 1543, reported that they were required to “construct fences for bullfights, sweep the plazas, go on long journeys with cargo and correspondence, and other works, as if they were conscripts, servants, and peons.” It was, he noted, only another kind of forced labor.88 The heterogeneity of the original allied forces, the various circumstances of their arrival in Central America, the constant addition of captured native slaves to their ranks, and the tendency to acquire new allies in conquered lands all served to complicate the position of the Nahua and 84. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 69v–70r. 85. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 241v. 86. AGI Justicia 295, “Residencia del Adelantado Pedro de Alvarado,” f. 87; Sherman, “Tlaxcalans,” 132–33; Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas, 70–71; AGI Guatemala 168, “Carta de fray Francisco de la Parra” (15 July 1549). 87. AGCA A1.23, leg. 4575, f. 9, “No es aceptado el plan sobre dar en repartimiento a los indígenas Tlascaltecas y Mexicanos, asentados en las afueras de la ciudad” (1532); Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas, 65. 88. Las Casas, Obras escogidas, 5:190, “Memorial de Fray Bartolome de las Casas y Fray Rodrigo de Andrada al Rey” (1543). This letter is reproduced in full in Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas, 67–68.

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Oaxacan conquistadors who remained as colonists. Not all the Nahuas and Oaxacans who migrated to Central America came as military allies, nor even of their own free will. When royal accountant Francisco de Zurrilla took possession of Juan de Espinar’s encomienda near Huehuetenango in 1530, for example, he brought with him around 100 Mixtecs to work alongside local Maya panning gold.89 Beginning in the 1530s, royal and local officials repeatedly charged that Nahua settlements and barrios had been infiltrated by Central American slaves or commoners who wanted to escape labor drafts and tribute payment.90 In Almolonga, it appears that a multicultural barrio of Maya slaves, naborías (migrants often used by the Spanish as laborers), allies and/or nobility coalesced near the Nahua settlements.91 As we will see, the issue of how to distinguish between Indian conquistadors and conquered Indians would continue to preoccupy Spanish bureaucrats throughout the colonial period. It would also be used to undermine the political power of nonlocal, non-Maya, usually Nahua allies throughout the region. But not only Spaniards worried about the problem of conquered Mesoamericans infiltrating settlements of “yndios conquistadores.” In 1587, the Nahua leaders of the Barrio de Taxcala and the Barrio de los Mexicanos outside Ciudad Real, Chiapas, accused their neighbor Domingo Pérez and his son Pedro Gómez of posing as Tlaxcalteca in order to gain tribute exemption. Despite the fact that he lived in the Tlaxcalteca barrio, they said, Pérez was a highland Maya slave from Guatemala who came to Chiapas in the service of the Spaniard Alonso de Aguilar. Pérez was examined by four different surgeon-barbers who testified that his beard hid a slave’s brand on his cheek. Numerous Mesoamerican witnesses also testified for the leaders of the Tlaxcalteca and Mexicano barrios. A K’iche’ Maya immigrant to Chiapas said that he, Pérez, and Pérez’s parents were all born in the K’iche’ barrio of Utatlán in Santiago de Guatemala, where 89. Kramer, Encomienda Politics, 217–20, taken from AGI Justicia 1031, R. 2, N. 1, “Juan de Espinar, vecino de la ciudad de Santiago de Guatemala, con el adelantado Pedro de Alvarado, gobernador de la misma provincia, sobre pago de 600 pesos” (1537). 90. See Sherman, “Tlaxcalans,” 126–27, using AGI Guatemala 41, “Carta de los consejos de las ciudades de Guatemala y Ciudad Real, y de las villas de San Salvador y San Miguel al Rey” (1539), ff. 3.3v; AGCA A1.23, leg. 4575, f. 118v, “Para que la Audiencia resuelve sobre la cancelación de tributos por parte de los yndios que auxiliaron a la conquista” (1552); AGI Guatemala 44B, N. 46 (3), “El cabildo de Gracias a Dios dictan las siguientes ordenanzas” (1560), f. 2r. 91. Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas, 63–64, 79.

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they had been neighbors before both he and Pérez came to Chiapas. An Acolhua from the Barrio de los Mexicanos said that when Pérez arrived in Chiapas he spoke only “guatimalteca populuca,” not Nahuatl. A woman named Ysabel Gutierrez said she and Pérez were both from Utatlán in Guatemala, and for this reason had treated each other “like family [como parientes]” in Chiapas. Gutierrez added that Pérez was bilingual in Nahuatl and K’iche’. All testified that Pérez had been Alonso de Aguilar’s slave, albeit a high-ranking one who had acted as Aguilar’s mayordomo. In their own defense, Pérez and Gómez insisted that Pérez had come from Tlaxcala to Guatemala and then to Chiapas. Otherwise, they said, he would not have been allowed to live in the Tlaxcalteca barrio (presumably he would have been expected to settle in the K’iche’ Maya barrio of Ciudad Real, called “Cuxtitali,” instead).92 Numerous Spanish and Mesoamerican witnesses vouched for the father and son, including a prominent Nahua captain named Juan Bautista who had served many years as the region’s tribute collector and had testified in other cases (including Justicia 291) concerning the indigenous conquistadors’ privileges.93 The final ruling in the dispute is lost. We do not know whether the accusation against Pérez and Gómez stemmed from a personal vendetta (as Gómez suggested), a legalistic concern to protect the reputation of the indigenous conquistador community in Chiapas, or a sincerely felt outrage on the part of the Nahua conquistadors that Pérez and Gómez were unworthy of the status they claimed. Several points are nevertheless notable. First, it was the Tlaxcalteca and other Nahua leaders, not Spanish authorities, who accused Pérez and Gómez of assuming Tlaxcalteca identity and avoiding tribute payment on false pretexts. Second, Spaniards and Mesoamericans alike accepted a clear division in this case between conquistador and conquered— a division that did not necessarily revolve around a distinction between Europeans and Mesoamericans. And third, all parties imagined an ideal situation in which this division would be reflected and maintained in the ethnically defined settlements of Mesoamerican colonists and immigrants founded in and around Spanish cities.94 92. Today Cuxtitali is a neighborhood of San Cristóbal de Las Casas whose K’iche’ origins are still remembered. See Vos, Vivir en frontera, 81. 93. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 217r; Lenkersdorf, Genesis histórico, 172; AGCA leg. 4675/exp. 40186, “Probanza de Diego Hernández Puertocarrero” (577), f. 6. 94. AGCA A3.16, leg. 2799/exp. 40482, “Probanza de Domingo Pérez, indio vecino del barrio de los tlaxcaltecas en Ciudad Real de Chiapa” (1587). See also a fragment of this

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The Spaniards involved in this late sixteenth-century dispute apparently accepted the underlying assertion that the Nahua settlers in Chiapas were conquistadors and the K’iche’ Maya were not. Such claims of privileged status by indigenous conquistadors, however, clearly rankled some Spanish colonists and bureaucrats, who viewed them as unwarranted and even offensive. As Pedro Escalante Arce has put it, even the term “Indian conquistador” so often utilized by the Nahuas and other allies “could wound sensibilities and exacerbate scruples” on the part of Spaniards in the Indies whose interests competed with those of Mesoamericans.95 Some, like Gregorio López in 1543, complained that the Nahua and other conquistadors from Mexico lorded over the native population of Guatemala with the cooperation of Maya caciques.96 Others accused the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors of association and intermarriage with Africans and conquered native migrants to the cities, roaming the streets as vagabonds engaged in criminal activity. In this view, the indigenous conquistadors were irrevocably polluted according to the Spanish standards of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood). The alleged vagabondage and criminality was not coincidental, but proof positive of the conquistadors’ degeneration into the emerging casta (mixed-heritage) population.97 Nor were the indigenous conquistadors exempt from the abuse and violence that threatened all Mesoamericans in colonial Central America, although these may have been somewhat mitigated in their case. Instances of their mistreatment appear scattered throughout sixteenth-century official reviews, called residencias or informaciones, of Spanish conquistadors and officials. In Honduras in 1544, an “indio mexicano” approached the conquistador Francisco de Montejo, bleeding after having been beaten. case in AGCA A1.15 leg. 4674/exp. 40164, “El fiscal contra Pedro Gomez. hijo de indio conquistador” (1587). 95. Escalante, Los tlaxcaltecas, 67. 96. Sherman, “Tlaxcalans,” 128, citing AGI Patronato 231, R. 4, “Información de Gregorio López” (1543). 97. AGI Guatemala 41, R. 4, “Carta de los consejos de las ciudades de Guatemala y Ciudad Real, y de las villas de San Salvador y San Miguel al Rey,” (1539), ff. 3–3v; AGCA A1.23, leg. 4575/f. 118v, “Para que la Audiencia resuelve sobre la cancelación de tributos por parte de los yndios que auxiliaron a la conquista” (1552); AGI Guatemala 44B, N. 46 (3), “El cabildo de Gracias a Dios dictan las siguientes ordenanzas” (1560). See also Sherman, “Tlaxcalans,” 127; and Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas, 65–67. On limpieza de sangre and its relationship to vagabondage in early colonial Spanish America, see María Elena Martínez, “Limpieza de sangre.”

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The offending Spaniard received only a verbal warning.98 Jufre de Loaysa, oidor (judge) of the judicial district of the Audiencia de Guatemala in the 1550s, was accused of using “mexicanos” from Ciudad Vieja as house servants and field laborers, without remuneration and violently enforced. The president of the Audiencia with whom Loaysa served, Juan Núñez de Landecho, was accused of similar abuses of the Nahua and Zapotec residents of Ciudad Vieja, including forcing them to carry his wife and on a separate occasion his African concubine on their shoulders in a litter for over six leagues.99 While not out of the ordinary by colonial Central American standards, these incidents demonstrate the extent to which the Mesoamerican allies’ status as conquistadors might be disregarded. The Nahuas and other allies of Ciudad Vieja complained vociferously about what they perceived as abuses of their position as conquistadors. In a 1547 letter to the crown, they claimed that despite their sacrifices and the “bad treatment” they had suffered at the hands of the Spaniards from “work and sickness and war,” over 400 of their party had been taken as slaves and were not heard from again. The rest of the community, they wrote, had been parceled out to provide labor to individual Spaniards. They asked the king for an order releasing them from all such subjection and reserving them from all tribute and forced labor. This communal letter, written on behalf of “those of Tlaxcala and all its provinces and the Mexicans with all their subjects, new vassals of your Majesty” living in the province of Guatemala, was followed by a letter from one “Francisco, vassal of your Majesty and native of Tlaxcala” and son of a Tlaxcalteca cacique Acxotecatl.100 Francisco, who had led a group of Tlaxcalteca war98. AGI Justicia 300, “Residencia de Francisco de Montejo” (1544), testimony of Hernán Sánchez de Alvarado, quoted in Sherman, “Tlaxcalans,” 135, n. 21. 99. AGI Justicia 322, “Visita que el Licenciado Francisco Briceño visitador, juez de Residencia, y Governador de la Provincia de Guathimala, tomó al Presidente, oydores, y demas oficiales de la Audiencia de Guathimala” (1563), ff. 28v–29, f. 347 question 14, and f. 347 question 15; and AGI Guatemala 111, N. 6, “Memorial que presenta la ciudad de Santiago de Guatemala al Consejo de Indias, sobre los excesos de los oidores de la Audiencia” (1557), f. 2v. 100. Francisco identifies his father as “Axotecatl y por nombre de pila Cristobal.” Escalante Arce (Los tlaxcaltecas, 72–73) considers this to be Acxotecatl Cocomitzi, who was son-in-law of Maxixcatzin, lord of Ocotelulco, one of the most powerful rulers in the confederation of Tlaxcala and an early ally of both Hernando Cortés and the first Franciscan evangelists. Acxotecatl Cocomitzi fought alongside Cortés and converted early to Christianity, but was infamously executed in 1527 for idolatry and the murder of one of his wives and their teenage son, Cristóbal. However, Axcotecatl’s baptismal name was not Cristóbal

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riors during Jorge de Alvarado’s 1527 campaign, said that he had expected to return to Tlaxcala as his father’s primary heir. Instead, as the conquest of Central America dragged on, Francisco received word that his siblings had assumed control of his share of the inheritance while he continued to be required for service in foreign lands. Reiterating the pleas of the first, collective letter, Francisco asked for restitution for all he had lost, and pledged his continued service to the crown.101 During this same period, in 1546 Nahua allies who had settled in Chiapas also traveled to the seat of the Audiencia in Gracias a Dios to deliver a petition asking that the privileges due them as conquistadors be upheld.102 The tenuousness of the indigenous conquistadors’ situation was exacerbated by President Alonso López de Cerrato’s implementation of the New Laws outlawing native slavery in the Audiencia de Guatemala in 1549. In that year, Cerrato freed some 3,000 to 5,000 Mesoamerican slaves in the Santiago area, many of whom had been forcibly relocated from other areas of the Audiencia and spoke a variety of native languages. Cerrato’s actions outraged many Spanish holders of encomiendas and increased tensions over claims to land and native labor. A flurry of local and royal decrees followed, which attempted to redirect and regulate the ex-slaves’ labor and tributary potential. These included a 1552 law outlawing vagabondage, and another in 1559 insisting that fair wages be paid to native laborers with no tax taken out. Also in 1559, in recognition of the hardships caused the ex-slaves by their former condition, the crown exempted them from personal service and tribute for a period of three years, after which time like his murdered son’s, but Gonzalo (see Gibson, Tlaxcala, 35–37). In later testimony for the Spaniard Antonio Núñez, Francisco (now known as Francisco de Oñate) again named his father as “don xpobal axcotecatl,” and noted, as he had alluded to in the earlier 1547 letter, that his father had sent him to Guatemala as part of a 600-strong Tlaxcalteca contingent brought to Guatemala by Hernando de Yllescas and Jorge de Alvarado in 1526; see AGI Patronato 62, R. 3 “Antonio Nuñez, vecino de Santiago de Guatemala, solicita un repartimiento” (1559–78), ff. 42–42v. The timing thus allows for Oñate’s father to be Axcotecatl Cocomitzi, but this is called into question by Oñate’s consistent references to his father as “Cristóbal.” Or perhaps Oñate’s father was Aexotecatl Quetzapopocatzin, the brother of Maxixcatzin; see Gibson, Tlaxcala, 202. In any case, there is no reason to doubt that Oñate was indeed of noble Tlaxcalteca descent and probably from Ocotelulco, where his family remained part of the highest nobility of the tequitl of Santa María Magdalena in 1557; see Rojas, Padrones de Tlaxcala, 101. 101. AGI Guatemala 52, “Carta de los yndios Tlaxcalteca y mexicanos al Rey sobre ser maltratados” (1547). 102. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 198.

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tribute could recommence. This ruling became vitally important to the indigenous conquistadors living in Ciudad Vieja in 1562, when the royal fiscal (public officer) serving under President Landecho attempted to collect tribute from them on the basis of the 1559 cédula (decree).103 As the indigenous conquistadors clearly realized, the official denial by the fiscal of any distinction between ex-slaves and ex-conquistadors threatened the very basis of their status in the colony. In response, they launched a campaign that superseded any of their previous efforts to secure a privileged place in Central American colonial society. This fight for privileges, initiated in the first weeks of 1564, produced the remarkable probanza archived as Justicia 291. On 18 January 1564, the principales (leading officials or men of standing) of Ciudad Vieja presented a petition to royal officials on behalf of the “yndios mexicanos conquistadores” requesting that tribute exemption be reinstated and guaranteed to them and to their descendants in perpetuity on the basis of their alliance with the Spanish crown during the conquest. The surviving documentation from this petition spans fourteen years (1564–1578) and includes over 800 pages of bureaucratic formulas, interrogations of witnesses, and royal pronouncements.104 Copies of a number of royal edicts pertaining to the case are provided. Witnesses include Nahua captains and foot soldiers who joined the conquest at various points in time; Spanish conquistadors who fought alongside and were assisted by the allies; and Spanish vecinos who could attest to the indigenous conquistadors’ service and reputation in Central America. The document is most obviously valuable for the information it provides about the conquest and settlement of Central America from both Spanish and Mesoamerican viewpoints, much of which is reflected earlier in this chapter. But just as important is the history of the document itself: its travels, participants, patterns, and trappings. Justicia 291 is divided into three sections. Two principales from Ciudad Vieja—the Tlaxcalteca don Francisco de Oñate (the same Francisco Acxotecatl, now with a Christian surname, who wrote the crown in 1547), and the “mexicano” don Juan de Tapia— presented the original petition, 422 pages long, to judicial authorities in 1564. It includes copies of the 103. Sherman, Forced Native Labor, 196, 214; Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas, 75–78. 104. Sixteenth-century Spanish notation counted single, two-sided pages as folios, each with a front called the recto (r) and a back, the verso (v). Justicia 291 contains 423 folios and thus approximately 846 pages. I am greatly indebted to Deanna Matthew for reproducing Justicia 291 from microfilm to paper, and to Christopher Lutz and Michel Oudijk for generously sharing their own transcriptions of Justicia 291 with me.

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queen’s 1532 edict exempting the indigenous conquistadors from being assigned to the repartimiento (labor draft) or to encomiendas, the king’s reaffirmation of this in 1543, the edict temporarily relieving ex-slaves from tribute from 1559, and the testimony of 29 witnesses— 22 Spaniards and 7 Nahuas— from Huehuetlán (Xoconusco), Santiago de Guatemala, Gracias a Dios and Valladolid/Comayagua (Honduras), San Salvador (El Salvador), and Ciudad Vieja, which took six months to collect. During this period, the Spanish court assigned Joan de Arguyo as defensor de los naturales in the case. In September 1564, the Spanish defensor Diego Ramírez submitted a separate petition from the “yndios conquistadores” living in the barrios of Santo Domingo and San Francisco in Santiago. It appears that the two cases merged in the fall of 1564, with Ramírez continuing to represent all the indigenous allies while Arguyo was reappointed to represent the royal fiscal. (Confusingly but not atypically for the Spanish colonial judicial system, Arguyo would again appear on behalf of the indigenous conquistadors during the second phase of litigation in the 1570s.) The governor of the province of Guatemala at the time, Francisco de Briceño, received closing statements from Ramírez and Arguyo in November 1564. In January 1565, Briceño ruled that the case be forwarded to the Council of the Indies within a year’s time and that the indigenous conquistadors should continue to pay tribute until a definitive ruling was made. The conquistadors’ petition was assigned to a representative serving the Council of the Indies, Juan de la Peña, and delivered to him in Spain sometime in 1565.105 De la Peña presented the case for consideration before the Council of the Indies in Madrid within days of the one-year deadline for submission, on 21 January 1566. Meanwhile, a delegation of five principales from Ciudad Vieja— don Francisco de Oñate, don Juan de Tapia, don Antonio Ceynos, Pedro Hernández, and Domingo Hernández—traveled to Mexico Tenochtitlan in the summer of 1566 to protest Briceño’s order that the Nahua and Oaxacan allies continue to pay tribute until the council in Spain reached a decision.106 Their attempt to have Briceño’s ruling overturned, handled by yet another Spanish defensor in the Mexican court named Juan de Salazar, was swiftly denied. 105. In 1572, Juan de la Peña was a lawyer for the Council of the Indies and resident, it appears, in Madrid; see Falla, Extractos de escrituras publicas, 1:159, “Juan de Rojas, vecino, otorgó poder a su hermano Graviel de Rojas.” 106. AGI Patronato 231, N. 4 R. 14, “Traslado de la ejectoria dada en la rreal audiencia de mexico en favor de los yndios mexicanos con el alvarado en la rreal audiencia de guatemala” (1571); see discussion by Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas, 77–80.

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The second and third sections of Justicia 291 resulted from the Council of the Indies’s ruling, five years later in February 1571, that the indigenous conquistadors had not proven their case and should continue paying tribute to royal officials in Guatemala. Subsequently, their representatives in Spain petitioned the council several more times to have the case reconsidered. In March 1572, the council agreed, and one year later, in March 1573, King Philip II issued a decree granting “certain Indians of this province [Guatemala] who came from New Spain to help in the conquest” two more years for the preparation of a new set of documents supporting their case and ordering that the privilege of tribute exemption be honored.107 The second part of the document thus consists of a new probanza, 388 pages long, compiled by the leaders of Ciudad Vieja in 1573.108 It is followed by a third section with its own numeration that summarizes the response of every witness to each of the second interrogation’s questions. The final outcome of the case is not provided. The most immediately striking aspect of Justicia 291 is its sheer bulk and breadth: not only in the number of pages, but also how many witnesses are called, the management of multiple interrogations across Central America, the amount of money and energy spent to sustain the case over so many years, and an impressive system of communications across Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Chiapas, Mexico, and Madrid. In each place, local and royal officials coordinated the effort with those handling the case from Santiago and Ciudad Vieja. Scribes, lawyers, and carriers had to be paid, and some of their charges are scattered throughout the text. One series of supporting documents cost the principales of Ciudad Vieja 560 maravedís, at approximately 48 maravedís a page; a common laborer’s wage in 1552 was around 12 maravedís a day.109 Despite some expenses being borne by royal officials and their offices as dictated by Spanish law, then, the cost of the case to the indigenous conquistadors must have been significant, particularly in those years when they were also paying tribute according to Briceño’s ruling.

107. AGCA A1.23, leg. 4575/fol. 361 (1573), “Que los indígenas de México goçen de algunas merçedes.” 108. This section of Justicia 291 is duplicated in AGI Contratación 4802, “Probanza de los indios conquistadores de Guatemala y San Salvador” (1573), which has been extensively analyzed in Martínez Baracs, “Colonizaciones tlaxcaltecas”; Martínez Baracs and Sempat Assadourian, Tlaxcala; and Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas. 109. Sherman, Forced Native Labor, 195.

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Also impressive is the list of witnesses who testified on the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors’ behalf, which includes some extremely wellknown and powerful Spaniards in early colonial society. Gonzalo Ortíz, for instance, was an original Spanish conquistador, encomendero, and vecino of Santiago who, beginning in 1530, had served the city in a number of capacities. He spent time in Spain in the 1540s serving as Santiago’s representative to the Council of the Indies. At the time of his testimony he was a municipal councilman. Álvaro de Paz did not participate in the conquest, but arrived in Guatemala from Castile in the early 1530s and became a close ally of Pedro de Alvarado, acting as his lawyer and majordomo until Alvarado’s death. He was briefly granted half of Alvarado’s encomienda of Totonicapán, held other encomiendas in Guatemala and Honduras, and was an active figure in Santiago’s government in the 1560s. Other witnesses— such as Francisco Castellón, Juan Gómez, Juan de Aragón, Pedro de Ovid, Pedro Gonzáles Nájera, Alonso de Loarca, and Diego López de Villanueva— were all conquistadors who came to Guatemala with either Pedro or Jorge de Alvarado, and were well-known members of the Spanish community in Central America. All of these Spaniards testified in support of the Mesoamerican conquistadors’ petition in 1564. In 1573, the witness list of Spaniards was pared down to a core group of four (Gonzáles Nájera, Paz, Loarca, and Villanueva) plus one impressive addition: don Francisco de la Cueva, cousin of Pedro de Alvarado’s wife doña Beatríz de la Cueva, lieutenant governor of Guatemala in 1540–41, husband of Alvarado’s daughter and heir doña Leonor, and one of the richest and most influential Spaniards in Guatemala. The pride with which the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors recalled their service to the crown and the equality they claimed with their Spanish co-conquistadors is evident throughout Justicia 291. In the first half of the document, this equality is more assumed than asserted. While in 1547 the principales of Ciudad Vieja had complained to the crown that the Spanish treated them “not as sons, but made us their slaves and tributaries,” in 1564 they made no such admission. Instead, the Nahua principales noted that before the Landecho administration they had never paid any kind of tribute, had always lived as free persons in the manner of Spaniards, and had received nothing for their service to the crown, for which reason they and their descendants remained penniless and stranded in Central America. The 1564 interrogation in support of these claims consisted of twenty questions that specified the indigenous conquistadors’ contribution to the conquest, rhetorically tracing their route from Mexico to

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Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Witnesses were asked to describe the conquistadors’ actions: their recruitment of armies, abandonment of families, and specific types of service as warriors and auxiliaries. This mirrored the probanzas of the Spanish conquistadors seeking recompense in the sixteenth century for their services in the conquest. Indeed, Justicia 291 is a standard probanza de méritos y servicios of the collectivity of Mesoamerican conquistadors in Central America. That the principales would adopt this formula rather than a humble petition directly addressed to the crown (such as was being composed by their Maya neighbors living in and around Santiago de Guatemala at the time) is itself an indication of the position they wished to assume, or preserve, in colonial society. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Justicia 291, however, is how the petitioners defined and interpreted the term “Indian conquistador” as the case made its way through the early colonial bureaucracy. In January of 1564, Oñate, Tapia, and their representatives claimed only to speak for the “yndios mexicanos e conquystadores que estamos poblados en la Ciudad Vieja [we the Mexicano conquistador Indians who are living in Ciudad Vieja].” In this initial presentation of their case, the ethnically diverse group of Oñate, Tapia, and the other principales used the moniker “mexicano” to cover all Nahuas living in Ciudad Vieja. They did not explicitly include Nahua colonists living in other parts of Central America, nor the Zapotec and Mixtec conquistadors who also settled in Ciudad Vieja, nor the Kaqchikel, Achi’, or other Maya allies who joined various campaigns organized from within Central America (some of whom had apparently also settled in or near Ciudad Vieja).110 As supporting documents were gathered over the course of the spring and summer, however, the scope of the case began to broaden. Oñate and Tapia asked permission to seek out witnesses in Nahua garrison colonies in Xoconusco, San Salvador, and Comayagua. These “other parts [otras partes]” were then incorporated into the petition, which now represented a regional effort of all the “mexicanos y tlaxcaltecas” who had fought and settled in Central America, represented by Oñate, Tapia, and the other principales of Ciudad Vieja. 110. See AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 241v, testimony of Álvaro de Paz; Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas, 64–65, 86; Lutz, Historia socio-demográfica, 89–90, 112; Dakin and Lutz, Nuestro pesar, 102–3. The probanza of Diego de Rojas mentions the assistance of warriors from Totonicapán in the fight against the Kaqchikel in 1524; it is unclear whether these were Nahua who we know remained in Totonicapán to secure the area after the initial invasion earlier that year; K’iche’ Maya; or a combination of both. See Kramer, Encomienda Politics, 55.

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The closest possible reference to non-Nahuas in this first petition, very vague, appears in question three of the 1564 interrogation presented that spring and summer: “Do you know that the said Pedro de Alvarado in the said conquests and settlements brought with him many Indians who were Mexicanos, Tlaxcaltecas, and of other languages, and with these he also brought the captains contained in the first question and many others who for being so many are not named here?”111 None of the seven Nahua witness (all of whom were from Xoconusco and Honduras) mentioned any Maya allies in their response to this question, or in any of their other testimony. Only one, from Xoconusco, mentioned allies from Oaxaca. By contrast, many Spanish witnesses testifying on the indigenous conquistadors’ behalf noted their alliance not only with Nahuas but also with Zapotec, Mixtec, and even “guatimalteca” conquistadors. This was especially true of Spanish witnesses living in the cities of San Salvador, Valladolid (Comayagua), and Gracias a Dios, where many highland Maya warriors had fought against local groups of Pipil and Lenca. By introducing non-Nahuas into the petition, these Spaniards may have unwittingly undermined the Ciudad Vieja Nahuas’ cause. As was true in Chiapas in 1587, when Domingo Pérez’s status as a conquistador hinged on whether or not he was “Tlaxcalteca” or “K’iche’,” to be labeled “Guatimalteca,” “Mixtec,” or “Zapotec” in Justicia 291 seems to have been considered clearly less prestigious, and less secure, than to be associated with the Nahua populations of central Mexico. The Spanish fiscal’s representative Arguyo ignored Oñate and Tapia’s very clear self-identifications as “mexicanos,” “taxcaltecas,” and “conquistadores.” Instead, Arguyo identified Oñate and Tapia only by their first names, as “Indians” living in Ciudad Vieja, and as representatives of “the rest of the Zapotec and Guatimalteca Indians.” These omissions and mischaracterizations appear too pointed to have been coincidental. Arguyo seems to have assumed that the Tlaxcalteca and so-called Mexicanos would more likely be recognized by Spanish colonial authorities as loyal allies and co-conquistadors than the Zapotecs and local Maya. The best strategy, therefore, was to deny Oñate and Tapia’s origins and misconstrue what groups they represented. Perhaps in response to Arguyo, an important shift occurred on 21 Octo111. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 38r, “Si saben que el dho don pedro de alvarado para las dhas conqystas y poblaçiones traxo consigo muchos yndios mexicanos taxcaltecas y de otras lenguas y entre ellos traxo los capitanes conthenydos en la primera pregunta y otros muchos que por ser prolixo no se ponen aquy digan lo que saben.”

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ber 1564, when the defensor Ramírez presented his final arguments along with all the interrogations gathered over the previous six months to the court in Santiago de Guatemala. For the first time, the principales of Ciudad Vieja explicitly named the Zapotec and “guatimalteca” conquistadors as co-petitioners in the case.112 No explanation was given for the change. The Nahuas continued to always be listed first, and Ramírez sometimes failed to mention the non-Nahua indigenous conquistadors in his many dealings with the court between October 1564 and January 1565. Nevertheless, Zapotecs and local Maya were identified alongside the “mexicanos y tlaxcaltecas” as fellow conquistadors in Mexico City in 1566, when the delegation of four principales from Ciudad Vieja attempted to overturn Briceño’s ruling that they continue paying tribute while the case was being heard in Spain. The inclusion of non-Nahua conquistadors, including unspecified Guatemalan Maya, in the petition in November 1564 suggests an intentional strategy rather than a thoughtless or careless addition.113 Whether by design or by fiat, the case had significantly expanded nine months after its original presentation to regional judges in Santiago in early 1564. But the petition’s inclusiveness was short-lived. After the Council of the Indies rejected the original petition in 1571, the principales of Ciudad Vieja appear to have rethought their strategy once again. The new probanza created in 1573 drew a line in the sand: the Guatimaltecas disappeared from the petition, while the Zapotecs and Mixtecs remained. The second probanza emphasized a single, central claim, taken for granted in 1564, that the Nahua and Oaxacan petitioners were superior to the peoples they had conquered and equal to the Spanish with whom they had allied. The point was emphasized many times over, as twenty questions were pared down to seven and the testimony of only 9 witnesses— as opposed to 29 in 1564— was reiterated almost verbatim and several times over. Both Spanish and Nahua witnesses testified on behalf of the Indian conquistadors’ claims in April 1573. They repeated the exercise between November 1573

112. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, f. 29v. 113. AGI Patronato 231, f. 9v. For the Spanish in early colonial Guatemala, “Guatimalteca” most specifically referred to the Kaqchikel. In Justicia 291 it appears to be a more generalized term, for elsewhere in the testimony other highland Maya groups like the Achi’ are mentioned as allies. It may also (or rather) have referred to a specific group of Kaqchikel living in adjacent settlements to the Nahuas and Oaxacans of Ciudad Vieja, who claimed to have been conquistadors in a letter to the Spanish crown in 1575. See Dakin and Lutz, Nuestro pesar, 30–35, 102–5; AGI Guatemala 54, “Los indios que eran esclavos” (1575), f. 26.

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and February 1574. In these later interrogations only the names of the individual conquistadors changed, according to the colony to which they belonged. In contrast to the travels and coordination of earlier petitions, all interrogations took place in Santiago or Ciudad Vieja. In addition, the imbalance between Spanish and Nahua witnesses was practically erased in both rank and number. From the emerging center of colonial power in Central America, four caciques from Ciudad Vieja spoke for all the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors living in Ciudad Vieja, Valladolid (Comayagua) in Honduras, San Salvador, and the Nahua barrio of San Francisco in Santiago. All were original conquistadors reputedly now approaching or in their seventies: don Antonio Ceynos from Tlaxcala, Diego Elías from Coyoacan, Diego de Galicia from Cholula, and Juan Pérez Tlapaltecatl from the Chinampa town of Huitzilopochco.114 They were not foot soldiers or latecomers, as many of the Nahua witnesses had been in 1564. Nor did they come from distant regional outposts in Central America. Instead, they were leading members of the most important garrison colony of indigenous allies in Central America, captains, and original conquistadors. They were, in fact, the Nahua counterparts of the Spanish witnesses— Gonzáles Nájera, Paz, Loarca, Villanueva, and de la Cueva— who were also original conquistadors and/or leading members of their own European community. (It might also be argued that with the exception of de la Cueva, the Nahua and Spanish conquistadors were counterparts in a less gratifying way. All were in the position, in the 1560s and 1570s, of defending their gains made during the military conquest from expropriation by the Spanish crown and local colonial bureaucrats.)115 The presentation and tone of the petition also changed in this later phase. In 1564, Oñate and Tapia presented the original petition and its supporting materials by themselves. In 1573, nine principales of Ciudad Vieja accompanied them to Santiago’s municipal building to submit the second set of interrogations. Whereas the 1564 probanza focused on the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors’ actions, the 1573 probanza emphasized their individual and shared qualities as nobility, conquistadors and allies, and nonslaves. Question two, for instance, sought to establish that the Nahua 114. Juan Pérez’s last name is variously spelled in the document as “Tlapaltecatl,” “Tlapalteca,” and “Tlaxcaltecatl.” His birthplace is always listed as “Mexico,” with one mention of the town “Huitzilipulco,” which most likely refers to Huitzilopochco outside Coyoacan. 115. See Schroeder, “Introduction: The Genre of Conquest Studies.”

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and Oaxacan conquistadors had never paid tribute nor been obligated “like other Indians” to personal service, but had always been treated like “Spanish vassals.” Questions three and four linked Spanish custom, which did not require Spaniards and “natives of the kingdom of Castile living in the Indies” to pay tribute or be obligated to labor, to similar pre-Columbian laws that exempted nobility and conquistadors from the same burdens. The Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors were all “warriors,” “nobles,” and “lords” who had been carefully selected to participate in the conquest.116 Each of them was a conquistador or “legitimate son” of a conquistador by the terms of both pre-Columbian law and the law of the Catholic church. As had been the case in pre-Columbian times, said the Nahua witnesses in the 1583 probanza, they and their children expected to enjoy the benefits of their high social rank in their adopted homeland. The Nahuas and Zapotecs were, according to the Cholulteca conquistador Diego de Galicia, more intelligent and capable (“más curiosa y abil”) than Central American peoples and were recognized and respected as such by them. Who, then, was an Indian conquistador? The 1573 probanza specifically named 209 conquistadors and their sons, in three lists. The first and longest, with 98 names in total, was presented by don Francisco de Oñate and don Juan de Tapia to the court in Santiago without specifying to what location the list referred. It seems likely that this list came from Ciudad Vieja itself. Forty-seven names seem to represent the second generation of Nahua and Oaxacan colonists and appear without ethnic appellation. Their fathers (some deceased) and others from the first generation of original conquistadors were separated into four broad groups in the following order: 20 Mexicanos, 8 Tlaxcalteca, 11 Cholulteca, and 12 Zapotecs. A similar but distinct list from Valladolid (Comayagua) provided the names of 29 second-generation sons of conquistadors (15 labeled as Tlaxcalteca, 11 as Mexicanos, and 3 as Zapotecs) plus 23 original conquistadors (10 Tlaxcalteca, 9 Mexicanos, and 4 Zapotecs). Here, the Tlaxcalteca, listed first, outnumbered both those labeled Mexicanos and those labeled Zapotecs. Many more of the first generation were still alive, reflecting both the later dates of the Honduran campaigns and a more prominent Tlaxcalteca presence than in earlier invasions of Central America. Finally, a third combined list from San Salvador and the Barrio de San Francisco in Santiago named 59 indigenous conquistadors who were not divided by ethnicity or generation, but were collectively identified only as “mexicanos, tax116. In Spanish, “gente de guerra,” “nobles y principales.”

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caltecas, zapotecas, y sus consortes.”117 The Mixtecs as well as many other groups (the Otomi, the Xochimilca, the Quauhquecholteca, etc.) did not explicitly appear as such in these lists. They were, however, mentioned in the witness testimonies, and were clearly included in the larger community of “indios conquistadores.” One senses that such long individualized lists were designed to impress rather than to delimit. They constituted a collective but not exhaustive statement of strength in both numbers and status. Nor did the collective pursuit of privileges prevent individuals from doing the same. The Tlaxcalteca conquistador Antonio Oçuma and his son Baltasar Oçuma of Ciudad Vieja, for instance, petitioned for individual tribute exemption in 1572 but do not appear individually named in Justicia 291.118 By contrast, the “guatimalteca” Maya allies were not only excluded from any description of the “yndios conquistadores,” but by their exclusion became part of a conquered population portrayed as inferior and even dangerous— “so bellicose,” according to Francisco de la Cueva, that the region could not have been pacified without the invading allies’ help.119 The second probanza suggests a new level of urgency on the part of the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors to make their case. In the end, their expectations were not fully met. In 1574, the king revoked the 1532 cédula exempting them from the encomienda, saying that many Indian ex-slaves had attempted to pass as conquistadors in order to avoid paying tribute, and that only the original conquistadors could therefore claim exemptions from forced labor obligations. In 1575, the Spanish fiscal noted that of the Indians living around Santiago that used to be slaves, “some came from Mexico,” avoiding labeling them conquistadors and not quite distinguishing them from ex-slaves either.120 Three years later, in 1578, the indigenous conquistadors’ petition had still not been resolved, and was being handled 117. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 297r-98r. 118. AGCA A1.15 leg. 4100/exp. 32505, “Francisco Vasquez yndio contra Bartolome García yndio de la Ciudad Vieja sobre aberle hurtado dos caballos que tenia en el campo” (1616). The probanza is for Bartolome García’s grandfather and father, Antonio and Baltasar Oçuma, who were granted individual tribute exemption by Jufre de Loaysa on 14 May 1572. A fascinating mention occurs in the bureaucratic language, once the ruling is official: the Oçumas are at one point said by the scribe to be part of the “parcialidad de los mexicanos tlascaltecas y mistecas” (f. 49v). 119. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 235v (Ciudad Vieja), 297r–98r (San Salvador and Barrio de San Francisco), 340v–43 (Comayagua). For the quote from de la Cueva, see f. 243r. 120. AGI Guatemala 10, R. 2, N. 20, “Carta de Hernando Caballero, fiscal de la Audiencia de Guatemala” (12 March 1575). Thanks for Tony Pasinski for this reference.

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by yet another set of Spanish officials in Santiago and Spain. In 1598, residents of Ciudad Vieja were obligated to labor at public works in Santiago alongside their Kaqchikel neighbors from San Antonio Aguascalientes. In 1605, the officials of Ciudad Vieja paid some of the highest tributes in the valley of Guatemala. According to eighteenth-century officials in Ciudad Vieja, their privileges as Indian conquistadors were not finally established until 1 September 1639, apparently with a decree that the Indian conquistadors “from Mexico, Tascala, and other parts” and their direct descendants in Guatemala pay only a fixed and reduced amount of monetary tribute and be exempt from all personal service.121 It would be easy to agree with Charles Gibson in his work on the Tlaxcalteca allies in central Mexico and to describe the strenuous efforts of the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors and colonists of Central America to gain formal, permanent recognition for their services as a failed enterprise. The privileges accorded them as a result of their sixteenth-century campaign were not unique in the Spanish colonial world. Native elites requested tribute relief, coats of arms, permission to ride horses, and other signs of recognition and reward from the Spanish crown throughout Mesoamerica, in the sixteenth century and beyond. All this was based on their noble heritage as “first settlers and conquistadors [de los primeros pobladores y conquistadores]”— a claim that could refer to a family’s preColumbian heritage, the conquest period, or both.122 After committing thousands of men to the conquest of Central America and expecting their 121. I have not yet been able to locate the cédula from 1639. It is clear, however, from later documentation that by 1639 and perhaps somewhat earlier, the descendants of the Nahua and some Oaxacan conquistadors were not paying the same tribute as other Mesoamericans in the region. See for example AGCA A3.16, leg. 825/exp. 15225 (1638), “Don Pablo Guzmán de Petapa pide exoneración de tributo”; AGCA A3.16, leg. 1587/exp. 10231/fol. 156 (1730), “Se exonere a los indígenas del barrio de los Mexicanos de Sonsonate”; AGCA A3.16, leg. 235/exp. 4668 (1735), “Razón de los tributos que deben pagar los 75 pueblos barrios etc. del valle de Guatemala”; and AGCA A1.12, leg. 154/exp. 3073 (1799), “Los justicias y principales del pueblo de Almolonga sobre no trabajar en el Hospitál de San Juan.” This last document suggests that paperwork from the 1639 decision was safeguarded along with the original petition in Ciudad Vieja; this is corroborated by U.S. ambassador John Lloyd Stephens, who visited Ciudad Vieja in 1839–40; see Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, 1:282. For the public works from 1598, see AGCA A1.15, leg. 4087/exp. 32420, “Proceso criminal de Juan Horozco de Ayala” (1598); for tribute payments, see AGI Guatemala 63, “Ynformación secreta de Capitán don Francisco Criado de Castilla” (1605). 122. For example, AGI Guatemala 59, “Testimonio . . . que me entrego don Bernabe Guerra yndios natural de Chiapa y governador” and “Don Rodrigo de Leon yndio prin-

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equal share of the spoils, however, the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors found themselves struggling instead to differentiate themselves from the conquered. And after decades— indeed, generations— of costly legal battles, they only managed a partial exemption from tribute, which would be unevenly implemented in subsequent years. Still, the privileges granted to the indigenous conquistadors of Central America were not insignificant. They were collective rather than individual, applying to all Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors in Central America whether from Ciudad Vieja, Totonicapán, Chiapas, Xoconusco, San Salvador, San Miguel, or any other major settlement. Monetary obligations were confined to the servicio de tostón (a head tax imposed by the crown in 1589, which in the Guatemalan records is sometimes rather confusingly and incorrectly referred to as the alcabala), so that the indigenous conquistadors were required to provide only a fraction of what others paid. In 1788, for example, while the “mexicano y tlaxcalteca” residents of Ciudad Vieja paid 4.5 reales per tributary to the Audiencia, their Kaqchikel neighbors in San Miguel Escobar paid 11.5 and the Poqomam tributaries of San Miguel Petapa, 17.5.123 Additional taxes imposed on the indigenous conquistadors in later years— for instance, a military tax in either money or kind (the almud de soldados or de Granada), and a community tax— were usually not differentiated from those paid by other Indians, but the original exemptions remained unchanged. Perhaps most crucially, the indigenous conquistadors received their privileges in perpetuity, to be applied to all their descendants.

cipal de Chiapas pide ayuda de costa” (1603); AGI Guatemala 116, N. 62, “Información de Cristóbal Arias” (1581); AGCA A1.15, leg. 4678/exp. 40252, “Merecimientos y servicios de indio Juan de Rosales, cacique de Sta Cruz Utatlan, y de sus antepasados (1603); and AGI Contaduría 983A, “Noticia individual de las encomiendas de yndios” (1664); AGCA A1.15, leg. 2801/exp. 40498, “Juan Canel, indio principal de San Bartolome, estancia del pueblo de Atitlan, solicita se le exonere de tributación” (1605); AGCA A1.29, leg. 5452/ exp. 46774, “Merecimientos de algunos indios principales de Rabinal” (1609); AGCA A1.24.15, leg. 4646/exp. 39606, “De amparo de privilegios y fueros a favor del indigena Pedro Tomas Garcia, San Juan Amatitlan” (1669); AGCA A1.29, leg. 205/exp. 4985, “Documentos de algunos caciques de Santa Cruz del Quiche” (1730); AGI Contaduría 983A, “Noticia individual de las encomiendas de yndios” (1664), f. 22. See also Casteñeda de la Paz, “Central Mexican Indigenous Coats of Arms”; and Perez-Rocha and Tena, La nobleza indígena. 123. AGCA A3.16, leg. 237/exp. 4712, “Tasaciones de costa de los Pueblos de Sacatepéquez y Amatitán” (1788–90).

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In Ciudad Vieja, the case was remembered and revered not only as a legal argument but also as a precious object whose physical attributes bespoke its importance. In 1799, the officials of Ciudad Vieja described the copy of the sixteenth-century proceedings in their possession, “authorized by Juan Martínez de Ferrán, Secretario de Cámara, and registered by Juan de Alceda, Teniente del Gran Chanciller, whose testimony is authorized in good form on parchment, in fine lettering, framed as if by a printing press, covered in crimson velvet with silver corner-pieces, with the image of María Santíssima on front, and of the royal arms.” In the mid-nineteenth century, it seems that this same book was still being preserved and valued long after its legal usefulness had passed with the abolition of tribute after independence. The leaders of Ciudad Vieja proudly showed it to the Guatemalan archbishop, economist, and chronicler Francisco de Paula García Peláez, who described it as dating from November 1564. The book, which according to García Peláez contained a royal provision from 6 November 1564 exempting the descendants of the Mexican conquistadors from tribute, consisted of “parchment papers finely bound in book form, and covered in crimson velvet with silver guards on the outside, the coat of arms in the middle, and corresponding latches . . . with loose overleafs of doubled mother-of-pearl taffeta, which are still carefully preserved.” In his own afterthought, García Peláez added, “A dignified monument to their antiquity!”124 Less jubilantly, the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors’ sixteenthcentury campaign for privileges served as a bitter education in what they could expect for their services and the ways they would be required to act in order to preserve their distinction in the new colonial order. The themes that dominate their petition for tribute exemption— whom they married, whether outsiders were diluting their community’s purity, how Spanish they appeared and acted— would return again and again for three hundred years as the external measuring sticks of who was, and was not, “Mexicano.” The Nahua and Oaxacan residents of Ciudad Vieja were colonial subjects and conquistadors, Indians and acculturated ladinos. How they lived out these overlapping dualities would determine who they collectively became in their new homeland.

124. García Peláez, Memorias, 1:156–57. See also Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, 1:282.

4. The Primacy of Place Ciudad Vieja as Indian Town & Colonial Altepetl

Although they are all from Ciudad Vieja, they are of different parcialidades. — Don Juan Bautista Pérez, resident of the Parcialidad de Tascala in Ciudad Vieja, governor in 1667, and captain of the Compañía de Soldados of the Parcialidad de Tascala in 16801

B

y the end of the sixteenth century the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors living in Ciudad Vieja were locally known as Mexicanos: a unique group on the margins of both Maya and Spanish society. Other Nahua colonies in Xoconusco, Totonicapán, San Salvador, San Miguel, and elsewhere would maintain their ethnic character for scores or even hundreds of years. But as the campaign for privileges had made clear, Ciudad Vieja was the heart of Indian conquistador settlement in Spanish Central America. It was also the place in Central America where Mexicano ethnicity— that is, the Mexicanos’ identity (or identities) in relation to those from whom they differentiated themselves, those against whom they were differentiated by outsiders, and each other— developed its most distinct and complex expressions. 1. Archivo General de Centroamérica, Guatemala City (hereafter cited as AGCA), A3.16, leg. 2887/exp. 42264, “Las justicias del pueblo de Sta Cruz Chiquimulilla pide la exoneración de tributación de ocho individuos descendientes de los conquistadoresauxiliares mexicanos que del pueblo de Ciudad Vieja habíanse avecindado” (1680), f. 1v; see also AGCA A1 leg. 2347/exp. 17672, “Autos de los ejidos que esta ciudad tiene en el valle de Alotenango” (1667), 20v, 77v, 86r, 89r.

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Spaniards and other Europeans tended to see the residents of Ciudad Vieja as “indios,” “mexicanos,” and “tlaxcaltecas,” in that order, each broad term encompassing the next. Maya perceptions are more difficult to assess, but in Spanish documentation the Guatemalan Maya also mostly label Ciudad Vieja’s Nahua and Oaxacan residents and their descendants “mexicanos.” Within Ciudad Vieja itself, a more complicated sense of identity emerged, linked in part to Ciudad Vieja’s nine parcialidades of Tascala, Cholula, Tenustitan, Tatelulco, Chinampa, Quahquechula, Teguantepeque, Tescuco, and Otumpa.2 An additional, tenth parcialidad named Reservados was home to families with privileges beyond those granted to the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors collectively and may have originally been created for the highest-ranking captains of all participating groups. These parcialidades dominated Ciudad Vieja’s social and political organization into the nineteenth century. Many residents remained in their particular parcialidades through the generations, maintaining family lands, climbing up the local political ladder, and serving in parcialidad institutions like trade guilds and militias. At the same time, the microethnicities captured in the parcialidades’ names were gradually disassociated from any actual ties to ancient homelands and altered by the Mexicanos’ accumulated experiences in Guatemala. As the colonial period progressed, the originally heterogeneous allies became an increasingly homogeneous, local, and Guatemalan group of colonial-era Indians. Why, then, did the people of Ciudad Vieja become and remain Mexicanos? Most obviously and pragmatically, because their hard-won exemption from most tribute and forced labor depended on this identification. But the economic and political advantages to being Mexicano in Guatemala were inseparable from its social significance. In Ciudad Vieja especially, the most salient aspect of Mexicano ethnicity was not direct connection with faraway lands in New Spain, nor even relief from tribute, but descent from conquistadors. Every action that made reference to that heritage— the cabildo defending the town’s privileges, militia members commemorating the conquest, individuals holding on to family lands or selecting godparents for their children— both sustained and modified the Mexicanos’ shared memory of it. Sometimes purposefully, sometimes not, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja collectively maintained a sense of themselves as both distinct and privileged throughout the co2. These are the most typical seventeenth- and eighteenth-century spellings of the parcialidades’ names as they occurred in Guatemalan documents.

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lonial period. Along the way they developed their own, unique ethnic identity. The rest of this book explores this process of becoming Mexicano in colonial Guatemala. We begin with Ciudad Vieja’s spatial and social organization, and with a large step back to ask what, if anything, constituted ethnicity for early modern Mesoamericans? The two issues are related, because Mesoamerican and especially Nahua ethnicity is often associated with the altepetl and calpolli, the primary building blocks of central Mexican society roughly analogous to the colonial pueblo (town) and parcialidad or barrio, respectively. Ciudad Vieja was a largely Nahua colony organized according to Nahua principles of hierarchy and social order, which were adjusted to the exigencies of colonial rule and the circumstances of the Mexicanos’ lives in Guatemala. That the ten parcialidades survived into the nineteenth century suggests that despite colonial pressures to centralize and consolidate, the ethnic complexity of the original settlement remained important for a very long time. Simultaneously, however, Ciudad Vieja itself became an ancestral homeland and a locus of Mexicano identity in Central America. It became, over time, a colonial altepetl: the end of an epic migration, a site favored by the patronage of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, a carefully balanced assemblage of associated parts, and a place of history and remembrance for those who lived there and those who had left.

Locating Mesoamerican Ethnicity The Mexican scholar Cayetano Reyes García called the altepetl a “temple of ethnicities,” and colonial Ciudad Vieja appears to match his description.3 But what exactly did he mean? Does a twentieth-century term like “ethnicity”— at its most basic, indicating a collective sense of shared heritage and identity— makes sense when applied to a Mesoamerican context some five hundred years ago? Mesoamericans at the turn of the sixteenth century perceived many differences between themselves, but these do not appear to have been viewed as immutable nor to have been defined in terms of blood or ancestry. Late Aztec imperial rhetoric most broadly and metaphorically described people as “Toltec” (civilized, conquered) and “Chichimec” 3. Reyes García, El altepetl, orígen y desarrollo, 34–35, quoted in Bernal García and García Zambrano, “El altepetl colonial,” 53.

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(uncivilized, unconquered). The less common term “Nahua”, indicating speakers of Nahuatl, also served as an expression of civilization.4 Regional identities such as Culhua, Mixquica, Otomi, or Cuitlahuaca were linked to shared origins or language. While some clearly reflected real divisions, they may also have been imposed by Aztec imperial ideology.5 Frances Berdan has noted that the Tenochca attributed a range of “ethnic emblems” to other groups, such as language, clothing, hairstyle, food traditions, tribute items, and cultural traits. The Totonac, for example, were considered barbarous; spoke Nahuatl, Otomi, and Huasteco; wore elegant clothing and had well-groomed hair; ate cacao, tamales, herbs, and chile; and were broad-headed, humane, skilled in song and dance, imprudent, and untrained. This does not necessarily mean, however, that the Totonac viewed themselves this way, nor that they would have agreed with how the Tenocha described them.6 Rather than emphasizing blood or common physical or cultural traits, Mesoamericans tended to claim group identities based on shared experience. The basic elements of Mesoamerican ethnicity according to Berdan were common lands, history, interests, enemies, destiny, and patron deities.7 Of these, history and place were key. As John Chance puts it, “it was ethnic identity phrased in terms of common places and common histories that transcended class lines and made it possible for populations of nobles and commoners together to imagine themselves as unified peoples.”8 We see this intertwining of ethnicity, place, and history in the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. The migration route of the Quauhquecholteca conquistadors followed a geographical and narrative path that explained their journey to Guatemala. Recounting that narrative in public or private performance reminded the Quauhquecholteca of who they were and where they came from. It bound them together as a people whose ancestors had collectively experienced the challenges of that particular series of roads and crossroads. Although many different Nahua conquistadors traveled to

4. See for example the quotation from Sahagún in Berdan, Chance, and Sandstrom, Ethnic Identity, 114: “All the Nahua, those who speak clearly, not the speakers of a barbarous tongue, are the descendants of the Tolteca.” 5. Brumfiel, “Ethnic Groups and Political Development.” 6. Berdan, “Concepts of Ethnicity,” especially Table 4.1, 119. 7. Berdan is building on Frederic Hicks’s definition in David Carrasco, Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, 1:388–92. 8. Chance, “Indigenous Ethnicity in the Colonial Period,” 136.

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Guatemala in 1527 with Jorge de Alvarado, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan tells only the Quauhquecholteca’s story. Shared experience could be an extremely flexible idea. Ethnicity in Mesoamerica has proved nearly impossible to define according to fixed categories such as territory, language, descent, or kinship. Nobles throughout Mesoamerica intermarried across language, territorial, and ethnic lines, maintaining and expanding elite power in the process.9 Commoners were subject to these noble houses, but might remain on their ancestral lands even after their lords had gone elsewhere. People moved from region to region, were conquered and rebelled. Communities were named after shared occupations, mythic figures, and language groups, as well as places of origin— all of which may or may not tell us much about how people living within that community defined themselves.10 In many instances, ethnicity seems to have been a far less important factor in determining how and where people led their lives than political alliance, competition for resources, the influence of a strong centralizing government, or social class. Nonetheless, Mesoamericans did express strong group allegiances in the early colonial period, most often in relation to where they lived and/ or where they came from. Nahuatl documents from the western Basin of Mexico most commonly associate ethnicity with the altepetl and its subunits, the calpolli or tlaxilacalli. The altepetl had urban, political, and religious dimensions. Its literal meaning in Nahuatl, “water-hill/mountain,” indicated the residence of a patron deity in a temple or designated hill from which life-giving water was said to spring. The discovery of this sacred place marked the foundation of the altepetl in a particular territory led by dynastic rulers. In some cases the altepetl itself became an object of ethnic identification. At the same time, the peoples of the Basin of Mexico strongly identified with their calpolli/tlaxilacalli, some of which were rural and widely dispersed. Each calpolli/tlaxilacalli had its own patron deities, government, and lands and was typically associated with a particular immigrant group, occupation, history, or noble house. In larger polities, a precise, rotational cycle of government posts filled by calpolli leaders served the dominant calpolli and its head dynasty, which in turn supplied the tlatoani of the entire altepetl. Urban centers divided 9. See for example Chance, “Barrios of Colonial Tecali”; Oudijk, Historiography of the Benizaá; Hildeberto Mártinez, Tepeaca en el siglo XVI; and Susan Gillespie, Aztec Kings. 10. Umberger, “Ethnicity and Other Identities,” 69.

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neatly into symmetrical groupings of contiguous calpolli, which further subdivided into wards of rough multiples of 20 households each. Conversely, confederations of multiple, usually even-numbered altepetl might join to create what James Lockhart calls a “composite state.” Here, no one tlatoani ruled. Instead, the tlatoque of the associated altepetl rotated duties and often strengthened their ties through royal intermarriage.11 In the colonial period, Nahuas generally used the term “altepetl” to translate the Spanish words “pueblo” or “ciudad” (city), while “calpolli” and “tlaxilacalli” were roughly synonymous with the Spanish barrio, cantón, or parcialidad. In some cases, disease or the Spanish tendency to recognize only the most obviously powerful ruling dynasties and most dense settlements resulted in the consolidation of existing calpolli and altepetl into huey altepetl (Nahuatl for “great cities”) or cabeceras (Spanish for “head towns”). In other cases, micropatriotism and Spanish interference fragmented complex altepetl, spurred a return to older arrangements, or created new, independent entities with more local loyalties. In the eastern Basin of Puebla-Tlaxcala (from which many of the most prominent Nahua conquistadors of Guatemala would come), powerful noble houses called teccalli overshadowed the altepetl-calpolli relationship. Self-governing and landholding calpolli did exist in this region, often identified with particular regional ethnicities and/or migrations. In Tepeaca, 25 pre-Columbian Cholulteca calpolli became 10 colonial-era Cholulteca barrios. Other ethnically identified calpolli of migrants from Otumba, Texcoco, Xochimilco, and Chalco existed in Tepeaca and nearby Acatzinco in the mid-sixteenth century.12 More commonly, however, powerful teccalli living in urban residential areas gleaned wealth from a majority of landless commoners tied to them by patronage and formed consolidated altepetl among themselves. In fifteenth-century Cuauhtinchan, powerful majority teccalli gradually subordinated local Cholulteca calpolli.13 Huejotzingo’s self-governing calpolli mostly disappeared in the sixteenth century; the vast majority of the altepetl’s subjects were landless macehualtin (commoners) living on large, dispersed landholdings belonging mostly to absent teteuctin (nobles).14 In Tlaxcala, four dominant 11. Lockhart, Nahuas, ch. 2; Schroeder, Chimalpahin and the Kingdoms of Chalco, ch. 5; Horn, Postconquest Coyoacan, ch. 1; Haskett, Indigenous Rulers, 9–10. 12. Hildeberto Martínez, Tepeaca en el siglo XVI, 36–38, 79. 13. Ruiz Medrano, “Lords of the Land,” 92–96. 14. Dyckerhoff, “Colonial Indian Corporate Landholding.”

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teccalli transformed what had been a loose confederation into the more concentrated and politically unified colonial city, or altepetl, of Tlaxcala, with barrios that perhaps for the first time had defined territories and did not function merely as administrative units.15 Throughout the Basin of Puebla-Tlaxcala, the altepetl produced notably less sense of shared heritage between dispersed rural peasants and wealthier urban nobility than in the Basin of Mexico. Those tenuous bonds often broke in the early colonial period, due to depopulation, the concentration of political power in the cabeceras, and land acquisition by macehualtin. Small, self-governing pueblos de indios emerged whose ethnic solidarity derived more from a sense of belonging to place and to each other for generations than from the persistence of local nobility. In the cities, meanwhile, the surviving teccalli continued to predominate in their particular barrios and maintain their authority based on noble descent.16 Even in the colonial-era Spanish city of Puebla de los Angeles— where suburban Indian barrios reflected ethnic origins and indigenous elites had ceased to speak of themselves as teteuctin by the late seventeenth century— political authority continued to derive, at least in some cases, from direct, remembered connection with the leading noble houses of ancient Tlaxcala.17 In Oaxaca, which also contributed warriors to the sixteenth-century invasion of Guatemala, language marked identity more strongly than in central Mexico. When Zapotec lords from Guevea near Tehuantepec allied with the royal house of Zaachila in the mid-fifteenth century, they defended their autonomy within the alliance based on their particular migration story as well as the different variant of Zapotec they spoke.18 Conversely, Kevin Terraciano sees in the sixteenth century Mixteca an overarching sense of being ethnically Ñudzahui— that is, people who spoke a Mixtec-related language and lived in Mixtec areas. Mixtecs also claimed affiliation with their towns (ñuu), the lordly houses to which they paid tribute (yuhuitayu, a word that could also indicate the settlement where the 15. Martínez Baracs, Un gobierno de indios, esp. 94–104, 140–65, 178–80; Martínez Baracs and Sempat Assadourian, Tlaxcala: Textos de su historia, 2:744–52, 822. 16. See Chance, “Noble House,” on the persistence of the teccalli as a shallow descent group holding territory corporately rather than as lineage-based private property in Santiago Tecali into the eighteenth century. 17. Townsend, Here in This Year, 36–38; compare to Martínez Baracs, Un gobierno de indios, 140n. 5. 18. Zeitlin, Cultural Politics, 53.

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lords resided), and their immediate local community (siña, siqui, or dzini), all simultaneously. Each siña— which like the central Mexican calpolli had its own patron gods, lands, and nobility— vied for dominance within the ñuu and/or yuhuitayu. Their configurations changed according to intraelite alliances most often established through marriage between noble houses.19 Likewise, calpolli-like wards called quiñaqueche, naaqueche, or collaba in Zapotec served Tehuantepec directly, while independent noble houses subject to the Zapotec king served the royal household. As among the Mixtecs, Zapotec settlement patterns were dispersed and the king’s authority based more on conquest and political alliance than on urban integration— a fact that may help explain why sixteenth-century Tehuantepec had an incredible 49 barrios in 1550.20 Zapotecs and Mixtecs seem to have tended towards less centralized urban centers and broader conceptions of ethnic identity than Nahuas. Nevertheless, they exhibited the same or perhaps an even greater emphasis on the constituent, locally based parts of larger social and political confederations. Ciudad Vieja was founded, settled, and ruled primarily by Nahuas from central Mexico. At first glance, then, its subdivision into ethnically named parcialidades following recognizably Nahua patterns makes sense. We will see that through its multiethnic, separately functioning but hierarchically ordered parcialidades, Ciudad Vieja managed conflicts between neighbors, incorporated newcomers, organized military and labor drafts, and administered tribute payments. Each parcialidad’s particular history, patron deity, and origins or migration story kept it distinct from neighboring parcialiadades and the town as a whole, even while it maintained connections to both. The oddities, however, are worth noting. Rather than a more canonical even number of parallel calpolli as was typical in central Mexico, Ciudad Vieja had nine ethnically named parcialidades: eight named after homelands in central Mexico, and one named after Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. Did this reflect the segregation— by choice, force, or habit— of Zapotec and perhaps Mixtec conquistadors from Nahuas? Another oddity is the additional Parcialidad de Reservados, which as a district of particularly privileged and noble families looks suspiciously like the teccalli of the Basin of Puebla-Tlaxcala. Without more documentation, it is difficult to 19. Terraciano, Mixtecs; Spores, Mixtecs in Ancient and Colonial Times. 20. Zeitlin, Cultural Politics, 41 and ch. 2 in general; Machuca Gallegos, Comercio de sal, 62. One of these barrios that survived into the eighteenth century, San Jerónimo Vizino, was “de los Mexicanos.”

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say whether this elite ward monopolized local government or otherwise dominated the others. But given Tlaxcala’s and Cholula’s preeminence in the original conquistador alliance, we might wonder whether Ciudad Vieja represented a hybrid structure: a typically multiethnic garrison colony in the mold of Aztec imperialism that also incorporated eastern Nahua preferences for setting elite lineages apart from commoners (a tendency that Spanish colonialism generally encouraged). I have emphasized the political and social aspects of Nahua and Oaxacan settlement patterns. But the altepetl was also a sacred center. The largest altepetl of central Mexico built temples that mimicked mountains and architecturally dominated the surrounding area. Ceremonial centers recreated the natural landscape from which humanity, and more specifically the altepetl’s ancestors, had been born. They housed the altepetl’s most revered deities, captured important celestial passages throughout the year, and connected with outlying shrines built at select springs, mountains, cliffs, and other natural features visible from the cardinal points of the altepetl’s main temples. These outlying shrines were often cared for by nearby calpolli, again reinforcing the bonds between calpolli and altepetl.21 Tenochtitlan’s rituals of rule and sacrifice are the most famous and well-studied, but the religious connections implicit in the altepetl are apparent throughout central Mexico. In Chalco, for instance, temples to the patron deities of the kingdom’s four main subaltepetl marked their original confederation. One deity lent particular power to the northernmost subaltepetl of Tlacochcalco/Tlalmanalco. Tlatlauhqui “Red” Tezcatlipoca was one of three manifestations of Tezcatlipoca, who along with Quetzalcoatl were the children of the primordial couple the Lord and Lady of Duality (Omecihuatl and Ometecuhtli), the creator gods of humanity, and the lords of the Four Ages of history. Despite being relative latecomers to the Lake Chalco region, the Tlacochcalca’s special connection to Tlatlauhqui Tezcatlipoca empowered them to grant the supreme royal title of “lord who possesses the divinity” (teohua teuhctli) to Chalco’s other altepetl rulers. Texcoco’s tlatoani Nezahualcoyotl in 1438 and Tenochtitlan’s Moctezuma II in 1440 also sought divine favor through Tlacochcalco’s 21. Umberger, “Imperial Inscriptions”; Davíd Carrasco, City of Sacrifice; Aveni, Calneck, and Hartung, “Myth, Environment, and the Orientation of the Templo Mayor”; Broda, “Sacred Landscape of Aztec Calendar Festivals” and “Templo Mayor as Ritual Space,” 97–100; López Luján, Offerings of the Templo Mayor; Bernal García and García Zambrano, “El altepetl colonial.”

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connection with Tezcatlipoca for their wars against the Tepaneca.22 Tlacochcalco’s ethnic identity was inextricably linked to its people’s care of and control over access to their patron deity. Tlatlauhqui Tezcatlipoca helped define who the Tlacochcalca were and imbued them with both sacred and political power. In 1464 the Tenocha forced Tlacochcalco’s abandonment and reestablishment to the south with a new name: Tlalmanalco. But territorial loss did not necessarily mean the dissolution of the Tlacochcalca as a people, nor of their ties with Tlatlauhqui Tezcatlipoca, who remained Tlalmanalco’s patron deity. Rather than simply disappearing, Tlacochcalco became a part of Tlalmanalco’s history as it was still recounted by the seventeenth-century Chalca historian Chimalpahin. Nahuas showed similar flexibility in the face of territorial loss in the early colonial period. Central Mexico saw far less wholesale congregación (forced consolidation of Indian towns) than other regions of the emerging empire. But the Spanish did resettle some calpolli and altepetl, usually small, dispersed, or heavily depopulated by disease, into “new towns” (as they were called) built along a grid pattern. In many cases, the more centralized new town lay within walking distance of the earlier, original “old town.” If a Catholic church existed in the old town, any sacred objects were ceremoniously transported to the new one. People set up households in the new town, but reclaimed their former lands for milpa cultivation, grazing, or religious rites. Beyond the practicality of tilling fields or gathering wood, these old lands continued to serve as sites of living memory, sometimes literally linking the old and new towns by means of trails or underground passageways. Walking through them reinforced the connections between the travelers, their ancestors, particular places, and the spirit world— all key ingredients of Mesoamerican ethnicity.23 For many Nahua, the altepetl itself was the culmination of an epic journey. Each altepetl or calpolli had its own migration story that emphasized different routes, departure and arrival dates, locations, and events along the way.24 Many stressed an investiture ceremony— usually performed halfway en route by the priests and lords of some already established and 22. Schroeder, Chimalpahin, 89–101. 23. See essays by Marcelo Ramírez Ruiz, Federico Fernández Christlieb, Marcelo Ramírez Ruiz, and Angél Julián García Zambrano in Fernández Christlieb and García Zambrano, Territorialidad y paisaje. 24. Boone, Stories in Red and Black, 164; she cites Schroeder, Chimalpahin, 123–24.

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powerful altepetl— as a collective rite of passage. In the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2, investiture happens at Cholula, a place of great religious authority in central Mexico with links to the ancient cults and cultures of Teotihuacan. This detailed cartographic history also calls attention to the spiritual challenges of the journey, which some scholars have likened to a pilgrimage trail. The migrants face tornadoes whipped up by mythic serpents, potentially dangerous crossroads that must be managed through prayers and blood sacrifices, and shape-shifting eagle-sorcerers that swoop down on the weary travelers, to name but a few.25 Chalca historian Chimalpahin’s histories are less dramatic, but inform us that the Tlacochcalca’s investiture on the way to Chalco happened in Tula, Hidalgo, another important link to the Toltec culture of Teotihuacan and the ancient civilizations of central Mexico for these Postclassic migrants. The Mapa de Sigüenza, recording the migration of the Tenocha from Aztlan, highlights a different but no less crucial event in their migration story: their separation from the Mexica Tlatelolca after a battle at Chapultepec (Grasshopper Hill), and the beginnings of their relationship with the ancient lineages of the well-established altepetl of Culhuacan.26 In all these cases, the altepetl’s foundation marks more than simply the geographical end of the journey. The travelers have earned the right to occupy their divinely sanctioned territory by successfully meeting the physical and spiritual challenges along the way. As Florine Asselbergs puts it for the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2, “The road . . . not only represents movement and migration, it also describes a process of transformation. By performing certain actions and ceremonies, Cuauhtinchan’s ancestors developed their own identity— they “grew.”27 What of migrations of conquest, like those to Guatemala that resulted in the founding of Ciudad Vieja? Were these also viewed as transformational, and do the resulting garrison colonies qualify as new altepetl? The lienzos of Tlaxcala, Analco, and Quauhquechollan do not immediately suggest so. None treat elements of spiritual pilgrimage, nor the transformational journey from being metaphorically Chichimeca to Tolteca. These lienzos deal with conquest, not ethnogenesis. Images of war predominate. We see battles, porters carrying equipment (or, out of newly conquered terri25. Carrasco and Sessions, Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest. 26. Boone, Stories in Red and Black, 166–72; Casteñeda de la Paz, Pintura de la peregrinación. 27. Asselbergs, “Claim to Rulership,” 125. See Carrasco and Sessions, Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest, in general for the possible spiritual dimensions of the journey.

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tory, trade goods), traps, hangings of local leaders, alliances, and pochteca spies. Still, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan’s form mimics the migration stories of altepetl foundings, with a clear beginning to the journey in the upper corner (in this case the embrace of Cortés, rather than the emergence from Chicomoztoc shown in the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2 or the departure from Aztlan in the Mapa de Sigüenza). An arrow in the prominent tree glyph of Retalhuleu indicates the Quauhquecholteca’s invasion of foreign territory, a crucial narrative moment emphasized much as the battle at Chapultepec was in the Mapa de Sigüenza. The lienzos of Tlaxcala and Quauhquechollan both stress their lords’ meeting with the Spanish, which while not exactly investiture, surely marks them as conquistadors and members of a powerful new alliance. The Lienzo de Tlaxcala adds another, unambiguously transformational element: the acceptance of Christianity. Most importantly, colonial settlements form the visual anchor at the center of both the Lienzo de Analco (at the Spanish town of Villa Alta outside of which Analco was founded) and the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan (at the central valley of Guatemala, including the Volcán de Agua, Chimaltenango, and Almolonga). While distinct from the Nahua migration stories, these conquest lienzos not surprisingly draw on many of the same narrative techniques and tropes. More concretely, and as we have already seen in Ch. 2, both Aztec imperial and Spanish colonial garrison colonies tended to organize according to the same principles of multiethnic settlement as the altepetl the Mesoamerican conquistadors had left behind. Oaxaca provides an excellent example that bridges the pre-Columbian Postclassic and early Spanish colonial eras. In the 1450s, Moctezuma I sent six Tenochca noblemen to found a garrison colony, Huaxyacac, in the Oaxaca valley. Six hundred families from Tenochtitlan, 60 each from Texcoco and Tlacopan, and others from Xochimilco and the other Chinampa towns were organized into wards by ethnicity. By 1521 these settlers had lived in the region for several generations, and joined local Mixtecs to unsuccessfully resist the Nahua-Spanish forces that attacked them that year. As a result, they were pushed outside the boundaries of Huaxyacac (which became the Spanish city of Antequera, now Oaxaca City), and three new Nahua-dominated colonies of more recent conquistadors sprang up at San Martín Mexicapan to the southwest of Antequera, Santo Tomás Xochimilco to the north, and Jalatlaco to the northeast. The Nahua residents of San Martín Mexicapan described themselves as “Mexica people [mexicatlaca].” They subdivided into four barrios: Mexi-

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capan, Cuernavaca, Tepoztlán, and Acapixtla, these last three referencing settlements in the Cuernavaca area.28 While we cannot assume a connection between these barrio names and the origins of their founders, they are at the very least suggestive. Similarly, some of Santo Tomás Xochimilco’s residents may have come from the Chinampa towns around Xochimilco, but perhaps not all. At least two of this town’s three barrios— Chiutla and Tula— were named for places notably distant from the Lago de Xochimilco (the third barrio was called Tecutlachicpan). The defeated Mexica of Huaxyacac, meanwhile, formed the Villa de Oaxaca, composed of at least two barrios, Istapalapa (also the name of a small altepetl between Tenochtitlan and Culhuacan in the Basin of Mexico) and Tlacopan (the third, least powerful partner in the imperial Triple Alliance). These three Nahua settlements outside Antequera— San Martín Mexicapan, Santo Tomás Xochimilco, and Villa de Oaxaca— eventually became a kind of triad despite their historical differences, based on their continued agrarian base and shared Nahua identity in the colonial period. The third newly founded Nahua settlement to the northeast, Jalatlaco, was eventually overtaken by Antequera and became a multicultural urban barrio known for its artisanal production. In the names and number of its barrios, Jalatlaco was remarkably similar to Ciudad Vieja in Guatemala. It had ten sixteenth-century tlaxilacalli, seven of them named after large, powerful Nahua altepetl or confederations of altepetl: Mexicanos, Tlatelolco, Colhuacan, Tlaxcala, Huejotzingo, Cholula, and Tepeaca. The remaining three tlaxilacalli were settled by Guatemalan Maya, Zapotecs, and Mixtecs. John Chance reports that in a 1565 census “fully 47 percent [of Jalatlaco’s immigrant Indian residents] were Nahuatl speakers from large communities in central Mexico, those from Tenochtitlan (the Mexicanos), Colhuacan, Tlaxcala, and Tepeaca being the most numerous.”29 As the colonial period progressed, more Zapotec and Mixtec barrios were founded in Jalatlaco, while the barrios of Cholula, Huejotzingo, and Tepeaca gradually disappeared. By the mid-seventeenth century, by which point Jalatlaco had been made its own pueblo, the town’s Nahua residents were outnumbered by migrant Oaxacans, mostly Zapotecs. Nevertheless, in a long process of what Chance sees as “ethnic homogenization” over the course of the colonial period, a kind of generalized Nahua identity persisted the longest and remained at least partially enshrined in Jalatlaco’s barrios. 28. Terraciano, Mixtecs, 335; Chance, “Urban Indian.” 29. Chance, “Urban Indian,” 611.

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In the wake of Tenochtitlan’s fall, Nahuas from central Mexico also invaded northern New Spain as conquistadors and colonists. Here, too, they organized themselves according to ethnic categories that grew more generalized over time. Nahua, Tarasacan, and Otomi warriors helped conquer Nueva Galicia in the sixteenth century, and later joined forces with local allies to pacify rebellious Chichimeca groups in the Fronteras de Colotlan.30 Tlaxcalteca warriors, tameme, and settlers helped the Franciscans establish their mission at modern-day San Miguel de Allende in the 1540s. Tlaxcala also famously sent some 400 families to help pacify the mining areas of the Gran Chichimeca in 1590–91. According to the negotiated agreement, these Tlaxcalteca would be granted hidalgo status, accrue the privileges accorded to their home province, and receive additional benefits such as perpetual exemption from tribute and forced labor, protection from wandering livestock within three leagues of their towns, independent government, and the right to bear arms and ride horses.31 Other Nahuas also contributed to the conquest of northern New Spain and appear to have maintained their own separate barrios in the region.32 But the Tlaxcalteca outnumbered them and were themselves a diverse group drawn from the four ruling subaltepetl of the sixteenth-century confederation of Tlaxcala: Ocoteculco, Quiahuiztlan, Tepeticpac, and Tizatlan. It is commonly held that each of these Tlaxcalteca subaltepetl or teccalli colonized a different region of the mining north. This was certainly true in San Esteban del Saltillo, founded outside the Spanish city of Saltillo primarily by colonists from Tizatlan who took their original altepetl’s patron saint for their own.33 But in most cases, the settlers’ particular origins in central Mexico are obscure. Around Charcas, for example, Tlaxcalteca settlers founded San Sebastián del Venado and San Gerónimo de la Hedionda, 30. Altman, “Conquest, Coercion, and Collaboration”; Blosser, “By the Force of Their Blood”; Fernández and Román, “Presencia tlaxcalteca,” who note the importance of the Tarascans in Nueva Galicia and of “indios” from México, Tlaxcala, Michoacán, Ávalos “y otros muchos” in the establishment of a cofradía of the Virgen de la Concepción in Zacatecas. See also Román Gutiérrez, Las cofradías. 31. Martínez Baracs, “Colonizaciones tlaxcaltecas,” 233. 32. In Mexicapan, Zacatecas, for instance, and perhaps also in Tlaxcalilla, San Luís Potosí, where in 1659 a “barrio of mexicanos” existed; see Fernández and Román Gutiérrez, “Presencia tlaxcalteca,” 20–21, and Montejano y Aguiñaga, “La evolución de los tlaxcaltecas,” 84. 33. San Esteban has received extensive attention from historians, including David Adams, Cecilia Sheridan Prieto, and Leslie Offutt. See most recently Offutt, “Defending Corporate Identity.”

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but we do not know if either settlement’s residents came from a particular altepetl or subaltepetl in Tlaxcala.34 Spanish-language documents tended to generalize Mesoamerican ethnicity as Tlaxcalteca, Mexicano, Tarascan, Otomi, Guichichil, Alazapa, etc. San Miguel de Aguayo’s two barrios, one for the Tlaxcalteca and another for the local Alazapa, are typical of this pattern. Elizabeth Butzer suggests that the neat divisions reflected in the original Tlaxcalteca migration in 1591 were quickly muddled by secondary migrations from struggling colonies to more stable ones, and from growing colonies to new ventures further north.35 Perhaps because of this fluidity between settlements— and/or because Spanish officials tended to ignore the finer distinctions between Mesoamericans— the documentary record rarely indicates how or whether the northern settlers may have subdivided themselves according to their original altepetl, teccalli, or calpolli. Nahuas and other allies also settled throughout Central America. Besides Ciudad Vieja, colonies at Totonicapán in Guatemala; Xoconusco and Ciudad Real in Chiapas; San Salvador, Sonsonate, and San Miguel de la Frontera in El Salvador; and Comayagua, Gracias a Dios, and Camasca in Honduras have all attracted scholars’ attention. Many more, one suspects, remain to be studied.36 Some Nahua colonies, such as the Barrio de Mexicanos (Mexicapa) outside San Miguel de la Frontera, were extremely small and precarious. Founded in 1530 and separated from San Miguel when the Spanish city relocated after a fire in 1586, Mexicapa numbered only 13 tributaries at the end of the sixteenth century and 6 by 1740, after which time it fades from the historical record.37 Other Central American 34. Montejano y Aguiñaga, “La evolución de los tlaxcaltecas,” 85–87. 35. Butzer, Historia social, 12–14. 36. The most thorough study is Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas. Popular references to Mexicano presence are ubiquitous throughout Guatemala, some quite specific. See, for instance, the microethnic conflicts that erupted in Aguacatán, Guatemala, in 2000, documented in Fink, Maya of Morgantown, 189–92. Two factions, the minority but dominant Awakatekos and the majority but subordinate Chalchitekos, disagreed over how the Chalchiteko dialect should (or shouldn’t) be institutionalized by government agencies, among other issues. A Chalchiteko trained in anthropology, Pablo Escobar Méndez, began to research the town’s history and claimed that the Awakatekos descended from “Mexicanos” who emigrated “behind the Spanish Conquistadores” in the sixteenth century. The Awakatekos were thus, in Escobar’s view, outsiders and usurpers of the rights of the more authentically local and “ancient” Chalchitekos. Whether true or not, the fact that this notion would be seized upon and taken seriously says something about the place of the “Mexicanos conquistadores” in Guatemalan historical memory today. 37. Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas, 122–24; Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain

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colonies thrived. The Barrio de Mejicanos outside the third villa of San Salvador founded in 1545 may have rivaled Guatemala’s Ciudad Vieja in population. (Presumably many of its residents came from their original colony at the second villa of San Salvador, occupied from 1527 until the mid-sixteenth century.)38 According to Escalante Arce, at least one and possibly two other satellite towns of the third San Salvador were also Indian conquistador colonies: Santiago Aculhuaca may have been settled by allies from Texcoco, while Santa María Paleca was known as the Barrio de Guatimaltecas.39 Both the Barrio de Mejicanos of San Salvador and Sonsonate’s smaller Barrio de Mexicanos retained their ethnic character into the mid-nineteenth century. In each town, the parish church safeguarded precious relics from the conquest era: the sword and the lance, respectively, of Pedro de Alvarado himself.40 In Honduras, both Comayagua and Gracias a Dios had their own Mexicano barrios, each also called Mexicapa, each founded around 1536. The descendants of two apparently Nahua conquistadors named don Joan Fasín de Mendoza and don Pedro Portocarrero y Mendoza governed the Honduran Pipil town of Camasca from at least the late sixteenth century. Eight elite families who traced their lineage back to original Nahua conquistadors continued to dominate Camasca politically and economically at the end of the eighteenth century.41 Similarly, residents of the Parcialidad de Caciques of Totonicapán, Guatemala, claimed political dominance as both descendants of Nahua conquistadors and as successful merchants. They, too, defended their privileges, such as tribute exemption, into the eighteenth century.42 In stark contrast to Ciudad Vieja in Guatemala, few of these Mexicano barrios or towns in other parts of Central America show any signs of having divided into multiethnic subunits along the same lines as the altepetl (hereafter cited as AGI), México 257, “Memoria de todos los pueblos que hay en la jurisdicción de S. Miguel y la villa de la Choluteca” (1590) (thanks to Pastor Rodolfo Gómez Z. for sharing this document with me). 38. Card, “Ceramics of Colonial Ciudad Vieja.” 39. Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas, 127–28. 40. Ibid., 130, 133; AGCA A3.16, leg. 1587/exp. 10231, f.156, “Que se exonere a los indígenas del barrio de los Mexicanos de Sonsonate” (1730). 41. Escalante Arce, Los tlaxcaltecas, 142–49. 42. Hill, “Social Organization by Decree”; AGCA A1, leg. 191/exp. 3889, “Los casiques de Totonicapán sobre que no pagar tribute” (1791); Chaclán, “Diario de fundación,” and “Los caciques de Totonicapán.”

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and the calpolli. Were they too small to sustain such complexity, as appears to have also been the case in Analco, Oaxaca? Were the outlying areas of Central America less fertile ground for colonization, with higher levels of isolation, forced migration, social dissolution, prolonged warfare, and slaving? Or have historians simply not yet found the documents that would allow a richer picture of the Salvadoran and Honduran colonies to emerge? A single court case reveals that the small Spanish city of Ciudad Real de Chiapas had at least three ethnically defined barrios of immigrants— called Tlaxcaltecas, Mexicanos, and Guatimaltecos— in the late sixteenth century.43 Copious records detailing life in colonial Santiago de Guatemala lay bare that city’s ethnic complexity and social organization. If we have far fewer records for Guatemalan history than for the heart of New Spain, the historical record for colonial El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua is thinner still. As we look at Ciudad Vieja through the prism of the colonial altepetl, then, we should remember that it may have been an exceptional colony of Indian conquistadors in Central America in its size, claims to originality, access to the seat of colonial power in the region, and location at the crossroads of several major trade routes. Or, perhaps, Ciudad Vieja was exceptional only in the historical traces it left behind.

Ciudad Vieja as an Indian Town Being Mexicano in colonial Ciudad Vieja meant claiming a particular constellation of places in what had become New Spain as original homelands. If the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan is any indication, it meant remembering an arduous journey from central Mexico and Oaxaca to Central America. It meant identification as an Indian conquistador. And it meant connection to Ciudad Vieja itself, the conquistadors’ new home in Guatemala. In the 1950s, archaeologist János Szécsy definitively showed that the original garrison colony of Almolonga founded in 1527 stood about a mile to the west of the Spanish city of Santiago en Almolonga, on the valley floor. Santiago itself lay on the slopes of the Volcán de Agua where the aldea (hamlet) or cantón of San Miguel Escobar is located today. Szécsy suggested that the road from San Miguel Escobar to Ciudad Vieja, which passes today through the main plaza outside San Miguel Escobar’s parish church but bypasses Ciudad Vieja’s central plaza, connected Santiago 43. AGCA A1, leg. 2799/exp. 40482, “El fiscal contra Pedro Gómez, hijo de indio conquistador” (1587).

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Santiago en Almolonga/ Zacualpa/San Miguel Escobar

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en Almolonga to outlying milpas and settlements. Almolonga protected the city on its western side, where an attack might have entered between the volcanoes Agua and Fuego. A Franciscan friary and adjoining small church were built where today an enclosed plaza holds Ciudad Vieja’s municipal offices, a school, and a small set of colonial-era ruins known locally as the Capilla de Doña Beatríz. Ciudad Vieja’s present-day central plaza was likely part of the friary’s gardens. Friary and church were rebuilt slightly to the west after 1541 and remained under construction in the early eighteenth century. The so-called Capilla de Doña Beatríz may have been one of the side chapels of this second church, which was destroyed in 1717 by an earthquake. Szécsy postulated that the second church’s collapsed remains were recycled as materials for a new, relocated, eighteenth-century cathedral still in use as Ciudad Vieja’s parish church today.44 Until 1541 Almolonga was a typical garrison colony, strategically located for the defense and protection of the Spanish. But a natural disaster that year radically altered Almolonga’s connection to Santiago. On 11 September 1541, earthquake tremors and heavy rains caused floods of water, earth, rock, and debris to hurtle down the steep side of the Volcán de Agua. Nearly 800 people are recorded as having died: some 600 Indian slaves, a smaller number of Africans, and around 100 Spaniards, including Pedro de Alvarado’s widow doña Beatríz de la Cueva and her maidservants, whose dramatic end lives on in the romantic legend associated with the Capilla de Doña Beatríz. Although the residents of Almolonga surely suffered casualties, the disaster seems to have largely bypassed them.45 The Spanish abandoned Santiago en Almolonga for the valley of Panchoy. The site where they had once lived was renamed San Miguel Tzacualpa, or “old town,” according to the seventeenth-century chronicler Fuentes y Guzmán (whose seventeenth-century assessment 44. Szécsy, Santiago de los Caballeros de Goathemala. Szécsy would no doubt be frustrated to know that for many residents in Ciudad Vieja today the municipal plaza remains the site of Pedro de Alvarado’s palace, and the Capilla the last tangible testament to doña Beatríz’s terrible end. Other Ciudad Viejans have accepted that the Capilla in the municipal courtyard is not part of the Alvarado palace, but have transferred doña Beatríz’s legend to an even more unlikely site: the colonial-era ruins of a large chimney on the grounds behind Ciudad Vieja’s modern cathedral, even deeper within what was Almolonga and further away from the buried ruins of Santiago en Almolonga; see the Ciudad Vieja webblog ciudadviejasac.blogspot.com/2007/07/el-padre-hermgenes-dedic-su-vida-al.html (accessed 18 July 2007). 45. Lutz, Santiago de Guatemala, 6–7.

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of Santiago en Almolonga’s location agrees with the twentieth-century archaeologists’).46 Fuentes y Guzmán claimed that many Kaqchikel who had lived in Santiago, now Tzacualpa, also left. These Kaqchikel relocated primarily to the Parcialidad de Goathemaltecos in Jocotenango alongside Pedro de Alvarado’s K’iche’ allies.47 Some Nahua and perhaps Oaxacan allies followed suit in subsequent years. At least six Tlaxcalteca men left Almolonga for the new Spanish capital city in 1551, establishing the Parcialidad de Mexicanos (sometimes also called the Parcialidad de Tascaltecas, adjacent to a Parcialidad de Guatimaltecos) near the newly constructed Franciscan friary in the Barrio de San Francisco. A similar mini-migration probably created the Parcialidad de Mexicanos (again adjacent to a Parcialidad de Guatimaltecos) of Santiago’s Barrio de Santo Domingo, founded on the other side of the city that same year.48 Most, however, seem to have stayed in Almolonga. Very quickly the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors’ settlement was dubbed Ciudad Vieja or “Old City”— significantly, in Spanish— in reference to the now-ruined Spanish settlement to which it had been attached. Ironically, the destruction and relocation of Santiago may have afforded Ciudad Vieja a desirable autonomy. No longer a suburb on the immediate outskirts of Santiago, Ciudad Vieja became in many ways a typical colonialera Indian town. While the “mexicanos y tlascaltecas” living within Santiago de Guatemala and immediately outside of San Salvador and Comayagua gradually lost their ethnic distinctiveness and disappeared into growing urban casta populations, Ciudad Vieja remained home to one of the valley of Guatemala’s largest Indian populations throughout the colonial period. Justicia 291 lists 98 prominent conquistadors and their sons from Ciudad Vieja by name, who represented only some of the Nahua and Oaxacan families living in Ciudad Vieja in 1573.49 Santiago resident 46. Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:95. 47. Ibid., 1:367–68. 48. Lutz, Santiago de Guatemala, 24. For the foundation of the Parcialidad de Mexicanos in the Barrio de San Francisco, see AGCA A1.15, leg. 2297/exp. 16846, “Proceso de los yndios de la millpa de Santa Cruz deste valle contra los yndios del barrio de San Francisco” (1585), ff. 17–17v; see also AGCA A1.15 leg. 4090/exp. 32446, “Autos de Miguel Lázar y Diego Hernández contra Lázaro Hernández por la propiedad de una basa barrio San Francisco” (1605), f. 44. For the Parcialidad de Mexicanos in the Barrio de Santo Domingo, see AGCA A1, leg. 5368/exp. 45403, “Autos que siguen los yndios del barrio de Santo Domingo sobre la alternativa” (1703). 49. AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 357–58. This is the only list (out of four) that does not specify to which settlement it pertains. Such silence in and of itself could indicate that the

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and chronicler Fuentes y Guzmán estimated a century later that Ciudad Vieja was home to 1,000 Mexicanos and around 180 Spaniards, mestizos, and mulatos, as well as around 180 “indigenous tributaries” in neighboring San Miguel Escobar.50 At the turn of the nineteenth century Ciudad Vieja remained a sizeable town of roughly to 1,400 to 1,800 people, the majority of them still identified as both Indians and Mexicanos.51 Like all Indian pueblos, Ciudad Vieja was administered for most of the colonial period by friars, in this case, the Franciscans. But the placement of its parish church on the outskirts of the original settlement belied its beginnings as a garrison colony. The urban plan of newly founded congregaciones tended to mimic Spanish American cities, with the local parish church built on the main central square. In already-existing altepetl, accommodating incoming friars also tended to recenter the urban landscape around the Christian church or friary. The relaciones geográficas of the late sixteenth century highlight such transformations. In these painted maps created to inform the Spanish crown of its subject territories, the church/ friary typically displaces the stylized altepetl mountain as the symbol (and very often the geographical center, a local axis mundi) of an Indian town.52 But Almolonga began differently, as a community of Mesoamerican al-

list comes from Ciudad Vieja, much as the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan does not bother to explicitly identify Almolonga, the place where the lienzo was most likely painted. In addition, this is both the first and longest list of individual conquistadors in a case directed from and by Ciudad Vieja. It was presented by Francisco de Oñate and Juan de Tapia personally, in contrast to the other lists from Comayagua, San Salvador, and the Barrio de San Francisco in Santiago, which were each presented by their own community representatives. It therefore seems most likely that all 98 of these conquistadors and their sons were indeed from Ciudad Vieja. 50. Chinchilla Aguilar, “El Corregimiento del Valle de Guatemala,” 518. The Kaqchikel area of San Miguel Escobar may also have been known simply as the “parcialidad de guatimaltecos”; see AGCA A1.14 leg. 3068/exp. 29349, “El indígena Francisco Pérez solicita permiso para avecindarse en Ciudad Vieja” (1579). 51. See AGCA A1 leg. 156/exp. 3134, “Tasación de lo que adeudan los Pueblos desde el año de 1804 hasta presente” (1804–5); A3 leg. 2327/exp. 34378, “Padrón de Ciudad Vieja” (1817); A1 leg. 1812/exp. 11962, “Padrón de Ciudad Vieja” (1820); Archivo Histórico Arquidiocesano (hereafter cited as AHA), “Francisco de Paula García Peláez,” Guatemala City; Padrónes, Caja 11, T3–17 “Padrón Alfabético para el año de 1805 siendo cura Francisco Sánchez de León” (1805). My thanks to Christopher Lutz for sharing this document with me. 52. See Mundy, Mapping of New Spain, figs. 29–36; but see also a retention of altepetl iconography in figs. 38, 43, 62, and 66.

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lies who were geographically and politically linked to an adjacent Spanish American city but not yet fully administered by the Catholic church. The Franciscan friary and chapel that would later become Ciudad Vieja’s parish church were located not at Almolonga’s center, but on the boundary between the Spanish and Nahua sections of Santiago en Almolonga. The Mercedarians, Dominicans, and Franciscans all claimed sites for monasteries at Santiago by the mid-1530s. Construction had not progressed far by 1541; the Franciscans began building in earnest only in 1540.53 After the earthquake and mudslide damaged their early foundations, the Dominicans and Mercedarians abandoned the area for the valley of Panchoy. The Franciscans, however, left a contingent in Ciudad Vieja to continue ministering to the town’s residents. As fray Francisco Vásquez wrote in 1714, “this is the reason why Almolonga has one of our convents, and for no other except that there was a site in Ciudad Vieja before the ruin. The name of Purísima Concepción was kept, as this was the first convent of the order in these lands; and the one that was built in the city of New Guatemala was named after our holy father San Francisco.”54 Accepting Christianity, however nominally, was a necessary and typical assurance of alliance with the Spanish for native groups throughout the Americas.55 So was cooperation with the ambassadors of the new religion. In 1524–25, two new Franciscan convents in Texcoco and Churubusco were quickly consolidated into one in Mexico City; two more were founded in Tlaxcala and Huejotzingo.56 At these early stages of alliance-building under a new imperial banner, both the first evangelists, the Franciscans, and the first allies, the Tlaxcalteca, may have had a particular stake in their developing relationship. Some Tlaxcalteca lords like Maxixcatzin rejected Christianity initially, and the Spanish, needing the Tlaxcalteca’s mercy and assistance, did not press the point. Nevertheless the Franciscans moved quickly to begin Christian instruction, especially for the nobility’s children. It was not a smooth process, as the infamous execution in 1527 of four Tlaxcalteca lords accused of idolatry by fray Martín de Valencia suggests. But by the 1530s, the Franciscans seem to have 53. See Vásquez, Crónica de la provincia, 1:98; Szécsy, Santiago de los Caballeros, 115–44; Annis, Architecture of Antigua Guatemala, 75–90. 54. Vásquez, Crónica de la provincia, 1:98. 55. See Nowack, “Vilcabamba Inca and the Spanish State,” esp. 66–67; Wood, “Nahua Christian Warriors”; Pérez-Rocha and Tena, La nobleza indígena. 56. Ricard, Spiritual Conquest, 64.

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been making real headway. “So thorough was the religious conversion of the 1530s,” writes Charles Gibson, “that subsequent generations imbued it with legends . . . the manufacture of [an] exaggerated Christian history for Tlaxcala.”57 In other altepetl, too, the apparent rate of conversion— or at least, of cooperation with representatives of the new religion— increased. At exactly at this moment the Franciscans founded their friary and chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception at the edge of Almolonga. Fray Andrés de Olmos initiated the Franciscans’ entry into Guatemala during a visit to Santiago en Almolonga in 1529, and the cabildo of Santiago approved a land grant for the Franciscans’ friary in 1530. It would be another decade, however, before construction began and five founding Franciscans arrived in November 1540. When they did, bishop Francisco Marroquín encouraged a special partnership between the Franciscans and the people of Almolonga. According to Vásquez, the bishop asked “the Indians and especially the Mexicanos and Tlaxcaltecas of Almolonga” to feed the friars as they settled into their new base of operations. Nahuas from Ciudad Vieja subsequently accompanied four of these five Franciscans into the highlands to spread Christianity. Fray Diego de Ordoñez, who Vásquez says was fluent in Nahuatl, remained in Almolonga and treated its residents “as if they were his children . . . defending and litigating on behalf of the Mexicano Indians of Almolonga . . . who had helped so much in the conquests.”58 Having a Christian cleric living directly in their midst likely brought the residents of Almolonga some annoyances, but also some benefits. According to Vásquez, Ordoñez spent the months before the disaster of 1541 successfully challenging the Spanish cabildo’s harassment of Ciudad Vieja over access to the headwaters of the Río Pensativo.59 As the home of loyal, original allies, Ciudad Vieja was perhaps more closely associated with Christianity than the typical Indian town in central Guatemala. Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, strongly associated with the Franciscan Order and with the conquest and conversion of non-Christians, became the patroness of Ciudad Vieja’s Tlaxcalteca resi57. Gibson, Tlaxcala, 29–30; see also Cuadriello, Las glorias de la república de Tlaxcala. 58. Vásquez, Crónica de la provincia, 1:85, 88. 59. Ibid., 1:88. Access to the spring and pasture around the former Franciscan convent were again at issue in the mid-seventeenth century, when access to residents from Santiago was being denied by “an Indian from Ciudad Vieja.” AGCA A1 leg. 2347/exp. 17672, “Autos de los exidos que esta ciudad tiene en el valle de Alotenango” (1667), f. 19r.

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dents and of the town as a whole.60 It is difficult to know how warm relations between the early Franciscans and the people of Ciudad Vieja really were. They surely must have varied with the arrival and departure of individual friars in charge. Vásquez, however, paints a rosy picture from his eighteenth-century vantage point. He writes of the care the “mexicanos y tlaxcaltecas de Almolonga” took in safeguarding the Franciscans’ chosen site for their friary while their patron, the Spaniard Gaspar Arias Dávila, traveled to Mexico to recruit its founding fathers.61 He identifies the Mexicanos— a label he uses indiscriminately— as “disciplined and practiced in the militia, and with much desire to recover and repopulate their Almolonga” during the war against the Kaqchikel. They were part of the “conquistador army,” while the K’iche’ are portrayed as subordinate porters whose “good willingness” Vásquez merely “admits.”62 Vásquez emphasizes the warm welcome the five founding Franciscans to Santiago received in 1540 from the “mexicanos conquistadores” compared to local converts.63 In more aggressively disparaging tones, Vásquez writes that the Kaqchikel and other Central Americans, inspired and abetted by the Devil, put every obstacle in the way of Franciscan evangelization. In their gentility they were “more carnivorous than bloodthirsty lions, more cruel than lamiae, harpies, and infernal furies, and if it were not for their subjugation and fear they would not be Christians, nor would they persevere in their Christianity . . . because their inclination, rooted in and inherited from their ancestry (for so many centuries possessed by the Devil), is, most commonly, toward filth and cruelty.”64 Vásquez never describes the Mexicanos, nor their ancient forebears, in such negative terms. Assisting Christian evangelization was a natural extension of the Mesoamerican conquistadors’ military alliance— a fact that the Franciscans, who considered military pacification a necessary step toward spiritual conquest, particularly appreciated. As guides, guards, and translators, 60. Hall, Mary, Mother, and Warrior, 7–8, 18, 24, 40, 48, 75; Stratton, Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art. Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception’s association with the Spanish conquest is also evident in a painted cloth bearing her image in a small chapel near Zacajá, Quetzaltenango, nicknamed (as were many other Marian images in colonial New Spain) “La Conquistadora”; see Vásquez, Crónica de la provincia, 1:19–20; Hall, Mary, Mother, and Warrior, 124–25. 61. Vásquez, Crónica de la Provincia, 1:35. 62. Ibid., 1:76. 63. Ibid., 1:64. 64. Ibid., 1:38–41.

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“Mexicanos” made the Franciscans’ work possible. Vásquez recounts a story of the Franciscans’ first expeditions, in which the friars sent a Mexicano guide into the bushes to track down a group of whispering, hiding Kaqchikel. As the friars continued through the mountains, Mexicanos foraged for wild fruits “to maintain them so they would not falter,” much as their counterparts had done for the Spanish during earlier invasions of Central American territory. In another encounter, the Mexicanos— who at that point Vásquez says knew Kaqchikel better than the friars— reportedly announced that their entourage did not intend to steal silver, gold, or young women, but to make the Kaqchikel Christians and save them from idolatry.65 The Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas also recruited “Mexicanos” from Ciudad Vieja to help him evangelize and pacify the Verapaz region.66 Town officials helped enforce Christian rule more locally. During Holy Week of 1580, the Franciscans repeatedly sent a mestizo and two Nahua alguaciles (constables) of the parish church to force the mostly Kaqchikel residents of San Antonio Aguascalientes to attend services in Ciudad Vieja.67 The Kaqchikel refused, hurling insults particularly at the mestizo. But they also directed their ire at the Nahuas, attacking one of them and grabbing from the other and breaking the royal staff of Spanish colonial authority. Later that week, the Kaqchikel confronted church officials outside the Ciudad Vieja church and were promptly arrested by order of Ciudad Vieja’s governor— the very same don Francisco de Oñate from Tlaxcala who wrote the Spanish crown in 1547 and helped lead Ciudad Vieja’s collective campaign for privileges documented in Justicia 291. Ciudad Vieja’s association with the ruined city of Santiago en Almolonga also set it apart from other Indian towns. The memory of the disaster weighed heavily in local lore, and the fondness and nostalgia that some Spanish Americans in Guatemala felt for Ciudad Vieja is palpable. Not all Spaniards left the area after 1541; some chose to remain within what would

65. Ibid., 1:71, 81. 66. Ximénez, Historia de la provincia, 238–39; AGI Justicia 290, “Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo contra el fiscal sobre el derecho a las encomiendas de Coban y Acatenango” (1563– 67); testimony from Mexicano witnesses along with the rest of this legajo is briefly summarized in Saint-Lu, La Vera Paz, 521. 67. AGCA A1.15, leg. 4078/exp. 32361, “Contra los yndios de San Antonio Aguascalientes por no haber asistido a jueves santo” (1580). Herrera uses this case to talk about the persistence of native religion and resistance to Christian rule among the Kaqchikel; see Natives, Europeans, and Africans, 142–44.

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become Ciudad Vieja’s administrative jurisdiction.68 The son of conquistador Hernando de Yllescas, Francisco Hernández de Yllescas, rented fields for wheat cultivation on the outskirts of Ciudad Vieja at the turn of the sixteenth century. Pedro García Hernando de Yllescas, surely a descendant, was an elderly Spaniard living in Ciudad Vieja who accompanied Mexicano officials to inspect the town’s land boundaries in 1631 along with another Spanish resident of Ciudad Vieja, Diego Godínez.69 The elderly granddaughter of one of doña Beatríz’s attendants who survived the disaster still lived in Ciudad Vieja with her husband when Fuentes y Guzmán interviewed her in the late seventeenth century.70 Other Spaniards maintained weekend houses, organized bull runs, and held festivities there.71 Bishop Francisco Marroquin— cultivator of good relations between the Nahua and Oaxacan allies and the Franciscans in Almolonga, overseer of the building of the first cathedral before the 1541 disaster, and co-governor of the Spanish colony with Francisco de la Cueva afterwards— willed proceeds from his properties to help fund a memorial “on the day that [church officials and friars] go to Ciudad Vieja in procession  .  .  . with which the clergymen may each say a mass for the dead, sponsored by the cabildo of the Holy Church [of Santiago].”72 In the eighteenth century and perhaps earlier, the town’s image of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception brought Spaniards “of the highest order” from Santiago to Ciudad Vieja on Saturdays to pay her homage.73 Perhaps some also visited a com68. Vásquez, Crónica de la provincia, 1:98. 69. Hernández Méndez, “Francisco Hernández de Yllescas”; AGCA A1 leg. 2347/exp. 17672, “Autos de los ejidos que esta ciudad tiene en el valle de Alotenango” (1667), f. 12r for Francisco Hernández de Yllescas and at least three other Spaniards with land on the ourskirts of Ciudad Vieja; 55r for Pedro García Hernando de Yllescas and Diego Godínez. 70. Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:141–44. The granddaughter, María del Castillo, was apparently an informant of some renown; the Franciscan chronicler Vásquez also interviewed her, and her testimony was ridiculed by the Dominican chronicler Ximénez, Historia de la provincia, 242. 71. AGI Guatemala 41, N. 103, “Carta de cabildo sobre la fiesta de Santa Cecilia” (1601); AGCA A1.19, leg. 347/exp. 7230, “Consta la presencia de espectadores durante un corredor de toros en Ciudad Vieja” (1744); AGCA A2.2, leg. 150/exp. 2836, “Contra Isidro Ruarro por heridas a Alexo Vicente de Paz” (1770). 72. Marroquín, Cartas y testamento, 95–96. Marroquín also appears to have personally helped individual Nahuas navigate Spanish bureaucracy; see for example his assistance in securing a legal title for land being sold between two Nahua families, AGCA A1.43, leg. 2340/exp. 17562, “Testamento de Cristobal de Quijada” (1575–1629). 73. Gall, “Zodiaco Maríano.”

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memorative plaque in the Franciscan convent that in Fuentes y Guzmán’s day still marked the grave of doña Beatríz’s attendants who were buried there. (Doña Beatríz herself was laid to rest in the still-standing cathedral in Santiago en Almolonga, to be reburied later in the cathedral in Santiago de Guatemala.) The Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja, conversely, participated in celebrations of the conquest in Santiago each November (analyzed at length in Chapter 5). In June, they again marched at the head of the capital city’s annual Corpus Christi parade as honored caretakers of an image of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception said to have been brought by the conquistadors and transferred to the acting cathedral of Santiago de Guatemala after 1541.74 If some Spanish Americans viewed Ciudad Vieja as a link to the early days of Spanish conquest and colonization, they also seem to have generally respected the Indian conquistadors themselves. Of these, the Tlaxcalteca and the Cholulteca garnered the most prestige. In Justicia 291, Spanish witnesses detailed the contributions of Mexicanos, Tlaxcalteca, Cholulteca, Quauhquecholteca, Mixtecs, and Zapotecs. Beyond this unusual document and moving further from the first generation of conquistadors, however, references to Zapotecs and Mixtecs in the conquest of Central America and the settlement of Ciudad Vieja are remarkably scarce. As for the Nahua, Bernal Díaz del Castillo set the refrain in his Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, when he referred to 200 Tlaxcalteca and Cholulteca and 100 Mexicanos who left Mexico Tenochtitlan with Pedro de Alvarado. His great-great-grandson Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzmán embellished this account, noting in his historical chronicles that the Tlaxcalteca and the Cholulteca were warriors while the Mexicanos (presumably referencing the Tenocha or those serving under their command) acted as backups and prepared the roads.75 In more prosaic documentation, the Cholulteca, Quauhquecholteca, and all other Oaxacan and Nahua conquistadors from Ciudad Vieja tend to be described simply as Mexicanos, perhaps in reference to their most common language, Nahuatl, known also to the Spanish as lengua mexicana. Only the Tlaxcalteca continue to be singled out, both individually and collectively and throughout the colonial period.76 For some creole 74. AHA Cofradías 101, #47, “El cabildo de Ciudad Vieja contra cofradía de Nra Señora de la Concepción de Santa Lucía” (1763); Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:154. 75. Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:82. 76. For example, see ibid., 1:96, 119, 232, 284, 298, 302, 303, 308.

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(European-American) elites— themselves descended from high-ranking Tlaxcalteca like the sisters Luisa and Lucía Xicotencatl, gifted by their father to Pedro and Jorge de Alvarado— this was a matter of family pride.77 But the special regard the Tlaxcalteca enjoyed throughout the Spanish colonial world is certainly apparent in Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala. While the town continued to maintain its nine parcialidades named after homelands in Mexico into the nineteenth century, Spanish administrators divided the town more simply, into Mexicano and Tlaxcalteca sections. Finally, Ciudad Vieja was an Indian town highly engaged in the emerging colonial economy and connected to trade routes that linked the central and northern regions of New Spain with the south. It lay at the crossroads of several major commercial routes, including the Camino Real from Veracruz to Mexico City to Oaxaca, the Pacific coast, and the Chiapas and Guatemalan highlands; the route called La Provincia running from Tehuantepec along the southern Pacific coast to Escuintla; and the road from Santiago to Honduras and El Salvador by way of Petapa and Mixco. Guatemala lacked mineral wealth, and so relied from its earliest years as a Spanish colony on export products such as cacao, indigo, and cochineal, and to a lesser extent on wheat, indigenous textiles, medicinal plants, and leather. In particular, European demand for dyestuffs made some entrepreneurs from Guatemala and southern Oaxaca wealthy, especially toward the end of the colonial period and despite the considerable costs of labor and transportation.78 Just as importantly, Santiago anchored a thriving regional economy that encompassed Central America, Oaxaca, and Chiapas.79 Some regional commerce no doubt continued pre-Columbian patterns; the notable popularity of Mixtec cloth in sixteenth-century Guatemala, for instance, leads Robinson Herrera to think this catered to already-existing markets.80 Textiles from Guatemala and cacao from Chia77. See also my discussion in Chapter 5. AGI Patronato 60, N. 5, R. 3, “Probanzas de don Francisco de la Cueva y doña Leonor de Alvarado sobre los servicios de sus antepasados hechos a su magestad” (1556); AGI Guatemala 64, “Don Joan de Alvarado pide una encomienda” (1617); AGI Guatemala 70, “Probanza de Don Juan de Alvarado” (1640); AGCA A1, leg. 2878/exp. 26440, “Sobre un descendiente de Pedro de Alvarado y de Xicotenga, Señor de Tascala” (1799); AGCA A1.29, leg. 212/exp. 5040, “Doña María Álvarez de la Fuente solicita encomienda” (1699); AGCA A1.29, leg. 4782/exp. 41327, “Merecimientos y servicios de los descendientes de Jorge de Alvarado” (1679). 78. Machuca, Comercio de sal, 198. 79. This is the thesis, amply demonstrated, of Herrera’s Natives, Europeans, and Africans. See also Machuca, Comercio de sal, 217. 80. Herrera, Natives, Europeans, and Africans, 40–50.

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pas and Xoconusco traveled north and west, while leather, shoes, textiles, and salt from Oaxaca and Tehuantepec traveled south and east. Some products remained regional; salt from Sonsonate in El Salvador and from San Miguel Ixtatán and Sacapulas in Guatemala traveled no further than Chiapas, while Escuintla’s salt was sold only locally.81 Santiago was less directly connected to the global traffic of goods than Mexico City, Veracruz, or Lima. Nevertheless, it impressed the English Dominican Thomas Gage in the mid-seventeenth century: The trading of the city is great, for by mules it partakes of the best commodities of Mexico, Oaxaca, and Chiapa, and, southward, of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. By sea it hath commerce with Peru, by two sea ports and havens. . . . There were in my time five (besides many others who were judged worth twenty thousand ducats, thirty thousand, fifty thousand, some a few hundred thousand) who were judged of equal wealth, and generally reported to be worth each of them five hundred thousand ducats . . . and their wealth and trading were enough to denominate Guatemala a very rich city.82 Ciudad Vieja partook of and contributed to this commercial wealth, supplying tortillas, dried and fresh fish, flowers, firewood, and straw mats (petates) made with fresh-water harvested reeds from Lake Quilizinapa to Santiago.83 Its residents were links in a human chain that crisscrossed Oaxaca and western Guatemala, with extensions to Mexico City, Veracruz, Sonsonate, and Honduras. Kevin Terraciano notes significant traffic between Mexico City and Oaxaca in the first hundred years after conquest, including church people, painters, and peddlers of medicinal plants.84 Others traveled further south and east. Nahuas, Oaxacans, Chiapanecos, and even “chichimecas” appear scattered throughout Santiago’s sixteenthcentury notary books and judicial cases, as domestics, tailors, healers, artists, weavers, merchants, porters, translators, and storekeepers.85 Some 81. Machuca, Comercio de sal, 208–9. 82. Gage, Thomas Gage’s Travels in the New World, 186. 83. Luján Muñoz and Cabezas Carcache, “Comercio,” 2:456; thanks to Christopher Lutz for pointing out the Quilizinapa connection. 84. Terraciano, Mixtecs, 332–33. 85. Herrera, Natives, Europeans, and Africans, 154–67. See also AGI Justicia 332, “Información recibida por el Dr. Mexia oidor, contra algunos religiosos de la orden de Santo Domingo” (1560); AGI Guatemala 965, “Ynformacion hecha por Bartolomé Nuñez de Valdespino, vicario del pueblo de Huehuetlán, provincia de Soconusco” (1561); AGI Gua-

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of these migrants cultivated relationships and settled in nearby Ciudad Vieja. In 1575, the will of a Nahua from Ciudad Vieja was witnessed by two other Nahua residents of the town plus Pedro García, a “merchant from Oaxaca.” A land sale between two residents of the Parcialiadad de Tenustitan in 1587 was witnessed by five other Nahuas from Ciudad Vieja plus Diego Hernández “from Comitlán” (Oaxaca) and Diego Vásquez “from Coyoacan” (central Mexico).86 A will from 1575 mentions a Nahua landowner in Ciudad Vieja, Juan Pérez, “conquistador de Zacatecas.” Such brief mentions suggest the diversity of people passing through and sometimes settling down in sixteenth-century Ciudad Vieja. More precise details emerge in a 1589 court case in Nahuatl against Gaspar Pérez, a native of San Pedro Huamelula on the Oaxacan coast southwest of Tehuantepec, who was prosecuted for bigamy in Ciudad Vieja after more than a decade away from home. Gaspar Pérez left Huamelula for Guatemala as a young husband and father probably in his late teens. He settled in Ciudad Vieja, and lived there some 8–10 years before marrying Margarita, a native of Ciudad Vieja whose mother was a Nahua from the Parcialidad de Tescuco in Ciudad Vieja and/or the central Mexican altepetl of Texcoco.87 Pérez claimed that acquaintances from Huamelula told him his first wife had died. Four years after Pérez’s second marriage, to Margarita, however, the padre guardián of Ciudad Vieja’s Franciscan convent requested that Indian officials in Ciudad Vieja apprehend and imprison the Oaxacan on bigamy charges. Thus began a difficult period for Pérez, who would spend the next year and a half in prison waiting for his case to be resolved in the colonial courts.

temala 45, “Cuenta y tasación de Santa Ynés Petapa” (1 February 1562), quoted in Luján Muñoz, “San Miguel Petapa,” 249. For later periods, see AGCA A2.2, leg. 139/exp. 2537, “Contra Juan Joseph Alvarado, vecino de Ciudad Vieja, por muerte de dos españoles” (1739); AGCA 2.2, leg. 110/exp. 2131, “Autos criminales . . . contra Juan Manuel Barillos alias Colindres por habersele aprehendido un cuchillo y . . . haber cometido un homicidio en la persona de Antonio Mexicanos” (1762). In 1752, the Mexicanos of Totonicapán noted that one of their privileges was to be merchants; see AGCA A1.29, leg. 3/exp. 143, “Algunas indígenas de San Miguel Totonicapán reclaman sus privilegios como mexicanos” (1752). 86. AGCA A1.43, leg. 2340/exp. 17562, “Testamento de Cristobal de Quijada” (1575– 1629), ff. 5r for Diego Hernández and Diego Vásquez, 7v and 10r for Pedro García. 87. Gaspar Pérez identifies Margarita’s father only as Cristóbal. He identifies his mother-in-law variously, as Ana de Tescuco, and as an “india vecina que es del pueblo de la Sacualpa de la Ciudad Vieja,” raising the slight possibility that she was Kaqchikel.

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Four other migrants from Huamelula who lived in the Escuintla region in the towns of Miahuatlán and Xicalapa claimed that Pérez’s first wife was alive and well, and now had a small infant as well as the child Pérez had left behind. (These two leading witnesses against Pérez had arrived in the Escuintla area some five years after Pérez’s migration to Ciudad Vieja. One was the first wife’s brother). An attempt to track down witnesses in Pérez’s favor failed. After languishing in jail for nearly eighteen months, Pérez was condemned to be stripped to the waist, bound hand and foot, paraded atop a mule or horse throughout Santiago with a crier announcing his crime of bigamy, given 200 lashes in the central plaza, and sold into servitude for six years at public auction. Aside from the terrible drama of Pérez’s misfortune, the case reveals something of the human connections created by trade and traders between Oaxaca, Ciudad Vieja, and the Pacific coast in the sixteenth century. All the witnesses for and against Pérez were themselves migrants from Huamelula who had resettled in the central highlands and coastal regions of Guatemala. The two missing witnesses were also migrants from Oaxaca: a “Mixtec” named Gonzalo Jimenes, and a native of coastal Huatulco, Oaxaca, named Domingo Hernández. The document does not reveal whether these two men lived permanently in Ciudad Vieja, but both had been available to play a role in Pérez’s second marriage ceremony there, and Pérez sent his court defender to Ciudad Vieja looking for them. When this failed, Pérez’s defender requested time to seek defense witnesses in Huamelula. Which brings us to a second notable aspect of the case: most of the witnesses involved came not only from Oaxaca, but from one town in Tehuantepec province. Years after leaving home, they still knew where to find each other and cooperated on each other’s behalf (or to each other’s detriment). We can only guess who might have denounced Pérez to the padre guardián of Ciudad Vieja, why Pérez might have called the two most persistent witnesses against him “singular” and his “enemies,” or how his first wife’s infant child by another man played into the conflict. But clearly, friendships and enmities were maintained or renewed among these migrants from Oaxaca despite many years away from home.88 88. AGCA A1, leg. 4084/exp. 32406, “Contra Gaspar Pérez, indio preso en la carcel del corte, sobre que le acusa ser casado dos veces siendo viva la primer muger” (1589). Many thanks to Christopher Lutz for providing me with this document, and to Sergio Romero for translating parts of the Nahuatl portions of it.

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Some residents of Ciudad Vieja followed similar itineraries to those of the Oaxaca migrants. Miguel Guitzitl left his family behind in Ciudad Vieja to work as a merchant in the cacao-rich region of Xoconusco. According to his daughter, he became wealthy, had another family with children, and died in Xoconusco while still maintaining his family in Ciudad Vieja.89 Many others traveled back and forth between Ciudad Vieja and the coastal provinces of Escuintla and Guazacapán, forging what seems to have been a strong, enduring economic orientation in Ciudad Vieja toward the southern Pacific coast. There is good reason to think that the Tlaxcalteca captain Juan de Tascala’s encomienda, granted and then reclaimed by Pedro de Alvarado, may have been in the Citala/Siquinalá area of Escuintla.90 In 1556, several Ciudad Vieja Mexicanos worked with a local Catholic priest to control the textile trade out of Naolingo and Izalco in Sonsonate, to the southeast of Escuintla.91 Bartolomé García from the Parcialidad de 89. AGCA A1.15, leg. 4809/exp. 41483, “El indígena Martín Gonzales reclama parte de la herencia de Catalina Vasquez, hija de yndio mercader de Soconusco, vecina de Almolonga” (1587). 90. Juan de Tascala’s encomienda is variously named Citala and Siquinalá in the documentation. According to Pedro de Alvarado’s residencia, it was divided with “el viscayno” (the Basque) by Pedro de Alvarado, then taken away by the Adelantado only a few years later; see AGI Justicia 295, “Residencia del Adelantado Pedro de Alvarado” (1537–38), f. 87. It is not clear whether Juan de Tascala held two adjacent towns in encomienda, nor where his encomienda was located. Two of the most prominent possibilities are a Citala near San Salvador and one in Escuintla. The Salvadoran Citala was under dispute between Gonzalo de Alvarado and several other conquistadors in 1559; one witness in this dispute was “Pedro de Vizcaina”; see AGI Justicia 285, N. 1, R. 1, “Gómez Díaz de la Reguera e Isabel Costilla su mujer contra Gonzalo de Alvarado” (1559), f. 31. I tend to favor the Escuintla location, in part because Juan de Tascala’s encomienda is also identified as Siquinalá (there is both a Citala and a Siquinalá in Escuintla), and also because of the numerous residents of Ciudad Vieja— Spaniards as well as Mexicanos— who emerge in later colonial documentation with significant economic ties to Escuintla and specifically to that province’s Siquinalá. It is also worth noting that today, Siquinalá in Escuintla is known for its devotion to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception and for certain “bailes de moros” that are also performed exclusively in Ciudad Vieja and the surrounding towns. See AGI Guatemala 110, N. 10, “Probanza hecha a petición de Marcos Ruíz” (1531); AGI Guatemala 128, “Libro de tasaciones de los naturales de las provincias de Guatemala” (1548–51); AGI Patronato 289, R. 70, “Comisión para resolver pleito de Isabel Costilla” (1564); AGI Escribanía 343, N. 2, “Doña Lorenza y doña Rita de Barra y Figueroa sobre abasto de carne en Ciudad Vieja” (1742); Mace, “Compendium of Guatemalan Dance Drama.” 91. AGI Justicia 283, N. 3, R. 1, “Proceso contra don Francisco Gómez, dean de la santa iglesia” (1556).

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Tascala accused his neighbor Francisco Vásques in 1616 of stealing a horse, then found the animal in Escuintla in the care of a relative.92 In 1639 the Mexicano Agustín Ramírez, who owned land in Escuintla, complained that he was being mistreated by Ciudad Vieja’s Mexicano governor and other officials because of his wealth.93 After a violent confrontation with Ciudad Vieja’s governor in 1802, Mexicano resident Patricio Santa María traveled to Escuintla to buy fish and returned, only to die a few days later of his wounds.94 Beyond the simple geography of Ciudad Vieja’s position at a trading crossroads, language may have fostered this orientation toward the coast. The commonalities of their languages would have facilitated communication between the Nahuas of Ciudad Vieja and the Pipil, who spoke a form of Nahuatl. The Ciudad Vieja Nahuas may also have been building on commercial relationships that predated the arrival of the Spanish.95 Finally, Nahua connections with both the Spanish creole elites of Santiago and others involved in trade along the Oaxaca-Chiapas-XoconuscoTehuantepec-Santiago circuit must surely have created new business opportunities for Ciudad Vieja residents. A number of important Spaniards with close ties to the Nahuas of Ciudad Vieja— including Pedro de Alvarado’s mestiza daughter Leonor by the Tlaxcalteca noblewoman doña Luisa Xicotencatl, and Leonor’s husband Francisco de la Cueva who testified on the Mexicanos’ behalf in Justicia 291— held encomiendas in the Escuintla and Guazacapán areas.96 In later years, numerous Europeans, creoles, and castas living or doing business in Ciudad Vieja also owned land in Escuintla.97

92. AGCA A1.15, leg. 4100/exp. 32505, “Francisco Vásques yndio de Ciudad Vieja contra Bartolome García yndio tascalteca de Ciudad Vieja por hurto de caballos” (1616). 93. AGCA A1.14, leg. 4063/exp. 31645, “Agustín Ramirez de Ciudad Vieja contra el gobernador por maltratamiento” (1639). 94. AGCA A1, leg. 2950/exp. 27808, “Francisca Victoria contra el gobernador de Ciudad Vieja por abusos” (1802). 95. On the Pipil of the southwestern coast of Guatemala and their northern origins, see Fowler, Cultural Evolution, 188–91. 96. Fowler, “Escuintla y Guazacapán,” 587. 97. See for example AHA T3–23, Juicios Civiles, “Sobre algunas tierras en Esquintla, propiedad de Paulina Osorio de Ciudad Vieja” (1634–1789); AHA T1–67 (Tomo 5), Visitas Pastorales, “Visita de Almolonga de M. Juan Gómez de Parada” (1731); AGI Escribanía 343, “Doña Lorenza y Doña Rita de Barra y Figueroa, sobre abasto de carne en Ciudad Vieja” (1742); AGCA A1.15, leg. 2454/exp. 18965 “Diego Quiñones, vecino de Ciudad

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Being a commercial hub did not make Ciudad Vieja unique. Many other Indian towns (such as San Miguel Petapa, Mixco, and San Cristóbal el Alto) were also heavily involved in colonial-era commerce. In the heterogeneous valley of Guatemala, however, the Indian populations of most of these towns dwindled in the face of increasing mestizaje as the colonial period progressed. In Ciudad Vieja, this did not happen. The Mexicanos’ ongoing ethnogenesis was partially fueled by their own ethnic pride and the deeply Mesoamerican ways they understood their past and present. But external factors were also at play. One was the town’s key involvement in trading patterns that connected the southern regions of New Spain and Guatemala. Another external boost came from local Spanish Americans, both in their affection for the site of their old capital city and in their respect— at least from some quarters— of the Mexicanos’ legacy as conquistadors and early Christian converts. But perhaps the most important external support of Mexicano ethnicity in Ciudad Vieja remained the privileges its leaders had won for their descendants as Indian conquistadors. Ciudad Vieja’s exemptions from the most basic function of colonial congregación— the acquisition of tribute and labor from conquered subjects— made it a truly unusual Indian town.

Ciudad Vieja as a Colonial Altepetl Despite Spanish generalizations about the Mesoamerican conquistadors’ ethnicity, more complicated notions of being Mexicano persisted in the relationship between Ciudad Vieja as a whole and its component parts, the parcialidades. It is tempting to see a direct correlation here with the pre-Columbian altepetl and calpolli, and more recklessly to see these better-understood Nahua patterns as reflective of a broad colonial Mesoamerican sensibility. Parcialidades also subdivided the Indian barrios of Santiago into ethnically identified units (for instance, the separate parcialidades of Guatemaltecas [Kaqchikel] and Utatecas [K’iche’] within the Barrio de Santa Cruz in Santiago), as well as majority Maya towns like Santa María de Jesús, Jocotenango, Tecpán Guatemala, Sacapulas, and Totonicapán. Colonial-era Spaniards claimed an equivalency between the K’iche’ or Kaqchikel chinamit (itself a loanword from the Nahuatl Vieja, contra Miguel Quiñonez por unas bestias” (1711); AGCA A1.15, leg. 4120/exp. 32646, “Pascual de Loaysa mulato libre sobre un solar en Ciudad Vieja que le dió su amo Joseph de Pérez” (1679).

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chinamitl, or “fence,” used interchangeably with calpolli in some regions of south-central Mexico), the Poqomam molab, the Nahua calpolli, and the colonial-era cantón and/or parcialidad. Colonial-era Maya texts use the terms “chinamit” and “parcialidad” interchangeably.98 In the Nahua garrison at Totonicapán, the equivalence between the Nahua calpolli and the colonial Guatemalan parcialidad is explicit; the Mexicanos there referred to their Parcialidad de Caciques as a “calpul.”99 A note of caution is warranted. Important differences existed between Mixtec, Zapotec, and Nahua understandings of ethnic identity, and even among the Nahuas themselves. We know even less about how the highland Maya conceptualized ethnicity before and after the Nahua-Spanish conquest. Still, where the mostly Nahua colony of Ciudad Vieja is concerned, it seems clear that the parcialidades— as self-governing, landholding, ethnically identified component parts of a functioning whole— were indeed roughly analogous in function to the central Mexican calpolli. The enormous expansion of the parcialidades of Tascala and Cholula relative to the other parcialidades by the end of the eighteenth century, combined with the Spanish tendency to recognize only Mexicano and Tlaxcalteca parts of town, might suggest a devolution of Ciudad Vieja’s parcialidades to only three: a simplified mix of so-called Mexicanos, Tlaxcalteca, and perhaps Cholulteca. Instead, all ten of Ciudad Vieja’s parcialidades survived into the nineteenth century, continuing to reflect both the ethnic mix of Nahuas and Oaxacans who had fought in the conquest and perhaps (in the case of Reservados) the nobility of some of the allies.100 Chapter 5 will examine how Ciudad Vieja’s residents actively remembered

98. Hill and Monaghan, Continuities, 24–42; Lockhart, Nahuas, 16, 479n. 11; Recinos, Crónicas, 24–67; Lutz, Santiago de Guatemala, ch. 2; Herrera, Natives, Europeans, and Africans, 137; and Hill, “Social Organization.” 99. AGCA A1, leg. 191/exp. 3889, “Los casiques de Totonicapán sobre que no pagar tribute” (1791). 100. The original residents of Reservados may have comprised an ethnically mixed conglomeration of the most high-ranking Nahua and Oaxacan captains and their families, or simply those who had succeeded in securing individual tribute exemptions regardless of their military rank. Robert Hill, in “Social Organization,” argues that the possibly analogous Parcialidad de Caciques of Totonicapán was a Spanish innovation, unlike the chinamit-based parcialidades of Sacapulas or Tecpán, in his article “Social Organization.” It is also possible that the creation of an elite barrio reflects the political dominance of the Tlaxcalteca and Cholulteca in the alliance and follows the teccalli model of noble houses that predominated in the Basin of Puebla-Tlaxcala.

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their shared yet distinct histories through the rituals of religion, historical commemoration, political administration, and kinship. But these rituals were tied to specific places— and not just the memory of places in faraway New Spain, but to the landscape, architecture, and neighborhoods of Ciudad Vieja itself. As was common in colonial Indian towns throughout Mesoamerica, each parcialidad in Ciudad Vieja had its own officials that helped calculate and collect tribute, defend land claims, and coordinate contributions to the parish church. Each also had its own patron saint, which provided the parcialidad with an alternate name; for instance, the Parcialidad de Tescuco was also known as the Parcialidad de San Antonio.101 In some cases, the adopted saints of the Guatemalan calpolli/parcialidades may have derived in some way from those same saints’ patronage of their respective altepetl in Mexico. San Gabriel, for instance, was patron not only of the Parcialidad de Cholula in Ciudad Vieja, but also of the Franciscan church of San Gabriel in Cholula, New Spain.102 I have been able to identify six parcialidad patron saints in Ciudad Vieja with certainty: San Gabriel for Cholula, San Sebastián for Tenustitan, Santiago for Tatelulco, San Rafael for Teguantepeque, San Antonio for Tescuco, and San Francisco for Reservados. Based on Ciudad Vieja’s festival calendar and a mention of Tascala as the “comunidad de nuestra señora” in one eighteenth-century document, it seems that Tascala’s patron saint was the same as the whole town’s, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. The patron saints of the parcialidades of Otumpa, Quahquechula, and Chinampa remain unknown. In the sixteenth century, Spanish records and a small corpus of surviving Nahuatl documents identified residents of Ciudad Vieja by parcialidad— but not always, and the omissions provide a few scarce clues to the relative importance of these microethnic identities in the first generations of colonial settlement. Accused bigamist Gaspar Pérez identified his mother-in-law as “Ana of Tescuco,” which in 1589 could have referenced not only Ana’s parcialidad in Ciudad Vieja but perhaps also her home-

101. See AGCA A1.45, leg. 151/exp. 2962, “Cuadrante de la parroquia de Ciudad Vieja” (1796); AGCA A1.15, leg. 6906/exp. 50138; AGCA A1.15, leg. 5906/exp. 50138, “José Pérez, alcalde del pueblo de Almolonga, contra varios indios por haberlo asaltado en el camino” (1733); AHA Vicarias (1779–83); AGCA A1.45, leg. 151/exp. 2962, “Ciudad Vieja queja que los ganados de la hacienda de Don Jose Eustaquio de Uria causan daños” (1741) 102. Fernández Christlien and García Zambrano, Territorialidad y paisaje, 306–9, 330, 336.

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land in central Mexico.103 None of the Nahua officials bringing the case forward, however, were identified more specifically than as residents of Almolonga. A Nahuatl-language land sale from 1573 identifies only one witness out of 12 by parcialidad: Andrés Hernández of the Parcialidad de Teguantepeque, listed as a “noble” alongside don Francisco de Santiago and don Juan de Tapia (who we know from Justicia 291 was from the Parcialidad de Tenustitan). Did Andres Hernández’s Oaxacan origins merit special mention in this majority Nahua town? Don Miguel de Tapia noted that he and the buyer of his land in 1587 were “both from Tenochtitlan,” but identified only Diego Vásquez of Coyoacan and Diego Hernández from Comitlán (Oaxaca) out of eight witnesses from Ciudad Vieja by residence or homeland. Perhaps, as I have already suggested, Vásquez and Hernández were late sixteenth-century immigrants or even nonresidents of Ciudad Vieja. Or perhaps they were descendants of first settlers who had been aggregated into the Parcialidades de Chinampa or Teguantepeque, making it more important in 1587 to point out their true ancestral homelands. Similar possibilities are raised by a 1575 will from Ciudad Vieja, in which testator Juan García identified three individuals by their homelands or residence: Juan de Çunica “of Quauhquechollan, a noble,” Juan Pérez “conquistador de Zacatecas,” and Cristóbal Pérez “resident of Santo Domingo” (presumably the Parcialidad de Mexicanos of the Barrio de Santo Domingo in Santiago). Six other Nahuas acting as witnesses were identified merely as residents of Almolonga, as was Juan García himself.104 Cristóbal Pérez’s residence outside Ciudad Vieja seems worth noting, as perhaps does Juan Pérez’s status as a conquistador of Zacatecas (suggesting that he was a Nahua veteran of the 1540–41 Mixton War who later im-

103. AGCA A1, leg. 4084/exp. 32406, “Contra Gaspar Pérez, indio preso en la carcel de corte, sobre que le acusa ser casado dos veces siendo viva la primer mujer” (1589). 104. The bills of sale of land from 1573 and 1587 and Juan García’s will from 1575, as well as the bills of sale of land indicated in note 106 below, are archived in AGCA A1.43, leg. 2340/exp. 17562, “Testamento de Cristobal de Quijada” (1575–1629). Andres Hernández appears on f. 3r; don Miguel de Tapia, f. 5r; Juan de Çunica and Juan Pérez, f. 9r; Cristóbal Pérez, f. 9v. Thanks to John Sullivan for translating the Nahuatl portions of this document, as well as the bigamy trial of Gaspar Pérez. These are the only Nahuatl documents from Ciudad Vieja that I have found thus far. It is worth noting that the Nahua notary of Juan García’s will calls Ciudad Vieja an “altepetl,” f. 10r; in all Nahuatl documents, Ciudad Vieja is labeled Almoloncan Santa María Concepción or simply Almoloncan (Almolonga).

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migrated to Ciudad Vieja).105 But why did García feel the need to specify the descent of Çunica, from whom he bought land? Did doing so signal Çunica’s social status, or bolster the legitimacy of the land transfer? As in other examples of early parcialidad identification, why these individuals are being singled out remains unclear. Parcialidad affiliation appears more regularly in early seventeenthcentury documents. Officials who witnessed a 1614 land sale between a nephew and uncle from the Parcialidad de Tatelulco were reported to be from the parcialidades of Tatelulco, Cholula, and Quahquechula. Two more officials who witnessed the uncle’s resale of the land in 1629 came from the Parcialidad de Tascala.106 In a 1616 litigation involving horse theft, all the witnesses from Ciudad Vieja named their home parcialidades of Tascala, Quahquechula, and Cholula.107 Again it is difficult to say what this increased tendency to mention parcialidad affiliation means in such a small corpus of documents. It may indicate changing Spanish bureaucratic norms, a second- and third-generation surge of micropatriotism, consolidation of the parcialidades, or a slowdown in migration in the seventeenth century. Perhaps who belonged to which parcialidad was common knowledge in the earlier period, since Ciudad Vieja was still small and many of the original conquistadors (both Mesoamerican and Spanish) were still alive. Everyone would have been familiar, for instance, with the influential don Juan de Tapia’s ethnic heritage. Whatever the explanation, it is worth noting that in all these documents from the first hundred years of settlement in Ciudad Vieja, social class— asserted through adoption of the Spanish honorific “don” and references to nobility, legitimacy, and occupation— was at least as salient 105. On Nahuas in the Mixton War, see Altman, “Conquest, Coercion, and Collaboration.” Thanks to Dana Velasco Murillo for pointing me toward this possible identification of Juan Pérez. 106. Ibid., ff. 14r–15v. Humberto Ruz, “De antepasados y herederos,” discusses this document as part of the testamento genre. He notes that Otumba is one of the Nahua homelands mentioned, which provides a good example of how difficult it is to determine the importance of parcialidad affiliation to the early colonial residents of Ciudad Vieja from only a few documents. Juan García the grandson twice claims Tatelulco as his parcialidad (as does his uncle Domingo) but at the end of his 1614 bill of sale says he is from “Otumpa” (f. 13r in Nahuatl, 15r in Spanish). I have chosen to assume this was a clerical error, but if so, it was an error on the Nahua scribe’s part later faithfully duplicated by the Spanish copyist. 107. AGCA A1.15, leg. 4100/exp. 32505, “Francisco Vásques yndio de Ciudad Vieja contra Bartolome García yndio tascalteca de Ciudad Vieja por hurto de caballos” (1616).

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as parcialidad affiliation. Juan García did not specify his parcialidad in his 1575 will, for example, but he did proclaim his descent from “the late Pedro Chiquilichco conquistador, here in the land of Guatemala. I legally married my wife, whose name is Marta, also child of a conquistador. My wife’s father is well known.”108 Put together, these documents suggest that Ciudad Vieja’s ethnically designated parcialidades had taken recognizable shape by the seventeenth century. They indicate the expected rotation of duties and shared governance between parcialidades and the incorporation of newcomers throughout the sixteenth century. Most important, parcialidad affiliation appears to have complemented the larger importance ascribed to being a noble and/or conquistador. No records tell us how the parcialidades were spatially arranged in colonial Ciudad Vieja, but one wonders whether that arrangement reflected the military hierarchy of the Nahua-Oaxacan alliance. In central Mexico, calpolli sets were ordered by rank, reflecting an “order of precedence from first to last.”109 In Justicia 291 and other sixteenth-century documents the Tlaxcalteca and Cholulteca are consistently portrayed as preeminent. The Zapotecs always follow the Nahua in order of reference (except, significantly, when the Indian conquistadors’ privileged status is being questioned, as in Joan de Arguyo’s inverted labeling of them as “yndios çapotecas guatimaltecas” in response to the first probanza of Justicia 291 in 1564).110 The parcialidades of Tascala and Cholula likewise consistently appear as important units of the town in land disputes, cabildo records, and other documents from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Even in the 1750s, by which time the Spanish no longer distinguished the Cholulteca from the larger mass of Mexicanos and only occasionally recognized the Tlaxcalteca, the parcialidades of Tascala and Cholula were by far the most populous in Ciudad Vieja.111 Tribute exemption applied to the entire conquistador-descended population of Ciudad Vieja and was managed by parcialidad officials. In 1752, for example, the governor of Ciudad Vieja, don Joseph Hipólito of the Parcialidad de Quahquechula, was joined by two alcaldes (judges) and 108. AGCA A1.43, leg. 2340/exp. 17562, “Testamento de Cristobal de Quijada” (1575– 1629), f. 9r. 109. Lockhart, Nahuas, 17. 110. The special mention of the Tlaxcalteca and Cholulteca in early colonial documents from Guatemala, as well as Joan de Arguyo’s labeling of the Mexicanos, is discussed in Chapter 3. 111. AGCA A3, leg. 2566/exp. 37661, “Padrón de Ciudad Vieja” (1752).

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nine regidores (council members)— one from each parcialidad excluding Reservados— to supervise the tribute counts that year. The task of collection fell to a different group of lower-ranking officials from each parcialidad.112 The calculation and collection of tribute thereby reinforced social boundaries not only between the broadly defined Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja and their Kaqchikel neighbors (who did not enjoy the same exemptions), but also among the Mexicanos themselves. The Kaqchikel neighborhood of San Miguel Escobar paid tribute according to the same general rules applied to all other Mesoamericans in Central America, except for the Mexicanos. For administrative purposes, the combined “Parcialidades de Mexicanos y Tascaltecas”— composed of the nine parcialidades de Tascala, Cholula, Quahquechula, Teguantepeque, Chinampa, Tescuco, Tenustitan, Tatelulco, and Otumpa— paid according to the dispensations accorded to the Indian conquistadors by the crown in the early seventeenth century. Finally, the Parcialidad de Reservados’ residents claimed even further exemptions from tribute than their neighbors, based on individual grants by the crown. Men and women in mixed parcialidad marriages (in which the spouses came from different parcialidades) were often categorized separately in the town tributary count, each within his or her home parcialidad. Mexicanos who married Ladinos or Indians from other towns also remained on the tributary rolls of their home parcialidad. Thus within Ciudad Vieja, an individual’s parcialidad affiliation was closely linked to the particular privileges he or she might claim as a descendant of Indian conquistadors. The relationship between place and privilege also mattered at the broader level of the pueblo itself. Migrants from Ciudad Vieja to other, non-Mexicano Guatemalan towns preserved their privileges as Mexicanos by maintaining their connections not to their ancestral homes in New Spain, but to Ciudad Vieja. This was most notably true for the numerous Mexicanos who relocated to the nearby Poqomam towns of San Miguel 112. Ibid.; AGCA A3, leg. 2834/exp. 41206, “Sobre el padrón de Ciudad Vieja” (1752). Tribute records might be expected to clarify whether government posts rotated in a particular order in Ciudad Vieja amongst the parcialidades, and whether certain families such as the Hipólitos (a name also associated with the Parcialidad de Quahquechula in the early seventeenth century) constituted a hereditary, parcialidad-based elite. Unfortunately, I have found no tribute records from Ciudad Vieja for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For reference to Matias Ypolito of the Parcialidad de Quahquechula in 1614, see AGCA A1.43, leg. 2340/exp. 17562, “Testamento de Cristobal de Quijada” (1575– 1629), f. 15r.

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Petapa and Santa Ynés Petapa, beginning in the sixteenth century and continuing into the eighteenth. One suspects that unusually high levels of intermarriage seen between Ciudad Vieja and the two Petapas developed, in part, because of the Poqomam towns’ advantageous position along the main trade route from Mexico to Honduras and the Atlantic coast. It may also be that the Poqomam of Petapa were seen as more suitable neighbors and potential kin than the mostly K’iche’ and Kaqchikel former slaves living in the Indian towns immediately surrounding Santiago. When Gaspar Juárez Passo, the grandson of Cholulteca conquistador Antonio Passo and son of don Bernardino Passo of Ciudad Vieja, moved to San Miguel Petapa in the late sixteenth century, he married a Petapan mestiza. In 1611, Gaspar Passo litigated on behalf of his four children, arguing that they should be exempt from tribute as the descendants of conquistadors. His eldest daughter, Engracia, married the second son of the leading cacique family of San Miguel Petapa, which had assumed the Spanish surname Guzmán.113 Passo’s story survives because of the prominence of the Guzmán family, which over several generations used its Mexicano connection to bolster its already considerable status and power in the area. But many other Mexicanos from Ciudad Vieja also migrated to the two Petapas, and Petapans to Ciudad Vieja, to such an extent that in the mid-eighteenth century the tributary counts of all three towns had to be cross-referenced before tribute could be calculated for any of them.114 For the Mexicano residents of San Miguel Petapa and Santa Ynés Petapa, maintaining quantifiable connections with Ciudad Vieja had important economic consequences. Those who were not able to prove their status as 113. AGCA A1, leg. 4674/exp. 40166, “Probanzas de los hijos del cacique Francisco Calel, vecinos de las mesas de Petapa, descendientes de yndio-conquistador de Cholula” (1582–1670); AGCA A3.2, leg. 825/exp. 15225, “Don Pablo Guzmán de Petapa pide exoneración de tribute” (1638). 114. See AGCA A3.16, leg. 2323/exp. 34292, “De el padrón hecho de los yndios y yndias que se havian excluydo del pardon de San Miguel Petapa” (1723); AGCA A3.16, leg. 2074/ exp. 31549, “Sobre la tasación de San Miguel Petapa” (1723); AGI Escribanía 342, “Testimonio de los autos fhos sobre descubrir los tributaries extraydos y fuera de Padrón de Pueblo de Petapa” (1724 and 1738); AGCA 3.16, leg. 2772/exp. 39964, “Padrón de Santa Ynés Petapa” (1762). In the 1723 tributary count from San Miguel Petapa, nearly 80 individuals, many of them heads of households, claimed to owe tribute in Ciudad Vieja. Several years of dispute followed, and a recount was ordered to be compared with Ciudad Vieja’s pardon. Santa Ynés Petapa’s padrón of 1762 contained a higher proportion of individuals married in Ciudad Vieja than in any other town besides their own, and the scribe notes at the end that a copy was submitted to Ciudad Vieja officials for comparison.

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Mexicanos at the end of the eighteenth century saw their tributary obligations at least double.115 Continuation of their privileges as Indian conquistadors also concerned 17 members of the López family of Santa Cruz Chiquimulilla, descendants of a group of Acolhua who left Ciudad Vieja in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century to seek their livelihood (“buscar su vida”) elsewhere. Here, it is easier to see the methods by which some Ciudad Vieja migrants maintained their connections not only to their Guatemalan hometown but also to their parcialidad. The Lópezes’ grandfathers and fathers came originally from Texcoco in central Mexico and settled in the parcialidad of the same name in Ciudad Vieja. They later migrated from Ciudad Vieja to Chiquimulilla, married local women, and remained in the predominantly Pipil coastal town. But every November the López ancestors returned to Ciudad Vieja for the feast of Santa Cecilia (and surely also the town’s titular fiesta two weeks later). The men continued to participate in the militia of the Parcialidad de Tescuco and were kept on Ciudad Vieja’s tributary rolls. They passed these traditions on to their children, who were also counted on the Ciudad Vieja tribute rolls. In 1680, officials from Ciudad Vieja petitioned on behalf of the migrants’ grown descendants that their status as Mexicanos be preserved, in part because they “fulfilled their obligations” in the Mexicano town of their ancestors— Ciudad Vieja— during the most important festival times of year.116 Like the Passos and Guzmáns of San Miguel Petapa, the Lópezes remembered precisely from which parcialidad (and thus from which central Mexican altepetl) their ancestors hailed. They regularly vis-

The 1752 padrón from Ciudad Vieja also shows a higher incidence of marriages between residents of Ciudad Vieja and the two Petapas than any other town, including San Miguel Escobar, the Kaqchikel neighborhood within the boundaries of Ciudad Vieja itself. Jorge Luján Muñoz has written extensively on the two Petapas and the Guzmán-Passo connection; see his “San Miguel Petapa,” “Los caciques-gobernadores de San Miguel Petapa,” and Indios, ladinos, y aculturación. 115. AGCA A3.16, leg. 237/exp. 4712, “Tasaciones de costa de los pueblos de Sacatepéquez y Amatitan (1790); AGCA A3, leg. 241/exp. 4807, “Mapas de los tributaries de esta Alcaldía Mayor” (1796–99). In this last document, the “Alcabaleros de Petapa” are included as part of Ciudad Vieja’s tributary count. 116. AGCA A3.16, leg. 2887/exp. 42264, “Las justicias del pueblo de Sta Cruz Chiquimulilla pide la exoneración de tributación de ocho individuos descendientes de los conquistadores auxiliadores mexicanos, que del pueblo de Ciudad Vieja habíanse avecindados” (1680).

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ited their home Parcialidad de Tescuco in Ciudad Vieja and continued to participate in its militia, an important institution to which we will return in Chapter 5. The Lópezes thereby claimed tribute exemption based not just on memory, but on verifiable connections to and time spent in Ciudad Vieja and the Parcialidad de Tescuco. Their continued involvement in parcialidad-based institutions proved their connection to Ciudad Vieja more generally, helping ensure their identification as Mexicanos in Guatemala. It is noteworthy that many witnesses from Ciudad Vieja who testified on the Lópezes behalf also specified their own parcialidad affiliations (from Cholula, Chinampa, Tescuco, Tascala, and Quahquechula), while generalizing their own and the López’s identity as “mexicanos de la Ciudad Vieja.” By the end of the seventeenth century, an overarching Mexicano identity into which parcialidad affiliation was folded had taken hold. Whereas sixteenth-century petitioners from Ciudad Vieja tended to identify themselves as nobles and/or conquistadors and their descendants, a century later that conquistador identity had a label. Parcialidad affiliation did not weaken that larger sense of ethnic belonging, but reinforced it. Land conflicts also reveal the extent to which parcialidades functioned as integral yet often independent components of the town. Every parcialidad in Ciudad Vieja held a unit of land divided into communally held and individual plots, often reaching high up onto the slopes of the Volcán de Agua. Although no maps have survived to show the colonial-era boundaries of these collectively administered ejido lands granted by the crown, nor how they developed over time, we do know that in the late seventeenth century the Parcialidad de Chinampa’s land bordered that of the parcialidades of Tatelulco, Otumpa, Cholula, and the separate Kaqchikel settlement of San Miguel Escobar (which may have been set apart by a stone wall).117 Some plots could be sold by their individual proprietors, as happened in 1692 when don Sebastián Sacarías of Chinampa sold a piece

117. In the Nahuatl-language bills of sale and wills archived as AGCA A1.43, leg. 2340/ exp. 17562, “Testamento de Cristobal de Quijada” (1575–1629), the land being sold by Luisa and Catalina Quijada to Juan Jimenes and to Juan García Chiquilochio is located “here in San Miguel Ciudad Vieja” and “in Tzacualpan” (ff. 1v, 5r). The Quijada bill of sale mentions a stone wall “border” along these lands, as does the will of Juan García (f. 4r and 9r). A Spanish addendum to the late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century translation of the Quijadas’ sixteenth-century bill of sale in Nahuatl suggestively states that the “prinsipales of Chinampa” (2v) oversaw a survey of these lands near San Miguel that apparently were in dispute a century or so later.

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of his parcialidad land to the community of San Miguel Escobar.118 This matches Mesoamerican land management patterns elsewhere. In central Mexico, calpolli were typically granted collective rights to particular pieces of land that were then divided into “house land,” which could be transferred or sold at the holder’s discretion, and calpollalli (from the Nahuatl calpolli and tlalli, “land”) designated for community use. Nobles held additional lands to which they had exclusive rights. Land that had been in a particular family for generations sometimes reverted to the status of private property, despite having at one time been under the calpolli’s jurisdiction.119 John Monaghan and Robert Hill, in one of the few studies of Maya community organization in colonial Guatemala, describe a similar pattern in Sacapulas, El Quiche. There, different parcialidades jealously protected their own land interests into the nineteenth century, thwarting Spanish attempts to create common ejido lands for the town as a whole.120 Like tribute collection, land disputes in Ciudad Vieja were often managed by parcialidad officials rather than the town cabildo and highlight the relationship between the two entities. In 1741, seventeen residents (two of them women) of the Parcialidad de Tascala filed a complaint against the widow of the Spaniard don José Eustaquio de Uría for allowing her cattle to graze on the “milpas of our pueblo.” They requested a vista de ojos (survey), and documented the land’s division into sixteen individual plots ranging in size from .5 to 9 cuerdas (.04 to approximately .9 acres), plus 10 additional cuerdas designated for the “pueblo of Our Lady” as a whole. These seventeen litigants were likely parcialidad officials and/or principales of high standing. Eight of them, including one of the women, were also named as individual plot-holders, but they clearly spoke as community representatives rather on their own behalf. For the duration of the dispute— which the Parcialidad de Tascala lost— parcialidad officials continued to act independently with no reference at any time to the larger polity of Ciudad Vieja.121 At other times, officials of one parcialidad helped mediate conflicts for another, as did the top-ranking regidor

118. AGCA A1, leg. 6943/exp. 57819, “Sobre tierras entre los parcialidades de San Miguel Escobar y Chinampa en Ciudad Vieja” (1692–1798). 119. Horn, Postconquest Coyoacan, 112–43; on the historical development of ejido lands in Huejotzingo, see Dyckerhoff, “Colonial Indian Corporate Landholding.” 120. Hill and Monaghan, Continuities, esp. chs. 7–8. 121. AGCA A1.45, leg. 151/exp. 2962, “Ciudad Vieja se queja que los ganados de la hacienda de San José Eustaquio de Uría cuasan daños en las siembras comunales” (1741).

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of Tascala in 1707 when he allowed the principales of Chinampa and San Miguel Escobar to meet at his milpa in preparation for an official survey of land boundaries under question. In yet another case from the turn of the nineteenth century (1800–1804), a Ciudad Vieja Ladino, Casimiro Santa Cruz, attempted to usurp the communal lands of the Parcialidad de Cholula. In this instance, Ciudad Vieja’s Mexicano governor and first and second alcaldes joined two officials from Cholula to argue against Santa Cruz’s claims.122 But even at this late date, the parcialidad’s claim to its own land remained primary and the town cabildo’s role merely one of support. Tensions between parcialidad and pueblo interests had the potential to undermine political unity even in the face of major land disputes with outsiders. From 1631 to 1703, Ciudad Vieja and the neighboring Kaqchikel town of Alotenango litigated against the city of Santiago for rights to a section of land that lay between the two Indian towns. Santiago officials accused the Indian towns of appropriating the city’s pasture, a charge that Ciudad Vieja and Alotenango denied. Mexicano officials and their court representatives argued that Ciudad Vieja’s founders had been awarded portions of the land in 1552 for their service in the conquest. As persons of “nobility and loyalty, descendants of those who helped and favored the first conquistadors to win over this kingdom, who helped to populate the city and give such an immensity of land and riches to the royal crown,” it would not be much to continue to allow them a small portion of land. But in the midst of this conflict between Mexicano and Spanish officials, in 1659 the captain of the Tlaxcalteca militia, don Juan Bautista Pérez, and five other Tlaxcalteca principales presented a petition to the Audiencia accusing the cabildo of Ciudad Vieja of appropriating their milpas on the same land in question.123 Significantly, the Ciudad Vieja cabildo responded to this internal challenge by invoking the town’s collective identity as Indian conquistadors: “We have had and have the lands that were ours as conquistadors, for which we have titles . . . and these belong to the whole of the town which we have possessed since time immemorial.”124 122. AGCA A1.45, leg. 6149/exp. 53416, “Casimiro Santa Cruz contra la parcialidad de Cholula de Reservados, ambos de Ciudad Vieja, por un pedazo de tierra” (1800–1804). 123. AGCA A1, leg. 2347/exp. 17672, “Autos de los ejidos entre Almolonga y Alotenango” (1667–1703), ff. 45, 104, 112v, 170v, 195. This is the same Juan Bautista Pérez, presumably, who testified on behalf of the family from Santa Cruz Chiquimulilla in 1680 and is quoted at the beginning of this chapter. 124. Ibid., f. 161.

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An even more united front was presented in 1733, when the head alcalde from the Parcialidad de Reservados, Joseph Pérez, denounced Ciudad Vieja’s governor to Spanish authorities for repeatedly releasing persons Pérez had put in jail. The governor, alcaldes, and principales from each of the other nine “Parcialidades de Mexicanos y Tascaltecos” joined the heads of the parcialidad-based militias to refute the charges.125 In 1773, no fewer than 31 current and former cabildo members from every parcialidad in Ciudad Vieja appeared before Spanish authorities asking that Ladinos not be allowed into the town during their titular festival.126 In all these instances, parcialidad leaders adopted a unified stance as descendants of Indian conquistadors to meet both internal and external challenges. As they had in the sixteenth century, the ruling elites of seventeenthand eighteenth-century Ciudad Vieja tended to emphasize their commonalities as Mexicanos when dealing with Spanish authorities. Within the town’s borders, however, all nine parcialidades named after provinces in central Mexico and Oaxaca survived for nearly 300 years. By the eighteenth century, centuries of emphasizing the collective interests of the town and living together had dissolved much of the ethnic distinctiveness that had originally spawned the parcialidades. While a sixteenth-century Zapotec from the Parcialidad de Teguantepeque would almost certainly have been distinguished from his Nahua neighbors by language, place of origin, and other cultural markers, by the eighteenth century his descendants likely did not speak Zapotec, may not have had family with whom they kept contact in Oaxaca, and (as we shall see in Chapter 5) likely had intermarried into other, largely Nahua parcialidades in Ciudad Vieja. The Mexicanos’ shared experiences in Ciudad Vieja increasingly blurred their internal divisions and bound them together as a pueblo in the most literal meaning of the word: a people. Still, the survival of Ciudad Vieja’s parcialidades helped sustain a memory of the particular places from which the Mexicanos’ ancestors, collectively, had come. Together, parcialidad and pueblo marked off territory in and through which the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja could literally maintain themselves as a group apart in colonial Guatemala. Ciudad Vieja became, over time, a colonial altepetl. 125. AGCA A1.15, leg. 5906/exp. 50138, “José Pérez, alcalde del pueblo de Almolonga, contra varios indios por haberlo asaltado en el camino” (1733). 126. AGCA A1, leg. 73/exp. 1712, “Testimonio de varios certificados de los curas de los pueblos . . . sobre la administración de justicia . . . del pueblo de Almolonga, nombrado de la Ciudad Vieja” (1773).

5. Creating Memories Militias, Cofradías, Cabildos, & Compadres

We are descendants of the conquistadors of Mexico, Tlascala, and Cholula and the other parcialidades that united with them . . . and from the beginning of the conquest until today we have presented ourselves in armed militia in this city, every year. —Justicias y principales of Ciudad Vieja, 17991

T

he territorial boundaries of Ciudad Vieja marked off a physical space that was internally complex and predominantly, identifiably Mexicano. But the activities of people living in and through that space, not the space itself, created a community out of the disparate colonists who settled in central Guatemala in the 1520s and 1530s. The Mexicanos’ most personal and persistent actions are largely inaccessible five hundred years later. Food, dress, gestures, accents, work habits, musical traditions, stories, jokes— these quotidian aspects of life in colonial Ciudad Vieja are barely mentioned in the historical record and are mostly absent from surviving material remains. Apart from language (to be discussed in the next chapter), we do not really know what, if anything, would have externally marked the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja as a distinct group in the valley of Guatemala. We can, however, trace archival echoes of the Mexicanos explicitly asserting their unique and privileged status in 1. Archivo General de Centroamérica, Guatemala City (hereafter cited as AGCA), A1, leg. 154/exp. 3073, “Los indígenas de Ciudad Vieja no quieren servir en el Hospital San Juan de Dios” (1799).

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colonial Guatemala, in court cases and in festive commemorations of the conquest. We can note the ethnic exclusivity of the Mexicanos’ religious confraternities, and the Mexicanos’ tendency to marry within rather than outside their ethnic community. Being Mexicano in Ciudad Vieja was not simply or even necessarily a matter of living within Ciudad Vieja’s territorial limits. More important, it meant living within certain social boundaries that were based on, and thereby helped maintain a memory of, being Indian conquistadors. If the Mexicanos can be detected acting on the basis of some notion of shared identity, this does not mean they always did so self-consciously. Indeed, the meaningfulness of social constructions like ethnic identity is often rooted in their being accepted and carried out without rigorous forethought. This is what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu on a much larger scale called “habitus”— a particular group’s set of guiding principles for acting in the world, so deeply ingrained that they become “embodied history, internalized as a second nature.”2 Bourdieu’s habitus is all-encompassing, but dynamic. It changes over time, absorbing and structuring new experiences. Under his model, the Nahuas and Oaxacans of Ciudad Vieja became Mexicanos by incorporating their Guatemalan experiences, large and small, into a common sense (in both senses of the phrase) of a particular, shared past. Bourdieu would say that they did so with almost no self-consciousness at all, and certainly without any independent creative capacity. We do not have to go quite that far, however, to appreciate that the residents of Ciudad Vieja may not always have had “being Mexicano” on their minds when engaging in behaviors that, in historical hindsight, seem to have contributed nonetheless to the cohesion of the group and the maintenance of its ethnic boundaries vis-à-vis others. Purposefully or not, the Mexicanos often remembered their heritage though peculiarly colonial institutions. Like colonial Mesoamericans everywhere, if the Mexicanos wanted to seek divine favor from ancient gods, they had to cloak their devotion in the trappings of Christianity. If they wanted to govern themselves according to certain Mesoamerican principles of political order, they had to fit those into the model of the Spanish cabildo. We might look upon these adjustments as tactics of the weak rather than strategies of the powerful— or more neutrally, as indicative of where Mesoamerican and European traditions most closely aligned (i.e., the cult of the saints caught on while the notion of divine punishment 2. Bourdieu, Logic of Practice, 56.

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in hell did not; the Indian cabildo, unlike its counterpart in Spain, elevated the role of alcalde above that of regidor).3 But in the case of Ciudad Vieja, we must go further and recognize that colonialism gave the process of becoming Mexicano in Ciudad Vieja a tremendous boost. Parading alongside Spanish authorities to celebrate the conquest each year reaffirmed in very public ways the Mexicanos’ honored position in colonial Guatemalan society. Continued official recognition of the Mexicanos’ privileges benefited them materially, politically, and socially. The Mexicanos’ presentation of themselves to the outside world in increasingly simplified terms, as “Mexicanos y Tascaltecas” or simply as Mexicanos, seems to reflect an understanding of how the Spaniards saw them. To what extent did this become how they saw themselves? To what degree were the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja created by colonialism?

Commemorating the Conquest: The Paseo del Pendón Real and Fiesta del Volcán The most obvious and forthright expressions of the Mexicanos’ conquistador identity occurred during celebrations of the conquest sponsored by the colonial government. These generally took place in Santiago rather than in Ciudad Vieja, although they incorporated local preparations and likely local rituals as well. Two conquest commemorations stand out. The Paseo del Pendón Real (Procession of the Royal Banner) was celebrated each year in November, while the Fiesta del Volcán happened only during occasional royal festivals declared by the crown for some special occasion. Mexican historian Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán has called the Paseo del Pendón Real the “festival of colonial submission.”4 Across the Spanish em3. On strategies versus tactics, see De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, ch. 3. De Certeau describes these adjustments or tactics as “metamorphizing” the dominant order in the colonial Americas: Native Americans taking colonial “laws, practices, and representations that were imposed on them by force or by fascination” and making “something else of out them . . . not by rejecting them or by transforming them (though that occurred as well), but by many different ways of using them in the service of rules, customs or convictions foreign to the colonization which they could not escape” (32). On the cult of the saints, the notion of hell, and the role of the alcalde, see Farriss, Maya Society, 320–33; Osowski, “Saints of the Republic”; Burkhart, Slippery Earth, 47–58, 67; Lockhart, Nahuas, 34–40, 235–50. 4. Viqueira Albán, Propriety and Permissiveness, 83.

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pire, it annually celebrated the military defeat of local native populations, the foundation of the first European colonial cities, the colony’s fealty to the crown, and the maintenance of proper social hierarchy. The date of the Paseo’s celebration varied, usually falling on the patron saint’s feast day and/or the foundation date of a particular city. In San Salvador, El Salvador, this occurred in August; in Montevideo, Uruguay, in May; in Guadalajara, Mexico, in September. In Mexico City, the Día de San Hipólito, 13 August, recognized both the founding of Mexico City atop the ruins of Tenochtitlan in 1521 and the conquistadors who had lost their lives during the Noche Triste in 1519, many of them at the location of the future Church of San Hipólito. From 1542 to 1557, the city of Santiago de Guatemala held its version of this ceremony on 25 July, the feast day of Santiago, to memorialize the 1524 founding of the short-lived Santiago at Iximche’ by Pedro de Alvarado. When Philip II’s ascension to the throne supplanted the procession in 1557, Santiago’s city council voted to instead commemorate the 1527 founding of Santiago en Almolonga on 22 November, the feast day of Santa Cecilia.5 Thereafter, a durable connection between Santa Cecilia and the city of Santiago overshadowed the city’s namesake. Council records from 1578 note a bid to return the Paseo del Pendón Real to the feast day of Santiago in July, but by 1602 the procession was being held annually on St. Cecilia’s Day. Linda Curcio-Nagy found that the Paseo was abandoned in the twilight of the Habsburg years in Mexico. But the opposite seems true for Santiago de Guatemala, where city council records from 1684 and 1692 suggest a late seventeenth-century reinvigoration of the annual event.6 Francisco de Antonio Fuentes y Guzmán may have been making an intellectual’s bid for historical accuracy in 1694 when, fresh from researching for his Recordación florida, he proposed a return to the festival of Santiago as “patron of the city.”7 Another effort on behalf of historical accuracy was made in 1724, when the city council ordered that the Paseo del Pendón Real be celebrated on Santiago’s day “as it had been done in

5. Ximénez, Historia de la provincia, 175–76; Pardo, Efemerides, 9; AGCA A1 leg. 2188/ exp. 15134, “Se manda erogar lo necesario para el día de Sta Cecilia” (1808), f. 176. 6. Curcio-Nagy, Great Festivals, 78–79; Pardo, Efemerides, 9, 78, 84, 88; Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain (hereafter cited as AGI), Guatemala 41, N. 103, “Cartas de cabildos seculares” (1602); see also AGCA A3.16 leg. 2887/exp. 42264, “Las justicias de Ciudad Vieja piden la exoneración de ocho individuos de Sta Cruz Chiquimulilla” (1680). 7. Pardo, Efemérides, 90; Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:154.

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ancient times,” with all the pomp and ceremony “as happens in the festival of Santa Cecilia.”8 The council’s desire to restore the Paseo on Santiago’s day was short-lived, however. In 1733, they abandoned the attempt. The festivities on St. Cecilia’s Day continued. Controversies over the proper date of the Paseo’s celebration reveal a tension between historical accuracy on the one hand (i.e., the Paseo as a faithful reenactment of the city’s foundational acts) and tradition on the other (i.e., the Paseo as something we have always done in a certain way, time, and place). All commemorative ceremonies symbolically reference the past, and having a clear story to tell is important. Guatemala’s Paseo del Pendón Real lacked such clarity. Besides attempting to determine the Paseo’s proper date, both colonial-era and modern historians of Guatemala have disagreed whether the Día de Santa Cecilia commemorated a battle between Pedro de Puertocarrero and the Kaqchikel in 1526, or the official foundation of Santiago en Almolonga in 1527.9 In 1808 the city council combined several theories into one, declaring that the Paseo celebrated “the pacification of this realm when the capital was founded in July of 1524, the day of the vespers of our glorious father the apostle Santiago, and the defeat of the Kaqchikels in their court of Tecpán Guatemala by don Pedro de Alvarado on 22 November 1526, the day on which the church celebrates the day of the wonderful St. Cecilia.”10 (It is worth noting that Pedro de Alvarado was not in Guatemala in November 1526). It is unclear why the Paseo did not shift back to Santiago’s day after 1557, or whether there were any gaps in its annual celebration between 1602 and 1680. But every year that the Paseo happened on 22 November, another layer of collective experiences helped fix its proper placement on that date. The tradition appears to have been firmly established by the early seventeenth century and to have persisted for the rest of the colonial period.11 Perhaps, as sociologist Paul Connerton would have it, the bodily memo8. Pardo, Efemérides, 124–26. 9. Pardo, Efemérides, 9, 25; Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:204–5, 348; Vásquez, Crónica de la provincia, 1:78–79; Ximénez, Historia de la provincia, 167, 175–76. See also Juarros y Montúfar, Compendio de la historia, 73–74. 10. AGCA A1 leg. 2188/exp. 15134, f. 176, “Se manda erogar” (1808). 11. References are scarce to the Paseo’s celebration in Spanish council records of the mid-seventeenth century. In 1680, however, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja claimed they had been regularly marching in the Paseo on St. Cecilia’s Day at least since the governorship of don Martín Carlos de Mencos (1659–67). See A3.16 leg. 2887/exp. 42264, “Las justicias del pueblo de Sta Cruz Chiquimulila (1680).

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ries created in both participants and spectators by preparing and donning costumes, playing clarinets, marching in the streets, and reciting certain words in the same way year after year— and the rhythm of ongoing, organized preparations in the months prior to the celebration— trumped any attempts to renovate an older but increasingly less familiar custom.12 Perhaps, too, the traditions of St. Cecilia’s Day intertwined with preparations for the feast day on 8 December of another patroness of extraordinary importance and affection in Santiago, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.13 In 1715, the Paseo on 21 November was further boosted by the crown’s order of another celebration of colonial authority the day before— the feast of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary— to commemorate the Spaniards’ suppression of a widespread native revolt in Chiapas three years earlier.14 Put together, all three festivities surely also helped anticipate the beginning of Advent and the Christmas season. Whatever the reason, in the late colonial period St. Cecilia continued to eclipse Santiago as the object of the city council’s affections and the symbol of their authority. She shared the spotlight with the pendón real during the Paseo, both being borne at the head of the procession. During the rest of the year her image graced the halls of the municipal Casas Consistoriales alongside the royal banner. In 1771, the addition of a small box of St. Cecilia’s relics to this assemblage bolstered the aura of her patronage still further. When the president of the Audiencia ordered that the Paseo of 1773 take place outside the city after a major earthquake, the city council refused to remove either the pendón real or the image of St. Cecilia from the council building, nor would it alter the Paseo’s traditional route. It was a statement of political defiance, an assertion of the oldest traditions of the city, and a testament to the power of longstanding rituals to embody what at least some participants deemed right and true.15 The Paseo del Pendón Real followed the same template throughout the Spanish empire. In the afternoon prior to the saint’s day, a solemn parade of finely dressed dignitaries on horseback traversed the city streets. The 12. Connerton, How Societies Remember, 53–71. 13. Pardo, Efemerides, 33. Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception was made a titular patron of the city in 1617, along with San Nicolás Tolentino. As controversy over the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception raged in the mid 1600s, the city of Santiago (in party no doubt with the influential Franciscans) declared its full support of the mystery. 14. Juarros y Montúfar, Compendio de la historia, 367–68. See Bricker, Indian Christ, Indian King, 59–69, for an account of the Cancuc revolt. 15. Pardo, Efemerides, 197, 204.

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alférez real, or royal standard-bearer, carried the procession’s focal point: the pendón real (also known as a lávaro or estandarte) that was usually housed in the seat of local government. In some cases the banner was temporarily transferred to the alférez for safekeeping in the days surrounding the festival, and the alférez ceremoniously invited to bear it in procession from his own home. In others, the alférez accompanied his fellow councilmembers and other citizens of high rank to the Casas Consistoriales, where the banner was lifted from its usual resting place and presented to him. As the procession continued, more high officials joined. In Mexico City, these luminaries included the viceroy of all of New Spain.16 In Guatemala, they included the president of the Audiencia. When the assembly was complete, it traveled to the cathedral to hear mass and vespers. The entire process then reversed itself, delivering the officials to their homes and the pendón real to its customary place in the halls of city government. Most descriptions of the procession emphasize its dignity and protocol, but more lively jousting matches (juegos de cañas), bull runs (corridas de toros), and street theater rounded out the festivities into the following days of celebration. Musicians on drums, trumpets, clarinets, and fifes, hired or coerced into service by the city council, accompanied the procession and played in the cathedral. Most likely they also performed in the street festivities that followed, in celebration not only of colonial authority but also of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music.17 These were expensive entertainments, reserved for the most important colonial festivals. Only Corpus Christi in June and occasional political celebrations honoring viceregal entrances and the ascensions of new monarchs could compare. Such extravagance bolstered the Paseo del Pendón Real’s core messages of victory over indigenous peoples, the supremacy of the Spanish monarchy, and the inviolability of the colonial order. That the city council could 16. Curcio-Nagy, The Great Festivals, 78–79; Viqueira Albán, Propriety and Permissiveness, 84–85; Yrigoyen, “La ciudad como escenario; “Guadalajara, la ciudad de las rosas: El Paseo del Pendón” http://www.guadalajara.net/html/tradiciones/06.shtml (accessed December 2009). In the Canary Islands in 2004, supporters of independence for the islands from Spain protested the Paseo del Pendón in La Laguna, Tenerife; see http:// elguanche.net/Ficheros/apendonarchivadosd.htm (accessed December 2009). 17. Rangel, Historia del toreo, 5–7; AGI 41, N. 103, “Carta de cabildo sobre la fiesta de Sta Cecilia’ (1601); AGCA A1 leg. 4012/exp. 30653, “Los clarineros del ayuntamineto piden nuevo uniformes para dis de Sta Cecilia” (1755) and exp. 30736 (1820); A1 leg. 2241/exp. 25407 (1796); A1 A1.2-1 leg. 2229/exp. 15963,” Cuentas de lo gastado en adornos el día de Sta Cecilia” (1761).

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order city and suburban residents to adorn their houses, clean the streets, provide unpaid musicians, and attend the spectacle only confirmed the authority of colonial rule that the Paseo asserted. (That such occasional edicts exist, as do protests over the lack of volunteers to fill the expensive post of alférez real, also exposes the limits of colonial power.)18 Paul Connerton has suggested that commemorative ceremonies like the Paseo are distinguished by the rigidity of their rituals, and indeed, even the smallest changes to the procession’s date, routes, or protocols were often contested. This was especially so in the unsettling years leading up to independence. In some areas, liberal-minded legislators interested in lessening the power of the monarchy suspended the Paseo during deposed king Ferdinand VII’s absence from power between 1808 and 1813. The year after Ferdinand returned to his throne, he reinstated the Paseo. After independence, most colonies abolished it again, or reconfigured it to fit a new national identity.19 According to nineteenth-century Mexican historian Lucas Alamán, a general “disdain” for the conquest after independence converted what had once been among the most ostentatious and traditional festivals of the colonial period to a minor saint’s day celebrated with “extreme poverty and coldness.” Alamán observed that “this ceremony could have been offensive to the Indians whose conquest it recalled.”20 Perhaps to some, but not to all. In Santiago de Guatemala, the descendants of Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors played a key role in the Paseo del Pendón Real— and they seem to have done so proudly. As the president of the Audiencia and city notables approached the cathedral bearing the royal banner and St. Cecilia’s image, a large group of Ciudad Vieja’s Mexicano militiamen greeted the assemblage with “courtesies . . . perform[ed] in military style . . . in 18. Rangel, Historia del toreo, 20, 59. For conflicts over service as alférez real in Santiago de Guatemala, see AGCA A1 leg. 5917/exp. 50990 (1619–91); AGCA leg. 2311/exp. 15790 (1619–91); A1 leg. 2861/exp. 25931 (1790); A1 leg. 2263/exp. 16423 (1808), and A1.2.9 leg. 2822/exp. 25038 (1820). For conflicts over costs and control of the ceremony, see AGCA A1.1 leg. 2818/exp. 24921, “Que se mantenga la costumbre de usar gualdrapas sin adornos en el paseo del Pendon Real” (1805). 19. Bauzá, Historia de la dominación española, 2:179, 416–17; AGCA A1 leg. 4012/exp. 30646, “Que durante Santa Cecilia el predicador no observó las atenciones que merece el ayuntamiento” (1737), and exp. 30655, “Que el Rdo P. profirió ciertas recriminaciones a los miembros del ayuntameinto durante Sta Cecilia” (1753). For Ferdinand VII’s reinstatement of the Paseo, see Balmaseda, Decretos del rey don Fernando VII, 2:98–99. 20. Alamán, Historia de Méjico, 3:265–66.

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memory of having been auxiliaries in the conquest, as descendants of the Tlaxcalteca and Mexicanos who came with the Adelantado don Pedro Alvarado.”21 Dressed in elaborate Spanish-style uniforms of lined velvet breeches and boots, high-buttoned collared jackets, and hats, the Mexicanos saluted the royal banner with flags and tambors, then followed the Audiencia officials into the cathedral. The Dominican Francisco Ximénez, writing around 1716, noted that the Mexicanos also accompanied the procession through the streets. Afterwards it was traditional, according to an official in 1764, to present each of the Mexicano soldiers with a bottle of wine.22 The earliest descriptions of the Mexicanos’ participation in the Paseo del Pendón Real come from the mid-seventeenth century, and the most detailed from the latter half of the eighteenth. From a conflict between the militias of Ciudad Vieja and a lieutenant of the regional alcalde mayor who commissioned new uniforms for them in 1777, we learn that each of Ciudad Vieja’s ten parcialidades organized and ran its own militia. These were then divided into two companies, the Compañia de Tascala for those from that parcialidad and the Compañia de Mexicanos for everyone else. Half of each militia’s members customarily marched in the Paseo del Pendón Real in any given year. Accounting records suggest that the Compañia de Tascala was half as large as the combined Compañia de Mexicanos. The next largest militias in descending order came from Cholula, Otumpa, Tenustitan and Teguantepeque with equal numbers, Tatelulco, Chinampa, Quahquechula, and Tescuco and Reservados with equal numbers. Taken at face value, the accounting books suggest that 188 descendants of Indian conquistadors from Ciudad Vieja, bedecked in splendid uniforms, lined 21. AGCA A1, leg. 2263/exp. 16447, “Ceremonial de esta Real Audiencia, aprobado 1787 y reformado 1808” (1808), f. 6v. Adelantado was the title of military governor of a province granted by the crown to the highest ranking Spanish conquistadors. 22. Ximénez, Historia de la provincia de San Vicente de Chiapa, 176; AGCA A1.2-1, leg. 1982/exp. 13541, “Cuenta de gastos en las festividades religiosos” (1764), f. 178; AGCA A1, leg. 2263/exp. 16447, “Ceremonial de esta Real Audiencia, aprobado 1787 y reformado 1808” (1808). Curcio-Nagy notes a similar participation of native nobility in Mexico City’s Paseo, but only beginning in 1721 and without any mention of militias or military costume; see Curcio-Nagy, The Great Festivals, 78–79. However, a ceremony that sounds very much like the Paseo was held on the patron saint’s day of the tiny Spanish settlement of Villa Alta, Oaxaca, in which the garrison town of Analco’s Nahua “Indian conquistadors” took part in 1683 and likely for many years before; see Yannakakis, The Art of Being InBetween, 207–210.

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up outside the entrance of Santiago’s cathedral to perform their ceremonial duties during the Paseo del Pendón Real of 1777.23 Most obviously, the militias’ role in the Paseo del Pendón Real celebrated Ciudad Vieja’s conquistador heritage. This, according to one Spanish official in 1810, was the particular privilege (“privilegio privativo”) of the “noble Mexicanos and Tlaxcaltecas who accompanied don Pedro de Alvarado and played such a role in the conquest of this realm”— a privilege the colonial government should support, financially if necessary.24 For different reasons at different times, Europeans and Mexicanos alike valued the ritual reenactment of their mutual alliance in Guatemala “since time immemorial” (that standard phrase now indicating a shared colonial rather than pre-Columbian history).25 Recall from Chapter 4 the López family of Santa Cruz Chiquimulilla, descendants of Acolhua conquistadors who traveled regularly to Ciudad Vieja from their new homes and families on the southern coast of Guatemala to “march as soldiers” in the “obligation” and “privilege” of the “festivities of St. Cecilia . . . in recognition always of their origins.”26 It was fortunate, perhaps, that the Paseo occurred in November at the beginning of the dry season, when travel away from one’s milpa could be more easily accommodated. One wonders, too, whether the Paseo del Pendón Real helped kick off Ciudad Vieja’s titular fiesta in honor of its patron saint, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, on 8 December. (Could the Mexicanos have played a part in snuffing out any suggestion to move the Paseo to the more inconvenient month of July)? For the Lópezes as for many immigrants today, returning for these annual festivities reconnected them with their personal and collective roots.27 Materially speaking, it bolstered their claims to tribute exemption. 23. AGCA A1.71.4, leg. 5372/exp. 45460, “Ocurso de los yndios de Ciudad Vieja, alias Almolonga, sobre que se les cobra a cada Miliciano de los que salen en el Paseo de Sta Cecilia 6 pesos 5 1//2 reales . . .” (1777). 24. AGCA A1 leg. 222/exp. 5218, “El N.A. solicitando lisencia para sacar 250 pesos del fondo de Propios para construir 30 bestidos para los Yndios de Ciudad Vieja en los actos del Paseo de Sta Secilia” (1810), f. 2v. 25. The phrase comes from the alcaldes and regidores of Ciudad Vieja, AGCA A1 leg. 4012/exp. 30661 (1778). 26. AGCA A 3.16, leg. 2887/exp. 42264, “Las justicias del pueblo de Sta Cruz Chiquimulilla . . .” (1680). 27. Farriss, Maya Society Under Colonial Rule, 332; Quinones, Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream, but see also the tensions over helping fund such festivals in modern-day Oaxaca, in Monaghan, The Covenants With Earth and Rain.

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Acting out their military roles reminded the Lópezes and other Guatemalan Mexicanos exactly on which side of colonialism, the conquistadors rather than the conquered, they fell. It set them apart as individuals, as families, and as part of a community distinct from other Indians. In the Paseo del Pendón Real, Ciudad Vieja’s status as a privileged town of Indian conquistadors was on full display. Ciudad Vieja’s very prominent role in the Paseo del Pendón Real could inspire both angst and opportunism. In 1777, the Spanish lieutenant who commissioned new uniforms for Ciudad Vieja’s militia members justified his expenses by noting, with perhaps feigned horror, the indecency of both their costumes and their alleged drunkenness for days on end in prior years. Defending himself against charges of exploitation, the lieutenant claimed that his respect for the ritual led him to spend his own money— for which he nevertheless expected to be reimbursed by the Indians— for outfits more befitting the occasion. (Eventually, his superiors ruled that the lieutenant had overstepped his authority and that the uniforms were in any case more costly than needed.) Conversely, the Spanish city council of the new capital of the Audiencia of Guatemala, which had moved from Santiago to the next valley over after an earthquake in 1773, used flattery and promises of financial support to secure the Ciudad Vieja militias’ participation in the Paseo of 1810. After the Mexicanos asked to be excused that year because of their “extreme poverty,” the city council voted to pay for their uniforms, emphasizing its obligation to support the “descendants of the noble Mexicanos and Tlascaltecas” of Ciudad Vieja who have always “celebrated with us the glory of Castile and their incorporation into the Crown. The law that says the royal banner should be raised with all possible decorum and pomp has been complemented in Guatemala by these Indians, who with their splendid triumphal arches, their militias, and their attendance give to the function all the majesty it requires.”28 Having the Mexicanos participate in the Paseo del Pendón Real clearly mattered to the Spanish city council. Ciudad Vieja’s militias were a longstanding and recognizable part of Santiago’s most important civic festival, and their presence spoke to the stability of that tradition in unstable times. The Mexicanos also cared about, and played politics with, the Paseo in late colonial Guatemala. We cannot know if their complaints of poverty in 1810 were sincere. Perhaps it had been a difficult year, or the longer trip to the new Spanish capital had lessened their enthusiasm for the Paseo. 28. AGCA A1 leg. 222/exp. 5218, “El N.A. solicitando licencia . . .” (1810)

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Perhaps they were angling for free uniforms, or had a political ax to grind. In any case, they realized that the Spanish valued their participation and used this to their advantage. Two years later, the tables were turned. When the liberal Cortes de Cádiz abolished the Paseo’s celebration throughout the Americas in early 1812, Santiago’s city council immediately asked for an exception, noting the “grave inconveniences” the abolition would cause the Indians. This bid, in part a reaction to protests against the festival’s suspension from the Mexicanos, only half succeeded. In July the Audiencia limited the St. Cecilia’s Day festivities to its church services, but agreed that the Mexicanos could greet government officials at the entrance to the cathedral in full regalia as usual. The Mexicanos’ anxieties over their possible exclusion from St. Cecilia’s Day celebrations in Santiago are apparent in their response to this ruling and the further reassurances they received from the Spanish city council. Assuming their usual cooperative stance (itself part of their reputation as Indian conquistadors), the Mexicanos “unanimously responded that they would promptly comply with the royal resolution, giving their thanks for the national congress’s and the royal council’s consideration, asking only that they be permitted in conservation and memory of their distinctive performance to attend the church functions with all their insignias, and discharge their arms as accustomed.” For its part, the city council soothingly intoned that it only desired to save the Mexicanos the costly inconvenience of preparing for the festivities: In no way does it strip them of nor damage their ancient privileges and customs of naming their own officials for this occasion, or the triumphal arches with which they have attended the procession and church function, and in all cases the original distinctions by which they have always been recognized will be conserved . . . and in order that neither their regalia nor exemptions nor the public opinion that has distinguished them decline, their alcalde mayor and parish priest should make this known to the people.29 The roles the Mexicanos and Spanish officials assumed in this negotiation— the Mexicanos as loyal and humble vassals but also insistent on 29. Antonio Larrazábal noted to the Cortes: “Far from this ceremony being ignominious for those [Mexicano and Tlaxcalteca] Indians, they view it as a kind of triumph. . . . They are very addicted to conserving their ways and customs, and somewhat unruly in this regard” (Diario de las sesiones de Cortes [1812], 2587). See also AGCA B1 leg. 6/exp. 257, August 7, 1812; AGCA B1.5 leg. 6/exp. 208, January 7–12, 1812; AGCA B1.5 leg. 5/exp. 180, July 29, 1812.

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their privileges and aggressively protective of their status, the Spanish officials secure in their authority yet strangely solicitous of the Mexicanos’ concerns— are (as we will see further in Chapter 6) wholly consistent with the place the Mexicanos had carved out for themselves as Indian conquistadors in Guatemala. This political back-and-forth was its own kind of performance, designed to uphold each side’s respective position in colonial society. At stake, however, was not merely the maintenance of these positions within the halls of city government. At stake was the most regularly staged, unabashed, and public performance of what being Mexicano meant in colonial Guatemala. For this reason, the Mexicanos insisted not only on participating but on maintaining all the traditional pomp and circumstance that the Audiencia had attempted to drain from the ceremony, including Indians wearing Spanish militia uniforms and ceremonially firing weapons. For their part, Spanish officials were at pains to reassure all the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja, not merely those in the militias, that any changes to the Paseo would not threaten their privileged status. The Paseo del Pendón Real was a thoroughly Spanish ritual into which the Mexicanos insinuated themselves. This is less obviously true for the Fiesta del Volcán, a mock battle between Mexicanos and Kaqchikel under an enormous faux volcano that filled the main plaza of Santiago. The Fiesta del Volcán happened only occasionally, during fiestas reales celebrating such events as births in the royal family and ascensions to the throne. Our knowledge of it is due almost entirely to Fuentes y Guzmán, who devoted a chapter to both the fiesta and the historical events upon which it was based in his Recordación florida.30 According to him, the Fiesta del Volcán memorialized the final battle in 1526 between the Spanish with their K’iche’ and Mexicano allies led by Pedro de Puertocarrero on the one hand, and the rebellious forces led by the Kaqchikel lord Sinacam (Kaji’ Imox) and the K’iche’ lord Sequechul (B’eleje’ K’at) on the other. In typically florid fashion, Fuentes y Guzmán describes several breathtaking stand-offs between the two sides; the attacks of the “rebels” and tenacious response of the Spanish; and the Spaniards’ final assault up a hillside (with significant help from friendly K’iche’ archers from Quetzaltenango) 30. Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:346–350. See also the account of military captain Martín Alonso Tovilla, who happened to see the Fiesta del Volcán celebrating the birth of the prince Baltasar Carlos in Santiago in 1631, in Tovilla, Relaciones históricos, 153–54; and also fray Antonio de Molina, present at the same event, in Molina, Antigua Guatemala, 24.

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to defeat the more numerous but confused rebels by strategy rather than numbers. At the end of Fuentes y Guzmán’s historical narrative, Sinacam and Sequechul are captured and spend 15 years in prison. Guatemalan historian Francis Polo Sifontes dismisses this version of the past as pure “fantasies.”31 The city at risk, Santiago at Iximche’, was in reality little more than a military camp that survived only a few months after its founding in 1524. Two years later, the Spanish and their Nahua allies were more defensibly camped at Olintepeque. The Kaqchikel-K’iche’ alliance against the Spanish, mentioned in no other sources, also seems fantastical. According to the Memoriál de Sololá, Kaji’ Imox and B’eleje’ K’at, both Kaqchikel lords, led a campaign against the Spanish from 1524 until 1530. The two evaded capture in this first war, but eventually surrendered to Pedro de Alvarado in 1530.32 Polo Sifontes and his colleague J. Daniel Contreras point out that the K’iche’ were allies of the Spanish at this stage in Guatemalan history. They also suggest that Kaji’ Imox initiated a second campaign against the Spanish in 1535 with another Kaqchikel lord, Kiyawit Kawoq. If so, things did not go well the second time around. The Memorial de Sololá records that both were captured, imprisoned, and in 1540 were executed by hanging. This sequence of events, Polo Sifontes says, “would give rise to the legend and Dance of the Volcán that would be practiced throughout the colonial period.”33 Fuentes y Guzmán collapsed these two Kaqchikel wars against the Spanish into one. The chronicler also placed Sinacam’s and Sequechul’s imprisonment (and thus their removal from the scene) before the foundation of the city of Santiago en Almolonga on St. Cecilia’s Day, 1527. The result is a neat, linear narrative of invasion and settlement, rebellion, victory over insurgents, and the securing of peace in the new colony— what anthropologist Victoria Bricker has labeled the “Myth of Pacification,” through which she suggests most Europeans and Ladinos have understood all eth31. Polo Sifontes, Los Cakchiqueles, 88. 32. Otzoy, Memorial de Sololá, 188–89, and the introductory essay by Contreras, xxvi; Maxwell and Hill, Kaqchikel Chronicles, 260–262, 277. 33. Polo Sifontes, Los Cakchiqueles, 96–98. Polo Sifontes uses Fr. Francisco Vásquez’s citation of cabildo records from 1540 (since disappeared), which noted the departure of Pedro de Alvarado for the Spice Islands in May, and the concern of those left behind that “Cinacan” and “Sachil” would escape prison and start yet another war; see Vásquez, Crónica de la provincia, 1:39. The Memorial de Sololá recounts the execution by hanging of Kaji’ Imox and Kiyawit Kawoq that same month and year. See Maxwell and Hill, Kaqchikel Chronicles, 287.

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nic conflicts in Mesoamerica since the sixteenth century.34 To hear Fuentes y Guzmán tell it, Sinacam and Sequechul were not clearing their territory of invaders, nor even betraying an alliance, but committing a seditious act against the Spanish crown. He assumes that the Kaqchikel fully submitted to the Spanish king’s authority when they allied with the invaders against their own enemies, the K’iche,’ in 1524. He also assumes that in 1526 a Spanish dominion against which to rebel existed, rather than a diminished force of military invaders now abandoned by their primary leader, Pedro de Alvarado. Under these premises, Sinacam’s and Sequechul’s actions constituted individual, criminal acts of rebellion that had to be punished, in contrast to the loyalty of the K’iche’ lords of Quetzaltenango who provided thousands of warriors to fight against these two bad men and their “conspiring towns.” Puertocarrero and his counselors were not forced to react from a position of weakness, but mastered the situation, rationally deciding by vote in a council of war to fight the Kaqchikel after many peaceful overtures.35 They did not complete the conquest, but merely defended it. Nor is this a story of Spaniards versus Indians. Fuentes y Guzmán tells a history of those who are obedient to the Spanish crown— the Tlaxcalteca and Mexicanos and the K’iche’ lords of Quetzaltenango— versus those who are not. Sinacam’s and Sequechul’s defeat and imprisonment (but notably not their execution) brought peace at last to this newest of Spanish realms. The Spanish “city of Goathemala” at Iximche’, founded in 1524 and threatened by violence, could be reestablished the following year in a location of the conquistadors’ choosing: Almolonga. The Fiesta del Volcán’s re-creation of this flawed historical narrative followed a similar but even more simplified script. Even before Fuentes y Guzmán describes it, one can imagine how some scenes might have theatrically played out. In his historical narrative the rebels act “in the manner of thieves,” disorderly, fighting among themselves, and unable to strategize and defeat the Spanish despite their great numbers. Prominent individuals emerge, chief among them Pedro de Puertocarrero as hero and Sinacam and Sequechul as villains. Fuentes y Guzmán mentions Spanish fighters such as Francisco Castellón, Alonso de Loarca, Sancho de Barahona, and Gaspar de Polanco, all familiar names from Justicia 291 for which they testi34. Bricker, Indian Christ, Indian King, 6. 35. Compare to retrospective narratives of conquest in the Andes that also make Spanish actions seem cooly rational rather than reflecting the instability of these earliest encounters, as argued in Lamana, Domination without Dominance.

Creating Memories / 193 Figures of the Spaniards Quirijol (left) and Portocarrero (right) from the Baile de la Conquista de Guatemala, as performed in Ciudad Vieja in 2005. Photograph courtesy of Joel E. Brown.

fied on the Mexicanos’ behalf. One wonders whether the Fiesta del Volcán individualized any of these characters mentioned in Fuentes y Guzmán’s historical narrative, much as Alvarado, Puertocarrero, and Hernán Carrillo are individually played in the Dance of the Conquest in Ciudad Vieja today.36 The Fiesta del Volcán began, writes Fuentes y Guzmán, with the construction in the central plaza of Santiago of the volcano, a massive structure made of wood and decorated with mountain vegetation and many flowers, with various grottos and spaces in which live animals such as monkeys, squirrels, deer, and wild pigs were released or caged. A small wooden house called the casa real or del rey (royal house) perched on the mountain’s top. This set the scene for festivities to begin the evening before the fiesta day. Residents of Santiago stayed up all night to wander the streets and mingle in the plaza, enjoying the harmonious sounds of horns, 36. Brown and Cruz Quiñones, Traditional Dances of Ciudad Vieja, ch. 2.

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flutes, and drums being played in and around the volcano. The loudest music of all emanated from the royal house at the volcano’s top. In the morning, Indian laborers returned to replenish the volcano’s greenery and prepare it for the afternoon’s reenactment of the defeat of Sinacam and Sequechul. At three o’clock, a parade of Spanish infantry and cavalry rode into the plaza from two directions. These were followed from yet another entry point by “many troops (that made up one thousand) of naked Indians with their loincloths and body paint in the style of their Gentile ancestors, with various feathers of parrots and parakeets, with bows and blunted arrows, others with staffs and shields in their old style.” A series of performances of native dances, music, and ceremony followed, the “extravagance and strangeness” of which, Fuentes y Guzmán writes, amused the crowds greatly. The pageantry of the local Maya culminated with a dance by the richest and highest ranking principales of the largest Indian suburb of Santiago, the mixed K’iche’-Kaqchikel town of Jocotenango, whose governor, playing the role of Sinacam, climbed to his throne in the casa real at the top of the volcano. Two military companies “of the Indians of Ciudad Vieja, who are descendants of those our friends the Tlaxcaltecas” then entered the plaza. Presumably from the Compañía de Tascala and the Compañía de Mexicanos, these soldiers dressed not as the other Indians had in native garb, but in Spanish-style uniforms and feathered hats, “adorned and armed with sheathed swords, arquebuses, and spears.” Flag-bearers and a legion of family members and other residents of Ciudad Vieja accompanied them, lacking uniforms but also “armed in military style.” Presiding over all were the governors and principales of Ciudad Vieja, dressed in “elaborate and expensive costumes in their Tlaxcalteca style.” The mock battle began as the Mexicanos attacked the Indians protecting Sinacam around the volcano, with a great deal of shouting and the whizzing of arrows being shot upwards. As the battle drew to a close, the defending forces retreated from the volcano. The governor and alcaldes of Ciudad Vieja captured Sinacam, led him in chains from the top of the volcano and across the plaza, and presented him to the president of the Audiencia seated in front of the city’s Palacio. A more dramatic and multilayered ritualization of the Mexicanos’ position as Indian conquistadors in the valley of Guatemala can scarcely be imagined. Multiple conquest narratives overlapped as Sinacam’s defeat unfolded. For the Spanish audience, Sinacam’s capture replayed the foundational myths upon which their supremacy in the colony was based. The

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Spanish cavalry leads the way, followed by their loyal Nahua allies. Curiously reminiscent of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, the Spanish do little of the actual fighting in Fuentes y Guzmán’s telling of the Fiesta del Volcán. Instead, they observe as different Indian groups carry out the final battle of conquest, their own superior position perhaps confirmed from their honored place in the audience. The animals released from the grotto may have recalled royal ceremonies based on the Roman past of Visigothic, Christian Spain, as well as the Roman conquests to which the Spanish saw themselves as heirs. Bernál Díaz del Castillo pointed out these ancient connections when describing a similar mock battle between “wild men” and “blacks” held in Mexico City in 1539 in honor of the truce agreed upon between the rival Catholic kings Charles V of Spain and Francis I of France. The release of animals from an artificial forest in that festival was the brainchild, Díaz claimed, of a Spanish-Italian descendant of Roman patricians inspired by the games of antiquity.37 Fuentes y Guzmán also betrays a reduction by Spanish observers of the native participants in the Fiesta del Volcán to a few stock groups. The “Mexicanos y Tlaxcaltecas” of the chronicler’s historical narrative become simply “Tlascaltecas” in the Fiesta del Volcán. Likewise, Fuentes y Guzmán describes all the present-day militia members, town officials, and residents of the real-life Ciudad Vieja as “Tlascaltecas”— despite the fact that one of the two military companies mentioned from Ciudad Vieja must have been the Compañía de Mexicanos. Even more strikingly, in the Fiesta del Volcán (unlike in the historical narrative) there are no Maya allies of the Spanish. The Quetzaltenango K’iche,’ whose numbers and loyalty complemented the Spaniards’ wit in the historical narrative, disappear from the Fiesta del Volcán entirely. The Mexicanos and Tlaxcalteca, scarcely mentioned in the thick of the fighting by the historical narrative, are here the main protagonists fighting on behalf of Spanish imperialism. In this reenactment of the conquest from late seventeenth-century Guatemala, the Spanish direct their Nahua allies to win the battle on their behalf. The Maya— played by real-life K’iche’ from Jocotenango as well as Kaqchikel— do not split into loyal and rebellious subjects, but simply rebel and are (re)conquered.38 37. Lupher, Romans in a New World; Harris, Aztecs, Moors and Christians, 123–29. 38. Jocotenango was divided into K’iche’ and Kaqchikel parcialidades, and in 1736 the sacraments were administered there in both languages; see Archivo Histórico Arquidiocesano (hereafter cited as AHA), Cofradías T1 1 #10 (1736), ff. 25–31.

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If the Fiesta del Volcán affirmed “the ideology of the superiority of Europeans over natives,” as Guatemalan historian Jorge Luján Muñoz has put it, it also drew upon native Mesoamerican understandings of history, the social and cosmic order, and public performance.39 Ethnohistorian Robert Hill has detailed much of this Mesoamerican symbolism in the Fiesta del Volcán.40 Most obviously, the locus of Kaqchikel political power atop a mountain from whose cavernous insides flowed an assortment of wild animals derived from Mesoamerican associations of caves with the sacred, fertile entryway between the watery underworld, the earth, and the sky. The animals caged and released from inside the Fiesta del Volcán’s mountain— including deer, parrots, monkeys, coatis, tapirs, and javelinas— appear in Maya cave paintings dating as far back as the Early Classic and continuing into the colonial period, not only as naturalistic images but also ritualistically fused with human forms.41 Hill suggests that the animals within the Fiesta del Volcán’s faux volcano/mountain would have been understood by Mesoamericans as tonas (animal spirit companions of each individual, from the Nahuatl tonalli) and ancestor spirits who typically resided there. The correlation between certain mountains with their watery underworlds and the identity of a particular people— exemplified in the Nahua pictographic symbol for the altepetl— would also have been shared by both the Maya and the Mexicanos. Mesoamericans often built their main temples atop or in imitation of mountains, and the Nahua pictograph for conquest reflected what sometimes happened in real life: a burning temple on a mountain. In the Fiesta del Volcán, as far as Fuentes y Guzmán tells us, neither the casa real atop the mock volcano nor the volcano itself were destroyed. This, according to Hill, left open the possibility of future battles and perhaps reversals of fortune. Even if the casa real had been destroyed and Sinacam ritually executed, however, it would not for Mesoamericans have signified a definitive, unique historical event. Rather, the Fiesta del Volcán replayed a prototypical conflict that according to Mesoamerican notions of time and history would be repeated at a predictable times in the future. Spaniards and Kaqchikel together comprised a hierarchical, 39. Luján Muñoz, “Al día con el pasado.” 40. Hill, Colonial Cakchiquels, 1–9. 41. On caves and mountains, see Stone, Images from the Underworld; Robinson, “Memoried Sacredness”; Brady and Prufer, In the Maw of the Earth Monster; Brady and Ashmore, “Mountains, Caves, and Water.”

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complementary duality, each one acting in proper harmony with, rather than opposition to, the other, alternating “endlessly and interdependently without resolution.”42 For the Kaqchikel, the Fiesta del Volcán may or may not have functioned as “a mask for their own myth of territorial recovery.”43 But it did situate their defeat as part of the continuity of a larger cosmic cycle. More immediately, it provided an opportunity to replay the Kaqchikel’s political and spiritual power, openly and officially sanctioned, in the center of the colonizer’s city. To dress up in all the imagined finery of the pre-Christian, precolonial era; to carry the governor of Jocotenango on a litter “adorned and composed” of quetzal feathers to the top of the mountain; to have group after group of Maya perform ceremonial dances “in the ancient style”; to defend the mountain led by captains recognizable by their distinctive quetzal feathers and insignias— all this must have been a heady re-creation of the Maya past for both participants and spectators. Indeed, Fuentes y Guzmán writes, the costume of the governor of Jocotenango was “so estimable” that the governor of Itzapa offered 500 pesos to assume the role of Sinacam for the dedication of Santiago’s third cathedral in November 1680.44 (The offer was refused.) With so little data, we can only guess what deeper meanings may have underlay Sinacam’s procession up the mountain, but his journey parallels almost exactly that of the saints in colonial Maya guachibales (private saints’ cults commissioned and sponsored by wealthy families), on whose feast days “the image [of the saint] was paraded on a litter decorated with fabulously expensive feathers, [with] dancing that again involved costly feathered costumes, and a feast for family and friends.”45 The dances that accompanied Sinacam echo those described by the Dominican Thomas Gage in the 1630s, in which wild beasts played by dancers in elaborate costume were ritually captured, killed, and fed to the saints in place of “heathen” gods. Hill likens these dances to the Kaqchikel ritual xq’ ul, “which appears to have been a celebration of warfare and nagual transformation.”46 The great whizzing of arrows reported by Fuentes y Guzmán may 42. Maffie, “Pre-Columbian Philosophies,” 15; Hill, Colonial Cakchiqueles, 7–8; Bricker, Indian Christ, Indian King, 179; Farriss, “Remembering the Future”; on duality in modern Guatemalan Maya thought, see Navarrete Pellicer, Maya Achí Marimba Music, ch. 3; and Cook, Renewing the Maya World, 87. 43. Harris, Aztecs, Moors, and Christians, 160 44. Annis, Architecture of Antigua Guatemala, 50. 45. Hill, Colonial Cakchiquels, 93–94; Van Oss, Catholic Colonialism, 89. 46. Hill, Colonial Cakchiquels, 96–98.

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have hearkened back to ancient arrow-sacrifice rituals that continue today in the most famous dance-drama in Guatemala, the Rab’inal Achí.47 Elsewhere in his chronicle Fuentes y Guzmán worries that such Indian dances during the colonial period flirted with ancient paganism, but he evinces no such concern in his description of the Fiesta del Volcán.48 He spares few words for the Tlaxcalteca’s mostly Spanish-style costumes and dwells less on their winning of the mountain than on the Kaqchikel’s defense of it. The residents of Ciudad Vieja may have played the ultimate victors in the Fiesta del Volcán, but they apparently were not nearly as exciting for Fuentes y Guzmán to watch. It seems fair to say that Ciudad Vieja’s Mexicanos and Tlaxcalteca would have shared with the local Maya a fundamentally Mesoamerican understanding of the Fiesta del Volcán’s symbolism. Despite their affiliation with the conquistadors and proud reputation as early Christian converts, Mexicanos from Ciudad Vieja and elsewhere were chastised throughout the colonial period for many of the same spiritual offenses as the Maya by Guatemalan priests, from seeing Christ as a pre-Columbian deity to dancing “fandangos” that one suspects were not merely secular affairs in front of the saints in cofradía (confraternity) houses.49 But it also seems a safe assumption that the Mexicanos’ interpretation of the Fiesta del Volcán would have significantly diverged from the Maya’s. They were, after all, playing the victors rather than the vanquished in this reenactment and may also have had their own, particular stories to draw upon for comparison. To take only one of the most obvious, in Mexica Tenochca myth-history the divine sanctioning of warfare took place on the serpent mountain Coatepec, where the Tenochca’s patron god Huitzilopochtli was born and murdered his rival siblings. Huitzilopochtli cast those he had defeated from the mountain, an act that would be ritualistically reenacted in the human sacrifices of the Templo Mayor at Tenochtitlan. For the descendants of mostly Nahua conquistadors in Guatemala, watching their husbands, brothers, and sons take over Sinacam’s temple and force him down the mountain in chains may have resonated quite differently than it did for their fellow performers from Jocotenango. The Mexicanos’ role as Spaniards in the Fiesta del Volcán echoed their 47. Van Akkeren, Place of the Lord’s Daughter, ch. 8. 48. See Martínez Peláez, La patria del criollo, 211. 49. Christenson, Art and Society, 191, from Ximénez, Historia de la provincia; AHA Cofradías T3 105 #4 (1748).

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ancestors’ triumphs in the wars of both Aztec imperialism and of Spanish conquest. The artificial mountain with its grotto of caged animals paralleled precolonial calendrical rituals like those honoring the rain god Tlaloc. The confrontation between uncivilized Maya and civilized Spanish echoed mock battles between uncivilized Chichimeca and civilized Otomi. Such festivals were replayed in front of Spanish colonial officials, argues Max Harris, in the aforementioned battle of the “wild men” and the “blacks” in Mexico City in 1539, the Tlaxcalteca Corpus Christi celebration reenacting the conquest of Jerusalem that same year, and the Xochimilca festival of the Moors and Christians held to greet the viceroy in 1586. In all these festivals, Harris suggests, indigenous participants appropriated the European narrative of triumphant conquest by presenting themselves as conquistadors and Cortés, Pedro de Alvarado, and other prominent Spaniards as Moors and Turks.50 The Tlaxcalteca in particular memorialized their triumphs over both the Spanish and the Aztecs in 1519–21 through theatrical displays created and performed with Spanish collaboration. In the same way, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja memorialized their triumph over the Guatemalan Maya in the Fiesta del Volcán dressed up as Europeans, but with no help from the real-life Spaniards of Santiago. The Spanish cavalry that processed into the plaza became part of the audience assembled to witness the Mexicanos’ noble deeds. The Mexicano militiamen’s Spanish costume distinguished and civilized them vis-à-vis the Kaqchikel dressed in native garb. The transformative power of donning and parading about in these costumes can hardly be overestimated. But the governors and alcaldes of Ciudad Vieja were also transformed into Tlaxcalteca lords in their fullest finery, and it was they who directed the battle. In one sense, then, the Fiesta del Volcán replayed the conquest of Guatemala as a Mesoamerican rather than a Spanish feat. The Paseo del Pendón Real on the Día de Santa Cecilia followed more recognizably European norms. But here too, the Mexicanos played the role of victors and allies rather than subordinates by combining indigenous ritual costume with formal European military dress and arms; by greeting Audiencia officials at the entrance to the cathedral; and by marching with those same high-ranking officials throughout the city of Santiago. For the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja, these spectacles asserted an equality with the Spanish that was less possible in other moments and contexts. 50. Harris, Aztecs, Moors, and Christians, 127–30; Wake, “Sacred Books and Sacred Songs.”

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They reinscribed in the Mexicanos’ memories a sense of their unique history in Guatemala, through gestures, costumes, and rituals that were repeated on a regular basis. Even receiving a bottle of wine from Spanish officials at the end of the Paseo was an act potentially full of significance, given the trope of drunkenness that so dominated elite Spanish and creole discourse about the Indians. But these public spectacles also reenacted and reinforced the Mexicanos’ liminal status in the colony. To be allowed to enter the church for the vespers of St. Cecilia in procession was a privilege bestowed by the colonial government and the crown— a privilege, in part, because the Mexicanos had not ceased to be Indians. Together as Indians the Guatemalan Maya and the Mexicanos and Tlaxcalteca of Ciudad Vieja performed the Fiesta del Volcán for the benefit of Audiencia officials and urban spectators from Santiago. Though the Mexicano governors became “Tlascaltecas” in this dramatic reenactment, the Mexicano militias conquered the barbarian natives as Spaniards. Their final act, the deliverance of Sinacam to the president of the Audiencia, was at its heart a gesture of obedience to Europeans. The Ciudad Vieja militias’ ritualization of their conquistador status in these fiestas thus served both to differentiate and to identify the Mexicanos as Indians: an elite group vis-àvis the Guatemalan Maya, but subordinated Indians in the colonial social hierarchy nonetheless. Through their performances in commemorations of the conquest, to borrow from Catherine Bell, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja engaged in a “delicate and continual renegotiation of provisional distinctions and integrations so as to avoid encountering in practice the discrepancies and conflicts that would become so apparent if the ‘whole’ was obvious.”51

Pillars of Memory: Militias, Cofradías, and Cabildos Conquest celebrations publicly affirmed the Mexicanos’ identity as Indian conquistadors, but these happened infrequently. On a more day-to-day level, colonial institutions like the militia, the cofradía, and the cabildo helped shape what it meant to be Mexicano in Ciudad Vieja. They provided a framework for asserting Mexicano identity and privileges to the outside world. Just as important, such institutions fostered interactions among the residents of Ciudad Vieja that were explicitly based on shared 51. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, 125.

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heritage and common interests. They allow us to glimpse the kinds of activities that helped bind the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja together as a distinctive (though not always harmonious) community, by calling upon their collective memory as Indian conquistadors and by creating new memories, both good and bad, of life together in Guatemala. The very existence of Ciudad Vieja’s ten militias marked the Mexicanos as conquistadors vis-à-vis the local Maya population, for most Guatemalan Maya and other natives were legally prohibited from forming militias or bearing arms.52 Based as they were on Ciudad Vieja’s parcialidades, the militias also revitalized ethnic particularities within Ciudad Vieja. Besides participating in the annual Paseo del Pendón Real and occasional Fiesta del Volcán, the militias marched in the two most important festivals of the Catholic calendar in Guatemala, Corpus Christi and Holy Week. Each militia most likely also marched in the celebrations of its own parcialidad’s patron saint’s day. Militia members patrolled the town, apprehended persons charged with wrongdoing, and delivered suspects to jail. They heard petitions and complaints brought by Ciudad Vieja residents to judge their worthiness, and testified on behalf of those who found themselves litigating in the Spanish justice system. (Interestingly, and in contrast to their counterparts elsewhere in southern Mesoamerica, there is little evidence that the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja acted as enforcers of colonial rule outside their own community much after the first century of conquest.)53 A system of captains, sergeants, and lieutenants led each corps of soldiers. To reach the highest ranks of the militia must have signified years of economic investment, for weapons, uniforms, flags, musical instruments, and other supplies throughout the year, plus annual fees paid to the Spanish sergeant of militias in Santiago and to the local parish priest.54 The militias 52. An interesting exception is discussed in Webre, “Las compañías de milicia.” 53. For a contrasting case, see Yannakakis, Art of Being In-Between, 210–11; for examples of Mexicanos from Ciudad Vieja imposing colonial discipline on neighboring Indians, see Sherman, Forced Native Labor, 103–4; AGCA A1.15 leg. 4078/exp. 32361, “Contra los yndios de San Antonio Aguas Calientes” (1573). 54. AGCA A1.15, leg. 5906/exp. 50138, “José Pérez, alcalde del pueblo de Almolonga, contra varios indios por haberlo asaltado en el camino” (1733), f. 2v; AGCA A2.2, leg. 145/exp. 2666, “Contra Agustin Herrarte y Joseph Benito por ladron de bestias” (1757); AGCA A2.2, leg. 150/exp. 2836, “Contra Isidro Ruano por heridas a Alexo Vicente de Paz” (1770); AGCA A2.2, leg. 151/exp. 2853, “Contra Pablo Sigarroga por homicidio en la persona de Manuel Pelen yndio tributario de Milpa Dueñas” (1771); AGCA A1, leg. 73/exp. 1712, “Testimonio de varios certificados de los curas de los Pueblos de la jurisdicción. . . .

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of Ciudad Vieja were a visible part of the town’s everyday life and governance, not merely ceremonial institutions that dusted off their uniforms and weapons for the occasional fiesta. Paradoxically, the militias helped maintain the parcialidades as distinct entities even as the parcialidades grew, shrank, and became progressively more tied to local realities than to the places after which they were named. The Parcialidad de Tascala is a case in point. Fuentes y Guzmán can hardly be blamed for singling out the Compañía de Tascala in the Fiesta del Volcán. If the soldiers’ outfits helped observers distinguish between either companies or parcialidad-based militia squadrons, the Tlaxcalteca contingent would have dominated the scene. The size of its militia reflected the Parcialidad de Tascala’s prominence in Ciudad Vieja. The ración (food donation) it provided the parish priest in 1720 was, along with the Parcialidad de Cholula’s, the largest in the town. (The Parcialidad de Quahquechula’s was the smallest.)55 The census of 1752 confirms that Tascala was by far the town’s most populous parcialidad with 426 counted.56 Cholula and Otumpa followed, just as their militias’ membership would in 1777. Chinampa, Tatelulco, Teguantepeque, Quahquechula, and Tenustitan each had between 35 and 55 names noted on the tributary rolls in 1752; these five parcialidades also had similar numbers of militia members, and significantly fewer than either Tascala, Cholula, or Otumpa in 1777. Tescuco brought up the rear in both the 1752 census and the 1777 militia records. (The 1752 census for the Parcialidad de Reservados is missing.) Such symmetry between the tributary rolls of 1752 and the militias of 1777

recibida en el asunto al Gobernador, Justicias, y principales del Pueblo de Almolonga, nombrado de la Ciudad Vieja” (1773); AGCA, A1.71.4, leg. 5372/exp. 45460, “Ocurso de los yndios de Ciudad Vieja, alias Almolonga, sobre que se les cobra a cada Miliciano de los que salen en el Paseo de Sta Cecilia 6 pesos 5 1//2 reales” (1777); AGCA A1, leg. 6944/ exp. 57832, “Cuadrante de la Parroquia de Ciudad Vieja” (1796). 55. AHA Visitas Pastorales T1–66 (Tomo 4) (1720), Visita de Almolonga de Don Juan Bautista Alvarez de Toledo, ff. 29–30. 56. This count followed the norms for tribute calculation and therefore does not represent all residents of each parcialidad, but only those by whose tributary status payment was assessed: men married to Mexicanas, men married to Indians from other towns, widowers, men married to women who were absent or were reserved from tribute (for instance, because they were from the Parcialidad de Reservados), single men, women married to Indians from other towns or Ladinos, “widows” married to absent husbands, single women, “Reservados de todas clases” (people reserved either by privilege or due to advanced age or illness), and those who were “absent.”

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Tributary Counts (1752) vs. Militia Membership (1777) in Ciudad Vieja

Parcialidad de Tascala Parcialidad de Cholula Parcialidad de Otumpa Parcialidad de Chinampa Parcialidad de Tatelulco Parcialidad de Quahquechula Parcialidad de Teguantepeque Parcialidad de Tenustitan Parcialidad de Tescuco Parcialidad de Reservados

Tributary counts, 1752

Militia members, 1777

(AGCA A 3.16, leg. 2566, exp. 37661)

(AGCA A1.71.4, leg. 5372, exp. 45460)

426 195 83 55 47 46 43 34 24 —

58 30 23 11 12 10 15 15 7 7

suggests that in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the Parcialidad de Tascala constituted about one-third of Ciudad Vieja’s population. It was either large or politically powerful enough, or both, to warrant its own separate militia company. The lieutenant in the dispute over costumes for the Paseo del Pendón Real in 1777 also noted the Tlaxcalteca’s singularity. He claimed to have bought 79 uniforms for the Compañía de Tascala, but only 64 for the larger Compañía de Mexicanos, adding that distribution of uniforms for the Compañía de Mexicanos should be general rather than by parcialidad.57 Once again, outsiders of European descent recognized the Tlaxcalteca’s particular heritage while tending to ignore distinctions among the remaining Mexicanos. One wonders whether such external recognition helped boost the Parcialidad de Tascala’s population over the years. In the sixteenth century, the Tlaxcalteca conquistadors were by all available counts outnumbered by Mexicanos and Cholulteca alike. In Ciudad Vieja in 1573, even the Zapotec captains listed in Justicia 291 outnumbered their Tlaxcalteca counterparts. The Parcialidad de Tascala’s transformation into Ciudad Vieja’s largest and most politically powerful division by far in the

57. AGCA A1.71.4, leg. 5372/exp. 45460, “Ocurso de los yndios de Ciudad Vieja.” (1777).

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eighteenth century is therefore striking. In the absence of reliable population data we cannot know for certain when and how the Parcialidad de Tascala’s remarkable rise to prominence took place. We do know that from the start, European discourse favored Tlaxcala as the home of the original and most loyal Indian allies. One therefore suspects that status as much as demographics stimulated the growth of the Parcialidad de Tascala; acquiring this most-favored identity would have had its perceived advantages. Nevertheless, the Tlaxcalteca of Ciudad Vieja neither took over nor fully dominated the town. Indeed, the other descendants of non-Tlaxcalteca Nahuas and of Oaxacans continued to outnumber the Tlaxcalteca 2:1 in the late colonial period. Nor did the other residents of Ciudad Vieja simply become a large, undifferentiated mass. As we have already seen, the finer points of parcialidad affiliation mattered most to the residents of Ciudad Vieja themselves. In the case of the Parcialidad de Tascala, that sense of belonging may in fact have been something of an invented tradition— but one which was no less real or meaningful for its invention, and which was reinforced by the shared activities of its militia members. At the other end of the spectrum is the Parcialidad de Reservados. Here, too, the militia’s activities upheld the parcialidad as a constituent part of the town— in this case, even as the parcialidad itself survived only as an idea. Always unique in Ciudad Vieja, the Parcialidad de Reservados’ initial composition was based not on an ancestral altepetl in Mexico, but on elite rank and privileges granted to particular individuals from the first generation of conquistadors. In 1720, its governing officials were listed separately from those of both the “parcialidad of Almolonga” and the “tributaries of San Miguel.”58 It was still a viable neighborhood in 1743, when the residents of Reservados were numerous enough to pay more cash tribute than their Kaqchikel neighbors in San Miguel Escobar despite their extra exemptions.59 In the 1750s, however, the Parcialidad de Reservados suffered a dramatic population loss. A count in 1762 recorded only two complete households, along with 13 individuals married in other parcialidades or towns, and 6 persons counted as widows, widowers, or unmarried (compared to 90 complete households the same year in San Miguel Escobar). It is difficult to say what this dramatic change in numbers over such a short 58. AHA Visitas Pastorales T1–66, Tomo 4 (1720), “Visita del Sr. D. Juan Bautista Alvares de Toledo Obispo de Guatemala.” 59. AGCA A3.16, leg. 235/exp. 4668, “Razon de los tributes que deben pagar los 75 pueblos, barrios, etc. del Valle de Guatemala” (1743).

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period of time represents. Several epidemics of typhus, measles, and especially smallpox afflicted the valley of Guatemala between 1740 and 1765, in some towns reducing the population to less than half within the course of a few years. Both San Miguel Escobar and Santa Ynés Petapa suffered this fate between 1760 and 1765. It is not unlikely, then, that disease could have devastated the Parcialidad de Reservados. But changing social patterns also seem to have diminished Reservados’s population, at least as a group of people identified with a territorially defined ward of Ciudad Vieja. In 1762, many men and women who identified themselves as belonging to the Parcialidad de Reservados were nonetheless living and raising families in other parcialidades, where they were counted but not cross-referenced in that year’s census. Discrepancies between that count and the census of 1752 suggest a significant amount of movement and marriage between Reservados and the other parcialidades during this decade.60 After 1762, the Parcialidad de Reservados disappeared from the tributary lists of the colonial bureaucracy. The old bureaucratic division between the Parcialidad de Reservados and the Parcialidades de Mexicanos y Tascaltecas morphed into another, between the Parcialidades de Mexicanos (in which Reservados was now included) and the Parcialidad de Tascala. Colonial officials did occasionally continue to recognize the Parcialidad de Reservados as a distinct entity, but only in deference to information given them by residents of Ciudad Vieja. From a colonial administrative point of view, by the late eighteenth century the Parcialidad de Reservados had ceased to exist. The Parcialidad de Reservados as a functioning part of Ciudad Vieja did not disappear, however, no matter how small or dispersed its population and despite the loss of official recognition. Its militia continued to march in the Paseo del Pendón Real, in local Corpus Christi processions, and in honor of the parcialidad’s patron 60. AGCA A3.16, leg. 235/exp. 4668, “Razon de los tributos que deben pagar los 75 pueblos del Valle of Guatemala” (1743), ff. 94–95; AGCA A3 leg. 2834/exp. 41207, “Sobre las últimas tasaciones de los pueblos del Valle de Guatemala” (1752); AGCA A3.16, leg. 2566/exp. 37661, “Padrón de Ciudad Vieja” (1752); AGCA A3, leg. 945/exp. 17662, “Padrón de Ciudad Vieja” (1752); AGCA A3, leg. 2834/exp. 41215, “Sobre el padrón de los Reservados y de San Miguel Escobar de Almolonga” (1753); AGCA A3.16, leg. 948/exp. 17706, “Padrón del Partido de Amatitán y Sacatepéquez” (1758); AGCA A3.16, leg. 2839/ exp. 41336, “Libro de tasaciones de Sacatepequez” (1760); AGCA A3 leg. 2887/exp. 42297, “Padrón de los Reservados de Ciudad Vieja” (1762); AGCA A3.16. leg. 2772/exp. 39964, “Padrón de Sta Ynés Petapa” (1762); AGCA A3.16, leg. 2840/exp. 41357, “Padrón de Sta Ynés Petapa” (1765).

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saint, San Francisco, into the nineteenth century. Its members also continued to play prominent roles in town politics. When the conflict over costumes in the Paseo del Pendón Real arose in 1777, Ambrosio Minas of the Parcialidad de Reservados was the leading litigant, despite the fact that his militia at that time consisted of only around 7 members (compared to the largest, that of Tascala, with around 58). That year the militia of Reservados was, alongside that of Tescuco, the smallest militia in Ciudad Vieja. Not surprisingly, its members came from only a few families; three of the seven Reservados soldiers involved in the Paseo del Pendón Real in 1777 shared Ambrosio Minas’s surname. Certainly, the promise of extra tribute exemption had supported the Parcialidad de Reservados’s existence throughout the centuries. The descendants of Reservados residents living in the late eighteenth century in other parcialidades likely continued to pay even less tribute than their Mexicano neighbors, as they clearly did in 1754.61 A similar process occurred in Sacapulas, El Quiché, where the parcialidad Santa María Magdalena was devastated by disease around 1640 and its population relocated in other parcialidades. Magdaleños continued for at least another 150 years to have their tribute assessed by their now defunct parcialidad, and Robert Hill and John Monaghan assert that “the Spaniards’ policy of assessing tribute by parcialidad . . . served to preserve the group’s identity” even after the surviving members of Magdalena had relocated into other parcialidades.62 They wonder whether the continued celebration of the parcialidad’s patron saint might have also helped support the “the memory and the identity of the people” of Magdalena after their dispersal. In the case of the Parcialidad de Reservados in Ciudad Vieja, we are not forced to wonder. Reservados was upheld as an identifiable entity in part by the tribute exemptions claimed by its members. But Reservados also persisted as a network of social relations sustained by the memory of a shared heritage and visible in the survival of its militia, even after the colonial privileges awarded on the basis of that heritage no longer obtained. Those who identified with the parcialidades of Tascala and of Reservados may also have nurtured their sense of particularity through cofradía activity. Although the Mexicano cofradías of Ciudad Vieja drew their membership from all neighborhoods, these two important parcialidades appear to have had special ties with two equally important cofradías, 61. AGCA A3, leg. 2566/exp. 37661, “Padrón de Ciudad Vieja” (1752). 62. Hill and Monaghan, Continuities, 60.

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Nuestra Señora de la Limpia Concepción (Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception) and Santíssimo Sacramento. Both the Parcialidad de Tascala and the cofradía Limpia Concepción honored Ciudad Vieja’s titular patroness on behalf of their own institutions as well as the entire town.63 Similarly, both the Parcialidad de Reservados and the cofradía Santíssimo Sacramento celebrated the feast of San Francisco, patron saint of the town’s regular clergy, in October. Additionally, the cofradía of Santíssimo Sacramento exclusively celebrated the mass of Santa Cecilia that preceded the Paseo del Pendón Real in November. The importance of Santíssimo Sacramento in the Counter-Reformation Catholic church, the cofradía’s duties on Santa Cecilia’s feast day in Ciudad Vieja, and its joint celebration of San Francisco with the Parcialidad de Reservados may not have been mere coincidence. It seems that the parcialidades of Reservados and Tascala and the cofradías of Santíssimo Sacramento and Nuestra Señora de la Concepción reinforced each other through their members’ activities. For some, participation in cofradía activities may have provided yet another opportunity to strengthen identification with their own parcialidades. Cofradías and the parish church also supported Mexicano ethnicity on a wider, more generalized scale. Throughout the colonial period, Ciudad Vieja had two separate churches for its Mexicano and Kaqchikel populations, with Nahuatl and Kaqchikel-speaking priests, respectively. The cofradías of Ciudad Vieja likewise conformed to the caste and ethnic divisions of the town; Ladinos and Kaqchikels had their own corporations, separate from those of the Mexicanos. In the eighteenth century— the earliest period for which regular parish records exist— there existed as many as three Ladino lay brotherhoods, one Kaqchikel cofradía, and seven Mexicano cofradías: Santíssimo Sacramento, Nuestra Señora de la Limpia Concepción, Rosario, Veracruz, San José, San Nicolás, and Ánimas. (The cofradía of Rosario seems to have been multiethnic in the midseventeenth century, but in 1664 petitioned for Ladinos to be excluded.)64 Each of these seven Mexicano cofradías drew its members from all of the Mexicano parcialidades, and no one group had a monopoly on any of the cofradías’ offices. Indeed, and as was typical of Indian cofradías throughout Mesoamerica, in the eighteenth century a single individual might 63. AGCA A1.45, leg. 151/exp. 2962, “Ciudad Vieja se queja que los ganados de la hacienda de José Eustaquio de Uria causan daños en la siembras comunes” (1741); see also AGCA A1, leg. 6944/exp. 57832, “Cuadrante de la Parroquia de Ciudad Vieja” (1796). 64. AHA Cofradías T2 108 #21 (1664).

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belong to several of Ciudad Vieja’s Mexicano cofradías simultaneously (but almost never to a Ladino or Kaqchikel one). Most cofradía activity was routine— arranging burials for members, providing wax candles for the church— and did not explicitly refer to ethnic affiliation nor to the Mexicanos’ conquistador heritage. Nonetheless, such routine activities carried out by specifically Mexicano institutions provided regular opportunities for members to work together on behalf of their sodality and the larger, yet still ethnically exclusive, community.65 Colonial-period Indian cofradías, which took firm hold in Mesoamerica around the turn of the seventeenth century, maintained churches, cared for the saints, acted as guardians of the caja de comunidad (community chest) from whose coffers they paid for both civic and religious expenditures, and often raised money for those coffers by leasing land, raising livestock, and engaging in other business enterprises.66 Most cofradías were associated with the parish church, but not all. At the end of the seventeenth century Ciudad Vieja had at least one official guild of pulque manufacturers with its own cofradía of Santa Catalina.67 Women partici65. AGCA A1, leg. 6944/exp. 57832, “Cuadrante de la Parroquia de Ciudad Vieja” (1796); A1.45, leg. 151/exp. 2962, “Ciudad Vieja se queja que los ganados de la hacienda de José Eustaquio de Uria causan daños en la siembras comunes” (1741); AHA Visitas Pastorales T1–66 (Tomo 4) (1720), Visita de Almolonga de Don Juan Bautista Alvarez de Toledo; Archivo Parroquial de Ciudad Vieja (hereafter cited as APCV) Libros de Cofradías, 1757–1810. The Libros de Cofradías make clear the extent to which some individuals were involved in multiple cofradías. Mariano Vásques, for instance, served as diputado, alcalde, or mayordomo in no less than five Mexicano cofradías between 1789 and 1810. More typically, Tomás Paredes and Dionisio Zelada both appear as officers in two different cofradías over a similar period of time. The cofradía books also seem to confirm a basic segregation between the single Kaqchikel cofradía and the Mexicano ones. Several last names appear far more prominently in the San Miguel officer lists than in other Indian cofradías— Gonzáles and García, for example— and only five officers of the cofradía San Miguel appear cross-listed with other cofradías between 1797 and 1810, the years for which the San Miguel books are available: José Vásques (Ánimas), Gregorio García (Rosario), Pascual Hernándes (Rosario), Pantaleón Gonzáles (San Nicolás), and Francisco Sánches (Santíssimo Sacramento). Some of these may refer to two different individuals with the same name. 66. On cofradías, see Sell, Nahua Confraternities; Farriss, Maya Society; Terraciano, Mixtecs; Lockhart, Nahuas, 218–29; Van Oss, Catholic Colonialism; Hill, “Manteniendo el culto de los santos”; Rojas Lima, La cofradía; MacLeod, “Indian Confraternity Lands”; Early, “Some Ethnographic Implications”; Chance and Taylor, “Cofradías and Cargos.” 67. A1.21 leg. 151/exp. 2952 (1696), “La cofradía de Santa Catalina Martir de Ciudad Vieja pide lizencia para continuar vender pulque”; Samayoa Guevara, Los gremios de artesanos, 45.

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pated alongside men as “capitanas” and “diputadas” (deputies).68 In much of Mesoamerica, the Indian cofradía used its connection to the Catholic church to help shelter community finances from Spanish bureaucrats. Although they sometimes criticized the ostentation and suspected pagan roots of cofradía activities, Spanish officials mostly tolerated the cofrades’ apparently pious motives and the upkeep they provided for the church building, altars, and adornments. Parish priests often colluded in this effort, for they generally depended on cofradía payments for extra income.69 In Guatemala, according to historian Adriaan van Oss, Indian cofradías tended to be poor and to invest most of their money in the liturgical life of the community. Ladino cofradías exhibited a more “entrepreneurial bent” that was reflected in the greater wealth of their account books and significant agricultural holdings in cattle, sugarcane, and wheat. This generalization rings true for Ciudad Vieja, where the financial assets of two Ladino cofradías founded in the mid-eighteenth century quickly and dramatically overtook the accounts of their Indian counterparts.70 Van Oss blames this situation on colonial exploitation of the native population, pointing out that the K’iche’ word for cofradía translated as “work service.”71 But the arrangement went both ways. Work or “cargo” on behalf of the community was a necessary burden, and funding the cult of the saints (whether at the individual, household, or corporate level) some 68. AHA Visitas Pastorales T2–66 (Tomo 12) (1746–48), “Visita de M. Pedro Pardo de Figueroa”; the cofradía books of the Archivo Parroquial de Ciudad Vieja (APCV), now transferred to the AHA, confirm the participation of women in the town’s cofradía leadership. See also AHA Cofradías T2 112 #18, “Luisa de Aguilar de la Parcialidad de los Mexicanos” (1723). 69. Van Oss, Catholic Colonialism, 110–115; Farriss, Maya Society, 266, 324–36; for cofradías defending what priests criticized as improper conduct at fiestas in Ciudad Vieja, see AHA Cofradías T2 108–89 (1663), “El cura para los Cakchiqueles de Almolonga sobre sus fiestas en San Andres” and AHA Cofradías T3 105–4 (1748), “Cofradías del Santíssimo Sacramento, Veracruz, Ánimas, y San Miguel piden ordenanzas.” 70. AHA Visitas Pastorales T1–67 (Tomo 5) (1731–32), “Visita de M. Juan Gomez de Parada,” in which the Ladino confraternities are first mentioned and which are far poorer than the Indian ones; one’s wealth had grown significantly by the 1740s (see AHA Visitas Pastorales T2–66 (tomo 12) (1746–48), “Visita de M. Pedro Pardo de Figueroa,” f. 276), and by the visita of M. Pedro Cortés y Larraz were the two richest sodalities in the town by far (with 232 and 363 pesos compared to anywhere from 27 to 92 pesos for the Indian sodalities); AHA Visitas Pastorales T3–69 (Tomo 23) (1769–70). By 1780–84, the cofradía de la Ascencion de Ladinos had 584 pesos worth of assets. 71. Van Oss, Catholic Colonialism, 115.

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of the most important work of all. In colonial Yucatan, historian Nancy Farriss has deemed it nothing less than “maintaining the cosmos” for the “collective enterprise of survival.”72 Even today, individual responsibility for fiesta sponsorship and other collective endeavors is considered in many indigenous towns of Mesoamerica a potentially ruinous but necessary obligation to help maintain social bonds of community, which “have their origin in the sacred.”73 Anthropologist John Monaghan saw these bonds at the end of the twentieth century being generated not by some abstract notion of community, but through specific acts of self-sacrifice that paralleled the giving of life, food, and care to a child; of water and pruning to a corn plant; of blood or pulque to the gods; and ultimately, of one’s body to the earth from whence it came, and from which new life will be born. Corporateness did not exist a priori, but “should be seen as something people create and experience through their interactions with one another.”74 In a similar way, being Mexicano in colonial Ciudad Vieja was not a given, but a sensibility forged out of many generations of descendants of Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors living together in Guatemala. The colonial-era cofradías of Ciudad Vieja sponsored cooperative activities for a common purpose, across household and parcialidad lines but largely apart from the Mexicanos’ Kaqchikel and Ladino neighbors. Over time, the Mexicano cofradías helped create a community out of disparate groups of people who, upon their arrival in Guatemala, had mostly shared bonds born of war and migration. Likewise, the town council, or cabildo, helped integrate Ciudad Vieja’s distinctive parcialidades into a functioning whole. In this, Ciudad Vieja was typical. Many studies have shown how colonial-era Mesoamericans adapted the Spanish model of town government to fit their own notions of hierarchy and governance, and to re-order relations between different groups that may or may not have been confederated before the fall of Tenochtitlan. Elites generally filled the highest offices such as gobernador (governor) and alcaldes, while lesser offices such as regidores and alguaciles (constables) were often drawn from a wider pool. Spanish colonialism generally accepted the Mesoamerican principle that parcialidades should be politically represented by their own officials. At the same time, 72. Farriss, Maya Society. 73. Monaghan, Covenants, 306. See also Watanabe, Maya Saints and Souls; Christenson, Art and Society. 74. Monaghan, Covenants, 241.

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colonial courts, the structure of the centralized Indian town, and the subordination of outlying settlements to a “head” town (cabecera) had the power to modify relationships between peoples who did not necessarily see themselves as part of a whole— a fact of which Mesoamericans routinely took advantage, with winners and losers. When Dominican friars attempted to congregate several foreign and local Maya populations into the highland Guatemalan town of Sacapulas, El Quiché, for example, the foreigners successfully litigated not only for political representation on Sacapulas’s Indian cabildo, but for a greater number of cabildo officers than the more numerous natives of the area. Here as elsewhere, the Indian cabildo was “used to structure relationships between previously unaffiliated groups thrown together in the new social and political environment of the pueblo,” to the benefit of some and the chagrin of others.75 Ciudad Vieja’s Indian cabildo served a similar integrative purpose for the town’s Nahuas, Oaxacans, and their descendants— and for the most part, only for them. The Kaqchikel aldea of San Miguel Escobar appears separately from the parcialidades of Ciudad Vieja in tribute rolls. Just as it had its own cofradía and parish church, it also had its own cabildo.76 Spaniards and Ladinos living within Ciudad Vieja’s jurisdiction lacked their own governing bodies until the end of the colonial period, and did on occasion submit petitions to the Mexicano cabildo of Ciudad Vieja. But more often they went directly to the Spanish regional courts through a lawyer, or to the Ciudad Vieja cabildo for processing of a complaint that would then be passed to appropriate authorities in Santiago.77 The pri75. Hill and Monaghan, Continuities, 86–87. 76. AGI Guatemala 54, “Los yndios que eran esclavos” (1575); AGCA A1, leg. 328/exp. 6796, “Pago a favor de los Franciscanos” (1707); AGCA A3.16, leg. 943/exp. 17590, “Cuaderno de las tasaciones de tributes, valle de Guatemala” (1738); AGCA A3, leg. 2834/exp. 41215, “Sobre el padrón de los reservados y de San Miguel Escobar de Almolonga” (1753). 77. Ladinos and Spaniards were legally prohibited from serving on Indian cabildos, although as Robert Haskett has shown, it was not uncommon for people with European and/or African descent to live and govern within the “Indian” world; see Indigenous Rulers; and also María Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions. I have found no mention of Ladinos in the Ciudad Vieja cabildo until the early nineteenth century, when a Ladino governor was appointed allegedly for the first time; see AGCA A1 leg. 157/exp. 3159, “Ciudad Vieja piden que no se permite un ladino ser gobernador” (1806). For cases involving Spaniards and/or Ladinos from Ciudad Vieja, see AGCA A1.15, leg. 4120/exp. 32646, “Pascual de Loaysa mulato libre sobre un solar en Ciudad Vieja que le dió su amo Joseph de Perez” (1674); A1.15, leg. 2454/exp. 18965, “Diego Quiñonez de Ciudad Vieja contra Miguel Quiñonez por bestias” (1711); A2.2, leg. 145/exp. 2666, “Autos contra Agustín

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mary function of Ciudad Vieja’s cabildo was to defend Mexicano lands, property, and grievances, for both individuals and the collectivity— and it is through these cases that the rhetoric of being “mexicanos y tascaltecas” or simply Mexicanos can most obviously be seen taking shape. It is apparent as early as 1547, in the common petition of “those of Tlaxcala with all its parts and Mexicanos with all their subjects” paired with the individual petition from the young Tlaxcalteca noble, Francisco de Oñate. Fifteen years later, Oñate served as one half of the duo, properly balanced between Tlaxcalteca and Mexicano parts, that officially presided over Justicia 291’s regional campaign for privileges directed from Ciudad Vieja. Oñate and don Juan de Tapia from Tenochtitlan were backed up by a contingent of principales who in other documents appear as governors, alcaldes, and principales— the predecessors, if not already the backbone, of the colonial cabildo of Ciudad Vieja.78 Having achieved at least partial success in their legal battle to secure collective privileges for all the Indian conquistadors and their descendants, Ciudad Vieja’s ruling elites returned to this idea again and again in subsequent years. They invoked the privileges of the town’s “mexicanos y tlascaltecas” when defending ejido lands from Santiago in 1589, and again in the mid-seventeenth century.79 They claimed tribute exemption for the López family of Santa Cruz Chiquimulilla in 1680 as an extension of what was rightfully the privilege of all Ciudad Vieja’s Mexicanos. In 1799, cabildo members presented a detailed history of their town’s collective privileges after being required to supply workers for the new San Juan de Dios hospital. The work obligations were suspended.80 Similarly, the cabildo defended a group of Mexicano musiHerrarte y Joseph Benito” (1757); A3.3, leg. 44/exp. 5346, “Doña Barbara Arroyave hace postura al abasto de carne en Ciudad Vieja” (1764); A2.2, leg. 150/exp. 2836, “Criminales contra Joseph Maria Ruano por las heridas dadas a Alexo Vizente de Paz” (1770). 78. Oñate, for instance, served as governor in 1573 and 1580; Diego Elías from Coyoacan, one of the six Nahua witnesses in the second petition of Justicia 291, was alcalde in 1589; Francisco Mexia, named as a leading Cholulteca litigant in Justicia 291, appears as a principal from the Parcialidad de Cholula alongside Juan de Tapia from the Parcialidad de Tenustitan in 1573. See AGI Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 235v, 253v; AGCA A1.43, leg. 2340/exp. 17562, “Testamento de Cristobal de Quijada” (1575–1629); AGCA A1, leg. 2347/exp. 17672, “Autos de los ejidos entre Almolonga y Alotenango, contra Ciudad de Santiago” (1667), f. 34v. 79. AGCA A1, leg. 2347/exp. 17672, “Autos de los ejidos entre Almolonga y Alotenango, contra Ciudad de Santiago” (1667), esp. ff. 159, 94–197. 80. AGCA A1, leg. 154/exp. 3073, “Los indígenas de Ciudad Vieja no quieren servir en el Hospital San Juan de Dios” (1799).

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cians who ignored a summons to play at the opening of another hospital in 1806, noting the musicians’ “privileges . . . which have been clarified in similar cases.”81 The Ciudad Vieja cabildo was concerned with protecting the economic well-being of the town and its Mexicano population, but the town’s reputation upon which those privileges rested was also at stake and worth defending. This was the major issue in 1763, when town officials claimed that the image of Nuestra Señora de la Limpia Concepción housed in the Church of Santa Lucía in Santiago was in fact the image of their patron saint, brought to Almolonga by the Spanish conquistadors and moved to Santa Lucía for safekeeping after the disaster of 1541. The small hermitage of Santa Lucía had been constructed in 1542 as a go-between for workers building the new city and those who remained in their damaged homes in Almolonga until the official move to the valley of Panchoy. Bishop Francisco Marroquín said the first mass of the new city there in 1543. From 1543 until 1560 Santa Lucía served as the city’s cathedral while the main cathedral in the central plaza was being completed.82 The officials of Ciudad Vieja were not concerned in 1763 that the image of Nuestra Señora be returned to them— it would seem the statue had by then been housed at Santa Lucía for over 200 years. But they wanted La Inmaculada reinstated at the head of the procession of Corpus Christi as the “most ancient [image], brought by the conquistadors from the kingdoms of Spain,” because the people of Ciudad Vieja were descendants of the “first conquistadors of this city, and therefore have enjoyed various privileges.” One of these privileges was seeing their patron saint leading all others in procession through the city. Indeed, warned the officials, if the ancient image of Nuestra Señora de la Limpia Concepción was not allowed to process first, they would boycott the fiesta of Corpus Christi, “for we cannot abandon our privileges.”83 The cabildos of the Mexicano parcialidades of the barrios of Santo Domingo and San Francisco in the city of Santiago invoked the same sense of privilege as Ciudad Vieja’s cabildo, despite a much weaker institutionaliza81. AGCA A1.3, leg. 2772/exp. 24142, “El común de Ciudad Vieja se queja que el alcalde mayor ordenó la prision de varios indios por no haber dado servicios personales” (1806). 82. Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:154; Annis, Architecture of Antigua Guatemala, 223–24; Vásquez, Crónica de la provincia, 4:383–84. 83. AHA Cofradías 101, #47, “El cabildo de Ciudad Vieja contra cofradía de Nra Señora de la Concepción de Santa Lucía” (1763). Compare to the defense of “privilegios de honra” in Cuadriello, Las glorias de la república, 171.

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tion of their status as descendants of Indian conquistadors. Although they were loosely segregated by parcialidad from their Kaqchikel neighbors and appear to have claimed certain craft specializations, for reasons still unclear these urban Mexicanos in Santiago did not enjoy tribute exemption. Nor did they have as complex a set of exclusive social institutions to help foster their particularity. Nonetheless, in 1677 Mexicano officials from the barrios Santo Domingo and San Francisco joined together to ask for temporary relief from church donations for all the “mexicanos y tascaltecas” living in the city. Some thirty years later, when the Barrio de Santo Domingo was being consolidated with another neighborhood, its Mexicano officials insisted that they should continue to monopolize the highest political offices in their barrio. This, they claimed, had been the case from “time immemorial . . . since the Mexicanos our ancestors were conquistadors and first settlers who came for that purpose from the nobility of the cacicascos [sic] of Mexico City, and therefore were always privileged, as we should also be enjoying the same privileges as our ancestors being the legitimate descendants and caciques that we are.”84 Even in Santiago, where the Mexicanos’ privileges were far fewer than in Ciudad Vieja and their segregation from other groups less complete, the cabildo helped maintain the Mexicanos’ memory of themselves as Indian conquistadors— and thus, their political power over their Kaqchikel neighbors. Together, colonial-era militias, cofradías, and the cabildo provided a structure upon which being Mexicano in Ciudad Vieja, in all its varieties, could hang. The longer these institutions persisted, the more experiences, precedents, and traditions they acquired and the more tied to a collective memory of shared lived experience in Guatemala they became. This, in turn, helped support an ongoing sense of being Mexicano in colonial Ciudad Vieja over time. But Ciudad Vieja’s reputation as the home of the Indian conquistadors depended not only on the Mexicanos’ own sustained conviction of their difference from other Mesoamericans in the central valley of Guatemala, but on that difference being legally and practically recognized. Here, too, Ciudad Vieja’s militias, cofradías, and cabildo played a role, because they provided formal, institutional points of con84. AGCA A3, leg. 1756/exp. 28202, “Petición de los indios alcaldes descendientes de tascaltecas para que no paguen el diezmo” (1677); AGCA A1, leg. 5368/exp. 45403, “Barrio de Santo Domingo y Candelaria sobre alternativa en la intergracion del ayuntamiento de dho barrio” (1703), ff. 3v. See Lutz, Santiago de Guatemala, 36–41, for an extended discussion of this case.

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tact between Spaniards and Mexicanos. When necessary, they provided a platform for reminding colonial officials of the distinctive history the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja shared not only with each other, but also with their European partners in conquest. Colonialism itself served as a pillar of Mexicano ethnicity. And when that support wobbled, the most visibly active colonial institutions of Ciudad Vieja propped it back up.85

The Ties That Bind: Sex, Marriage, and Godparenthood Claiming that the Mexicanos kept themselves separate from other Guatemalans during the colonial period implies not just some degree of geographical and institutional segregation, but also endogamy. Did the Mexicanos mainly form relationships with each other? Did they tend to marry within their parcialidades, or to prefer Mexicano godparents for their children? At the level of sex and the family, did being Mexicano matter at all? It is difficult to assess family patterns in sixteenth-century Ciudad Vieja. As was also typical for imperial colonists in Triple Alliance military garrisons, some Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors of Guatemala brought their families with them. Women and children traveled with the conquering armies; others joined husbands and fathers later. Entire families also migrated to Guatemala as colonists in the wake of military conquest. The first generation of Nahua and Oaxacan families settling in Ciudad Vieja were all labeled conquistadors and (as one husband from the Parcialidad de Tatelulco identified his wife in 1575) “conquistadoras.”86 Other men partnered with local women. Some of these were Poqomam women from the two Petapas. Others may have been Pipil speakers from the Escuintla region. Some may have been Kaqchikel, K’iche,’ or other Guatemalan Maya who were forcibly settled in the environs of Guatemala. But an analysis of the Mexicanos’ language patterns in the sixteenth century, discussed in more detail in Chapter 6, suggests that most children of these multiethnic relationships continued to learn and speak Nahuatl into the second and third generations and beyond. Furthermore, when Spanish 85. For comparison, see Yannakakis, Art of Being In-Between, ch. 6. 86. AGCA A1.43, leg. 2340/exp. 17562, “Testamento de Cristobal de Quijada” (1575), f. 6: “yo Juan García que soi hijo de Pedro Tziquiloizco conquistador aqui esta tierra Guatemala y por berdad yo me case con mi muger que se llama Marta asimesmo conquistadora hija y semilla de su padre dha mi muger.”

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bureaucrats complained about local Maya attempting to pass as Mexicano in order to escape tribute in the sixteenth century, they mentioned regional migration from the western highlands far more frequently than intermarriage as a causal factor.87 However prevalent the entry of Maya or Pipil women into Ciudad Vieja households was, it apparently did little to alter the town’s Mexicano identification. Some Nahua and Oaxacan women became the companions of Spaniards, literally embodying the early partnership between the military allies. Such unions forged ties that in pre-Columbian times would have helped integrate the two communities and solidify their political relations, particularly at the level of the nobility.88 The canonical example, recorded by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, is the gifting of five young noblewomen to Cortés by the Tlaxcalteca lord Xicotencatl during negotiations for their alliance against Tenochtitlan in 1519.89 At least one of these women was Xicotencatl’s daughter, whom Cortés baptized, renamed Luisa Techquilvasin, and gave to Pedro de Alvarado. Doña Luisa Techquilvasin Xicotencatl would accompany Pedro de Alvarado to Tenochtitlan and escape with him during the Noche Triste, when the Tenochca ran their unwelcome guests out of the city.90 She bore him a son, Pedro, possibly in Oaxaca while Alvarado was helping subjugate the Mixtecs around Tututepec in 1522.91 Again pregnant while traveling with him during the 1524 invasion of Guatemala, Luisa gave birth to their daughter Leonor in March of 1524 in K’iche’ territory in the immediate wake of the destruction of the city of Utatlán. Six months later she moved to the newly founded Spanish city of Santiago at Iximche’ with a toddler and a newborn, only to flee to Olintepeque after the Kaqchikel broke their alliance with the invaders. She settled at Santiago en Almolonga the following year, while Alvarado was in Mexico and Spain securing his title to the governorship of Guatemala. The details of Luisa’s life in Guatemala thereafter are scarce. Alvarado returned to Guatemala in 1530 a widower. In a move no less calculated than Xicotencatl’s gift of Luisa, while in Spain he had married the daughter of a member of the royal court, Francisca de la Cueva, who died en 87. AGI Guatemala 41, R. 56, “Capitulos de la provincial tocantes a la utilidad de aquellas provincias” (22 March 1539). 88. Susan Gillespie, Aztec Kings; Oudijk, Historiography of the Benizáa; Martínez Peláez, La patria del criollo, ch. 6. 89. Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera (Barbón ed.), 184–86. 90. Ibid., 351, 357, 362. 91. Recinos, Pedro de Alvarado, 222. Recinos does not give references for this assertion.

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route to Guatemala. (Alvarado would return to Spain in 1537 to marry Francisca’s sister Beatríz). No other children are reported to have been born to Luisa; the only other information we have of her life is that she accompanied Alvarado along with 10-year-old Leonor (and quite possibly 12-year-old Pedro) during Alvarado’s ill-fated Peruvian expedition in 1534. Many a romantic tale has been spun about Pedro de Alvarado’s and Luisa Xicotencatl’s relationship, of which Luisa’s presence in Peru is taken as proof positive. Historian Robinson Herrera takes a more practical view, suggesting that Luisa Xicotencatl may still have been needed to ensure the loyalty of that expedition’s contingent of Tlaxcalteca and other Nahua allies.92 If so, she was sacrificed for a losing cause. The Peruvian campaign was a failure, and Luisa died soon after her return to Guatemala.93 Despite Alvarado’s repeated attempts to establish a fully Spanish lineage in Guatemala, it was Luisa’s and Pedro’s daughter Leonor who would carry the Alvarado name into future generations. Only 11 years old when her mother died, Leonor was immediately married off to Alvarado’s old friend and relation Pedro de Puertocarrero, presumably for her protection while Alvarado continued to travel. Doña Leonor inherited Puertocarrero’s valuable encomiendas when he died a few years later and was thus a young, wealthy widow when Alvarado returned to Guatemala with his new Spanish wife doña Beatriz de la Cueva in 1539. Two years later, both Alvarado and doña Beatriz died without having conceived children together and within weeks of one another— he fighting in the Mixton War in western Mexico, she in the natural disaster that destroyed Santiago en Almolonga. Seizing opportunity, Beatríz’s cousin Francisco de la Cueva— Alvarado’s lieutenant governor since 1539 and considered a usurper by many in Santiago— consolidated his position by immediately marrying Leonor. De la Cueva thereby laid claim to Leonor’s encomiendas through Puertocarrero, positioned himself as guardian of Alvarado’s daughter, and insinuated himself into the older conquistador community. In all these moves and counter-moves, Luisa’s rank in Tlaxcalteca society clearly mattered. Of Alvarado’s at least five other mestizo children besides Leonor, only one showed the possibility of entering elite Spanish society in Guatemala: Luisa’s son Pedro, who apparently died somewhere en route to Spain to help his cousin Juan de Alvarado press claims 92. Herrera, “Concubines and Wives,” 133. For a more romantic tale, see Gorriz de Morales, Luisa Xicotencatl. 93. Ibid., 131–35; Recinos, Pedro de Alvarado, 144–54, 165–67.

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to the governorship of Guatemala. Given the difficulty many mestizo sons of conquistadors had in being accepted as part of the incipient Euroamerican elite of colonial Spanish America, however, we might doubt whether Pedro would have easily assumed his father’s status in Guatemala had he lived. The fact that Juan de Alvarado’s strongest supporter in Guatemala, bishop Francisco Marroquín, never mentioned the Adelantado’s now nearly 20-year-old son should not surprise.94 Leonor’s situation was different. Properly handled, the strategic marriage of a mestiza daughter of a conquistador and native noblewomen with a well-placed Spanish newcomer could create a solid foundation for future generations. Doña Leonor’s descent from both Pedro de Alvarado and the Tlaxcalteca lord Xicotencatl formed the genealogical bedrock of some of Guatemala’s most important creole families. Leonor’s children married Spaniards, but nevertheless extolled the family connection to doña Luisa, “daughter of Gicotenga, lord of the province of Tlaxcala . . . who favored and helped don Fernando Cortés, Marqués del Valle, in the conquest of Mexico . . . and in whom was conserved the rights and merits of her father Gicotenga.”95 Such praise grew purple in later centuries, as doña Luisa’s de94. Another Alvarado son named Diego, by a different, unnamed Mesoamerican woman, must have been only a few years younger than Pedro. Diego pressed for his rightful inheritance in Guatemala after his father’s death, but was forced into litigation over pieces of his father’s encomiendas against the criado (minor raised in the household) of the serving governor of the Audiencia de Guatemala, Alonso de Maldonado. Diego left Guatemala for Peru sometime after 1549 (perhaps, as Herrera and Kramer both suggest, having been shut out of Santiago’s Spanish elite for being mestizo and without the marriage ties to that community that his sister Leonor had), and died there. A third son, Gómez, must have been only five years old at the time of his father’s death. According to Alvarado’s will, he was living in the Azores with his mother, a “doncella” (young unmarried woman)— possibly a Mesoamerican who traveled with Alvarado during his journey in 1537 to Spain, or more likely a native of the Azores where Alvarado stopped off for six months that spring and summer. She and her baby appear to have remained behind while Alvarado proceeded on to Spain and then back to Guatemala. A small daughter Anica, only five years old, died with Beatríz de la Cueva in the earthquake; another daughter, Inés, survived, but neither she nor her unidentified mother were mentioned in Alvarado’s will. See Recinos, Pedro de Alvarado, 168, and Doña Leonor de Alvarado, 45–48; Herrera, “Concubines and Wives,” 134; Kramer, Encomienda Politics, 191–92; AGI Patronato 284, N. 1, R. 93, “Receptoria pedida por Francisca de Alvarado” (1557). 95. AGI Guatemala 64, “Don Joan de Alvarado pide una encomienda” (1617) ; AGI Guatemala 70, “Probanza de Don Juan de Alvarado” (1640); AGCA A1, leg. 2878/exp. 26440, “Sobre un descendiente de Pedro de Alvarado y de Xicotenga, Señor de Tascala” (1799).

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scendants through Leonor continued to recall the “first native lord to submit to the Spanish crown and whose example was followed by the rest . . . giving thousands of Indians from his reign as soldiers in the conquest of Mexico . . . without whose help and assistance it would have been impossible to achieve the conquest of the Indies.”96 Due in no small part to such rhetoric as this, Luisa entered the pantheon of protonational heroes and heroines celebrated by the creole Spanish elite in Guatemala. Luisa Xicotencatl tends to overshadow other Nahua noblewomen because of her connection to Pedro de Alvarado and the extent to which her descendants proclaimed that fact. But she was not alone. Pedro’s brother Jorge de Alvarado also partnered with a Tlaxcalteca noblewoman, Luisa’s sister Lucía, although it is unclear whether Lucía was presented to Cortés along with her sister by Xicotencatl in 1519 or ended up with Jorge sometime later. Jorge de Alvarado had at least one child with Lucía, a daughter Francisca. But like his brother Pedro, Jorge also preferred a well-placed Spanish bride. He married the daughter of the treasurer of New Spain in 1530 and fathered three children with her in Mexico. (Lucía’s descendants through Francisca would later claim that Lucía had married Jorge, leading the nineteenth-century Guatemalan historian José Milla to conclude Lucía must have died very early. It seems equally likely that such stories of legitimate marriage and birth were produced after the fact in defense of family honor.)97 Jorge de Alvarado’s and Lucía Xicotencatl’s mestiza daughter Francisca de Alvarado married twice, first to the conquistador Pedro de Garro who came to Guatemala with Jorge de Alvarado in 1527 and then to the newcomer Francisco Girón who came with Pedro de Alvarado from Spain in 1539. Interestingly, Francisco Girón did not trumpet his wife’s connection to Tlaxcalteca nobility in his 1563 probanza de méritos, pointing out only that Francisca was the daughter of Jorge de Alvarado and was a person “muy principal y honrada” without mentioning Lucía. In 1679, however, descendants of the Girón-Alvarado union in El Salvador— perhaps mimicking their distant Guatemalan relatives, the descendants of doña Luisa Xicotencatl and Pedro de Alvarado—proudly proclaimed their descent from the younger daughter of Xicotencatl, “king of Tascala 96. AGCA A1.29, leg. 212/exp. 5040, “Doña María Álvarez de la Fuente solicita encomienda” (1699), f. 177. 97. Recinos, Doña Leonor de Alvarado, 36; Milla, Historia de la América, 181; Herrera, “Concubines and Wives,” 134; AGCA A1.29, leg. 4782/exp. 41327, “Merecimientos y servicios de los descendientes de Jorge de Alvarado” (1679).

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with whose favor help and assistance the conquest of these lands was accomplished.”98 Nor were all Mesoamerican noblewomen who partnered with Spaniards from Tlaxcala. One woman, yet again baptized Luisa, was claimed by her Spanish son-in-law Bartolomé de Canseco in 1577 to have been the daughter of the “captain Chalchiutototl, brother of Moctezuma cacique and governor of all of New Spain in the time of its gentility and the most principal Indian that there was in that time besides the said Moctezuma.” According to Canseco’s probanza, Luisa Chalchiutototl had a daughter, Ysabel, with the Spanish conquistador Agustín de Rodas in Mexico after the fall of Tenochtitlan. Mother and child accompanied Rodas to Central America in 1526, where he fought in Honduras alongside Pedro de Alvarado and then settled in San Salvador. Ysabel de Rodas was married to a Juan Griego who also fought in Honduras and settled in San Miguel. After Griego’s death Ysabel married Canseco, a Spaniard from León who appears to have arrived in Central America in the 1550s, serving first as an escribano público (public notary) in La Villa de la Trinidad (Sonsonate, El Salvador) and later as secretary of the Audiencia de Guatemala in Santiago. As was also true for Luisa and Lucía Xicotencatl, Luisa Chalchiutototl’s mestiza daughter would be integrated into colonial Spanish society and her noble heritage used to bolster the status of a newcomer to the colony— in this case, a mid-range Spanish bureaucrat attempting to bend the fame of Moctezuma to his advantage, far away from the centers of either Nahua or Spanish power in sixteenth-century Mexico Tenochtitlan.99 98. AGI Guatemala 111, N. 32, “Informaciones de Francisco Girón,” (1563), f. 4 ; AGCA A1.29, leg. 4782/exp. 41327, “Merecimientos y servicios de los descendientes de Jorge de Alvarado” (1679); Kramer, Encomienda Politics, 92, 195. 99. AGCA leg. 4675/exp. 40185, “Probanza de Bartolome de Canseco relator sobre los meritos de agustin de rrodas su suegro” (1577). I have been unable to identify this captain Chalchiutototl, despite his alleged high standing. John Schwaller suggests that Chalchiutototl, which means Turquoise or Jade Bird, may have been a title rather than a name (personal communication, 16 December 2009), an idea bolstered by Diego Muñoz Camargo’s assertion that chalchiuh was an honorific term for “captain” and understood as such by the Spanish; see Meade de Ángulo, Doña Luisa Teohquilhuastzin, 62. This raises the interesting possibility that in faraway Guatemala, Canseco felt no need to be more specific about his wife’s genealogy. The mere assertion of nobility was more meaningful than the identity of the family itself (an approach that would surely not have been sufficient in central Mexico at the time). The genealogy of the Ixtlilxochitl family in Texcoco, Mexico, provides a valuable comparison to the Canseco case. The noble post-conquest patriarch of the family, don Fran-

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Hints abound in sixteenth-century documentation of other Nahua and Oaxacan women who partnered with Spanish conquistadors and whose children entered the legally defined “república de españoles” rather than the “república de indios.” Pedro de Puertocarrero’s mestizo son with an unnamed Nahua woman, Diego Hernández Puertocarrero, petitioned the crown for financial assistance on the basis of his father’s conquistador status in 1577. A mestiza daughter of Puertocarrero married the conquistador Pedro de Losa and received a conquistadors’ pension (ayuda de costa) from the crown in 1593.100 Alonso de Paz married the daughter of a cacique from Xoconusco, probably a Tenochca, in 1548. A Mixtec woman named Magdalena bore Diego de Usagre at least one daughter, Catalina, who was “raised in the household of her father” and married the Spaniard Francisco Castellón.101 Pedro Gonzáles Nájera had a daughter whose mother may have been Nahua (given Gonzáles Nájera’s language skills in Nahuatl and the close relationship he had with the indigenous allies during and after the invasion), but who is identified only as his illegitimate mestiza daughter (“hija natural mestiza”) in her Spanish husband’s probanza of 1577.102 Yet another doña Luisa identified as a Tlaxcalteca who came with the first conquistadors was reported in the 1580s as having many grandchildren, “among them some important Spaniards.” She too received a small pension from the colonial government.103 Maya women must have also borne children by Spaniards in early colonial Guatemala, but they are scarcely if ever mentioned in the historical record. Nor did Robinson Herrera in his study of native-Spanish intimate unions in early colonial Guatemala cisco Verdugo Quetzalmamalitzin Huetzin, married a daughter of the king of Texcoco. Their daughter married a Spanish interpreter for the Audiencia, and her daughter married another Spanish interpreter. The mestizo historian and governor of Texcoco, don Francisco Alva de Ixtlilxochitl, was born of this last union. María Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 114. 100. Recinos, Doña Leonor de Alvarado, 32–33. 101. Herrera, “Concubines and Wives,” 136; AGI Guatemala 9–17, “Carta del fiscal y oficiales de la provincial de Guatemala al rey sobre salarios, ayudas de costa, entretenimientos y quitaciones que se dan en la provincia de Guatemala” (1563); Gasco, “Polities of Xoconochco,” 51–54.; Gall, “Probanzas de méritos y servicios,” 147. 102. AGI Guatemala 114, N. 10, “Ynformación de los méritos y servicios de Juan de Ecija” (1577) see also Herrera, “Concubines and Wives,” 135. 103. AGCA A1.39, leg. 1751, “Autos asignando ayudas de costa” ff. 6v, 39v-40; for Herrera, this lesser-known doña Luisa is emblematic of the way native women were not merely victims of the conquest, but got what they could out of their unions with Spanish men in the sixteenth-century; see “Concubines and Wives,” 127, 135.

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find any indication of Maya noblewomen helping cement Maya-Spanish alliances (for instance, with the Kaqchikel or the K’iche’), as Nahua noblewomen clearly did. Herrera concludes that “the presence of the Tlaxcalteca auxiliaries could have offset the need to create binding military ties with native groups in Guatemala through intimate links with daughters of powerful local lords”— and clearly not only the Tlaxcalteca, but other Nahuas and perhaps some Oaxacans as well.104 What if any benefits did the Indian conquistadors of Ciudad Vieja gain from these sexual partnerships? In the sixteenth century, Nahua and Oaxacan women helped weave a web of personal connections with the Spanish allies that continued into the second generation of colonization. These appear to have served both sides well at the time. We get a hint of the consideration Luisa Xicotencatl and her daughter Leonor may have received from their compatriots in Ciudad Vieja through the recollections of a Spaniard, Alonso Ruíz, in 1617. According to Ruíz, doña Leonor, now a wealthy encomendera and matriarch of an elite “Spanish” family living in Santiago, received special visits from representatives of Ciudad Vieja in her old age. “The Indians and naturales [natives] of Ciudad Vieja who are Tascaltecas recognized her as their noble lady [se reconocieron por señora],” he reported, “and as such on the vespers of Easter and other important days they visited her and brought presents in recognition.”105 Conversely, doña Leonor’s son was put in charge of the pension of the other Tlaxcalteca doña Luisa, grandmother of “some important Spaniards,” who lived not in the Spanish city of Santiago but in Ciudad Vieja.106 A number of Spaniards who testified on the behalf of their Nahua and Oaxacan allies in Justicia 291— such as Pedro Gonzáles Nájera, Álvaro de Paz (brother to Alonso), and Pedro Çerón (who provided the information on Diego de Usagre’s partner and mestiza daughter)— were connected to Mesoamerican women through friendship and family. Likewise, familiar Nahua names from Justicia 291 show up as witnesses on behalf of the probanzas of the children of Spanish-Nahua unions. Don Francisco de Oñate, don Juan de Tapia, and don Diego Elías— major figures who spearheaded the 104. Herrera, “Concubines and Wives,” 135. 105. AGI Patronato 85, N. 6, R. 1, “Ynformaciónes secretas y publicas de los meritos y servicios de Don Juan de Alvarado y los que hicieron en la conquista destas provincias los pasados de Doña Francisca de Guzman su muger” (1617), 7v. Thanks to Wendy Kramer for this reference. 106. Recinos, Doña Leonor de Alvarado, 53.

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campaign for the Indian conquistadors’ privileges out of Ciudad Vieja in the 1560s and 1570s— all testified on behalf of Bartolomé Canseco’s probanza in 1577, as did three other residents of Ciudad Vieja originally from Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and possibly Huitzilopocho.107 Perhaps these Guatemalan Mexicanos felt they had a stake in defending Ysabel de Rodas’s status as the granddaughter of an important Tenochca lord. Perhaps they acted out of ongoing friendship or even a feeling of kinship. Or perhaps they were merely doing a favor for the scribe and interpreter of Canseco’s probanza, Juan Fernández Nájera, who, as we have already seen, had a close relationship with the Nahuas of Ciudad Vieja and may himself have been married to a Nahua woman from Mexico, according to his own probanza.108 As always, the Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors got less out of these relationships than they likely expected. Many Spanish conquistadors showed little interest in marrying their Native American partners, an attitude that seems to have been more prevalent in Central America and also Peru than in New Spain.109 The issue was not necessarily the morality or exclusivity of the sexual relationship. Catholic marriage was after all a foreign ceremony to Mesoamericans, and Luisa Xicotencatl’s noble father (to take the most famous example) allegedly had more than ninety children. But all involved would surely have recognized some insult in a Spanish conquistador passing over a Nahua noblewoman gifted by her father in military alliance, in favor of a Spanish wife sanctioned by the Catholic 107. A witness “Juan Perez mexicano” was around 80 years old, a principal of Ciudad Vieja, and claimed to have known the captain Chalchiutototl in central Mexico and to have been one of the original conquistadors. Given his rank and the fact that his testimony immediately follows that of Francisco de Oñate, Juan de Tapia, and Diego Elías, this may have been Juan Pérez Tlapaltecatl originally of Huitzilopochco, who was (along with Diego Elías) one of the four Mexicano and Tlaxcalteca witnesses to testify for the new and improved 1574 probanza of the second half of Justicia 291. See Chapter 3 of this volume, and AGI Justicia 291, N. 1, R. 1, 251v. 108. AGI Guatemala 52, “Probanza de Juan Fernández Nájera (1551); see also AGCA A1.29-1, leg. 4675/exp. 40173. Many thanks to Wendy Kramer for bringing this document to my attention. Juan Fernández Nájera appears almost exclusively as the Nahuatl interpreter for Nahua witnesses from Ciudad Vieja in probanzas of the sixteenth century; it was he that reported being shown the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan or something like it by the Indian conquistadors of Ciudad Vieja in 1564. See Chapter 3 this volume, and AGI Patronato 62, N. 3, “Méritos y servicios de Hernando de Illescas” (1559–78). 109. Compare to the reaction of some Andean noblewomen in similar situations, in Burns, “Gender and the Politics of Mestizaje,” 15.

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church. All would also have recognized the inferior position of children deemed illegitimate by Spanish and church law. And while at least some Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja esteemed Luisa Xicotencatl and other Nahua noblewomen living in Guatemalan Spanish households, they did not include these women in their own narratives of the conquest of Guatemala. Nor do witnesses from Ciudad Vieja testify on behalf of the children of these early intimate unions beyond the sixteenth century. With the passing of the original conquistador generation, direct personal connections between Spaniards and Mexicanos fade away in the documentary record. “Spanish” families in Central America who continued to celebrate their descent from the native nobility of central Mexico did so on their own. And this, I would argue, was the most lasting and significant benefit the Nahuas and Oaxacans of Ciudad Vieja and their descendants derived from such intimate unions. For despite an ever-widening juridical gap between the república de españoles and the república de indios, Mexicanos and Spaniards in colonial Guatemala continued to play a role in each others’ memories of conquest. Luisa and Lucía Xicotencatl’s validation in Spanish creole narratives constituted one more acknowledgment of the Mexicanos’ identity as Indian conquistadors. Unions between Nahua and Oaxacan women and Spaniards may not have created a single, bicultural elite in colonial Guatemala. But as long as some well-placed Spanish Americans continued to embrace their own Mesoamerican ancestry and to credit the Indian conquistadors’ role in establishing the colony, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja could call upon those shared memories to curry favor, defend privileges, and petition colonial authorities with a greater hope of success. Partnerships between Nahua and Oaxacan men and local noblewomen had a more predictably integrative effect from a Mesoamerican point of view. We do not know precisely why Gaspar Passo, grandson of Cholulteca conquistador Antonio Passo, left Ciudad Vieja and married a mestiza in San Miguel Petapa. But undoubtedly Gaspar was aware of the advantages of a marriage between his eldest daughter and a son of Petapa’s leading cacique family, the Guzmáns. The Guzmáns, meanwhile, clearly appreciated the symbolic capital their Mexicano son-in-law brought to the family. Over a hundred years after these Ciudad Vieja Mexicano and Petapa Poqomam families joined, the Guzmáns continued to point out their heritage as both native caciques and, through Passo’s line, Indian conquistadors. And as we have already seen, the Guzmáns were not alone. Marriage relations between Ciudad Vieja and the two Petapas were so

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common that according to Fuentes y Guzmán in 1686, the residents of Santa Ynés Petapa were “known as descendants of the Tlaxcalteca who came to the conquest of Guatemala with Pedro de Alvarado,” dressed distinctively, and spoke Nahuatl rather than Poqomam.110 In 1723, those with family ties to Ciudad Vieja constituted the largest group of all San Miguel Petapa residents claiming tribute exemptions. This was also true in Santa Ynés Petapa in 1762 and in Ciudad Vieja in 1752, when the vast majority of exogamous marriages were with someone from one of the two Petapas.111 The two Petapas, however, appear to have been exceptions to the rule. In the mid-eighteenth century, Ciudad Vieja was an overwhelmingly Mexicano and mostly endogamous town. According to the 1752 tributary count, in only 7 percent of the 458 Mexicano households recorded in Ciudad Vieja did one spouse come from another town, while another 12 percent of recognized unions were between Mexicanos and Kaqchikel from San Miguel Escobar or local Ladinos. Thus in 1752, nearly 80 percent of the town’s Mexicano marriages— and the majority of marriages in the town as a whole— were between local Mexicanos. This is perhaps not surprising given the large Mexicano population of Ciudad Vieja. But it is worth noting that the Indian populations of other towns along the main trading routes, such as Escuintla, Mixco, and San Miguel Petapa, were being overshadowed by rapidly growing casta populations in the mid-eighteenth century. Did this endogamy extend to the parcialidad? Certain family names do appear predominantly or even exclusively in particular parcialidades in 1752: the Seladas in Tascala, the Hipólitos in Quahquechula, the Mexicanos (used as a surname) in Reservados. In rare instances, we can trace a single family’s persistence in a parcialidad through many generations. Don 110. Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:238. 111. For Petapa’s tributary counts, see AGCA A3.16, leg. 2074/exp. 31549, “Sobre la tasación de San Miguel Petapa” (1723); AGCA A3.16, leg. 2323/exp. 34284, “Fragmento sobre el padrón de San Miguel Petapa” (1723); and AGCA A3.16, leg. 2323/exp. 34292, “De el padrón hecho de los yndios y Yndias que se havian excluydo del padrón de Sn Miguel Petapa” (1723). For Santa Ynés Petapa, see especially AGCA A3.16, leg. 2772/exp. 39964, “Padrón de Sta Ynés Petapa” (1762), an immensely sad document in which almost half of the names are crossed out with the side notation “died,”presumably after an epidemic; and AGCA A3.16, leg. 2840/exp. 41341, “Padrón de Sta Ynés Petapa” (1762). For Ciudad Vieja’s count, see AGCA A3, leg. 2566/exp. 37661, “Padrón de Ciudad Vieja” (1752). The town of Mixco also appears to have had some tradition of intermarriage of Ciudad Vieja, although not to the extent of the two Petapas.

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Diego de Selada of the Parcialidad de Tascala served as alguacil mayor of Ciudad Vieja in 1598. His descendants remained in the Parcialidad de Tascala until at least the 1730s, when family members were involved in a land dispute with a group of local Ladinos. Significantly, three of the four Selada siblings in the case were women, suggesting that marriage had not severed their ties to their parcialidad (and indeed, two of the three sisters appear to have married Tlaxcalteca husbands).112 Such apparent clannishness within the parcialidades, however, is misleading. A comparison of the 1752 padrón (tributary census) with baptismal, marriage, and burial records from Ciudad Vieja between 1754 and 1761 shows that while many people in this period married within their parcialidad, a significant number did not. Women, more often than men, frequently shifted parcialidad status after marriage, sometimes more than once in their lifetimes. This makes the precise level of intra-Mexicano marriage between parcialidades hard to calculate. While some are explicitly noted in the 1752 padrón— that is, husband and wife appear separately in their home parcialidades as individuals who are “married in other towns,” rather than as a single tributary household unit— much more often the wife in a mixed marriage simply assumed the parcialidad affiliation of her husband. Sixteen-year-old Valentina Ordoñes, for example, lived in the household of her father Pasqual Ordoñes in the Parcialidad de Tatelulco when the 1752 tributary count was taken. That same year her future husband, Bernardo Larios, was 19 years old, single, and from the Parcialidad de Quahquechula. By 1758 the two were married, and both were listed as being from Quahquechula at the baptism of their son, Mariano Joseph. Thus while the padrón indicates only a small proportion of marriages between parcialidades, the actual number was probably much higher. Women in particular broadened the web of Mexicano relationships as they balanced their own multiple family affiliations.113 112. Don Diego is AGCA A1.15, leg. 4087/exp. 32420, “Proceso criminal de Juan Horozco de Ayala alguacil mayor desta ciudad contra Alonso de Contreras corregidor del Valle” (1598), f.18; AGCA A1.45, leg. 151/exp. 2962, “CV se queja que los ganados de la hacienda de Don Jose Eustaquio de Uria causan daños en las siembras comunales” (only Tlaxcala), AGCA A1, leg. 6943/exp. 57819 “Sobre tierras entre los parcialidades de San Miguel Escobar y Chinampa en Ciudad Vieja” (1692–1798) (only Chinampa), A1.45, leg. 614/exp. 53416 (1800–1804) “Casimiro Santa Cruz conta la parcialidad de cholula de Reservados, ambos de Ciudad Vieja, por un pedazo de tierra”; AGCA A1, leg. 2454/exp. 18974 (1720) “Paula, Mauela y María Selada reclaman varios solares.” 113. AGCA A3.16, leg. 2566/exp. 37661, “Padrón de Ciudad Vieja” (1752), and APCV

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Children extended this web of relationships even further, through both family ties and compadrazgo (godparenthood). In modern Latin America, anthropologists describe compadrazgo as a kind of social glue, expanding kinship ties beyond the extended family. In Santa María Belén Azitzimititlán, Tlaxcala, Mexico— the site of Hugo Nutini’s and Betty Bell’s groundbreaking study of the institution conducted in the 1970s— local residents broke their compadrazgo system down into no less than 31 distinct types. While some types implied only transitory and primarily economic obligations, such as helping sponsor the rites involved in the blessing of a friend’s house, others signified the beginning of a lifelong relationship that was never embarked upon lightly. This was particularly the case with the two most important types of godparenthood in Santa María: baptismal and matrimonial compadrazgo. In these types, the most salient relationship was not that between godparents and godchild, but between godparents and the parents of the child. Often, the bonds between these adults— formalized through the obligations of comadrazgo and involving long-term, mutual economic and moral support— endured until their deaths.114 Through the eighteenth-century baptismal and marriage records of Ciudad Vieja we see these same kinds of bonds being forged during the colonial period. Manuela del Espíritu Santo, for example, was born in 1758 to Ygnacia Larios and Phelipe de la Cruz López of the Parcialidad de Chinampa. Her maternal grandparents lived in the Parcialidad de Quahquechula. Her godparents, Felis Mexicano and Phelipa Mendoza, were from Reservados and Otumpa, respectively, and were godparents to at least 10 other children from 6 families in Chinampa, Tascala, and Tenustitan. This one child, then, created ties between adults from at least four parcialidades. In many families, each child had his or her own set of Bautismos Libro No. 3, f. 8. The major exceptions to this predominantly female movement between parcialidades were the men and women of the Parcialidad de Reservados, who almost always retained their parcialidad affiliation after marriage regardless of gender or where they established their household. Reservados spouses, when not from Reservados themselves, remained on the tributary rolls of their own parcialidad of origin, and their tribute obligations were calculated individually. Thus 48-year-old Francisca García was counted in the Parcialidad de Cholula for the 1752 padrón, while her husband, Pedro de Paz, was listed as being from Reservados. Similarly, Manuel de Mendoza, age 22 in 1752, was counted in his home Parcialidad de Quahquechula, but owed only as much tribute as a widower because his wife, María Mexicano, was from Reservados and therefore exempt “by royal privilege.” 114. Nutini and Bell, Ritual Kinship.

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godparents, often, again, from different parcialidades. This was the case for the three children of Juan Santos Gonzáles and Hermengilda Zacarias of Tescuco, whose baptismal godparents, all different, came from Tascala and Tenustitan. Other parents chose only one set of godparents for all of their children, implying an interdependency between parents and godparents that may have been as significant as any blood relationship. The ties created by compadrazgo could prove highly durable, as is evident in the life of María del Carmen Quintero of Quahquechula. In 1752, María was the young wife of Juan Manuel Aguilar of Tascala. In 1754, the couple became godparents to the infant son of Lorenzo García and Juana Pérez of San Miguel Escobar. Some months later, Juan Manuel Aguilar died, and the widowed María quickly married Pasqual Vásques of Cholula. María and Pasqual had at least four children, whose godparents were a single woman (probably either Ladina or Spanish) and a couple from Otumpa. María’s existing relationship with Lorenzo García and Juana Pérez thus did not carry over to her children with Pascual Vásques. María and Pasqual themselves, however, became the godparents of Lorenzo and Juana’s second child in San Miguel Escobar in 1758, continuing the relationship that had been established during María’s first marriage.115 Less commonly, Mexicanos also chose non-Mexicanos as godparents. Most often these were Kaqchikel from San Miguel Escobar. Baptismal and matrimonial compadrazgo with other Maya from outside Ciudad Vieja, as well as with Ladinos and Spaniards, tended to build upon already-established relationships. In 1754, for instance, a Maya couple from the town of Santiago Zamora who were living in Ciudad Vieja chose Thomasa Bentura from the Parcialidad de Teguantepeque as godmother of their daughter— a choice surely influenced by the fact that Thomasa’s husband was from Santiago Zamora as well.116 Patron-client relationships with Spanish employers in Santiago and prominent Spanish families in Ciudad Vieja also seem to account for some of the compadrazgo relationships Mexicanos established with Spaniards. This seems to have been particularly true in the case of matrimonial godparenthood, where the padrinos were expected to help cover substantial wedding costs. Members of the Spanish American Valenzuela family, whose household included 115. AGCA A3.16, leg. 2566/exp. 37661, “Padrón de Ciudad Vieja” (1752); APCV Bautismos Libro No. 2 (1751–58), ff. 85, 101, 108, 125v; APCV Bautismos Libro No. 3 (1758– 65), f. 1. 116. APCV Bautismos Libro No. 2 (1751–58), f. 112v.

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the parish priest and a prominent local rancher, appear occasionally but regularly as godparents in Ciudad Vieja’s baptismal and matrimonial registers. A pattern of compadrazgo relations is also evident between Ciudad Vieja’s Mexicanos and Spaniards and Ladinos living in the Barrio de San Sebastián in Santiago. All of these sorts of relationships were not untypical, but they constituted a minority of compadrazgo relations in Ciudad Vieja in the mid-eighteenth century, the majority of which were between Mexicanos. Marriage and godparenthood could strengthen bonds within a parcialidad, especially when people married or chose godparents exclusively among their immediate neighbors. But there remained great potential for creating links with families and individuals from other neighborhoods, or even with non-Mexicanos from other towns or social groups. In Ciudad Vieja, most Mexicanos appear to have broadened their social sphere within the bounds of Mexicano society. While kinships were clearly being forged with non-Mexicanos between the years 1752 and 1761 for which complete data exist, these constituted a minority of the total marriage and godparent relations established. More commonly, Mexicanos tended to choose other Mexicanos as marriage partners and godparents. Some choices reinforced the standing of particular families within a certain parcialidad. Others extended relationships between Mexicanos living in different parcialidades. If these patterns were longstanding, they help explain how the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja simultaneously maintained their ethnic character and, over time, became internally more homogeneous. At the level of individual choice, it is impossible to say whether being Mexicano mattered in any given situation. Nothing tells us what motivated the marriage between Valentina Ordoñes of Tatelulco and Bernardo Larios of Quahquechula, or the choice of Felis Mexicano and Phelipa Mendoza as godparents for so many of the town’s Mexicano children in the 1750s and 1760s. Love, friendship, and obligation must have played their part. Regardless, these relationships and all those that preceded and followed them cumulatively reinforced the Mexicanness of Ciudad Vieja. While women in relationships with Spaniards tended to sever their ties with Ciudad Vieja and its Mexicano community, and family relationships established with outsiders weakened them, the preponderance of blood and fictive kinship between Mexicanos helped shape the ethnic character of the town. Ciudad Vieja in the late eighteenth century was both a fundamentally Guatemalan and an identifiably Mexicano place. It was a regional com-

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mercial hub, site of the first permanent Spanish capital in Central America, and home to hundreds of Guatemalan-born Indians who, despite embracing the label “Mexicano,” had never been to the land of their ancestors. Still, Ciudad Vieja was defined by its connection to the Nahuas and Oaxacans who had invaded Central America in the 1520s and 1530s. Being Mexicano in the late colonial period did not only mean exemption from tribute. It also meant sewing costumes for the Fiesta del Volcán, or marching down the streets of Santiago each year during the Paseo del Pendón Real. It meant marrying a fellow Mexicano, watching the town’s patron saint lead the procession of Corpus Christi, saving the sixteenth-century will of the son of a Tlaxcalteca captain in the conquest army, or (as we will see in Chapter 6) speaking Nahuatl. All these extraordinary and everyday aspects of life helped sustain the Mexicanos’ social memory of themselves as descendants of Indian conquistadors in their native land of Guatemala. Tribute exemption constituted only one part of the Mexicanos’ heritage as Indian conquistadors and was as socially significant as it was economically important. But this does not diminish the fact that tribute exemption continued to be awarded to the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja by colonial authorities over whom they had little control, and who saw them primarily as Indian subjects rather than fellow rulers of the colony. The extent to which the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja could openly celebrate their own rather than the Spaniards’ feats in the conquest was limited. To safeguard their privileges, the Mexicanos had to also act out their proper role as colonized Indians— a role they manipulated to their advantage to be sure, but also one that excluded them from powerful positions of colonial authority that in other contexts might have been rightfully theirs. The fact that Spanish-descended creoles in colonial Guatemala folded Ciudad Vieja and its residents into their own prideful memories of the conquest period, and continued to recognize the Mexicanos’ privileges as Indian conquistadors, provided an enormous and perhaps essential boost to the process of becoming Mexicano in colonial Ciudad Vieja. Colonialism did not exactly create the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja, but it did limit the possibilities of what being Mexicano could mean.

6. Particularly Ladinos Language, Ladinization, & Mexicano Identity

More than in any other town, in Ciudad Vieja the prohibition against Indians from other parts and against Ladinos must be observed with the utmost rigor, because it is where there has been the greatest attempt to conserve their purity, which will be completely lost with mixing. And because they do not pay tribute and they have been ladinized, they constitute a distinct class of Indians. —Alcalde ordinario of Santiago, 17981

I

n the colonial Mesoamerican world no less than the modern, language potentially marked identity. This was especially true in the valley of Guatemala, where so many Guatemalan Maya were forcibly relocated and so many travelers passed through. Language connected the speaker to a particular region. Facility in more than one language created opportunities and the potential for upward mobility. Different languages were perceived as indicators of belonging, foreignness, barbarism, or assimilation. Nahuatl, the language of most residents of Ciudad Vieja, was associated in colonial Guatemala with the high civilizations of central Mexico, the power of the Aztec empire, and— positively or negatively— the arrival of the Spanish. The Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja in the second generation and beyond distinguished themselves by maintaining Nahuatl as their mother tongue. They also quickly adopted Spanish, earning a reputation as indios ladinos 1. Archivo General de Centroamérica, Guatemala City (hereafter cited as AGCA), A1, leg. 154/exp. 3060, “El comun de Ciudad Vieja pide que se les conceda avecindar en su Pueblo a varias familias” (1798).

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who could speak Spanish and who generally aligned themselves with the Spanish world. But the meaning of the term “Ladino” broadened over time in colonial Guatemala, to also indicate a classification of people: the castas, descendants of Africans, Native Americans, and Spaniards who were considered part of the Spanish as opposed to the Indian republic under colonial law. Even as the older meanings of bilingualism and hispanization persisted, by the eighteenth century the term “Ladino” in Central America also referred to all castas regardless of their particular placement (for instance as African descended mulatos or Native American descended mestizos) within the casta system. These Ladinos dressed like Spaniards, spoke Spanish, no longer paid tribute, and served in militias— all characteristics of the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja in late colonial Guatemala as well. By the end of the colonial period, had the Mexicanos therefore become Ladinos in this later sense of the term, that is, not Indians?

The Uses of Nahuatl in Colonial Guatemala The valley of Guatemala in the sixteenth century was a jumble of languages. Maya slaves and allies from the Guatemalan highlands spoke K’iche’, Achi’, Kaqchikel, Tz’utujil, Mam, and numerous other languages. Natives from the east spoke Poqomam, Pipil, and languages classified as part of the Xinca family. The Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors and their families spoke mostly Nahuatl, but also varieties of Zapotec and Mixtec. And these are only the most common languages listed in sixteenthcentury documents, almost certainly generalized from a much greater variety. Spanish in this early period was drowned out in the din. Nahuatl, or la lengua mexicana as the Spanish called it, served as a colonial language of translation between Spanish and Central American languages for approximately a century after 1524. Not surprisingly, this was particularly true in zones of significant Nahua and/or Spanish colonization such as Xoconusco and Ciudad Real de Chiapa in Chiapas; Ciudad Vieja, Santiago de Guatemala, and Escuintla in Guatemala; and San Salvador and San Miguel in El Salvador. These areas produced the greatest concentration of colonial-era documents in classical Nahuatl (the language of Postclassic and colonial central Mexico), many more than have emerged from predominantly Maya zones. In these same colonized areas, some non-Nahua Mesoamerican scribes incorrectly emulated classical Nahuatl in documents such as petitions to the Spanish crown and Catholic cofradía ordenances, indicating that the central Mexican language was

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perceived to carry a certain caché or political weight in the early colony. Meanwhile, in areas predominated by speakers of Pipil— a variant of Nahuatl that had been spoken in the southeastern parts of Central America since at least 800 a.d. — a vibrant colonial-era tradition of writing in that distinct dialect developed rather than being replaced or altered by classical Nahuatl. Some scholars have suggested that the ready use of Nahuatl in colonial Guatemala— from renaming Maya cities with Nahuatl place-names, to translating from Maya and other languages, to lexical borrowing— derived from Postclassic trade and diplomacy with the Aztecs. Others point to the long centuries of interaction between Maya languages and Pipil. But the distribution and traits of Nahuatl documents from colonial Central America suggest that its use proceeded most directly from the Nahua-Spanish invasion and subsequent colonization.2 Nahuatl was the indigenous language most familiar to the Europeans, and thus the most direct way of communicating with them. It was widely understood in the south, where the Spanish dubbed its cousin Pipil la mexicana corrupta. It was the language of hundreds of Nahuas who settled throughout the region and was likely spoken as a second language by many other native merchants and colonists who traveled from northern parts of Mesoamerica to the south in the wake of conquest. For the extremely heterogeneous population of Mesoamericans that settled in and around Santiago de Guatemala, Robinson Herrera argues, Nahuatl went beyond functioning as a language of bureaucracy and in the sixteenth century served as a general lingua franca among all types of people, including urban Maya. He, too, attributes the choice of Nahuatl as a language of translation in sixteenthcentury Santiago and its environs at least partially to the “large number 2. For a compilation of Nahuatl documents from Central America (including classical Nahuatl, Pipil, and the hypercorrected Nahuatl that Sergio Romero and I have dubbed “Colonial Central American Nahuatl”), see Romero and Matthew, “Nahuatl Documents.” On the Postclassic, Pipil, or colonial influences of Nahuatl on Mayan languages and speech practice, see Navarrete, “Elementos arqueológicos de mexicanización,” 347–48; Maxwell and Hill, Kaqchikel Chronicles, 62–67; Romero, “Status of Nahuatl”; Romero and Matthew, “Más allá de la lingua franca.” Romero points to the monolingualism of the Kaqchikel lord Kaji’ Imox, described in the Memorial de Sololá as being unafraid when he met Pedro de Alvarado at Xetulul (Zapotitlán), even though he “did not speak the Yaqui language (Nahuatl)” (Recinos, Crónicas indígenas, 124). Maxwell and Hill note that the Kaqchikel used the term “Yaki” for both the Nahuas and the Pipil (Kaqchikel Chronicles, 63), but also note a Nahuat (perhaps Pipil) influence on early Kaqchikel kings’ names that seems to have disappeared by the time of the Nahua-Spanish invasion of 1524 (65).

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of Nahuatl-speaking auxiliaries who accompanied the Spaniards and the high status that they enjoyed.”3 All together, this created a high demand for nahuatlatos, Nahuatl translators who appear in almost every early colonial document from the valley of Guatemala that records communication between Mesoamericans and Spaniards. Some Spaniards in Central America recognized the advantages of learning Nahuatl themselves. The Spanish conquistador Pedro Gonzáles Nájera was atypical in having learned Nahuatl to help coordinate military actions with Nahua captains.4 The notary Juan Fernández Nájera also learned Nahuatl exceptionally early and well and appears to have had a close relationship with the Nahuas of Ciudad Vieja that went beyond the professional. His wife, María Díaz, was likely Nahua herself, a “native of this land” whom Fernández Nájera met and married in Mexico before coming to Guatemala in the mid- to late 1530s. Fernández Nájera appears as the translator for a great many legal cases involving the Nahua conquistadors throughout Central America, including for every single case I have seen involving prominent Ciudad Vieja officials such as don Francisco de Oñate and don Juan de Tapia. He is also the only Spaniard to have mentioned, in two separate documents, having been shown in 1564 the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan or something like it by “the Taxcalteca and Mexicano governors and Indian principales who went on behalf of Your Majesty in the conquest and pacification of this land.”5 Fernández Nájera may have had more incentive and opportunity to learn Nahuatl than most, but other Spanish notaries followed suit in the late sixteenth century. Sebastián Gudiel, to take only one example, appears in his 1590 notarial books using a native interpreter but by 1620 was 3. Herrera, Natives, Europeans, and Africans, 157–58. 4. Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain (hereafter cited as AGI), Justicia 291, N. 1, R. 1, f. 240; AGI Guatemala 60, “En nombre de Juan Calbo de Nájera” (1605). 5. AGI Guatemala 52, “Probanza de Juan Fernández Nájera” (1551) (thanks to Wendy Kramer for this reference and her shared enthusiasm for tracking down “our friend JFN”); AGCA A1.29-1, leg. 4675/exp. 40173, “Probanza hecha de Juan Fernández Nájera” (1551); AGCA leg. 1751/exp. 11737, “Sobre ayudas de costa a los conquistadores y pobladores antiguos” (1589–90), f. 6v; Polo Sifontes, Título de Alotenango, 22, 27, 31. Interestingly, the ayuda de costa for María Díaz, widow of Juan Fernández Nájera, interpreter for the Real Audiencia, immediately follows an ayuda de costa granted to doña Luisa india, “antigua vecina de la Ciudad Vieja”; see discussion in ch. 5 and also AGCA A1.39, leg. 1751, “Autos asignando ayudas de costa” ff. 4, 39v-40. Robinson Herrera views Fernández Nájera’s claim to fluency in Nahuatl as evidence of the esteem in which this skill was held by Spaniards; see Herrera, Natives, Europeans, and Africans, 158n. 49.

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doing his own translations from Nahuatl to Spanish.6 In notarial records we also find mayors, judges, and other officials speaking Nahuatl, perhaps after having attended Nahuatl classes given in Santiago’s cathedral by fray Juan de Samaniego. One group of students in 1585 included city council members and several high-ranking citizens alongside a number of friars.7 It should also be noted, however, that according to the Dominican memorias written by fray Antonio de Molina and others in the seventeenth century, this Nahuatl school “began and ended” with Samaniego “because it didn’t have students, and the Father went back to Spain.”8 While some Spaniards may have recognized the utility of speaking at least a little Nahuatl in order to communicate with the Mesoamericans who worked in their homes, sold them goods, and cooperated with them as bureaucratic intermediaries, they may not have been inclined to attend classes nor to seek a high level of functioning in the language. Mesoamericans in the valley of Guatemala used Nahuatl either as a means of communicating through a translator, or increasingly as a second language through which they could speak directly. Most typically, translation from a local language into Nahuatl facilitated communication with Spanish authorities both high (for instance, in a 1572 set of petitions to the king asking for relief from abuses by colonial authorities) and low (as when the Kaqchikel officials of Patzicía demanded debt payment by a Spaniard to a Mesoamerican merchant in 1583).9 In 1592, the Kaqchikelspeaker Bartolomé García of San Sebastián El Tejar (Chimaltenango) contracted himself as muleteer and his wife, Catalina, as house servant to a Santiago Spaniard in Nahuatl, which “I the scribe (Fernando Niño) and the witnesses understand.” Similarly, in 1597 Olalla Hernández, an indigenous woman from the milpa of San Juan del Obispo where Kaqchikel 6. AGCA, A1.2, leg. 810, “Protocolo de Sebastián Gudiel,” ff. 6 (3 June 1595), 88v (29 May 1596), and 404 (21 August 1623). 7. AGCA, A1.2, leg. 1127/exp. 9620, “Protocolo de Fernando Niño,” ff. 64 (12 September 1586), 112 (2 November 1589), and 135 (6 April 1593); AGCA “Que el padre fray Juan de Samariego negó asistir la catedra de la lengua mexicana” (1585), AGCA A1.2, leg. 1507/ exp. 9994. See also Herrera, Natives, Europeans, and Africans, 158n. 48. The instruction of Nahuatl in Guatemala imitated similar programs of translation and lessons initiated by the Franciscans in Mexico. See León-Portilla, Teputzlahcuilollo impresos en Nahuatl, vol. 1, ch. 1. 8. Molina, Antigua Guatemala, 197. 9. Dakin and Lutz, Nuestro pesar, nuestra aflicción; AGCA A1.2, leg. 422/exp. 8825, f. 51, “Protocolo de Cristóbal Aceituno” (1 March 1583).

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likely predominated, dictated her will to the Spanish scribe Diego Jácome directly in Nahuatl.10 That same year, a widow named Catalina Barahona, identified only as an Indian from the Barrio de la Merced in Santiago, used Nahuatl to apprentice her son to another Indian, a hatmaker who lived in the same barrio but who apparently did not speak the same first language as Catalina. In 1583 an indigenous couple from the Barrio de Santo Domingo sold a house to a free mulata using a Nahuatl-speaking interpreter. Such cases suggest that Nahuatl could serve the client’s interests as much as the scribe’s, and support Herrera’s contention that Nahuatl enabled Mesoamericans from different regions and perhaps some Africans and people of mixed heritage to communicate not only with Europeans but also with each other in the sixteenth-century valley of Guatemala.11 Quantifying the precise use of Nahuatl in Guatemala is difficult. In contrast with the considerable corpus of native-language documents available in Mexico, far fewer documents written in either Nahuatl or Maya languages have been uncovered by scholars in Guatemala. Indeed, only five documents in Nahuatl from Ciudad Vieja emerged in my research for this book, all from the last quarter of the sixteenth century and the first quarter of the seventeenth. Although we know that indigenous scribes existed, none of their notarial books have surfaced in the archives to date. Thus we are left with circumstantial evidence from Spanish scribes, mostly centered on the Spanish city of Santiago. And this information, for its part, is frustratingly incomplete. It arrives not only second- and third-hand, but also with irregular systems of reference. Some scribes specify the languages spoken by their clients and the interpreters more precisely than 10. AGCA A1.2, leg. 1127/exp. 9620, “Protocolo de Fernando Niño,” f. 148 (1 June 1592); AGCA A1.2, leg. 1018, “Protocolo de Diego Jácome,” f. 63 (23 March 1597). Similar patterns emerge during the same time period in far less urban and Spanish areas, such as Patzicia and Totonicapán, as well as in smaller Spanish cities like Comayagua and San Salvador. See, for example, AGCA A1.15, leg. 4100/exp. 32511, “Querella del barrio San Francisco contra un español” (1616), with an indigenous witness from San Antonio Aguascalientes; AGCA A1.2, leg. 538/exp. 9041, “Protocolo de Juan Bravo,” f. 120 (4 December 1615), for Chimaltenango; AGCA A1.2, leg. 422/exp. 8825, “Protocolo de Cristóbal Aceituno,” f. 51 (1 March 1583) for Patzicía; AGCA A1.2, leg. 424, “Protocolo de Cristóbal Aceituno,” f.129v (15 October 1586) for Totonicapán; AGCA A1.2, leg. 810, “Protocolo de Sebastián Gudiel,” f. 88v (29 May 1596) for Veracruz; AGCA A1.2, leg. 1127, “Protocolo de Fernando Niño,” f.4 (10 December 1588) for Comayagua; AGCA A1.2, leg. 1018, “Protocolo de Diego Jácome,” f. 68 (9 April 1597) for San Salvador. 11. AGCA A1.2, leg. 1018, “Protocolo de Diego Jácome,” f. 55 (20 March 1597); AGCA A1.2, leg. 422/exp. 8825, “Protocolo de Cristóbal Aceituno,” f. 319v (16 July 1583).

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others. For example, in 1586 the scribe Cristóbal Aceituno provided information about the language spoken by his clients in 33 out of 34 cases, but the books of Luis de Aceituno de Guzmán in 1579 only specify the same information in 4 out of 21 instances. These inconsistencies, along with the apparent loss of indigenous notarial books, prevent any statistical analysis of the rates of bilingualism in the valley of Guatemala.12 Nevertheless, several things do emerge quite clearly from the Spanish notarial books of Santiago in combination with the other, scattered nativelanguage sources that have survived. However commonly Nahuatl was used in and around sixteenth-century Santiago de Guatemala, it clearly did not supplant native Guatemalan languages. Despite the heterogeneity of the valley of Guatemala’s population, Nahuatl in many towns remained a language of ceremony and politics spoken only by a few and not necessarily well. Analyzing the 1572 letters sent by local leaders to Philip II of Spain, linguist Karen Dakin identified certain characteristics of Nahuatl written by native speakers of Kaqchikel and compared these with the typical characteristics of the classical Nahuatl of the Aztec empire. According to Dakin, “The Maya towns from which these letters came were not bilingual, and . . . neither were their scribes, but rather, they employed a lingua franca that they had learned only imperfectly.”13 Some of the indigenous authors of these letters themselves noted that although their scribes could translate the letters from their native language to Nahuatl, “the principales and the rest of the people don’t know Nahuatl.”14 Likewise, in 1580 the Kaqchikel interpreter Lucas de Paz maintained that “only a few Indians know Nahuatl” in San Antonio Suchitepéquez. Another witness at the same hearing, the “yndio cacique” Francisco de la Cuba, agreed that “only the yndios principales and a few of the people understand and speak 12. The examples of public records in this study come from a sample, collected by Oralia de León, from approximately 100 notarial books of Spanish scribes collected between the years of 1551 and 1655, housed in the AGCA. From these 100 books, 388 records that refer to the language spoken by a Mesoamerican were noted. I am grateful to Oralia de León for her assistance. My analysis of language patterns applies only to the extremely heterogeneous Valley of Guatemala in the early colonial period. All the documents used come from this area, and therefore cannot be used to generalize about Nahuatl’s use in the western highlands or in other, more remote areas of Guatemala and Central America. These regions were less transformed by influxes of Spaniards and Nahuas in the sixteenth century, and likely did not see the same widespread use of Nahuatl that is evident around Santiago. 13. Dakin and Lutz, Nuestro pesar, 169. 14. Ibid., 13.

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Nahuatl.”15 And when residents of San Antonio Aguascalientes angrily protested their forced Christianization to Nahua and mestizo representatives of Ciudad Vieja’s Franciscan convent in 1573, they had to rely on their local scribe to translate their invectives from Kaqchikel to Nahuatl.16 In all these instances, a few Maya who could speak Nahuatl were called upon to speak for those who could not. Missionaries concerned with preaching and conversion also recognized the predominance of local languages, despite their own predilection for using the more familiar (to them) Nahuatl. In 1552, the Franciscans requested permission to teach Nahuatl to those Guatemalan Indians who did not want to learn Spanish, “because it is general in these lands”— but not, we should note, so general as to preclude the need for its instruction. The crown refused, insisting that the natives be taught Castilian Spanish instead.17 In the central highlands and the valley of Guatemala, only three parishes were classified by the Catholic church as towns where Nahuatl was spoken. These were the town of Ciudad Vieja and the barrios of Santo Domingo and San Francisco in Santiago, the three centers of Mexicano population in the valley of Guatemala. Most other towns around Santiago were classified throughout the colonial period as Kaqchikel, while towns further in the western highlands received parish administrators who spoke K’iche’, Tz’utujil and Poqomam.18 Even the Pipil, speakers of a Nahuatl 15. AGCA A1.43, leg. 4078/exp. 32361, “Testamento de San Antonio Suchitepequez” (1580), ff. 6, 73–74. 16. AGCA A1.15, leg. 4078/exp. 32361, “Contra los yndios de San Antonio Aguascalientes por no haber asistido a jueves santo” (1573). 17. AGI Guatemala 168, N. 22, “Carta al emperador de fray Juan Monsilla suplicando que le ayuda a terminar el convento de San Francisco” (8 September 1551); AGI Guatemala 168, N. 60, “Carta de los franciscanos sobre enseñar el castellano a los yndios” (30 January 1552); and AGI Guatemala 168, N. 46, “Carta de fray Juan de Monsilla al rey” (1 July 1554). 18. AGCA A1.39, leg. 1751 (and surrounding legajos in the section “Nombramientos” in the AGCA) records the appointment of parish priests to Indian parishes, for example f.  288, “Fray Antonio Monzón es nombrado cura doctrinero para Almolonga” (1659); f. 418v, “Fray Miguel de Cordova es nombrado cura doctrinero para Almolonga” (1661); and f.  434v, “Fray Francisco Gallegos es nombrado cura doctrinero barrio Santo Domingo” (1662). See also Archivo Histórico Arquidiocesano (hereafter cited as AHA), T1– 89, #6, Cartas, “Autos de los yndios del barrio de Santo Domingo sobre no se les cuitasse a su cura doctrinero” (1669); AHA T2–142, #18, Curatos, “Aprobación de fray Cristóbal Macal para el curato de Almolonga” (1679); AHA T7–1, Curatos, “Colaciones y posesiones de curatos” (1709–11, 1724); AGCA A1.11, leg. 113/exp. 4769, “Presentación para curato

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dialect, were ministered to in their own language in which friars were specifically trained.19 Widespread bilingualism seems to have been the norm only in Santiago itself and in a few, particular Indian satellite towns. In 1566, it was reported that most of Santiago’s resident Catholic priests knew Nahuatl, for which reason there was “no necessity . . . for confessions to be heard using interpreters.”20 According to the Spanish scribe Pedro Valles de Quexo in 1586, Nahuatl had gone beyond being a language of translation in Santiago and was freely spoken by most of its inhabitants.21 In the nearby town of San Cristóbal el Alto in 1611, residents gave statements for a murder trial in “the Nahuatl that is commonly used in this city and province which the witnesses examined speak and understand very well.” After a Spanish official expressed concern that the native tongue of San Cristóbal was “very different from the language in which they were questioned, which was la lengua mexicana corrupta,” the indigenous witnesses insisted again, in Nahuatl, that the recommended intervention of two interpreters was unnecessary and would not change their testimony. One added that “all the Indians . . . speak the common language Nahuatl, and many of them speak Spanish because they are so close to the city and every day go there and deal with Spaniards, for which reasons there could have been no fraud in the questioning.”22 Nahuatl continued to function as a language of translation in and around colonial Santiago de Guatemala into the mid-seventeenth cende Candelaria a Tomás Serrano” (1731); AHA T1–1 #10 (?), Cofradías, “Cofradías de Jocotenango, Candelaria, Santa Ynes, San Juan Gascón” (1736); and AGCA A3.16, leg. 2840/ exp. 41345, “Aprobación de padrónes por padres curas” (1763–64). 19. Anonymous, “Teomachilizti iny iuliliz auh yni miquiliz Tu Temaquizticatzin Jesu Christo quenami in quimpeua teotacuiloque itech teomauxti” (16??), John Carter Brown Library BA6— .T314i; Anonymous, “Arte de la lengua vulgar Mexicana de Guatemala que se habla en Ezcuintla y otros pueblos de este Reyno” (16??), University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Brinton Collection, Br 498.22 AzAr78; Anonymous, “Pláticas piadosas en lengua Mexicana vulgar de Guatemala” (16??), Brinton Collection, BR 498.22 AzP698. 20. AGI Patronato 182, R. 24, “Testimonio del sínodo espicopal celebrado en Santiago de Guatemala” (1566), f.7. 21. AGCA A1.2, leg. 1433, “Protocolo de Pedro Valle de Quexo,” f. 137 (18 July 1586). 22. AGCA A1.15, leg. 4094/exp. 32482, “Causa criminal contra Geronimo Lopez” (1611), f. 37. The apparent use of Pipil here raises interesting questions about the extent to which that regional Nahuatl dialect from the southern coast served as a bridge between Mayan or Xinca languages and the Classical Nahuatl of the invaders.

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tury. The latest evidence I have seen comes from 1653, when the leaders of Petapa used Nahuatl as their language of choice in court testimony concerning a land dispute with a Spanish resident of Santiago.23 It may be that there are even later examples. Yet the San Cristóbal case hinted at things to come. Witnesses in 1639 claimed that many residents of San Miguel Tejar and San Felipe understood Spanish during a region-wide drive for tribute relief (conducted mostly, still, in Nahuatl).24 Increasing numbers of Mesoamericans appear in seventeenth-century notarial records speaking Spanish, even when the notary knew Nahuatl.25 And although the colonial administration still used Nahuatl in some official business in the seventeenth century, it appears less and less frequently as a language of translation from the Spanish end as well.26 By the turn of the eighteenth century, Nahuatl had effectively disappeared from notarial records, having been completely replaced by Spanish. In the 1760s, the archbishop Pedro Cortés y Larraz described native use of Spanish in terms almost identical to what I have noted for Nahuatl in the sixteenth century: in the Indian towns of western Guatemala, “they neither understand nor hope to understand Spanish, although there is always one or two who do know it, and although I have observed that these know it only in a rudimentary way.”27 Late colonial Europeans and creoles in Guatemala understood the “language of the Indians” to mean mostly Kaqchikel and K’iche’, and these were always to be translated into Castilian Spanish.28 Where did this early adoption of Nahuatl in Guatemala and its eventual replacement with Spanish leave the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja? Despite the heterogeneous mix of the original Indian conquistadors and their contact with Mayan languages, Nahuatl quickly became dominant in the town, 23. AGCA A1.2, leg. 845/exp. 9338, “Protocolo de Gaspar Gallegos,” f. 33v-35 (December 1653). 24. AGI, Guatemala 16, N. 1, “Los yndios de barrio Santo Domingo piden exoneración de tributo” (1639), f. 225. 25. AGCA A1.2, leg. 1127/exp. 9620, “Protocolo de Fernando Niño,” f. 282 (2 December 1591); AGCA A1.2, leg. 1413, “Protocolo de Francisco Vallejo,” f. 111v (8 January 1609); AGCA A1.2, leg. 4550/exp. 38559, “Protocolo de Francisco de Vallejo,” f. 42v (2 January 1620); AGCA A1.29, leg. 428, “Protocolo de Cristóbal Aceituno,” f. 41 (1591). 26. AHA T3 23 s.n., “El común de Petapa en querella sobre tierras” (1653). 27. Cortés y Larraz, Descripción geográfico-moral de la diócesis de Goathemala, 1:41. 28. AGCA A1.39, leg. 24/exp. 692, “José Francisco Gonzáles solicita el nombramiento de interprete” (1805); AGCA A1.29, leg. 397/exp. 8311, “El indio interprete José Francisco Gonzáles pide que se le dé alguna ayuda por sus servicios” (1813); AGCA A1.39, leg. 2650/ exp. 22236, “Providencia sobre sustituir al ynterprete de la Real Audiencia” (1816).

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quite possibly by the second generation. It remained the officially recognized language of the conquistadors’ and early colonists’ descendants in the valley of Guatemala for over 200 years. According to church records, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja and of the Mexicano parcialidades of the barrios of Santo Domingo and San Francisco in Santiago all still spoke Nahuatl into the mid-eighteenth century. Clerics assigned to these Mexicano parishes were required to be proficient in Nahuatl, while most other Indian towns and barrios in the area received clerics who spoke a Mayan language.29 Ciudad Vieja was assigned two friars responsible for Christian instruction and administration until at least 1670, one who spoke Nahuatl for the Mexicano population, and another who spoke Kaqchikel for residents of the barrio San Miguel Escobar. By 1750, however, when the secular arm of the church took over administration of Indians from the regular clergy, the church’s interpretation of the Mexicanos’ needs had changed. The Franciscans, fighting to retain their traditional role, reported that all the towns in their jurisdiction still needed instruction in their native languages with three significant exceptions: Ciudad Vieja, Petapa, and Mixco.30 Petapa and Mixco, by this time, had large non-Indian populations, so it is not surprising that Spanish should have overtaken local native languages. But Ciudad Vieja remained an overwhelmingly Indian town, and nevertheless its residents were, in the words of the Franciscan fathers, “expertissímos” in Spanish. Some twenty years later, Archibishop Cortés y Larraz also noted that although Nahuatl was the mother tongue of the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja, “the language most commonly spoken there is Spanish.”31 Comparing these external observations with the Mexicanos’ own behavior, the history is the same but the shift from Nahuatl to Spanish detectable much earlier. In their first generation in Guatemala, many Nahuas required interpreters to translate their legal testimonies from Nahuatl to 29. AHA T1 89 #6, “Autos de los yndios de el barrio de Santo Domingo sobre no se les cuitasse su cura doctrinero” (1669); AHA, T2–142 #18?, “Aprobación de fray Cristóbal Macal para el curato de Almolonga” (1679); AHA T3–130 #3 “Sobre guardians de la Sagrada Religión” (1681); AHA T7–1, s.n, “Fray Joseph Cordero es nombrado cura, en lengua mexicana” (1709–11); AHA T7–1, s.n., “Colaciones y posesiones de curatos” (1724); AHA, T1–67 s.n., “Visita pastoral de M. Juan Gómez de Parada” (1731–32); AHA T1–1 #10?, “Papeles de las cofradías de Jocotenango, Candelaria, Santa Ynés y San Juan Gascón” (1736); Molina, Antigua Guatemala, 186; Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:353–387. 30. AHA Cartas T1-106 #38, f. 156 (1753). 31. Cortés y Larraz, Descripción, 1:38.

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Spanish, including the high-status principales who directed the town’s original petition for tribute exemption in the 1560s and 1570s.32 This remained the case into the first quarter of the seventeenth century, as the grandsons and great-grandsons of the original Nahua and Oaxacan conquistadors continued to speak Nahuatl when testifying in legal cases.33 Mexicanos from Ciudad Vieja, Barrio de Santo Domingo, and Barrio de San Francisco also appear still speaking Nahuatl at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in service contracts, land disputes, and civil lawsuits.34 The persistent use of Nahuatl is particularly notable among women, especially widows, who appear as servants in Spanish households. But despite whatever value the Mexicanos in the valley of Guatemala attributed to their native language, they became increasingly bilingual as the colonial period progressed. Children and orphans learned Spanish during their tenure as servants in Spanish households.35 Adult Mexicanos can be found transacting business in Spanish at least as early as 1580.36 Sometimes the process of language shift is itself visible, for example in the case of María de Chavés, a Mexicana from the Barrio de Santo Domingo in Santiago who spoke Nahuatl to confirm her work contract with the Spaniard Miguel de Porras Alvarado in 1583, but who had learned

32. AGI, Justicia 291, N. 1, R. 1, f. 230; see also AGCA A1.15, leg. 4087/exp. 32420, “Proceso criminal de Juan Horozco de Ayala” (1598). 33. AGCA A1.15, leg. 4100/exp. 32505, “Francisco Vasquez yndio de Ciudad Vieja contra Bartolome García yndio tascalteca” (1616); AGCA A1.15, leg. 4087/exp. 32420, “Proceso criminal contra Juan Horozco de Ayala” (1598), f. 18; and AGCA A1.15, leg. 4090/exp. 32446, “Autos de Miguel Lazaro y Diego Hernandez contra Lazaro Hernandez” (1605). 34. See for example AGCA A1.2, leg. 1433, “Protocolo de Pedro Valle de Quexo,” f. 10 (19  September 1579); AGCA A1.2, leg. 1127/exp. 9620, “Protocolo de Fernando Niño,” f.  242 (10 September 1590); AGCA A1.2, leg. 1128/exp. 9621, “Protocolo de Fernando Niño,” ff. 47 (23 March 1591), 56 (22 October 1592); AGCA A1.15, leg. 2297/exp. 16846, “Proceso de los yndios de la millpa de Santa Cruz deste valle contra los yndios del barrio de San Francisco” (1585); AGCA A1.15, leg. 4090/exp. 32446, “Autos de Miguel Lazaro y Diego Hernandez contra Lazaro Hernandez,” (1605); and AGCA A1.15, leg. 4129/exp. 32713, “Por delación de Juana de León yndia contra Juana Godinez mulata” (1609). 35. AGCA A1.2, leg. 422/exp. 8825, “Protocolo de Cristóbal Aceituno,” f. 86 (13 November 1583). 36. See for example AGCA A1.2, leg. 447/exp. 8850, “Protocolo de Luis Aceituno,” f. 54v (27 January 1579); AGCA A1.2, leg. 424, “Protocolo Cristóbal Aceituno,” f. 69v (1 July 1586); AGCA A1.2, leg. 434, “Protocolo de Cristóbal Aceituno,” f. 153v (5 August 1608); AGCA A1.2, leg. 1427/exp. 9918, “Protocolo de Francisco Vallejo,” f.38r (31 January 1611); AGCA A1.2, leg. 428/exp. 10003, “Protocolo de Cristóbal Aceituno,” ff. 35, 314–15.

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enough Spanish to renew her contract in that language in 1591.37 In the seventeenth century one begins to see more Mexicanos speaking Spanish as they worked for Spaniards in their homes, plantations, and workshops.38 With the passage of time, fewer and fewer people from Ciudad Vieja, Barrio de Santo Domingo, and Barrio de San Francisco are recorded in the documentary record as having spoken Nahuatl, despite their continued reception of Nahuatl-speaking friars in their churches. In my own research, the last example comes from 1620; all the Mexicanos I have seen after that date in the documentary record spoke Spanish.39 The substitution of Spanish for Nahuatl in the Mexicano parcialidades of the barrios of Santo Domingo and San Francisco in Santiago does not substantially differ from the linguistic experience of native Guatemalans living in the capital city, and was well underway by the middle of the seventeenth century. According to the 1719 census of the Parcialidad de Mexicanos of the Barrio de San Francisco, “all the Indians of this barrio are speakers of the Castilian language.”40 The Barrio de Santo Domingo (also called the Barrio de la Candelaria at the end of the seventeenth century) lost its Nahuatl-speaking cleric in 1731, after which time only Spanish and Kaqchikel-speaking clerics served.41 The loss of Nahuatl for the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja is more notable and in sharp contrast to the 37. AGCA A1.2, leg. 422, “Protocolo de Cristóbal Aceituno,” f. 88v; AGCA A1.2, leg. 428, “Protocolo de Cristóbal Aceituno,” f. 237v. 38. See AGCA A1.2, leg. 445/exp. 8848, “Protocolo de Luis Aceituno,” f. 13 (1 December 1582); AGCA A1.2, leg. 809, “Protocolo de Pedro Grijalva,” f. 14r (28 June 1595); AGCA A1.2, leg. 440/exp. 8843, “Protocolo de Luis Aceituno,” f. 178r (30 April 1572); AGCA A1.2, leg. 1128/exp. 9621, “Protocolo de Fernando Niño,” f. 158r (25 August 1589); AGCA A1.2, leg. 1413, “Protocolo de Francisco Vallejo,” f. 338r (20 July 1609). 39. In approximately 700 documents from four archives in Guatemala and Spain, the latest example I have found of a resident of Ciudad Vieja speaking Nahuatl in a document is the will and testament of Diego Hernández, “yndio vecino” of Ciudad Vieja “ladino in Nahuatl and who can understand Castilian,” AGCA A1.2, leg. 4550, “Protocolo de Francisco de Vallejo,” f. 49r (16 January 1620). 40. AGCA A3.16, leg. 1252/exp. 21698, “Asiento de las partidas de tributes cancelados por los indios de barrio San Francisco” (1716). 41. Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:374, says the Indians of the Barrio de la Candelaria were administered to in Pipil; again it is unclear how the Nahuatl spoken in the urban areas of Santiago had evolved in relationship to Pipil by the end of the seventeenth century, or how the Spanish tended to understand the differences between these dialects. See also Lutz, Santiago de Guatemala, 24, 94; and AGCA A1.11, leg. 113/exp. 4769, “Presentación para curato de Candelaria a Tomás Serrano” (1731).

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persistence of native languages in the other Indian towns of the valley of Guatemala and the western highlands. According to Cortés y Larraz, the majority of Indian towns where Spanish predominated lay in the southeast, or were urban centers like Huehuetenango or San Miguel Totonicapán, where “many Indians understand Castilian and there are many Ladinos,” although the smaller adjoining towns spoke their native languages “without understanding any other.”42 By contrast, wrote Cortés y Larraz, in Ciudad Vieja where Ladinos remained a minority throughout the eighteenth century, “everyone understands and freely speaks Castilian with as much fluency as their native tongue.”43 It seems likely that at least some Mexicanos in Ciudad Vieja spoke Nahuatl in the late colonial period, given that church officials continued to identify Nahuatl as the town’s mother tongue. But many signs point in the opposite direction: the fact that Ciudad Vieja was the only Indian town for which the Franciscans could not make a case for continuing to administer the parish in the residents’ native language (despite their obvious desire to be able to do so); the total absence of Mexicanos who needed interpreters in various documents of the eighteenth century; and the comments of Cortés y Larraz. Taken together, these indicate that by the end of the eighteenth century the Mexicanos were well on their way to becoming monolingual Spanish speakers who had abandoned their Native American language entirely.44

The Meanings of Ladino: Language, Acculturation, and Race The Mexicanos’ proficiency in both Nahuatl and Spanish bolstered their reputation as “indios ladinos,” a term whose meaning varied at different times and for different people in colonial Guatemala. Being labeled “ladino” could indicate bilingualism, adoption of European life-ways, or, eventually, ethnic identification with the non-Indian population of pre-

42. Cortés y Larraz, Descripción, 2:100, 117. 43. Ibid., 41. See also AGCA A1, leg. 1812/exp. 11962, “Padrón de Ciudad Vieja” (1820). Even in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Ladinos represented only approximately one-third of Ciudad Vieja’s population, which nonetheless represents a significant increase since the time of Córtes y Larraz. 44. The modern-day residents of Ciudad Vieja are entirely Spanish-speaking, in contrast to most of their Guatemalan Maya neighbors in nearby towns.

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sumed mixed heritage. Over the course of the colonial period, the Mexicanos’ reputation as Ladinos encompassed all of these meanings. The Spanish term “ladino” originated in Roman times, when it referred to a native of the Iberian peninsula who could speak the language of the conquering Romans. By early medieval times, “ladino” had come to mean the vernacular Romance language commonly spoken in what would become Spain (excluding Catalonia). The term’s meaning shifted again between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries, after Latin rites adopted by the Christian Council of Burgos in 1080 replaced the Visigothic liturgy and as Romance-based spellings became more common. Eventually, Christian writers ceased to use the term “ladino” to describe their own Romance vernacular languages. In particular, Castilian Romance developed its own nomenclature as castellano. Iberian Jews, however, continued to use the term for their vernacular language, a hybrid of Hebrew and Romance. In the sixteenth century, “ladino” could refer not only to this language of the Sephardim, but also to anyone who spoke Castilian as a second language (“to a Moor or a foreigner,” according to the early linguist Sebastián de Covarrubias in 1611), and/or to a person’s wisdom or cleverness.45 In the Americas, the word’s meaning was extended to Native Americans and Africans who could speak Spanish and/or who were considered “very civilized,” and its meaning continued to shift.46 In Colombia and Mexico, for instance, “ladino” came to mean a person— often of native descent— who is wily or deceitful. Elsewhere in Latin America, the term disappeared from use altogether. In Guatemala (including Chiapas), however, “ladino” had by the late eighteenth century become a catch-all term for the casta population: persons of mixed Native American, African, and/or Spanish descent. This usage persists in a modified way today, to describe anyone not identified as an indígena (indigenous person, i.e., Native American). Indeed, at least half of Guatemala’s modern population is labeled Ladino.47 45. Adorno, “Images of yndios ladinos,” 234–35. 46. Alonso, Enciclopedia del idioma, 2:2490. 47. Following English language conventions and to distinguish this race-based notion of Ladino as a noun from the older usage, I capitalize the term Ladino wherever it refers to people of mixed heritage, or castas. For the modern Indígena/Ladino divide in Guatemala and recent work on the evolution of the term in Guatemala, see Solares, Estado y nación; Galich, “¿Existe una literatura indígena en Guatemala?”; the campaign Nuestra diversidad es nuestra fuerza and traveling exhibit “¿Por qué estamos como estamos?,” February 2005–June 2006, organized by the Guatemalan Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de

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Francisco Cisneros, “Indios de Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala,” ca. 1835, watercolor commissioned by Juan Galindo. Although dating from around 150 years later than Fuentes y Guzmán, this painting gives some idea of how a ladinized Indian might have appeared in the valley of Panchoy. Note in particular the woman’s white ruffled blouse and the man’s cape and hat. Courtesy of the Societé de Geographie, Paris, France.

In sixteenth-century Guatemala, the term “ladino” usually referred to a second language spoken by a non-Spaniard. Frequently, this was its only meaning. Even in this early period, however, “ladino” also described a Native American, African, or person of mixed heritage who had adopted certain Hispanic cultural traits. Normally the word was not used as a noun, but as an adjective, for example, “Juan López is an Indian ladino in the Castilian language” (i.e., he can speak Spanish), or “Juan López is very ladino” (he dresses or acts like a Spaniard or a European). The testimony of the Kaqchikel Francisco Escobar in 1587 captures these two meanings in one sentence. According to Escobar, the wealthy Mexicano merchant Martín Gonzáles was “the most ladino Indian that there is in this valley, Mesoamérica (CIRMA); Martínez Peláez, La patria del criollo; Luján Muñoz, “Fundación de villas de ladinos”; Taracena Arriola, “Contribución al estudio del vocablo ‘ladino’ en Guatemala”; Taracena Arriola et al., Etnicidad, estado y nación en Guatemala; Rodas Nuñez, De españoles a ladinos, and “Ladino”; Lokken, “From Black to Ladino.”

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and he speaks and understands Spanish and . . . dresses like a Spaniard.”48 This dual meaning persisted into the late seventeenth century and beyond. Fuentes y Guzmán, for instance, wrote in 1686 that the residents of the barrios of San Antón, Espíritu Santo, and San Gerónimo in the capital were “as ladino in the Spanish language as we Spaniards are ourselves,” and “dressed like Spaniards.”49 Vis-à-vis language, a person could be ladino not only in Spanish but also in Nahuatl. Some examples, all of non-Nahua natives who spoke Nahuatl with a Spanish scribe, include Catalina Ordoñez, “yndia ladina” in Nahuatl from Petapa (1593); Gerónimo and Francisca López, “yndios ladinos” in Nahuatl from San Sebastián el Tejar (1597); and Marta de la Cruz, “yndia vecina” and “ladina” in Nahuatl from the barrio San Gerónimo (1611).50 More commonly, however, “ladino” in sixteenth-century Guatemala referred to Mesoamericans speaking Spanish. In a sample of 79 Mesoamericans who clearly spoke Spanish in their sixteenth-century notarial transactions, 66 were classified by their Spanish scribe as “yndios ladinos.” This usage is consistent across every notarial book and scribe in the sample. Use of the term “ladino” to describe Nahuatl speakers is less consistent. In his notarial book from 1597–98, for example, Diego Jácome described 16 out of 17 Mesoamericans who spoke Nahuatl instead of Spanish as ladinos. By contrast, in the books of Pedro Valles de Quexo between 1569 and 1601, only 7 out of 24 Mesoamericans speaking Nahuatl are called ladinos, and in the book of Cristóbal Aceituno from 1583, only 1 of 13. Spaniards never, that I have seen, used the term “ladino” to describe facility in Mayan languages. Such use of “ladino”— referring mostly to Spanish, sometimes to Nahuatl, and never to a Maya language— suggests that in the sixteenth century the Spanish viewed Nahuatl more favorably than Maya languages. This is indirectly borne out in many Spaniards’ apparently happy adoption of Nahuatl as a language of translation, their willingness to teach it to Indian commoners in place of Spanish, and their use of it to convert and gov-

48. AGCA A1.43, leg. 4809/exp. 41483, “El indígena Martín Gonzáles reclama parte de la herencia de Catalina Vasquez” (1587), f. 21. 49. Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:366; see also Knocke de Arathoon, “Indumentaria indígena.” 50. AGCA A1.2, leg. 1127/exp. 9620, “Protocolo de Fernando Niño,” f. 135 (6 April 1593); AGCA A1.2, leg. 1018, “Protocolo de Diego Jácome” f. 56 (12 March 1597); AGCA A1.2, leg. 1427/exp. 9918, “Protocolo de Francisco Vallejo,” f. 292 (2 November 1611).

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ern the colony.51 Perhaps the Spanish saw Nahuatl as the Mesoamerican language of empire, much as Castilian had become on the Iberian peninsula. In any case, the Spanish belief in Nahuatl’s inherent superiority over Guatemalan languages persisted long after the Spanish had stopped using Nahuatl themselves. Considering Mesoamerican bilingualism in Spanish, the archbishop Cortés y Larraz wrote in 1770: Speaking of these parishes near to [Santiago de] Goathemala, and even of Jocotenango on its outskirts, and of the parishioners in their relations with city residents, at all hours they conserve their language Kaqchikel to such an extent, that most of them neither know nor understand Spanish, and only those of the town of Almolonga [Ciudad Vieja], whose maternal tongue is Nahuatl, without forgetting their own language everyone understands and freely speaks Spanish with as much fluency as their own. But I have not been able to conclude a reason for this that appears to me likely, except that the Nahuatl language is not as barbaric as the others. Some think that this [linguistic conservatism] is due to the parishes’ governance by the regular clergy, who do not encourage their charges to learn Spanish; but this cannot be the reason, because those of Almolonga have been until only recently also under the regular clergy’s care. . . . This thought is corroborated by the fact that in all the parishes of this diocese, and there are many as can be seen from this writing, whose mother tongue is Nahuatl, they no longer need administration in this language, because they all commonly understand Spanish; but in the rest, which are many more, in which there are so many varied languages, they neither understand nor hope to understand Spanish, although there is always one or two who do know it, and although I have observed that these know it only in a rudimentary way. All of which gives me to understand that the principal reason for this difference must be that the other languages are more barbaric than Nahuatl, and their barbarity is transferred to their subjects.52

51. Although sometimes the Spanish used Nahuatl rather imperfectly; see Herrera, “People of Santiago,” ch. 6, p. 38, which notes that the vicar of Acajutla persisted in using Nahuatl despite the fact that the residents claimed to not understand him. 52. Cortés y Larraz, Descripción, 1:41.

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This is a curious antecedent to modern theories of linguistic relativism, which suggest that the language spoken directly affects the ways the speaker thinks (hence the archbishop’s notion that the more barbaric Guatemalan languages transferred their barbarity to their subjects).53 Cortés y Larraz did not take into account the Mexicanos’ self-interest in speaking Spanish in Ciudad Vieja, nor the impact of Spanish-owned plantations in Pipil-speaking areas in contrast to the relative isolation of indigenous towns in the western highlands.54 And what looked like barbarity from the archbishop’s point of view may have been seen as resistance from the Mesoamericans’. What is interesting for our purposes is to see how even at this late date, Spaniards and Spanish American creoles in Guatemala still considered Nahuatl particularly ladino: an inherently civilized language in comparison to the “barbaric” tongues of indigenous Central Americans. For the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja, such estimation of their native language supported the exalted identity they wished to cultivate in Guatemala after the conquest. But note the negative vocabulary that Cortés y Larraz used. He did not say that Nahuatl was a more civilized language, only that it was “less barbaric” than native Guatemalan languages. Most Spaniards never considered Nahuatl a language equal to Castilian. This, perhaps, contributed to the decision by Maya leaders in Santiago’s environs to rewrite their petitions to the crown in Spanish in 1576, after having sent them in Nahuatl four years earlier.55 For the creole Fuentes y Guzmán, Indians who did not learn Castilian were “rude and uncouth and very slow in their understanding.”56 There were therefore advantages to the Mexicanos distancing themselves from their own native language, even if it was reputed to be less barbaric, and adopting the language of their European allies. It seems that the Mexicanos recognized this linguistic hierarchy. They employed Spanish early and consistently in their communications with the crown, in sharp contrast to their Maya neighbors. In 1547, Francisco Acxotecatl (later known as don Francisco de Oñate) and the collectivity of “those of Tlaxcala and its territories and Mexicans with all their sub53. Carroll, Language, Thought, and Reality; Mandelbaum, Selected Writings of Edward Sapir; and Gumperz and Levinson, Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. 54. Pinto Soria, Historia General de Centroamérica, 2:310–311. 55. Dakin and Lutz, Nuestro pesar, xiii. 56. Fuentes y Guzmán, Obras históricas, 1:377, “Es toda la gente tosca e inculta y de tupidísimos entendimientos, sin haber entrado en la inteligencia de una palabra castellana.”

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jects” wrote King Philip II directly in Spanish. Their letters are replete with Spanish courtly and Christian references and devoid of any mention of translators or Spanish advisers, although given the letters’ early date and typically Castilian turns of phrase these must surely have been employed. Translators are also conspicuously absent from the Mexicanos’ collective probanza, Justicia 291, although many of the Nahua witnesses are noted as having testified in Nahuatl.57 The Mexicanos not only assumed the appearance of bilingualism, but quickly adopted Castilian forms of written address befitting nobility and conquistadors: the personal carta (letter) and the probanza.58 By contrast, the 1572 Maya letters to the crown in Nahuatl assumed a far humbler position toward their royal audience. They emphasized the petitioners’ necessities more than their deservedness, and avoided any direct address to the Spanish crown. Instead, they were addressed to Audiencia president Francisco Briceño or to the Dominican and Franciscan friars who had advised them in the letters’ composition. It is difficult to know from which tradition this humble rhetoric primarily stemmed. Such artifice typified both Nahuatl and Castilian honorific speech and likely marked speech practices in the Maya world as well. It may also have been the posture encouraged by the petitioners’ Dominican and Franciscan advisers. In any case, the Maya’s rhetoric of humility acknowledged, and even highlighted, the hierarchical and paternalistic relationship between the letters’ authors and the crown. An interesting exception emerges, however, with the letters of the “guatimaltecos” (i.e., Kaqchikel) of San Miguel Escobar, Ciudad Vieja. In 1572, the letter from San Francisco en Zacualpan, Ciudad Vieja (San Miguel Escobar), proceeded in the same form as the others sent that year, but ended by complaining that the residents of San Miguel Escobar were not considered “vecinos” or “conquistadores guatemaltecos.” Christopher Lutz suggests that “the memorialists hoped to achieve a legal status distinct from the rest of the Kaqchikels, and closer to that of the Mexican and Tlaxcalan allies from the neighborhoods of Ciudad Vieja.” This interpretation is supported by the quite different tone struck by Ciudad Vieja’s Kaqchikel residents in 1575, which sheds much of the humility of the earlier petition and more closely approximates the language of the Mexicano petition (1564–78) ar-

57. AGI, Justicia 291, R. 1, N. 1, ff. 4–12. 58. As discussed in earlier chapters, this was also the case in central Mexico. See Pérez Rocha and Tena, La nobleza indígena; and Pérez-Rocha, Privilegios en lucha.

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chived as Justicia 291.59 Significantly, the Kaqchikel of Tzacualpa in this instance also wrote in Spanish. The Mexicanos thus distinguished themselves as a group of Indians who were ladinos not only in the languages they spoke, but also in their posture toward their European allies and their capacity to navigate the emerging colonial system. This remained mostly true in the later colonial period. In 1667, when colonial officials in Santiago attempted to appropriate lands lying between Ciudad Vieja and the Kaqchikel town of Alotenango, the Ciudad Vieja cabildo responded within a week. During litigation that lasted over 30 years, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja submitted dozens of pages of documentation from the years 1552, 1589, 1599, and 1631 that asserted their legal right to the land in question. Witnesses testifying in their favor included the Franciscan prior of Ciudad Vieja’s convent, Indian alcaldes from Alotenango and nearby San Miguel Milpas Dueñas, and a Spaniard who did business in Ciudad Vieja. In 1668, Ciudad Vieja cabildo members, militia members, “tlatoque,” and principales all participated in the surveying of the disputed land. Although in 1631 Nahuatl translators assisted the Ciudad Vieja officials, thereafter the Mexicanos were always characterized as “indios ladinos” in Spanish. Most forcefully, the Mexicanos argued that as Indian conquistadors they should be treated with special attention.60 The cabildo of Alotenango took a more passive approach, responding to the Audiencia’s summons for the first time only in 1684 and with far less documentation. Not until 1703 when the leaders of Ciudad Vieja and Alotenango began to act together with a single lawyer representing both towns did the cabildo members of Alotenango figure prominently in the case. (During the proceedings, the Kaqchikel said they could understand Spanish but requested interpreters, who in at least one instance fulfilled his duties in Nahuatl rather than Kaqchikel). The Alotenango cabildo’s strategy was not ineffective. Residents of both Alotenango and Ciudad Vieja continued to use the land in question as the case dragged on. But the Kaqchikel’s delayed response and continued

59. Dakin and Lutz, Nuestro pesar, 30–35 and 102–5; AGI Guatemala 54, “Los indios que eran esclavos” (1575), f. 26. The only petition to be written in Spanish rather than Nahuatl came from the Barrio de Santo Domingo, whose officials would likely have been Mexicanos and who also pointed out that they had been reserved from tribute, 73. 60. AGCA A1, leg. 2347/exp. 17672, “Autos de los ejidos entre Alotenango y Almolonga contra Santiago” (1667), ff. 104, 112v, 195: “siendo indios conquistadores y como a tales se les debe atender con toda especialidad.”

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reliance on interpreters stood in marked contrast to the direct, aggressive approach of the Mexicanos from Ciudad Vieja. Similarly, when asked for the land titles of the town’s community ejido lands in 1774, the Ciudad Vieja cabildo stood out for the precision of its response. The cabildo reported that its paperwork had been requested some 20 years prior, in the time of the Spanish judge don Barilio Roma, and never returned: “Although they later asked for them back, they haven’t been able to recover them.” All the other towns that could not produce their titles simply reported them lost or destroyed, without explanation.61 And again, in 1799, when the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja were required to work in the Hospital de San Juan de Dios in the new capital some thirty miles away, their cabildo protested by recounting in great detail the process by which they were granted their privileges as “descendants of the conquistadors of Mexico, Tlascala, Cholula and the other parcialidades.” The Mexicanos’ status as Indian conquistadors exempted them from hospital labor, which was the responsibility of the other Indian towns, while “our town never joined them.” In this case the cabildo described not only each significant ruling by the Crown in their favor— from 1564, the 1570s, 1639, and 1699— but also the bindings, coverings, and coat of arms decorating their copy of these proceedings.62 Many Spaniards and especially Spanish American creoles accepted and perpetuated the image of the Mexicanos as a unique, particularly ladino group of Indians. As late as 1798, an Audiencia official argued that the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja were a “distinct class of Indians” because they had most fervently “conserved their purity” and “ladinized themselves [se hallan aladinados].”63 This use of the term “ladino” to describe the Mexicanos as Europeanized Indians was at odds, however, with alternate definitions of the word that predominated in late colonial Guatemala. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, “ladino” referred to not just acculturated Indians but also to members of the mixed-heritage castas. The term’s positive connotations were decidedly muddled by this definitional shift. Even in the sixteenth-century, the castas endured their share 61. AGCA A1, leg. 73/exp. 1713, “Sobre recoger los titutlos de los ejidos que tenian los pueblos inmediatos de Guatemala arruinada” (1774). 62. AGCA A1.12, leg. 154/exp. 3073, “Los mexicanos de Ciudad Vieja no quieren servir en el Hospital San Juan de Dios” (1799). 63. AGCA A1, leg. 154/exp. 3060, “El comun de Ciudad Vieja pide que se les conceda avecindar en su Pueblo a varias familias,” (1798).

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of prejudice; one recalls the invectives directed at the mestizo alcalde of the Franciscan convent of Ciudad Vieja by the Kaqchikel of San Antonio Aguascalientes in 1573, calling him a thief, goatherder, “mestizo, moro [Moor], mulato . . . and other foul words.”64 Spaniards tended to view the castas as dirty, deceitful, and corrupting. In the eighteenth century it was custom in certain Indian towns, according to Cortés y Larraz, to cover a baby’s face with a long cap to prevent it being made ill by seeing a casta’s face.65 Clerics called them thieves and dogs in their sermons. Ordinances prohibited them from “playing in the street” late at night, or from entering Indian towns on fiesta days.66 At the same time, mulatos and others of African descent successfully challenged their tributary status in the seventeenth century based on their service in regional militias. Paul Lokken has argued that this move elevated mulatos socially by distinguishing them from the tribute-paying population that was now more closely associated with being “Indian.” Gradually, this meaning of the term “ladino”— a nontributary non-Indian— would replace its older reference to language and acculturation. By the late 1700s, “Ladino” was most commonly used as a noun rather than a verb and was understood to mean “all the mulatos, mestizos, zambos, and other castas that are not Spaniards or Indians.”67 What exactly, then, did the creole official mean that the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja had “ladinized themselves”? As they lost their language, had they become Ladinos in this other sense of the word: that is, not Indians? In general, the eighteenth century was a period of population growth and increasing competition for land and resources, sometimes involving Ladino incursions into Indian towns and lands. And indeed, it does seem that in the eighteenth century the Ladino population of Ciudad Vieja 64. AGCA A1.15, leg. 4078/exp. 32361, “Contra los yndios de San Antonio Aguascalientes por no haber asistido a jueves santo” (1573), ff. 1, 7, 8. 65. Dakin and Lutz, Nuestro pesar, xxi; Cortés y Larraz, Descripción, 1:36. For the history of ladino-indígena relations during the modern period, see Esquit, “La lucha por la tierra”; McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 1760–1940; and Colby and Van den Berghe, Ixiles y ladinos. 66. AGI Escribanía 342B, “Testimonio de los autos fechos sobre la fundación de Yglesia en el pueblo de San Miguel Petapa” (?); AGCA A1.2, leg. 137/exp. 2500, “Sobre negros y mulatos jugando en la calle” (1729); AGCA A1.15, leg. 2456/exp. 19056, “Sobre los autos de Candelaria” (1735); AGCA A1 leg. 73/exp. 1712, “Sobre la administración de Justicia en Ciudad Vieja” (1773). 67. AGCA A3.20, leg. 1749/exp. 28130, “Estado que manifiesta el numero de Yndividuos de este Partido, Alcaldía mayor de Amatitanes y Zacatepequez” (1778). See Lokken, “From Black to Ladino,” esp. ch. 7.

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grew significantly. In 1720, the parish had only one Ladino cofradía. In 1732, another Ladino cofradía was founded, and the goods owned by these two cofradías were comparable to or less than those recorded for each of the town’s nine Mexicano cofradías.68 By 1770, the two Ladino cofradías had grown considerably wealthier in comparison with their Mexicano counterparts, suggesting both a certain interest in consolidating corporate wealth (as discussed in Chapter 5) and/or an increase in membership. Occasional population assessments from the same period show that Ciudad Vieja had one of the largest Ladino populations in the valley of Guatemala outside of Santiago in the second half of the eighteenth century, as well as the highest ratio of Ladinos to Indians in a majority Indian town. By some counts, the Ladino and Mexicano populations of Ciudad Vieja were practically equal in the last two decades of the eighteenth century.69 As well, the categories by which Ciudad Vieja’s Mexicanos and Ladinos were identified shifted and blended in the late eighteenth century. Individuals and even entire families were labeled Ladinos in one circumstance, and Mexicano Indians in another. The Barrera and Mayorga families, for example, were concentrated in the Parcialidad of Tascala and were considered Mexicanos for purposes of tribute collection in 1752.70 Four married Barrera men, possibly cousins or even brothers, appear from the tribute records to have lived in contiguous households that year: Marcelo Barrera, 32, with his wife Phelipa Muñoz, 23; Thomas Aquino Barrera, 44, with his wife, Faviana Martín, 42; Manuel Barrera with his wife, Manuela Mayorga, both 40; and Simón Barrera with his wife, Efigenia Mayorga, both 38. In parish records from the same time period, three of these four couples are variously and repeatedly described as Ladinos, free blacks 68. AHA T1–66 (Tomo 4), Visitas Pastorales, “Visita de Almolonga de Dn Juan Bautista Alvarez deToledo” (1720); AHA T1–67 (Tomo 5), Visitas Pastorales, “Visita de M. Juan Gómez de Parada” (1731–32); AHA T2–66 (Tomo 12), Visitas Pastorales, “Visita de M. Pedro Pardo de Figueroa” (1746–48). 69. AGCA A3.20 leg. 1749/exp. 28130, “estado en que manifiesta el número de individuos del Alcaldía de Amatitanes y Zacatepequez” (1778), which shows Ciudad Vieja with 51 Spaniards, 790 Ladinos, and 1159 Indians (excluding residents of San Miguel Escobar, who are counted separately). See also AHA, Vicarias (1779–83) for the valley of Guatemala, which records 1,077 Indians (approximately 700 of whom lived in Almolonga) and 588 Ladinos in Ciudad Vieja; thanks to Hector Concohá Chet for sharing this document with me. 70. AGCA A3 leg. 945/exp. 17662, “Padrón de Ciudad Vieja” (1752), which counts only the Indian population and in which the surname Barrera appears exclusively in the Parcialidad de Tascala.

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(“pardos libres”), or mulatos of African and Mesoamerican descent.71 The parish scribe not only contradicted the tributary count but also contradicted himself from entry to entry when labeling Marcelo, Manuel, and Simón Barrera. He was similarly inconsistent in his labeling of Manuel’s and Simón’s wives, Manuela and Efigenia— interestingly, both with the surname Mayorga— as well as a number of unmarried Barrera and Mayorga women from the Parcialidad de Tascala who acted as godmothers and midwives for each other from 1754 to 1761.72 So were the Barreras and Mayorgas Mexicanos, Indians, Ladinos, or all three? While many Ciudad Vieja Ladino and Mexicano surnames appear exclusively in one or the other community, both Barrera and Mayorga were common names in both. Most of the Barreras and Mayorgas who were not counted as tributary Indians in the 1754 census chose other Ladinos as godparents for their children, reinforcing the impression that in regards to family, Ladinos and Mexicanos in Ciudad Vieja lived their lives in roughly separate spheres. Both Marcelo Barrera and Simón Barrera, however, became godfathers exclusively to Mexicano children between 1754 and 1761. Indeed, Simón Barrera and Efigenia Mayorga appear to have been a couple of some repute within the Mexicano community, gaining the unusually large number of twelve godchildren from seven families from the parcialidades of Cholula, Teguantepeque, Tascala, and Quahquechula between 1755 and 1761. And yet Marcelo and Simón’s own children’s godparents during this time appear to have been Spaniards and Ladinos.73 Manuel Barrera and Manuela Mayorga, meanwhile, twice in this period became godparents to a child of Pedro Alcantara and Juana Baptista. In 1756, the church scribe initially identified both couples as being from Tascala, but then crossed this information out. He made no further changes to Manuel Barrera’s and Manuela Mayorga’s entry, but added under Pedro Alcantara’s and Juana Baptista’s, “I mean Ladino [digo ladino].”74 In 1759, for the baptism of Pedro and Juana’s next child, the scribe demonstrated less confu-

71. The fourth Barrera, Thomas, does not appear in the parish record sample at all. 72. Archivo Parroquial de Ciudad Vieja (hereafter cited as APCV) Bautismos Libro No. 2 (1751–58), ff. 89, 101, 101, 103, 104, 106, 111, 112, 115, 123, 128, 131, 135, 138, 140, 144, 146, 152, 157, 159, 165, 175, 177, 179, 180, 183, 185, and Bautismos Libro No. 3 (1758–65) ff. 4, 4, 5, 6, 10, 15, 21, 37, 47, 49, 54, 58, 67, 70, 74, 77, 80, 92. 73. APCV, Bautismos Libro No. 2 (1751–58), ff. 122, 137, 144, Bautismos Libro No. 3 (1758–65), ff. 21, 37. 74. APCV Bautismos Libro No. 2 (1751–58), f. 134.

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sion. This time, he identified Pedro and Juana as Ladinos and godfather Manuel as the “husband of Manuela Mayorga, parda libre.”75 It seems that in the second half of the eighteenth century these two extended families, though intermarriage and family ties, were literally becoming Ladinos in the late colonial sense of the term. In tributary, parish, and other records after 1790, the Barreras and Mayorgas cease to be labeled Mexicanos. They do not appear in any documents produced by late eighteenth-century Mexicano cofradías, militias, and cabildo in Ciudad Vieja— a striking fact given the predominance of these two surnames in the Parcialidad de Tascala’s 1754 tributary count and the families’ compadrazgo relationships with other Mexicanos recorded in the 1760s. Crucially, whether the Barreras and Mayorgas were Ladinos or Indians, they could not be both. These terms appear to have been mutually exclusive. Whenever the Barreras and Mayorgas were labeled Ladinos in parish records, any reference to their Mexicano parcialidad was dropped. While they could be identified as either Mexicano or Ladino, being Mexicano in late eighteenth-century Ciudad Vieja necessarily meant also being Indian. Through a murder trial we can follow some of the Barreras into the second generation and catch a closer glimpse of the relations that were possible between Indians and Ladinos in Ciudad Vieja in the late eighteenth century. Blas Barrera, the youngest son of Simón Barrera and Efigenia Mayorga, was questioned and jailed in 1771 concerning the murder of an Indian from San Miguel Milpas Dueñas. Blas testified that his brother Secundino, while walking along the road from Santiago to Ciudad Vieja with the mulato muleteer Pablo de Sigarroga, witnessed Sigarroga murder the Indian Manuel Pelen. In Ciudad Vieja that same night, the mulata María Roberta Velis was making tamales with a Spanish-speaking Indian named Manuela Alonza Cazera when Sigarroga appeared and said that he had killed an Indian from San Miguel Milpas Dueñas. Meanwhile, a 50-year-old mulata named Ygnacia Mexia was told by her son that Pioquinto Joseph, a “natural de Teguantepeque” who was staying at her home in Ciudad Vieja, had wounded Pelen in a fight. Sigarroga, for his part, protested his innocence, called Pioquinto his countryman (“paisano”), and claimed they were drinking together in Manuela [sic] Mexia’s home the night of the murder.76 75. APCV Bautismos Libro No. 3 (1758–64), f. 21. 76. AGCA A2.2, leg. 151/exp. 2853, “Contra Pablo Sigarroga por homicidio en la persona de Manuel Pelen yndio tributario de Milpa Dueñas” (1771).

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Trial records do not clearly identify anyone involved as a Mexicano, or even as an Indian. Secundino and Blas Barrera are identified only by their residency, in Ciudad Vieja and Santiago respectively. Manuela Alonza Cazera, while probably an Indian from Ciudad Vieja, may have been a Kaqchikel from San Miguel Escobar. Pioquinto Joseph could have been from either the Parcialidad de Teguantepeque in Ciudad Vieja or (more likely) from Tehuantepec in Oaxaca. In the latter instance, as an out-oftowner from a major regional trading hub and Sigarroga’s “paisano,” Joseph may very well have been a mulato. Nevertheless, the trial suggests a variety of relationships between people of different backgrounds: the Ciudad Vieja resident Secundino Barrera and the muleteer Sigarroga, both of some African descent, walking down a road one Saturday night; an Indian woman and a mulata making tamales together; a native of Teguantepeque (either casta or Indian) boarding with a mulata matron. As we have already seen, the location of Ciudad Vieja at the crossroads of several major trade routes increased the Mexicanos’ contact with Ladinos, Spaniards, and Indians from other towns and regions. Unlike many Indians whose towns were more geographically and/or culturally isolated even in the valley of Guatemala, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja had frequent and often intimate contact with Ladinos in their everyday lives. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Mexicanos had ladinized themselves in more ways than one. Over the course of the colonial period, they had adopted Spanish, aggressively pursued their interests within the colonial bureaucracy, and fraternized and to limited extent intermarried with the growing casta population that passed through and lived in their town. Some even became Ladinos themselves, as the creation of Ladino cofradías and the population counts of the eighteenth century suggest, and the Barreras and Mayorgas illustrate. But still, these were not the majority. Most Mexicanos in Ciudad Vieja remained Mexicanos into the nineteenth century. As the Audiencia official noted in 1798, the late colonial Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja had both “ladinized themselves” and “conserved their purity.” Colonial authorities considered Ciudad Vieja an Indian town until the end of the colonial period, and the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja still considered themselves Indian conquistadors. Not only that, they continued to portray themselves, and to be portrayed, as Indians. Nowhere is this point more obvious than in the conflicts engendered by the earthquake of Santa Marta, in 1773.

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Ciudad Vieja and the Earthquake of Santa Marta, 1773–1815 Sometime between three and four o’clock in the afternoon of 29 July 1773, the ground began to shake in the valley of Guatemala. Earthquakes had occurred every 20–40 years since Santiago’s founding in the sixteenth century, and many people left their homes and businesses at these first signs of another one. They hadn’t long to wait. Around 4 p.m., deep tremors rocked the city of Santiago and its outlying settlements, and continued for two more hours. Soon afterwards, a heavy rain began to fall that lasted throughout the night. The next morning, the damage became apparent. Outside the city, most of the region’s parish churches were destroyed or unusable. Broken water systems and wells, which would not be fully repaired for years, caused water shortages. A number of Santiago’s churches, monasteries, and convents were completely destroyed and the rest had suffered significant damage. Many homes in the poorer neighborhoods had collapsed, as had the city’s mill and gunpowder storage facility.77 The city, wrote its political leaders to the king four days later, lay “entirely in ruins.”78 The earthquake of Santa Marta, so named for the saint’s day on which it occurred, was one of the worst the valley of Guatemala had ever experienced. But as the historian Cristina Zilbermann de Luján and others have pointed out, the earthquake did not in fact destroy the city of Santiago. The city hall, the Universidad de San Carlos, and many prominent residents’ homes escaped serious damage. Almost immediately, the city’s ruling elites split over the proper response to the disaster. Royal officials, led by the peninsular Spanish captain general of the Audiencia, Martín de Mayorga, favored moving the city to a new location. A group of powerful creole families and ecclesiastical authorities led by Archbishop Pedro Cortés y Larraz wanted the city to be rebuilt in situ. It was a classic Bourbon conflict pitting royal reformers against local Spanish American elites and entrenched church interests. In this case, the peninsulares won. In December 1775, the crown agreed that the Spanish capital of the Audiencia of 77. Feldman, Mountains of Fire, Lands That Shake, 73–75. 78. Zilbermann de Luján, Aspectos socioeconomicos, 116, from AGI Guatemala 657, “Informe de la ciudad de Guatemala con su presidente, arzobispo, ministros y cabildo sobre su total desolación” (2 August 1773). See also the “razón particular” dated May 1774 of Juan Gonzalez Bustillo, quoted in Jickling, Ciudad de Santiago de Guatemala, 58, and Pérez Valenzuela, La Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción.

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Guatemala would be rebuilt in the Llano de la Virgen, a valley some thirty miles to the southeast of Panchoy. The Indian towns that surrounded Santiago were left out of this debate but were devastated by its resolution. Most of the historical work on the earthquake has centered on Santiago de Guatemala; the surrounding Indian towns are only mentioned in passing by many historians and eighteenth-century observers, usually in terms of the destruction of parish churches. The damage must have been considerable. But many saw no need to abandon their town sites, and it appears this sentiment was even stronger in the Indian towns than in the Spanish capital. When Ciudad Vieja, Jocotenango, and San Pedro de las Huertas— three of Santiago’s largest satellite towns— received orders to follow the capital city (along with the smaller towns of Santa Isabel, Santa Ana, Santa Inés, and San Gaspar Vivar), resistance came quickly. Town councils insisted that the land being offered them was inferior to what they already had and petitioned the crown to rescind the order.79 When these petitions failed, large numbers of residents refused to leave despite being threatened with beatings and the burning of their crops, and while facing the loss of the urban market that had fueled the valley’s local economy.80 As debate continued in Santiago, a group of Ciudad Vieja’s Ladinos, the parish priest Juan Coloma, and the regidores of the parcialidades of Tascala, Reservados, Cholula, and Otumpa moved to preempt the relocation order. In 1774, they organized a collection for repairs to the parish church to which every Ladino and Indian household would contribute. Despite orders that reconstruction cease and residents prepare to move the town to its new location, the collection proceeded with the approval of some colonial officials. One royal official noted that Ciudad Vieja had already met its financial obligations that year. Only such a pious act as rebuilding a church, he intoned admiringly, could yield such generosity and compel Indians and Ladinos to work together.81 79. In AGCA A1, leg. 72/exp. 1695, “Los Yndios de Ciudad Vieja sobre que el Alcalde Mayor les violenta a que se trasladena el nuevo pueblo” (1778), Fernando de Corona complained that both Jocotenango and Ciudad Vieja had sent letters resisting the relocation that are “insolent, lacking in respect and subordination to the alcalde mayor.” 80. A detailed account of the politics surrounding the relocation of these Indian towns, including Ciudad Vieja, can be found in Pérez Valenzuela, La Nueva Guatemala, especially ch. 7. 81. AGCA A1 leg. 73/exp. 1720. “Para reparo de la Yglesia de Ciudad Vieja la Antigua” (1774).

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Nevertheless, Ciudad Viejans were divided over the possibility of relocation. Somewhere between 20 and 40 Mexicano families moved almost immediately to the new site, pithily named Ciudad Vieja la Nueva (New Old City).82 And while Coloma and representatives from the parcialidades of Tascala, Cholula, Quahquechula, Otumpa, Teguantepeque, and Tenustitan collected money for reconstruction, a faction led by Pascual Ordoñez of the Parcialidad de Tatelulco campaigned against them. Ordoñez wrote a letter to the alcalde mayor of Amatitanes and Sacatepéquez who was responsible for overseeing the relocations of Indian towns, Fernando Corona, alerting him of the collection. He accused Coloma of blasphemy and extortion, claiming that the priest had demanded 3,000 pesos of his Indian subjects to repair the church’s roof after the order to move was issued. Furthermore, he wrote, the priest had declared that he was the ruler of his own parish, and that “neither the pope nor the president of the Audiencia nor the king” could give orders concerning his church.83 Thus began a decade-long struggle— between the cabildo of Ciudad Vieja and Juan Coloma against Fernando Corona and other royal officials, and also between at least two political factions within Ciudad Vieja— as a result of the Santa Marta earthquake. Juan Coloma refused to perform his priestly duties in the new site, prompting officials of Ciudad Vieja la Nueva to ask to be officially joined with the parish of Santa Catalina Pinula in 1777.84 A year later, in the spring of 1778, Ciudad Vieja officials complained that Corona had threatened to destroy residents’ crops, force them out of their homes, and whip their officials. The Mexicano cabildo played their cards as both Indians and conquistadors, arguing that such treatment was “exorbitant” not only because of the “orders and privileges our Majesty honored us with as conquistadors,” but also because it went

82. AGCA A1 leg. 73/exp. 1716, “Piden se providencie de ministro que les de el Pasto Espiritual” (1777) and AGCA A1.10, leg. 72/exp. 1707, “Que se trasladen los Indios de Ciudad Vieja, al el paraje que tienen asignado en esta nueva ciudad” (1778); AGCA A1, leg. 72/exp. 1695, “Los Indios de Ciudad Vieja sobre que el alcalde mayor les violenta a que se trasladen a el nuevo pueblo” (1778). 83. AGCA leg. 73/exp. 1720, “Para reparo de la yglesia de Ciudad Vieja Antigua” (1774), f. 37: “de que ni el Papa ni el Sr. Presidente ni el Rey mandava a su yglesia que solo el manda en su curato.” 84. AGCA A1 leg. 73/exp. 1716, “Piden se providencie de ministro que les de el Pasto Espiritual” (1777).

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against the “laws concerning the love . . . with which we should be treated” as Indians being reduced into towns.85 Alcalde mayor Corona and other Audiencia officials met the Mexicanos’ claims directly. “Isn’t it strange,” wrote the fiscal for the king, that such obedient children and loyal vassals of the king, who have served the conquest and thus deserved so many distinctions and privileges that prove how much they love their King, resist in these days their orders on the pretext that they don’t want to leave their lands, when their ancestors left theirs in Mexico and Tlaxcala some 400 leagues distant, whose example they should follow in order to not lose the honors, distinctions, and privileges that their elders righteously acquired, and should conserve through loyalty and obedience to the King as the just rewards of Mexicanos and Tlaxcaltecas. Corona further complained that he had been “particularly” unable to collect tribute from those still in the old site of Ciudad Vieja at Almolonga, whose officials “have completely negated any obedience” and “willfully disregarded . . . the orders of the alcalde mayor [desprecian en un todo los mandamientos del alcalde mayor].”86 He accused the officials of Ciudad Vieja not only of frustrating the relocation effort, but of actively encouraging those who had already moved to return. In protest, or perhaps self-protection, the Ciudad Vieja cabildo sought asylum in the parish church in the summer of 1778. Meanwhile, reconstruction in Ciudad Vieja continued, while 56 houses in Ciudad Vieja la Nueva remained empty. Corona, temporarily defeated, called the Ciudad Vieja officials “seditious,” complained that they had caused him “many headaches,” opined that they had been taken advantage of by that “crazy, withered old priest who I believe will put you in such a situation that you will pass through many trials [viejo loco caduco de vuestro Padre Cura quien creo os ha de poner en estado de que paseis muchos trabajos]” (underlined in the original), and handed the case over to higher authorities. The captain

85. AGCA A1 leg. 72/exp. 1695, “Los indios de Ciudad Vieja sobre que el alcalde mayor les violenta a que se trasladen a el nuevo pueblo” (1778). 86. AGCA A1.10-3, leg. 73/exp. 1709, “Sobre recaudar tributo de los yndios de Ciudad Vieja” (1778). Portions of this text and others concerning Ciudad Vieja’s refusal to relocate are reproduced in Chapter 7 of Pérez Valenzuela, La Nueva Guatemala.

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general of the Audiencia, Martín de Mayorga, also blamed the priest and attempted to defuse the situation. In August 1778, Mayorga ordered that threats of violence cease and that the Mexicanos be gently persuaded to adhere to the relocation order, “in order to continue enjoying the privileges that their ancestors acquired.”87 The Mexicano cabildo, however, insisted that they wanted the case heard by the Audiencia and eventually, if necessary, by the king. They wanted guarantees that their “privileges as conquistadors” would be preserved. Our ancestors, they wrote in 1780, “left [their lands in Mexico and Tlascala] in order to gain new vassals for the king and the Church, and we would do the same in an equal situation, happily; but the opposite has come to pass.” The relocation effort, they claimed, had not resulted in a stable Mexicano town, but in a dispersed, impoverished Mexicano population. To finish, the Mexicanos took on a humbler tone: “ . . . because it seems to us, in our limited intelligence, that there may have been some misunderstanding, we have chosen to . . . explain ourselves with all possible clarity.” This entreaty was followed by a recounting of the regulations governing the amount of land all Indians were entitled to, prohibitions of pastures and plantations on ejido land, and protections against forced labor, complete with each law’s number and date.88 Again, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja pled their case against the relocation orders as both conquistadors deserving special privileges, and as Indians deserving the king’s paternalistic protection and provision. The Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja la Nueva also portrayed themselves as Indians and conquistadors— often in the same breath, and often against those who refused to move from the old site. By 1781 a new archbishop and captain general of the Audiencia had both assumed their posts, and the colonial government concentrated its resources on building the new capital. The Ciudad Vieja cabildo distanced itself from the conflict with Fernando Corona, blaming it on the previous regidores Sebastián Vásques and Marcos Ordoñes (who were absent from these declarations, presented by the

87. AGCA A1.10-3, leg. 73/exp. 1709, f. 17r. Despite Corona and Mayorga’s accusations, Coloma seems to have commanded no great loyalty from the Mexicano cabildo; in 1777, the Mexicano cabildo asked for a reduction in the rations they were required to pay him. AGCA A1.1, leg. 5815/exp. 49117, “Queja de los indios de Ciudad Vieja sobre rebaja de ración de su cura” (1777). 88. AGCA A1.10-3, leg. 76/exp. 4580, “Real Cedula y testimonio a instancia de los Yndios de Almolonga contra Don Fernando Corona” (1781).

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cabildo and some 55 other residents of Ciudad Vieja).89 But those who had already moved to the new site would not let the matter drop. Pointedly calling themselves the “alcaldes, principales, casiques, conquistadores del pueblo antiguo [old town] de Ciudad Vieja,” the officials of Ciudad Vieja la Nueva promised to execute the order for a total relocation.90 Pascual Daniel, governor of Ciudad Vieja la Nueva in 1782, asked to be recognized as the sole governor of both towns, since, he argued, the old site was illegitimate and filled with “rebellious children [hijos rebeldes].”91 At the same time, the leaders of Ciudad Vieja la Nueva also adopted a tone of humility in their dealings with colonial officials, emphasizing their need for assistance as simple Indians of limited intelligence (“cortas facultades”) and playing on the continuing preoccupation of Spanish colonial rule with controlled settlement of the Indian population.92 These internal conflicts that surfaced after the earthquake literally tore the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja apart. Approximately a third of the Mexicano population of Ciudad Vieja left permanently for the new site. When it became clear that those who remained would not be forced out, officials from Ciudad Vieja la Nueva demanded material goods (bells, retablos [devotional paintings], and uniforms) and personnel (especially musicians) from the old town’s church to adorn and assist in their own, claiming that “in the church of our old town all these things are in abundance” and asking that the justices of Ciudad Vieja be punished if they attempted to harass those who had moved.93 Leaders in Ciudad Vieja asserted the old town’s continued centrality as the spiritual heart of the Mexicano community, noting that many who had abandoned their homes for Ciudad Vieja la Nueva had returned during the festivities of Santa Cecilia.94 For the remainder of the colonial period the two Ciudad Viejas would negoti-

89. Ibid., and AGCA A1.10-3, leg. 76/exp. 4578, “Los Alcalde Ordinarios sobre señalamiento de exidos a los pueblos inmediatos a esta ciudad” (1780), ff. 14v–15. 90. AGCA A1.10-3, leg. 76/exp. 4578, “Los Alcalde Ordinarios sobre señalamiento de exidos a los pueblos inmediatos a esta ciudad” (1780), f. 3. 91. AGCA A1.10, leg. 76/exp. 4581, “Carta del gobernador y demas justicias del nuevo pueblo de Almolonga” (1782). 92. AGCA A1.10, leg. 76/exp. 4582, “Yndios de Almolonga sobre su traslasion y demas que piden su Yglesia, campanas, y cantores” (1782). 93. Ibid., f. 1. 94. AGCA A1.10, leg. 76/exp. 4581, “Carta del gobernador y demas justicias del nuevo pueblo de Almolonga” (1782), f. 5.

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ate their relationship, especially concerning those festivals and institutions that had marked Mexicano identity for over two hundred years. Both towns retained the privilege of tribute exemption, protection of which had been promised to those who moved. Colonial officials did not originally question the legitimacy of the new Ciudad Vieja’s privileges, but were concerned (as they had been so many times before, in Ciudad Vieja, Totonicapán, San Miguel Petapa, and San Salvador) with distinguishing them from other, tribute-paying Indians. When Ciudad Vieja la Nueva officials asked that a group of Indians from Santa María de Jesús be permitted to settle in their town, the fiscal responded that “it will never be convenient to allow in the town of Ciudad Vieja (la Nueva) those Indians who want to reside there, since those of Ciudad Vieja have the privilege to not pay tribute, and the frauds committed against the Royal Treasury would be undiscoverable.”95 In 1805, Ciudad Vieja la Nueva’s right to collective tribute exemption was challenged, but the colonial government upheld it.96 The creation of two Ciudad Viejas may also have destabilized the balance of power between Ladinos and Mexicanos in the old town, and here too we see the Mexicanos asserting their identity as both conquistadors and as Indians. When the Ladino Casimiro Santa Cruz attempted to claim land that belonged to the Parcialidad de Cholula in 1800, he was defeated by a coalition of representatives from the other parcialidades that came to Cholula’s aid. Then, in 1806, Santa Cruz solicited and received the post of governor of Ciudad Vieja. Mexicano officials reacted badly: In our town there has never been appointed a Ladino governor, since as caciques we have always named the most ancient and qualified amongst us. . . . There is a man from our guild mortally wounded and nothing has been done against the aggressor because he is from the Ladino guild . . . and the same Ladino alcaldes are the most scandalous of the town, who get drunk and parade around town without their wits, mistreating the native sons [hijos] of the town without 95. AGCA A1, leg. 76/exp. 4591 “Los naturales de Ciudad Vieja trasladado a las ynmediaciones de esta Capital sobre fabrica de su Yglesia” (1791), f. 1v; AGCA A1, leg. 154/exp. 3060, “El común de Ciudad Vieja pide que se les conceda averindar en su Pueblo a varias familias” (1798). 96. AGCA A1, leg. 156/exp. 3134, “Tasacion de lo que adeudan los Pueblos desde el Año de 1804, hasta presente” (1804–5).

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reason and putting them in jail for no crime . . . and we ask that Ladino alcaldes not be named.97 In this conflict the Mexicanos did not receive the support of their parish priest ( Juan Coloma had died), who refuted their charges and complained that they neither paid tribute nor helped support him. Their petition was rejected. Given the mutability of Ladino and Mexicano identity in Ciudad Vieja before the earthquake, it is reasonable to wonder whether Casimiro Santa Cruz was always and in all situations a Ladino, or whether the cabildo of Ciudad Vieja in the late colonial period was as purely Indian as the Mexicano officials claimed. As Robert Haskett has pointed out, political infighting in colonial Indian town government often resulted in charges of non-Indians attempting to usurp power illegally, while popular governors who may have been mestizos or other castas were not only tolerated but supported without mention of their ethnic disqualifications.98 Still, it is striking in this case how vehemently a large number of Mexicano political leaders asserted their right to monopolize town government as Indians, and how different this seems from the practice of local politics in Ciudad Vieja in earlier times. And there are other signs that the division of Ciudad Vieja after 1773 threatened the Mexicanos’ preeminent status in their Guatemalan ancestral home. The same year that Casimiro Santa Cruz was upheld as governor, the alcalde mayor of Sacatepéquez, Andres Saavedra, threatened to jail several Ciudad Vieja musicians for refusing to play at the opening ceremony of a new hospital. Reminiscent of sixteenth-century officials who questioned the Mexicanos’ claims to tribute exemption by calling them “yndios conquistadores guatimaltecas y zapotecas,” Saavedra addressed his order to the “Ladino officials of Ciudad Vieja,” although the musicians were all Mexicanos serving in the church. Mexicano officials (who despite the naming of Santa Cruz as Ladino governor seem to have maintained their own cabildo structure and their own governor, don Pedro Vasques) responded that they were free of all tribute, communal work, and other service, and that nonetheless the Spanish alcalde mayor compelled them to provide three servants each week for the hospi97. AGCA A1.45, leg. 649/exp. 53416, “La Parcialidad de Cholula (los Reservados) contra Casimiro Cruz por tierras” (1800); AGCA A1 leg. 157/exp. 3159, “Ciudad Vieja pide que no se permite nombrar un ladino como casique” (1806). 98. Haskett, Indigenous Rulers.

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tal. When they informed him that they had the privilege of not providing labor, he jailed them, imposed a fine of 7 reales for the servants they did not produce, and threatened prison for “the musicians of this town, who are all Indians.”99 Similarly, in 1815 Mexicano officials complained that the Ladino alcalde José Eufrasio Osorio was harassing Indians for dressing immodestly, with their pants showing too much of their calf muscles. Osorio only arrested Indians, said the Mexicano officials, “when those of his guild are notoriously more wild in all regards.” They added, “the justice of the Indians is better recommended than that of the mulatos for the particular graces that we of Ciudad Vieja have been granted; we should be treated with more consideration and decorum.”100 If the pre-earthquake population of Ciudad Vieja was indeed becoming increasingly Ladino in the late-colonial sense of the term; if fewer and fewer Mexicanos could speak Nahuatl; and if some of the town’s more prominent families were entering Ladino society permanently, then the earthquake of Santa Marta and subsequent division of the town indeed had the potential to fundamentally alter the world the Mexicanos had lived in since they arrived in Guatemala in 1524. The anxiety surrounding that possibility is evident, I would argue, in the sudden appearance in the documentary record of such conflicts with Ladinos as I have just described after 1773. And yet in 1807, the creole historian Domingo Juarros y Montúfar described Ciudad Vieja as one of the largest, most beautiful and well-placed towns in the region, famous for having been the first Spanish capital and, for a time, the seat of the alcaldía mayor of Sacatepéquez. Although the earthquake of Santa Marta had diminished the town’s population, still “more than 2,000 Indians and many Ladinos” had stayed. “The natives of this place exhibit their nobility [blasonan de nobleza],” wrote Juarros, “as descendants of the Mexicanos, Tlaxcaltecas and others who came as auxiliaries of the conquistadors; and for this reason they do not

99. AGCA A1.3, leg. 2772/exp. 24142, “El comun de Ciudad Vieja sobre la prision en que el alcalde mayor a puesto a varios yndios por no haber dado sirvientes para el hospital” (1806), f. 3. 100. AGCA A1.21, leg. 2985/exp. 28380, “El gobernador y justicias de naturales de Ciudad Vieja contra el alcalde de ladinos de dicho pueblo por agravios” (1815). Christopher Lutz points out (personal communication, 1 December 2003) that the use of the term “mulato” here also seems a sharp dig at the Ladino officials; while “Ladino” carried ambivalent connotations in the racialized discourse of late colonial Guatemala, “mulato” was a far more degrading descriptive.

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pay tribute, except for two reales, in recognition of their royal service.”101 Ironically— and echoing the effects of the disaster that destroyed Santiago en Almolonga in 1541— Mexicano ethnicity may have been strengthened by the upheaval of the earthquake at precisely the moment when the town’s ladinization seemed inevitable. As a result, at the dawn of the nineteenth century Ciudad Vieja remained both Mexicano and Indian, home of the Indian conquistadors.

101. Juarros y Montúfar, Compendio de la historia, 68.

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oday, the residents of Ciudad Vieja still remember their heritage as Mexicano, Cholulteca, and Tlaxcalteca conquistadors. Outsiders often assume they are indígenas, but they consider themselves Ladinos. How this transition from Indian to Ladino identity happened would take another book to say. The fact that it did might suggest a cautionary tale: that by accepting and working with foreign powers, the Mexicanos ultimately lost something of their Mesoamericanness. But this is not the historical lesson I would draw from their story. Instead, I am most struck by the Mexicanos’ failure to fit easily into narratives of either loss and victimization or Indians versus Ladinos. Such narratives treat the tumult of the sixteenth century as a definitive break with the past, after which the richness of prior civilizations is lost (through death, oppression, or ladinization) and the outlook for the future is bleak. Taken to an extreme, the “conquest paradigm” views the sixteenth century as the beginning of the end of Mesoamerican history. The Guatemalan Mexicanos challenge this view. We can understand neither the sixteenth-century conquest wars nor the process of becoming Mexicano in Guatemala without reconnecting Mesoamerican history across

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the pre-Columbian/colonial divide. At the same time, the Mexicanos demonstrate the enduring power of a colonial ideology that has divided the Americas into winners and losers since 1492. The new Ciudad Vieja on the outskirts of Guatemala City eventually lost its Mexicano identity. Memories carried over for a generation or two at least, based in part on lingering ties to the original town. Marcelino Quachita wrote in 1805 that he wished to be relieved of his position as governor of the new town, referring to his wife’s ill health and to the many services he had provided “since my childhood and in the old city.”1 Pascuala de los Santos noted that she was from the “Mexicanos of the town of Ciudad Vieja of this capital city” when denouncing her husband to church officials in 1817.2 Not surprisingly, tribute exemption continued to prop up Mexicano identity in Ciudad Vieja la Nueva for the brief remainder of the colonial period. In 1813, the new town’s cabildo complained that it should not have to pay the tercio de navidad (the Christmas tribute collection, one-third of the year’s tribute due) because the Mexicanos had always been exempt from tribute and had paid less than other Indians. Other disputes over tribute exemption in Ciudad Vieja la Nueva arose in 1818–19.3 Residents of the new town apparently continued to participate in the age-old tradition of marching in the Paseo del Pendón Real, but only until independence, when the festival celebrating the Spanish monarchy was officially abolished. What little documentation survives suggests a diminished enthusiasm for this expensive ritual even before its abolition. In 1820, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja la Nueva wrote that if the ceremony was only to consist that year of the church service and not the procession, they wished to be excused because it occurred during harvest time. In 1821 they wrote again, this time to clarify whether they were expected to attend the ceremony in the cathedral on 22 November and also the “fiesta de

1. Archivo General de Centroamérica, Guatemala City (hereafter cited as AGCA), A1 leg. 156/exp. 3137, “Marcelino Quachita, Gobernador del Pueblo de Ciudad Vieja, renuncia de dho oficio” (1805). 2. Archivo Histórico Arquidiocesano (hereafter cited as AHA), Miscellaneous (?) T116, “Pascuala de los Santos de los Mexicanos del Pueblo de Ciudad Vieja sobre abuso contra ella de su marido” (1817). 3. AGCA A3.16, leg. 251/exp. 5113, “Ciudad Vieja la Nueva resiste pagar tributo desde 1811” (1813); AGCA A3, leg. 257/exp. 5748, “Contra los alcaldes del pueblo de Ciudad Vieja de la capital, por deuda de tributos” (1818); and AGCA A1.73, leg. 159/exp. 3218, “Sobre lo que adeudan los justicias de Ciudad Vieja del Llano de comunidad” (1819).

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galeones” on 29 November.4 In 1826, a resident of Guatemala City, señora Carmen Mendía, wrote rather poignantly to municipal administrators: Since my husband was mayordomo de propios there have been in this house quantities of breeches, jackets, boots, and old hats belonging to the Indians of Ciudad Vieja who processed in the Paseo de Santa Cecilia; and as I am about to leave this house . . . I put these before you, to serve as a reminder of this corporation, and to make the arrangements for the said costumes. God, union, and liberty, Guatemala, November 3, 1826.5 In Ciudad Vieja la Nueva, where the social and territorial bonds between residents were so newly created and in an era that needed Indian conquistadors less, the idea of being Mexicano appears not to have long survived independence. The new town was rapidly absorbed into Guatemala City and stopped being a Mexicano town in the process. The original Ciudad Vieja tells a very different history, maintaining its identity as the ancestral home and central settlement of the Guatemalan Mexicanos through the politically unstable years of 1773–1821 and beyond. The town’s majority Mexicano population remained sizeable and its nine parcialidades (now minus Reservados) intact at the turn of the nineteenth century.6 Its internal political hierarchy was still apparent in 1813, when alcaldes from the parcialidades of Tascala and Cholula led a protest against donations extracted for the new capital’s hospitals.7 Trib4. AGCA A1, leg. 4012/exp. 30735, “Sobre la asistencia de los indígenas de Ciudad Vieja la Nueva al paseo de Ciudad Vieja (1820); AGCA B3.6, leg. 47/exp. 1034, “Los indios de Ciudad Vieja sobre la abolición del Paseo del Pendón Real” (1821); AGCA B4.9, leg. 55/ exp. 1246, f.1, “El ayuntamiento de la ciudad de Guatemala hace constar que los indígenas del pueblo de Ciudad Vieja aledaño a la capital consultaron que se deberían a la misa celebrada el día de Santa Cecilia” (29 November 1821). 5. AGCA B78.44, leg. 1507/exp. 36080, “Sra Carmen Mendia pide se le indique que hace con las casacas que usaban los indios de Ciudad Vieja durante el paseo del Pendón Real” (1826). It is unclear from the note whether she referred to the new or the old Ciudad Vieja; given her location I think it more likely she meant the new. 6. AGCA A3.16, leg. 2569/exp. 37712, “Ciudad Vieja pide que para recaudar tributes, se siga conforme al antiguo sistema” (1821); AHA T3–17, Caja 11 Ex. 183 and 184, Padrones, “Padrón alfabético de esta parroquia de Ciudad Vieja” (1805). Thanks to Christopher Lutz for this reference. 7. AGCA A1.21.1, leg. 159/exp. 3216, “Que los de Ciudad Vieja no quieren pagar los tributes para el Hospital” (1813).

272 / Conclusion Eagle warrior from the battle of Tecolotlán. Detail of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. Digital restoration Universidad Francisco Marroquín/Banco G&T Continental. © 2007 Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala. Images are available under the Creative Commons license AttributionNoncommercial-Share Alike.

ute exemption was less threatened here, perhaps, than in Ciudad Vieja la Nueva. Nevertheless, residents continued to actively petition for payment reductions and to resist new collection schemes, first in 1812 and again in 1821.8 And unlike in the new town, in the original Ciudad Vieja conquest commemorations continued to be enthusiastically embraced even after independence. In 1820, the musicians of Ciudad Vieja asked for money for costumes to perform in the annual celebration of the Paseo del Pendón Real, “as is the very old custom.”9 Some fifteen years later and well after the official celebration’s suspension, the Guatemalan-Irish diplomat and antiquarian Juan Galindo commissioned a painting of “Indians of Ciudad Vieja in the paseo or fiesta of Santa Cecilia.” A young boy sporting a single blue feather in his hair grasps a stick and more feathers, imitating his adult companion who is adorned in fancy eighteenth-century style breeches, a “vest [casaca],” stockings, and a cape. An enormous feathered backrack, its summit ending in a carved eagle’s head, towers gently over the adult performer: a perfect, graceful echo of the eagle warrior backracks of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. 8. AGCA A3.16, leg. 251/exp. 5108, “Los oficiales de Ciudad Vieja piden exoneración de tributo atrasado” (1812); AGCA A3.16, leg. 2569/exp. 37712, “Ciudad Vieja pide que para recaudar tributos, se siga conforme al antiguo sistema” (1821). 9. AGCA B1.8, 1eg76/exp. 2251, “Se acuerda las medidas para reestablecer el Paseo del Pendón Real” (1815); A1.2, leg. 2191/exp. 15741, ff. 169–79, 175, “Se acuerda las medidas para reestablecer el Paseo del Pendón Real” (1815); AGCA A1, leg. 4012/exp. 30736, “Los clarineros piden nuevos uniformes para Santa Cecilia” (1820).

Francisco Cisneros, “Indios de Ciudad Vieja en paseo o fiesta de Sta. Cecilia,” ca. 1835, watercolor commissioned by Juan Galindo. Courtesy of the Societé de Geographie, Paris, France.

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Townsfolk and outsiders alike continued to recall Ciudad Vieja’s Mexicano heritage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When Guatemalan archbishop and historian Francisco de Paula García Peláez visited the town in the 1840s, officials showed him the well-preserved copy of Justicia 291 that we encountered in Chapter 3, “covered in crimson velvet with silver guards on the outside, the coat of arms in the middle, and corresponding latches  .  .  . with loose overleafs of doubled mother-of-pearl taffeta, which are still carefully preserved.” García Peláez’s extremely favorable descriptions of the sixteenth-century campaign for tribute exemption and the persistent nobility of the Guatemalan Mexicanos surely came, in part, from the keepers of the book themselves.10 In 1887 another archbishop, M. Casanova y Estrada, reported that Ciudad Vieja still maintained separate churches in San Miguel de Escobar and Ciudad Vieja as well as separate cofradías for Indians and Ladinos.11 On 22 November 1927, the city council of Ciudad Vieja sponsored a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Santiago en Almolonga, complete with a “memorial [recuerdo]” publication of the Spanish city’s founding document and the dedication of a plaque on the side of the cathedral that remains there today.12 And in 1953, the Guatemalan Ministry of Public Education published a short book by J. Adrián Coronado P. describing the department of Sacatepéquez. Following in the footsteps of colonial-era chroniclers, Coronado detailed the twentieth-century features of the towns outlying the old colonial capital of Antigua Guatemala: their flora and fauna, their 10. García Peláez, Memorias para la historia, 1:156–57. See also the discussion of this encounter at the end of Chapter 3. U.S. ambassador John Lloyd Stephens was shown this same book during his travels through Central America in 1839–40 by the “principal chiefs and women, descendants of caciques of the Mexican auxiliaries of Alvarado, calling themselves, like the Spaniards, Conquistadores, or Conquerors; they entered, wearing the same costumes which their ancestors had worn in the time of Cortez, and bearing on a salver covered with velvet a precious book bound in red velvet, with silver corners and clasp, containing the written evidence of their rank and rights. It was written on parchment, dated in 1639, and contained the order of Philip the First, acknowledging them as conquerors, and exempting them, as such, from the tribute paid by the native Indians. This exemption continued until the revolution of 1825, and even yet they call themselves descendants of the conquerors, and the head of the Indian aristocracy.” Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, 1:282. 11. AHA Visitas Pastorales T6 64, “Visita de M. Casanova y Estrada” (1887). 12. Concejo Municipal de la Ciudad Vieja, Almolonga. A contemporary remembrance of Ciudad Vieja from a Spanish American point of view is Díaz, La romántica ciudad colonial, 14–16, 106–10.

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local industries, and the numbers, language, and habits of their residents. He noted that most of the Sacatepéquez “Indians” were of the Kaqchikel Maya “race,” with one exception: Also amongst the ethnological elements that make up the race of the department are individuals of the Aztec race, descendants of the natives of Mexico [indígenas mexicanos] that Pedro de Alvarado brought with him as porters to carry out the conquest in these regions; these natives settled in the area of what is now Ciudad Vieja and [San Miguel Milpas] Dueñas and their inhabitants even today exhibit all the typical features that distinguish the Mexican Indians; for this reason the people of the district of Ciudad Vieja are called xiguales, which in Kaqchikel means “foreigners.”13 Coronado’s racialized characterization of the Guatemalan Mexicanos is dated. His vaguely belittling description of their ancestors as porters rather than conquistadors recalls the sixteenth-century jurist who dismissed the Nahua conquistadors as “guatimaltecas” and “zapotecas,” and the seventeenth-century chronicler Fuentes y Guzmán who distinguished Tenochca porters from Tlaxcalteca and Cholulteca warriors. The remarkable fact remains that in the twentieth century, residents of Ciudad Vieja continued to be recognized by outsiders as descendants of mostly Nahua allies of the Spanish. By the 1950s, however, I suspect that the internal turn from Indian to Ladino identity had already happened. Today, just as many of their Maya neighbors do, Ciudad Vieja’s residents continue to subsist through a combination of farming and regional commerce. Their religious 13. Coronado P., Monografía del Departamento de Sacatepéquez, 55. “Xigual” is not in fact a Kaqchikel word. Guatemalan novelist and political commentator Carlos Manuel Pellecer asserted in 1995 that the term derived from the Kaqchikel word for hawk, xik, and the Nahuatl word (Pellecer misidentifies it as Kaqchikel) for serpent, coatl, which led to Xic-coatl. Pellecer offers no references for this etymology and I have not found any such reference elsewhere. He writes, “With use and time, and certainly also with the intent to offend, Xiccoatl degenerated into “xihualo” or “Shigüalo,” as it continues to be used to designate the residents of Ciudad Vieja . . . The inhabitants of that place have developed a certain sense of superiority, and the shihualos know how to demonstrate this in any occasion. . . . Years have passed, even centuries, and nevertheless the present-day populations, villages, fincas, and households of ‘El Valle’ and beyond, conserve a certain grade of dislike for the residents of Ciudad Vieja, so proud of their Mexicano origin.” See Pellecer, Descubrimiento y conquista, 135–36. Thanks to Walter Ortíz Flores, Hector Concohá Chet, Tood Little-Siebold, and Judith Maxwell for their thoughts.

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and civic institutions parallel those of neighboring Maya towns, though perhaps with a more orthodox Catholic flavor. Residents acknowledge but do not particularly dwell on their history as Mesoamerican allies of the Spanish, as I have assumed was also true to a certain extent during the colonial period. Nevertheless, they consider themselves Ladinos in the context of contemporary Guatemalan society and fundamentally different from the Kaqchikel and other Maya whom they encounter on a daily basis. Instead, they are (as Coronado reported) shigualos, which they affirm means either “foreigner” because their ancestors did not come from the area, or “equal to” because their ancestors imitated the Spanish in dress and language.14 This process of becoming Ladino in Ciudad Vieja was, as we have seen, well underway by the end of the colonial period. By presenting themselves as a particularly ladino group of Indians in the early colonial sense of the term— speaking Spanish, engaging rather than evading the colonial administration, and embracing their reputation for being more civilized than the Maya— the Mexicanos distinguished themselves from their neighbors. Above all, they continued to view themselves at the end of the eighteenth century as the conquistadors, not the conquered. It seems quite possible that as colonial-era protections of the indigenous population were removed after independence, the Mexicanos would have seen little advantage in continuing to be labeled Indians. Furthermore, they may have quite naturally identified as Ladinos under nineteenth- and twentiethcentury rule, increasingly defined not by their descent from African slaves, rural Spaniards, and/or hispanized Indians, but by their separation from indigenous society and their sometime willingness to engage in the projects of the liberal nation-state. As the meanings of “ladino” continued to 14. Don Benjamin Parada M., a respected local historian, town crier, and wonderfully warm human being, explains the term “shigualo” beginning at minute 3:15 of an independent video produced in 2008, “Las Cuatro Capitales de Guatemala-Valle de Almolonga (2 of 8),” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbf PnLg1DU8&feature=related (accessed 11 January 2011). He explains that the people of Ciudad Vieja are descendants of the “tlaxcaltecas” who served the Spanish, and that the original inhabitants of the valley (who he says were forced to relocate to Alotenango and Santa María de Jesús) called these foreign invaders “xigual” (foreigner), leading to the term “shigualos.” When the interviewer asks if people do not get offended at the term at minute 4:12, Parada genially responds, “No, ya es tan natural y ha mamado de herencia que nos sentimos bien cuando nos dicen así [No, now it is a natural thing; we have absorbed this heritage and it makes us feel good when they call us this].”

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Float during the convite (parade) of the festival of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Ciudad Vieja, Sacatepéquez, 2010. The float commemorates the landslide off the slopes of the Volcán de Agua during tropical storm Agatha that destroyed parts of San Miguel Escobar in May 2010, bringing to mind for many residents the disaster that passed through the same area in 1541. The sign on the float reads: “Thank you friends of the town and residents and friends from other countries and brothers of our beloved town for your help and humanitarian collaboration. Los Shigualos are very grateful for your helping our beloved town move forward from the catastrophe of the 29th of May. God bless you and may the Virgin Mary and the Archangel St. Michael protect you. A thousand thanks forever, Shigualos 2010.” Photograph courtesy of Walter Ortíz.

evolve, the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja adjusted accordingly. While the labels identifying them may have changed, their persistent and somewhatbut-not-entirely privileged place in Guatemala did not. Perhaps the Mexicanos’ shift to Ladino identity merely confirmed, in a different era, the in-between position in Guatemalan society that they had always held. Contemporary residents of Ciudad Vieja see no contradiction between being Ladinos, being Shigualos, and being descended from the Nahuas who aided the Spanish conquistadors (the Oaxacan element seems to have been largely forgotten). They do, however, sometimes skirt around direct references to their heritage as either Indians or conquistadors, emphasizing instead Ciudad Vieja’s history as the site of the “first” capital of Guatemala and the Spanishness of the town’s traditions. Jorge de Alva-

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rado, generally forgotten in Guatemalan national lore, is remembered here as founder of the town. Residents recall the “mexicanos y tlaxcaltecas,” but like the mid-twentieth century observer Coronado they most often label their ancestors porters and auxiliaries rather than conquistadors and allies.15 Some distance themselves from this history even further, claiming that most of the original allies moved to Antigua after the 1541 disaster that destroyed Santiago en Almolonga and that Ciudad Vieja’s modern residents descend from an untraceable mixture of migrants, Spaniards, and Indian slaves. Likewise, only a faint recollection of the town’s affection for St. Cecilia seems to have survived into the twenty-first century. Some say that St. Cecilia used to be the patron saint of the town, and that her image was brought from Spain— much like the beloved image of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, affectionately known as “La Chapetona” in reference to her reputed Spanish origins. St. Cecilia’s image, it is said, was taken away sometime in the first half of the twentieth century and put in a museum either in Guatemala City or Antigua. St. Cecilia remains an important image and patron of neighboring Alotenango, however, and the resident priest of Ciudad Vieja while I worked in its parish archives in 1997 mentioned that some thought Alotenango’s St. Cecilia was in fact Ciudad Vieja’s. These vague memories, like the skirting around of both an Indian and conquistador past, may indicate a collective forgetting. Or they may be a kind of careful remembering in a country where being identified as either the conquistadors or the conquered can be a delicate matter. In the early twenty-first century, a mini-revival of Ciudad Vieja’s historical memory seems to be taking place. In 2004, the town officially recognized the founding of Santiago en Almolonga on 22 November for the first time in many years. The event’s flyer extolled the population’s descent “directly from the Tlaxcaltecas, Cholulas, and other Mexican tribes who accompanied the Spanish conquistadors as allies, a situation that gave them many privileges in that long-ago time, as they were also considered conquistadors,” at the same time that it claimed the original coat-of-arms of the city of Santiago as Ciudad Vieja’s own.16 Attempts have been made 15. Ibid.; at minute 3:38 Parada says that “la raza de este valle se puede decir no es descendiente de indígena guatemalteco, sino que es de tlaxcalteca, los cuales pues naturalmente venían cargando todas las chivas de los conquistadores [The race of this valley you could say is not descended from Guatemalan indígenas but is of Tlaxcalteca descent, who are those who, well, naturally came carrying all of the conquistadors’ things].” 16. Walter Agustin Ortíz Flores, in La Gaceta de Ciudad Vieja, 13 November 2004.

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to bring local archaeological remains from past digs back to the town from a museum in Guatemala City. A town historian has been appointed in the style of the old colonial-era chroniclers. And with an eye toward drawing tourists from Antigua, a small local history and culture museum has been built. This revival of interest in the town’s history may simply reflect one mayor’s tenure: a marketing and rhetorical tool in the face of intense population pressures, inadequate infrastructure, religious tension, and political strife. The fundamental divide between conquered and conquistadors, however, persists. In a speech for the celebration of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in 2005, the mayor reminded his audience of their common history, exhorting them to move into the future with boldness and to remember the past with pride. “The people of this place descend from the Mexicanos that came to conquer Guatemala,” he said. “We were not conquered. We were conquistadors . . . and for this reason we must continue our traditions.” The conquered/conquistador divide also persists in the relationship between Ciudad Vieja and San Miguel Escobar, whose residents are considered san migueleños rather than Shigualos. Most women of the formerly Mexicano side of Ciudad Vieja and many from San Miguel Escobar have ceased to wear the recognizably indigenous traje (dress) common in many Maya towns, and both wear characteristic earrings signaling their devotion to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. Nevertheless, they point to styles of apron and other identifying features that distinguish one group from the other. Tensions, jokes, and stereotypes linger; the San Migueleños describe those from Ciudad Vieja as arrogant while the Shigualos characterize those from San Miguel Escobar as rustic. Community rituals often involve agreeing to routes that give the church at San Miguel Escobar its due, or one side refusing to allow processions from the other to pass its boundaries. Meanwhile, devotion to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, patroness of the Parcialidad de Tascala and the town as a whole during the colonial period, remains as strong as ever. The brotherhood of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception is one of the town’s most important and traditionalist institutions, pitting itself against reformist Catholic priests and evangelical Protestants who would do away with allegedly pagan adorations of the Virgin’s image. Her saint’s day and the town’s titular festival on 8 December is locally renowned and extends for over a week, including a street parade with themed floats (with historical themes such as the conquest or Guatemalan independence as well as dinosaurs, misbehaving

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friars, hospital dramas featuring doctors educated in the United States, and the comical woes of bickering couples), a beauty contest, satirical loas or street skits, and dance-dramas new and old. All this previews or follows the solemn procession of the image of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception from her home in Ciudad Vieja’s cathedral to the church in San Miguel Escobar, through the oldest sections of town to the south, and back to the cathedral. In 2005, the mayor’s office pursued and won national patrimony status for the most famous of the week’s dance-dramas, a morality play called the “Dance of the Legion of 24 Devils” written in the mid-nineteenth century— in part, to safeguard this dance and all the other traditions of fiesta week against hostile interference. The oldest masks used in the “Dance of the Legion of 24 Devils” were created by a Mexicano artisan born in 1835, whose descendants continue to work in their great-great-great-grandfather’s workshop as renowned carpenters and sculptors today.17 A children’s version of the play was created and performed in 2006, “with the intention that the tradition of the dance would be insured far into the future by engaging young people.”18 Perhaps because its residents have lost so many of the trappings that externally mark indigenous identity in Guatemala today— native languages and distinctive dress among them— Ciudad Vieja is no longer recognized as an Indian town. Perhaps the descendants of the colonial Mexicanos did not find it advantageous to insist on their Indian identity under the less paternalistic and oftentimes repressive regimes of independent, modern Guatemala. Perhaps they found Ladino identity and allegiance to the nation-state more in keeping with their sense of themselves. But despite all this, five hundred years after their ancestors’ alliance with the Spanish, Ciudad Vieja is still the home of the Guatemalan Mexicanos. Where do the Mexicanos fit in history? The answer has implications beyond Guatemala, for the Nahua and Oaxacan allies were hardly alone in helping Europeans gain a foothold in the American continent. Very often, these indios amigos are characterized as fierce but short-sighted auxiliaries at best, collaborators or even traitors at worst. Most famously in Mesoamerica, the tiny state of Tlaxcala in modern Mexico— home of the origi17. Galindo Bethancourt, “Origin de la advocación.” 18. A quotation from mask-maker Oscar Antonio Cruz Quiñonez, who was instrumental in the creation of the children’s version, in Brown and Cruz Quiñonez, Traditional Dances of Ciudad Vieja, 37. See also Lara Figueroa, “Las fiestas populares.”

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nal Indian conquistadors, whose enmity with Tenochtitlan helped bring about the imperial city’s downfall— has labored to uphold, explain, and defend its conquest-era history. This struggle is eloquently expressed in the title of a locally produced volume published in 1996, Tlaxcala in the Conquest of Mexico: The Myth of Betrayal.19 To keep a historical memory alive that honors the Spanish-Tlaxcalteca alliance has required both effort and subtlety. In the late colonial period, Tlaxcalteca nobility spent considerable sums of money to proudly declare their “tlaxcaltequidad” (as the art historian Jaime Cuadriello calls it)— that is, their guardianship of Christianity even before the Europeans arrived on the one hand, and their identity as conquistadors on the other. In the more hostile atmosphere of nineteenth-century liberalism and twentieth-century indigenism, Tlaxcalteca apologists ceased to reference Maxixcatzin, original friend of the Spanish, and instead glorified the rebellious Xicotencatl el Mozo, who counseled resistance against the Spanish and was executed for treason after the fall of Tenochtitlan.20 Other native allies also insisted on the primacy of their own histories, and not only in Mesoamerica. In the Andes, the Spanish found eager partners in the Cañari of northern Ecuador and the Chachapoya of the highlands north of Cuzco who had recently been forcibly incorporated into and dispersed throughout the Inka empire. Like the Nahua and Oaxacan allies in Guatemala, the Cañari and Chachapoya fought on the frontlines of conquest battles, served as the Spaniards’ bodyguards, and received exemptions from tribute and forced labor for their service. To the Spanish they were “faithful friends . . who are enamored of the [Spanish] nation, who have always been loyal and the most Catholic [of Indians].” To the Inka-descended chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega they were “spies, agitators, and executioners against the other Indians.”21 Reminiscent of the parcialidades of both Ciudad Vieja and Santiago de Guatemala, colonial-era Cañari and Chachapoya lived in and governed their own barrio in Cuzco. Recalling the Mexicanos’ insistence that their original image of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception head the Corpus Christi processions as well as their roles in the Paseo del Pendón Real and Fiesta del Volcán, in Cuzco’s most important Christian festivals the Cañari and Chachapoya adopted European-styled costume and ostentatiously marched in military 19. Toulet Abasolo, Tlaxcala en la conquista de México. 20. Cuadriello, Las glorias de la república de Tlaxcala, 121, 125. 21. Dean, Inka Bodies, 189, 193.

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formation while their rivals’ costumes emphasized connection to the imperial Inka.22 As was the case in Ciudad Vieja and elsewhere in Mesoamerica, however, it seems that Cañari and Chachapoya privilege in the Andes depended on Spanish recognition as much as on the native allies’ own ethnocentrism. Where the Spanish failed to reward and thus recognize their contributions, for instance by choosing an Inka rather than a Cañari to govern the Cañari’s own homelands around Quito in 1560, these most Christian and loyal allies became just another group of Indians.23 In the small town of Mexquitic in the Mexican state of San Luís Potosí, founded by Tlaxcalteca colonists in 1591, Spanish indifference again undercut their former allies’ pretensions to difference from the conquered. The residents of Mexquitic invoked their identity as Tlaxcalteca to press for favors into the mid-eighteenth century, despite the revocation of their tribute exemption in 1712. As the nineteenth century approached, however, they increasingly had to “confront the most negative images of the Indian held by the colonial elite, respond to those images, and even adopt them, with whatever modifications they could make, in order for their voices to be heard.”24 As may also have been the case for Ciudad Vieja, anthropologist David Frye argues that the residents of Mexquitic saw no compelling reason in independent Mexico to assume the negatively charged label of “Indian” that so many outsiders imposed upon them. But quite unlike their counterparts in either Tlaxcala proper or in Ciudad Vieja, the residents of Mexquitic forgot their heritage as Tlaxcalteca and other Nahua conquistadors and colonists altogether. In the twentieth century, influenced perhaps by the indigenista spirit of postrevolutionary Mexican education, they avoided reference to the allegedly traitorous Tlaxcalteca and instead recalled a distant but direct connection to the ancient autochthonous peoples of their adopted homeland against whom their ancestors in fact had likely battled, the Guachichil and Chichimeca. What continued to matter to the late twentieth-century residents of Mexquitic, says Frye, was not what version of their past was academically correct, but a persis22. Ibid., 196, but also ch. 8 in its entirety and Plates I–V. 23. Oberem, “Los Cañaris y la conquista española”; Lamana, Domination without Dominance, ch. 3; Amado Gonzáles, “El alférez real de los incas.” Compare to the Tlaxcalteca of Analco near Villa Alta, Oaxaca, in Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-Between, ch. 6; and the Mohegans whose alliance with the English was undercut by British colonists who labeled them “savages,” in Den Ouden, Beyond Conquest, ch. 4. 24. Frye, Indians into Mexicans, 186–87; compare to the strong sense of indigeneity expressed by the Yaqui of Sonora in Erickson, Yaqui Homeland and Homeplace.

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tent memory of themselves as a people who have always belonged to a certain place. Their memories of Guachichil wild men showed that they were present in this place “from time immemorial.” Stories of the patron saint of the town, San Miguel, affirmed the continued protection of both people and place in the postconquest, Christian era. “Land and community mutually define one another,” observes Frye, “sweeping away notions of ‘Tlaxcalan,’ ‘Indian,’ or ‘ethnic’ identity.”25 To this connection between people and place I would add another essential element: the act of remembering itself. Tales of European victors and indigenous vanquished— what I am calling the conquest paradigm— cannot easily accommodate these Native Americans who traveled far from home in service of a distant Spanish crown and in pursuit of their own desires, created a new homeland for their descendants, and forged their own sense of historical purpose. Their stories require a narrative of Mesoamerican history that is less unerringly tragic and more able to admit a variety of indigenous experiences, while still communicating the dramatic overall losses that resulted from the disasters of epidemic disease, European colonialism, and the insertion of the Americas into a global economy. The key, I think, is a fuller embrace by historians of the entire timeline of Native American history and a stronger rejection of treating the pre-Columbian past as a mere prelude to the “historical” era of the past 500 years.26 This means more skillfully linking the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in particular, so that the latter marks an important historical moment along a continuum rather than a definitive break with the past. It also means striving not just for the voice or perspective of indigenous actors, but toward the creation of a historical framework with Native America as its geographical, epistemological, and temporal center. This is difficult for a non-Native American steeped in the Anglo-American academy to do. But it is worth trying, because the paradox of the Mexicanos’ history is this: that even as conquest and colonialism cannot be fully understood without reference to deeply indigenous patterns of warfare, settlement, spirituality, social organization, etc., so 25. Frye, Indians into Mexicans, 192. 26. This is akin to the historical imaginary of Mexican anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, whose “México profundo” is “the distilled product of a continuous process thousands of years old, the Mesoamerican civilizational process” of which the “last five centuries [are] barely a moment in their long trajectory,” albeit a violent and oppressive moment with profound consequences in the present day; Bonfil Batalla, México profundo, 174.

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Native American experiences since the mid-sixteenth century cannot be understood without reference to the dominating foreign ideologies that have consistently attempted to put them in their less powerful place. The conquest paradigm has to a large extent defined what being Mexicano has meant in Ciudad Vieja from 1524 to the present. It continues to frame the conversation about indigenous identity and rights in Latin America today, and any attempt to challenge it must take into account its historical resonance in the present. In perhaps the most influential work of Guatemalan history of the twentieth century, La patria del criollo, Severo Martínez Peláez argued over thirty years ago that a “conquistador supremacy complex” persists in Guatemala, fueling an ideology of Spanish and creole superiority over the Indian and fostering competition between socioeconomic classes who should have been united by their shared experience of oppression. Martínez Peláez ridiculed the romanticization of the Indian by cultural historians and foreign scholars. Indeed, he argued that studying the uniquely Mesoamerican culture of modern indígenas is a pointless exercise, for the Indian today is nothing but a colonial creation designated for exploitation.27 To some extent, Martínez Pelaez’s concern is the same as mine in this book: to explain “how conquest and colonialism transformed prehispanic natives into Indians”— and in the Mexicanos’ case, into Indian conquistadors. If that incongruous label has the power to surprise, offend, and be proudly claimed in Guatemala today, it is because Martínez Peláez was at least partially right. The harsh realities of colonial exploitation and discrimination persist in Guatemala, as do the narratives that help explain and sometimes justify them. No less than for the colonial Mexicanos or the residents of Ciudad Vieja today, a division of the world into the conquistadors and the conquered permeates even the rhetoric of indigenous rights and identity in postwar Guatemala. Although they prefer the term “invasion” to “conquest,” pan-Mayanists regularly decry the historical and contemporary victimization of Guatemala’s Maya, Xinca, and Afro-Caribbean Garífuna peoples by foreign invaders.28 For these indigenous activists, linking past and present violence against indigenous peoples is an essential first step toward claiming their human rights in the modern world. 27. Martínez Peláez, La patria del criollo, 35, 43–44, 595–619. 28. On the pan-Maya movement, see Bastos Amigo and Cumes, Mayanización y vida cotidiana; Del Valle Escalante, Maya Nationalisms; Bastos Amigo and Brett, El movimiento maya; and Montejo, Maya Intellectual Renaissance.

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And yet, as the pan-Mayanists also insist, Martínez Peláez overstated his case that indigeneity under colonialism was “an essentially new cultural complex”; that the native nobility’s role was merely that of fellowexploiters within the system; that indigenous languages only survived because the friars desired it; or that the Spanish forced Indians to wear certain kinds of dress in order to control them. The history of Ciudad Vieja bears this out. The Mexicanos’ estimation of their own status did not derive only or even mostly from how the Spanish viewed them. Their ancestors ruled over the ancient centers of Mesoamerican civilization: Cholula, ritual center of Quetzalcoatl; Tenochtitlan, heart of the Aztec empire; Tlaxcala, defiant and independent. The most elite among them were sons of nobility, leading a campaign for wealth and glory into unconquered lands. As the Aztecs had in their own imperial campaigns, the Mexicanos divided the world into barbarian and civilized peoples, conquered and conquerors. In colonial Guatemala, they represented the latter: as much conquistadors, in their own estimation, as the Spaniards had been. And if Mesoamerican methods of conquest and colonial exploitation influenced the Spanish, so too the settlement patterns, political relationships, and religious practices that evolved in Ciudad Vieja over three hundred years suggest profound continuities with the pre-Columbian past, despite the transformative and even corrosive effects of colonialism. It is precisely such continuities that the pan-Maya movement claims as the basis of what it means to be Maya today. The Guatemalan Mexicanos’ history is particular, but it is not unusual. Myriad other local histories in contemporary Guatemala may likewise not fit expectations but can be newly understood within the context of a Mesoamerican rather than a European or national timeline. It does not matter if the residents of Ciudad Vieja were once conquistadors or today are Ladinos. They share their history with the Maya, and with all those in whose lives the broad sweep of Mesoamerican history is reflected still.

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Index Acajutla (El Salvador), 81, 89, 248n51 Achi’, 123, 125n113, 232 Acolhua: and Triple Alliance, 37, 54, 59– 61; and Otumba, 54; in Nahua-Spanish alliances, 64, 77, 79, 81, 89; probanzas of, 108; colonists in Guatemala, 115, 173–74, 187 Acxotecatl (cacique of Tlaxcala), 117 Acxotecatl, Francisco de, 117, 119. See also Oñate, Francisco de Africans, 1, 107, 116, 150, 232, 236, 245 Aguacatán (Huehuetenango), 105, 146n36 Ahuitzotl, 42, 47n16, 49n19, 54, 77 Alcabala, 130 Alliance: pre-Columbian patterns of, 4, 39–42, 46, 49–50, 59–60, 81, 136; Nahua-Spanish, 5, 48, 60, 68–69, 71, 77, 124, 140, 187; in Classic and Postclassic Guatemala, 25, 34, 37; matrimonial, 42, 44, 58, 97, 139, 215–23 passim; against Tenochtitlan, 42, 50–56 passim, 291; in Oaxaca, 57–59, 138, 170; Maya-Spanish, 80–81, 84, 124, 192, 222; in Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, 98, 108–10, 143; as basis of privileges, 119; in northern New Spain, 145, 282–83; and Christianity, 153–55; against Inka, 281–82 Allies, Mesoamerican: numbers of, 2–3, 61–66, 71, 79–80, 84–85, 87–91 Almolonga: foundation of, 87–88, 148–55; in Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, 95, 102–4, 108, 143; privileges granted to, 110–13, 213; migrants to, 114; ethnicity in, 168; in Paseo del Pendón Real, 192; in eighteenth century, 204, 248, 261. See also Ciudad Vieja Almud de soldados/de Granada, 130

Alotenango (Sacatepéquez), 176–77, 251, 278 Altepetl: definition of, 44; and military organization, 45–49, 55–56, 59, 78, 92, 143–48; probanzas of, 66, 76; and ethnic identity, 96–97, 134, 136–38; Ciudad Vieja as, 134, 165–77 passim; as sacred center, 140–42, 152; and migration, 142–43; symbol of, 152, 196 Alvarado, Diego de, 84–88, 91n56 Alvarado, Francisca de, 219–20 Alvarado, Gómez de, 87 Alvarado, Gonzalo de, 85, 163n90 Alvarado, Jorge de: in Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, 73, 99–101, 110; in invasions of Guatemala, 80–81, 85–87, 90, 91n56, 93, 99–102, 118, 122, 136; and foundation of Santiago en Almolonga, 87, 93; encomiendas of, 108; and Lucía Xicotencatl, 159, 219–20 Alvarado, Pedro de (father): reputation of, 14, 35, 73, 147, 199; alliance with Nahuas, 56, 62–63, 70–71, 78, 80, 88–89, 158, 187, 225, 275; in Guatemala, 56, 80–85, 90, 100–101, 112–13, 122, 124, 163, 181–82, 192; alliance with Zapotecs, 57–59; in El Salvador, 81, 84, 87, 89; in Honduras, 87, 200; in Peru, 88, 217; and encomiendas, 89, 111, 113, 163; and Beatríz de la Cueva, 122, 150; alliance with Maya, 151, 191; and Luisa Xicotencatl, 164, 216–19 Alvarado, Pedro de (son), 216–18 Alvarado Xicotencatl, Leonor de, 122, 164, 216–19, 221–22 Analco (Oaxaca), 68 Analco, Lienzo de, 68, 108, 142–43 Antequera. See Huaxyacac

310 / Index Ayuda de costa, 221, 234n5 Aztecs, 15, 16, 29, 41. See also Tenochca (Mexica); Triple Alliance Aztlan, 37, 41n5, 142–43 Balberta (Guatemala), 22 Barrios. See Parcialidades Basin of Mexico, 13, 20, 29–30, 37, 49–51, 59, 136, 138, 144 Basin of Puebla-Tlaxcala, 50–51, 53, 59, 67, 79, 137–39, 166n100 B’eleje’ K’at, 86–87, 103, 190–97 passim Bichana Lachi, 58–59 Bigamy, 161–62, 168n104 Bourbons, 258 Briceño, Francisco de, 120–21, 125, 250 Briones, Pedro de, 84, 90 Cabecera, 63–64, 137–38, 211 Cabildo: definition of, 86; of Ciudad Vieja, 133, 170, 175–77, 179–80, 210–15, 251–52, 260–65; Spanish, 154, 157, 179– 80; of Ciudad Vieja la Nueva, 270 Cacao, 38, 46, 55, 77, 135, 159–60, 163 Caciques, Parcialidad de (Totonicapán), 147, 166 Calpolli, 45, 49, 134, 136–41 passim, 146, 165–67, 170, 175. See also Tlaxilacalli Camasca (Honduras), 146–47 Camino Real, 159 Cañari, 281–82 Carrillo, Hernán, 85, 193 Cartographic histories, 68, 93, 96–97, 142 Castas, 116, 151, 164, 225, 232, 245, 252–54, 257, 265. See also Ladinos; Mestizos; Mulatos Çeron, Pedro, 84n29, 90n55, 111n76, 222 Cerrato, Alonso López de, 118 Ceynos, Antonio, 81n26, 120, 126 Chachapoya, 281–82 Chalchiutototl, 220, 223n107 Chalchiutototl, Luisa, 220 Chalco, 61, 78, 137, 140, 142 Chiapas: region of, 17, 31, 245; and Triple Alliance, 37, 42, 48; invasions of, 63, 84,

88; and Nahua colonists, 76, 112, 114–16, 118, 121, 124, 130, 146, 148, 232; on trade routes, 77, 159–60, 164; revolt in, 183 Chichén Itzá, 29–30, 35 Chichimeca, 28–30, 134, 142, 145, 160, 199, 282 Chilam Balam, Books of, 7, 14, 28–29 Children: in invasions, 70, 90, 92, 215; and Mexicano identity, 127, 133, 172–73, 215, 280; and Christianity, 153; Nahuas seen as, 154, 261, 263; Nahua-Spanish, 217–24 passim; and compadrazgo, 227–29, 255; in Spanish households, 242 Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, Francisco de San Antón Muñon, 7, 141–42 Chimaltenango, 86–87, 90–91, 93, 102–4, 107, 109, 143, 235, 236n10 Chinamit, 165–66 Chinampa, 45 Chinampa (region), 45, 49, 52–55, 126, 143–44 Chinampa, Parcialidad de, 51, 133, 167–68, 171, 174–76, 186, 202–3, 227 Cholula: and Tollan Zuyuá, 29–30, 32, 35, 52, 142, 285; and Triple Alliance, 42, 47, 51–53, 59; in invasions of Central America, 57, 85, 126; and defeat of Tenochtitlan, 60–61 Cholula, Parcialidad de, 40, 51, 133, 167–76 passim, 226n112, 252, 264; dominance of, 57, 140, 166, 170, 186, 202, 212n78, 271; in Oaxaca, 144; militia, 186, 202–3, 228, 252, 255, 259–60, 264, 271; kinship relations in, 227n113, 228, 255; and earthquake of Santa Marta, 259–60; in modern memory, 278 Cholulteca: in invasions of Central America, 48, 50, 71, 79, 127, 275; relations with Tlaxcalteca, 52, 59–60; Postclassic migrants, 110, 137; in Ciudad Vieja, 158, 166, 170, 172, 203, 269; in San Miguel Petapa, 224 Chontal Maya, 17, 31 Christianity: and social memory, 9; in Mesoamerican history, 20, 28, 92; and

Index / 311 Nahua-Spanish alliance, 63–64, 67, 77, 94, 111–13, 117n100, 143, 281–82; in Ciudad Vieja, 93, 152–56, 165, 238, 241; and colonialism, 179, 195–99, 238 Çiguacoatl, Marcos, 84–85, 92 Citala, 111, 163 Ciudad Real de Chiapa, 112, 114–16, 146, 148, 232 Ciudad Vieja (Sacatepéquez): foundation of, 2, 87, 150–54; parcialidades, 40, 51, 133; and Justicia 291, 73, 76–77, 111–31; and Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, 73, 95; and Pacific coast, 163–64; as colonial altepetl, 165–77, 263; patron saints, 167; population, 202–3, 225, 266; cofradías, 206–10; Nahuatl in, 240–44; and earthquake of Santa Marta, 259–66; Indian identity in, 265, 269, 275–77; contemporary identity in, 269, 274–80 Ciudad Vieja la Nueva, 260–64, 270–71 Coat of arms, 93–94, 98, 109, 131 Cofradías, 145n30, 198, 206–14, 232, 252–57, 274, 278 Colhuacan, Barrio de ( Jalatlaco, Oaxaca), 144 Coloma, Juan, 259–61 Colonialism: and Mexicanos, 5, 180, 188, 230; narratives of, 6; institutions of, 140, 210, 215, 283–85 Colquin (Honduras), 91 Comalapa (Chimaltenango), 86–87, 102 Comayagua (Honduras), 120, 123–28 passim, 146–47, 151–52, 236n10 Commemoration, 10–11, 167, 179–80, 200. See also Fiesta del Volcán; Paseo del Pendón Real Compadrazgo, 227–29, 256 Confraternities. See Cofradías Congregación, 141, 152, 165 Conquest: narratives of, 1–10, 70–77, 110, 122, 129, 142–43, 192n35, 199, 224; in pre-Columbian Guatemala, 14, 36–38; Tenochca, 44–50; Nahua-Spanish, 60–69; of Central America, 77–92; paradigm, 269–70, 283–84. See also

Commemoration; Fiesta del Volcán; Probanzas Conquest, Dance of the, 193 Copán, 23, 25–26, 31, 33, 35–37 Corona, Fernando, 260–62 Corpus Christi, 158, 184, 199, 201, 205, 213, 281–82 Cortés, Hernando: in Mexico, 38, 42, 54, 60–63, 65–66, 68, 71; and invasion of Central America, 77–79, 84–85, 90; in Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, 94, 98, 108, 110, 143; in Corpus Christi, 199; and Xicotencatl, 216, 218–19 Cortés y Larraz, Pedro, 240–41, 244, 248–49, 253, 258 Cotzumalguapa, 32, 36 Creole: conquest narratives, 9, 158–59, 230, 284; on Pacific coast, 164; and Mexicanos, 200, 218–19, 224, 230, 252–53, 266; and indigenous languages, 240, 249; and earthquake of Santa Marta, 258 Cuauhtinchan (Puebla), 29, 137, 142 Cuauhtinchan, Mapas de, 7, 110, 142–43 Cuauhtlantzinco, Mapa de, 67, 108 Cueva, Beatríz de la, 122, 128, 150, 157–58, 217–18 Cueva, Francisco de la, 122, 126, 128, 157, 164, 217–18 Cueva, Leonor de Alvarado Xicotencatl de la. See Alvarado Xicotencatl, Leonor de Culhuacan, 38, 52–53, 61, 66, 142, 144 Cuscatlán (El Salvador), 81, 84 Cuxtitali, Barrio de (Ciudad Real de Chiapa), 115 Cuzco, 281 Dance of the Legion of 24 Devils, 280 Díaz del Castillo, Bernal, 62–63, 65–66, 71, 77–79, 88–89, 108, 158, 195, 216 Disease, 1–2, 47n15, 49, 53, 61, 71, 137, 141, 204–6, 283 Dogs: attack by, 103–4, 110 Dominicans, 153, 211, 235, 250. See also Gage, Thomas; Las Casas, Bartolomé de; Ximénez, Francisco

312 / Index Doña Beatríz, Capilla de, 150 Don Juan Torres, Historia Quiché de, 28 Duality, 196–97 Earthquake of Santa Marta, 183, 188, 258–66 Elías, Diego, 86n34, 126, 212n78, 222, 223n107 El Petén (Guatemala), 17, 23, 25, 36, El Salvador: Nahuas in, 76–77, 112, 120–30 passim, 146–48, 151; and trade routes, 77, 159–60; conquest of, 81, 84–85, 87, 89, 110; Nahua-Spanish lineages in, 219–20; Nahuatl in, 232. See also Pipil Encomiendas: of Pedro de Alvarado, 58, 89, 122, 218n94; in Central America, 81, 114, 118, 122; of Jorge de Alvarado, 86, 108; of Juan de Tascala, 111, 113, 163; Mexicano exemption from, 111, 120, 128; of Leonor de Alvarado Xicotencatl, 164, 217 Escuintla, 21–22, 65, 81, 102–3, 111, 159–60, 162–64, 215, 225, 232 Ethnicity: definition of, 10n8, 74n109, 132–42; and language, 72, 135–36; Mexicano, 133, 165–66, 215, 267; in northern New Spain, 146 Family, 215–26 Feathered Serpent. See Quetzalcoatl Fernández Nájera, Juan, 94–95, 223, 234 Fiesta del Volcán, 180, 190–202, 230, 281–82 Flowery wars, 47, 51 Franciscans, 145, 150–57, 183n13, 235n7, 238, 241, 244 Fuentes y Guzmán, Francisco Antonio de: as historical source, 9; on Nahua allies, 39, 158, 225, 275; and Ciudad Vieja, 150–52, 158; and Paseo del Pendón Real, 181; and Fiesta del Volcán, 190–98, 202; and indigenous languages, 247, 249 Gage, Thomas, 160, 197 Galicia, Diego de, 86n34, 126–27

Galindo, Juan, 246, 273 García Peláez, Francisco de Paula, 131, 274 Gonzales Nájera, Pedro, 86, 90, 95, 113, 122, 126, 221–22, 234 Gracias a Dios (Honduras), 70, 78, 80, 88, 118, 120, 124, 146–47 Guachibales, 197 Guachichil, 282 Guatimalteca. See Kaqchikel Maya Guazacapán, 163–64 Gulf coast (Mexico), 13–14, 16–17, 20, 28, 31, 33–36, 53 Gumarcaaj (El Quiché), 37 Habitus, 179 Honduras: pre-Columbian, 23, 25; invasions of, 63, 81, 84–85, 87–91, 110, 220; Nahuas in, 70, 76, 78, 80, 116, 120–26 passim, 146–48; Spaniards in, 122, 220; and trade routes, 159–60, 172 Hospitals, 212, 252, 265, 271 Huamelula, San Pedro (Oaxaca), 161–62 Huasteco, 17 Huaxyacac (Oaxaca), 49, 143–44 Huehuetenango (Huehuetenango), 105, 114, 244 Huehuetlán (Xoconusco), 120 Huejotzingo: under Aztec imperialism, 42, 47, 51–53, 59; in Ciudad Vieja, 56–57; in invasions of Central America, 56–57, 59, 66, 80; in defeat of Tenochtitlan, 61; calpolli in, 137; in Oaxaca, 144; and Christianity, 153 Huitzilopochco, 52, 126, 223n107. See also Pérez Tlapaltecatl, Juan Huitzilopochtli, 37, 198 Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of the: patroness of Ciudad Vieja, 134, 153–54, 157–58, 163n90, 168n104, 187, 213, 277–81; and Parcialidad de Tascala, 167, 207; and Santiago de Guatemala, 183 Itzapa, 197 Iximche’: Kaqchikel capital, 1, 38, 80–81; Santiago at, 81, 84, 90, 107, 181, 191–92, 216

Index / 313 Ixquin-Nehaib, Títulos de la casa, 38, 77 Ixtepeque, 33, 35–36 Ixtlilxochitl (tlatoani of Texcoco), 54, 61, 63–64, 77 Ixtlilxochitl, Fernando de Alva, 7, 54, 63–64, 68, 77–79, 84, 89, 220–21n99 Izapa, 17 Izcuintepeque. See Escuintla Jalatlaco (Oaxaca), 143–44 Jocotenango, 151, 165, 194–95, 197–98, 248, 259 Juarros y Montúfar, Domingo, 266 Justicia 291: description of, 72–73, 76–77, 92–93, 95, 115, 119–31, 151, 250, 274; witnesses from, 156, 164, 168, 192, 212, 222, 223n107; social hierarchy in, 158, 170, 203 Kaji’ Imox, 86–87, 103, 190–97, 233n2 Kaminaljuyú, 23, 26–28, 35 Kaqchikel Maya: Nahua-Spanish conquest of, 1, 3, 84–87, 101–10 passim, 155–56, 182, 222; Mexican heritage of, 14–15, 31, 33, 35; language, 17, 207, 232, 235, 237–51 passim; Postclassic migrations, 28, 34–35; relations with K’iche’, 34, 37; and Triple Alliance, 38, 42, 77; alliance with Spanish, 44, 72, 80–84, 123; and colonial rule, 129–30; colonialera migrations, 151, 165; and Mexicanos, 156, 172–76, 204–16 passim, 225, 228, 253, 257, 275–76; in Fiesta del Volcán, 190–99. See also San Miguel Escobar; Sololá, Memorial de K’iche’ Maya: Nahua-Spanish conquest of, 1, 44, 70–71, 77–78, 91, 216, 222; Mexican heritage of, 14–15, 31, 33, 35; language, 17, 232, 238, 240; Postclassic migrations, 28–35; relations with Kaqchikel, 34, 37–38, 151; and Triple Alliance, 38, 42, 77; in invasions of Central America, 85, 99, 101, 110, 155; colonial-era migrations, 114–16, 124, 151, 165; and Mexicanos, 172; in Fiesta del Volcán, 190–95

Lacandon Maya, 88 Ladinos: definitions of, 1, 6, 245–47, 252–53; in contemporary Guatemala, 15, 245; and Mexicano identity, 131, 231–32, 251–57, 267, 269, 275–77, 280; and kinship relations, 171, 228–29; in Ciudad Vieja, 176–77, 211, 225–26, 253–54, 259, 264–66; and colonial rule, 191, 244; cofradías, 207–11, 254, 274; and bilingualism, 237, 239–40, 247–49 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 112–13, 156 Loarca, Alonso de, 122, 126, 192 Loaysa, Jufre de, 117, 128n118, Lona, Pedro de la, 78–79, 88 López de Villanueva, Diego, 122, 126 Malintzin, 94, 98 Mam Maya, 1, 17, 33, 35, 37, 85, 232 Marroquín, Francisco, 154, 157, 213, 218 Maxixcatzin, 117n100, 153, 281 Mayapan, 16, 29 Mejicanos, Barrio de (San Salvador), 147 Mercedarians, 153 Mestizos: memories of conquest, 63–64; in Ciudad Vieja, 152, 156, 238, 253; in Spanish colonial society, 164, 217–23; in San Miguel Petapa, 172, 224; as Ladinos, 232, 253, 265. See also Castas; Ladinos Mexicanos: definition of, 2, 15, 50, 55, 79, 109n74, 132–33, 158, 165; ethnogenesis of, 10–11, 40, 171, 177–80, 230; and ladinization, 231–32, 252–57 Mexicanos, Barrio de (Sonsonate, El Salvador), 147 Mexicanos, Barrio de los (Ciudad Real de Chiapa), 114–15 Mexicanos, Compañia de, 186, 194–95, 203. See also Militias Mexicapa (Comayagua, Honduras), 147 Mexicapa (Gracias a Dios, Honduras), 147 Mexicapa (San Miguel, El Salvador), 146 Mexica Tenochca. See Tenochca (Mexica) Mexica Tlatelolca. See Tlatelolca (Mexica) Mexquitic (San Luís Potosí, Mexico), 282–83

314 / Index Migration, 96, 110, 135, 141, 146, 160–64, 168, 171–72, 216, 264 Militias, 10, 40, 155, 173–78 passim, 185–87, 194, 201–6, 232 Milla, José, 219 Milpas Dueñas. See San Miguel Milpas Dueñas Mixco, 85, 159, 165, 225, 241 Mixe-Zoquean, 16–17 Mixtecs: in invasions of Central America, 51, 71, 80, 92; in Ciudad Vieja, 57, 158, 162; Nahua-Spanish conquest of, 58, 68, 216; in colonial Guatemala, 114, 221; in Justicia 291, 125, 128, 158; languages, 138, 232; in Postclassic period, 138–39, 143–44 Mixton War, 168 Moctezuma I (1440–68), 41, 49, 51 Moctezuma II (1502–20), 38, 42, 44, 49, 54, 61, 77, 140, 143 Molab, 166 Montana (Guatemala), 22–23, 26, 32, 35–36 Montejo, Francisco de, 78, 88, 116 Montejo, Joan, 70, 78, 88 Moscoso, Luis de, 87 Mulatos, 152, 232, 253–57, 266. See also Castas; Ladinos Muñoz Camargo, Diego, 64–65, 72, 220n99 Naborías, 114 Nahuatl: and ethnicity, 4, 16, 29, 50, 115, 135, 158, 215, 225, 230, 240–44, 247; documents from Ciudad Vieja, 8, 168–69, 174n117, 236; and Pipil, 17, 35, 164, 233, 238–39, 243n41; and imperialism, 38, 48, 101, 109, 247–49; and Christianization, 207, 238–41; and translation, 232–40; and bilingualism, 247, 250 New Laws, 118 Nicaragua, 77, 88, 148, 160 Nicarao, 3 Notaries, 234–40 Nueva Galicia, 66, 88, 145

Nuñez de Landecho, Juan, 117, 119, 122 Ñuu, 71, 138 Oaxaca: languages, 4, 16, 138, 232; in Ciudad Vieja, 4, 57, 87, 139, 151, 168, 177, 277; and Triple Alliance, 42, 46, 48–49, 53, 143; in invasions of Central America, 50, 80, 87–88, 90–91, 114, 221–22; ethnic divisions, 57–58, 71; Nahua-Spanish conquests of, 62–64, 66, 68–69, 144, 148, 186n22; histories, 96; in Justicia 291, 124–31; and trade routes, 159–61, 164; migrants from, 161–63, 168, 257 Oçelote, Francisco, 80, 88, 90 Olid, Cristobal de, 84, 90 Olintepeque, 84–87, 90, 101–2, 191, 216 Oñate, Francisco de, 117n100, 119–20, 123–29 passim, 151n49, 156, 212, 222–23, 234, 249 Otomanguean, 16 Otomi, 42, 54, 71, 128, 135, 145–46, 199 Otumba, 40, 51, 54–56, 61, 137, 169n106 Otumpa, Parcialidad de, 51, 133, 167, 169n106, 171, 174, 186, 202–3, 227–28, 259–60 Pacific coast: Postclassic migrations, 22–23, 31, 33–36, 57; and Triple Alliance, 77; Nahua-Spanish conquest of, 80–81; on Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, 97, 99, 103, 106–7; on trade routes, 159, 162–63. See also Escuintla; Pipil Panchoy, valley of, 93, 111, 150, 153, 213, 259 Pan-Maya movement, 14, 284–85 Parcialidades, 51, 133–34, 165–69, 201–6, 271, 281 Paseo del Pendón Real, 180–90, 205–6, 270–72, 281–82 Passo, Gaspar Juárez, 172–73, 224 Paz, Alonso de, 221 Paz, Álvaro de, 122, 126, 222 Pérez, Gaspar, 161–62, 166–67 Pérez Tlapaltecatl, Juan, 126, 223n107 Peru, 49n20, 88, 160, 217–18, 223. See also Cuzco

Index / 315 Petapa, 102, 159. See also San Miguel Petapa; Santa Ynés Petapa Philip II, 120, 181, 237, 249 Pipil: Postclassic migrations, 17, 34; language, 17, 164, 232–33, 238–39, 243; influence on Maya, 31, 233, 249; NahuaSpanish conquest of, 44, 72n5, 81, 124, 147, 173, 215–16; and regional trade, 77 Pochteca, 44, 52, 56, 99–100, 110, 143 Pochutla, 86, 102–4 Policía, 111 Popol Wuj, 7, 14, 20, 23, 28–29, 31, 34–36, 39, 77, 110 Poqom Maya, 33, 35, 224–25 Poqomam Maya, 44, 85, 130, 166, 171–72, 215, 224–25, 232, 238. See also San Miguel Petapa; Santa Ynés Petapa Privileges: of Mesoamerican conquistadors, 111, 187–89, 204, 214, 260–62, 265; campaign for, 111–30; and Mexicano identity, 133, 212–13, 230; in Santiago de Guatemala, 214; in Andes, 282 Probanzas: definition of, 65; indigenous, 66, 69, 73, 84n27; Spanish, 72, 86, 94, 219–21; Justicia 291, 72–73, 86, 94–95, 119–31, 170, 250; Mexicanos as witnesses in, 221–23 Puebla de los Angeles (Mexico), 138 Pueblos de indios, 134, 138. See also Congregación Puerto de Caballos, 88 Puertocarrero, Pedro de, 80–81, 85, 86, 190, 192, 217 Pulque, 208 Putun Maya, 31 Q’anil (lineage), 36 Q’oja (Quetzaltenango, Guatemala), 33 Quahquechula, Parcialidad de, 51, 110, 133, 167, 169–71, 174, 186, 202–3, 225, 227–29, 255, 260 Quauhquechollan, 86, 168; and Triple Alliance, 46, 53, 55–56; conquest of Tenochtitlan, 61; and Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, 96–98, 100, 108, 110

Quauhquechollan, Lienzo de: description of, 7, 41, 45, 72–77, 87, 91–110, 143, 195; creation of, 73, 94–95, 234; and ethnicity, 135–36, 142, 148, 272 Quauhtemoc, 61–65, 78 Quetzalcoatl, 17, 20–23, 28–30, 32, 34–35, 52, 140, 285 Quetzaltenango, 100, 192. See also Xelajuj Quilizinapa, Lake, 102, 104, 160 Quito, 282 Rab’inal (Baja Verapaz), 105 Rab’inal Achi, 34–35, 198 Rax Ch’ich, 34–35 Relaciones geográficas, 67, 152 Repartimiento, 111, 113, 120, 129, 212–13 República de indios/españoles, 221, 224 Reservados, Parcialidad de, 133, 139, 166–67, 171, 177, 186, 202–7, 225–27, 259–60, 271 Retalhuleu, 99–100, 107, 109, 143 Rodas, Agustín de, 220 Rodas, Ysabel de, 220, 223 Rojas, Diego de, 90, 123n110 Sacapulas (El Quiché), 86, 105, 160, 175, 206, 211 Sahagún, Bernardino de, 8, 30, 53, 62 San Antonio Aguascalientes (Sacatepéquez), 129, 156, 238, 253 San Cristóbal el Alto (Sacatepéquez), 185, 239 San Esteban del Saltillo, 145 San Francisco, Barrio de (Santiago de Guatemala), 120, 127, 151, 213–14, 241–43 San Gaspar Vivar (Sacatepéquez), 57, 259 San Martín Mexicapan (Oaxaca), 68–69, 143–44 San Miguel de Allende, 145 San Miguel de la Frontera (El Salvador), 87, 130, 132, 146, 220, 232 San Miguel Escobar (Sacatepéquez): and Santiago en Almolonga, 87, 148, 150, 277; tribute in, 130, 171, 204; population, 152; and Mexicanos, 172–73n114, 204, 211, 225, 228, 257, 279–80; boundaries

316 / Index of, 174–76; disease in, 205; language in, 241, 250 San Miguel Milpas Dueñas (Sacatepéquez), 251, 256, 275 San Miguel Petapa (Guatemala): NahuaSpanish conquest of, 102; tribute, 130, 225, 264; and regional trade, 159, 165; and Mexicanos, 171–73, 215, 224; and Nahuatl, 240, 247; Ladinos in, 241 San Miguel Tzacualpa. See San Miguel Escobar San Pedro de las Huertas (Sacatepéquez), 259 San Salvador (El Salvador): foundation of, 84–85, 87; Mexicanos in, 112, 132, 146–47, 151, 220, 264; in Justicia 291, 120, 123–24, 126–27, 130; Paseo del Pendón Real, 181; Nahuatl in, 232 San Sebastián, Barrio de (Santiago de Guatemala), 229 San Sebastián el Tejar (Chimaltenango), 235, 247 Santa Catalina Pinula (Guatemala), 260 Santa Cecilia, Día de: and Santiago en Almolonga, 87, 181–83; in Ciudad Vieja, 173, 185–90, 199–200, 202–3, 207, 263, 271–73, 278; and Fiesta del Volcán, 191. See also Paseo del Pendón Real Santa Cruz, Casimiro, 176, 264–65 Santa Cruz Chiquimulilla (Santa Rosa), 173, 187, 212 Santa Eulalia (Huehuetenango), 86, 105 Santa Lucía, Church of (Santiago de Guatemala), 213 Santa Ynés Petapa (Guatemala), 171–73, 205, 215, 224–25 Santiago de Guatemala: and Ciudad Vieja, 94–95, 111, 129, 157–58, 164, 176, 180–85, 213, 251, 267; barrios of, 114, 120, 128, 151, 165; and Justicia 291, 118, 120–27; Mexicanos in, 151, 168, 213–14; and trade routes, 159–60; Nahuatl in, 232–44 passim, 248; earthquake in, 258–59. See also Earthquake of Santa Marta; Fiesta del Volcán; Iximche’; Paseo del Pendón

Real; San Francisco, Barrio de; Santo Domingo, Barrio de Santiago en Almolonga: foundation of, 87, 148–50, 153–54; on Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, 91, 93, 104, 109; and Mexicanos, 113, 148, 222, 267; destruction of, 150–51, 217; nostalgia for, 156– 58; commemoration of, 181–83, 191, 274, 278. See also Fiesta del Volcán; Paseo del Pendón Real; Santa Cecilia, Día de Santiago Zamora (Sacatepéquez), 228 Santo Domingo, Barrio de (Santiago de Guatemala), 120, 151, 168, 213–14, 236, 238, 241–43 Santo Tomás Xochimilco (Oaxaca), 143–44 Sequechul. See B’eleje’ K’at Shigualos, 275–77 Sigüenza, Mapa de, 110, 142 Siña, 139 Sinacan. See Kaji’ Imox Siquinalá, 111, 163 Social memory, 6–10, 133, 178–79, 182–83, 201–6, 210 Sololá, Memorial de, 28, 31, 34, 38, 72, 77, 86, 103, 110, 191, 233n2 Sonsonate (El Salvador), 146–47, 160, 163, 220 Spaniards: memories of conquest, 2, 86, 224, 230; in Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, 98, 108–9; and Mexicanos, 112–13, 116, 194–95, 216, 224, 228–29, 249, 282. See also Alliance; Fiesta del Volcán; Paseo del Pendón Real Stephens, John Lloyd, 131, 274n10 Tameme, 20, 45, 105 Tapia, Juan de, 119–20, 123, 127, 169, 212, 222, 234 Tascala, Compañia de, 186, 194, 202–3. See also Militias Tascala, Juan de, 111, 113, 163–64 Tascala, Parcialidad de, 51, 56–57, 132–33, 163–64, 166–76 passim; dominance of, 166, 170, 202–5, 271; and Immaculate

Index / 317 Conception, 167, 206–7, 279; militia, 186, 194, 206; kinship relations in, 225– 28; Ladinos in, 254–56; and earthquake of Santa Marta, 259–60 Tatelulco, Parcialidad de, 51, 133, 167, 169, 171, 202; borders of, 174; militia, 186, 202–3; kinship relations in, 215, 226, 229; and earthquake of Santa Marta, 260 Taxcala, Barrio de (Ciudad Real de Chiapa), 114–15 Teccalli, 137–39, 145–46, 166n100 Tecún Umán, 70 Teguantepeque, Parcialidad de, 51, 57–59, 133, 167–77 passim, 186, 202–3, 228, 255– 57, 260. See also Mixtecs; Zapotecs Tehuantepec (Oaxaca): in Ciudad Vieja, 40, 51, 57–59, 139, 161–62, 257; and Triple Alliance, 48, 57–59; conquest of, 66; alliance with Spanish, 80; and language, 138; Zapotec identity in, 138–39; and trade routes, 159–60, 164 Tehuantepec, Isthmus of, 13, 16, 18, 36 Tenochca (Mexica): in Basin of Mexico, 37; imperialism, 40–50, 108, 135, 143–44; and Postclassic relationships, 50–60; relationship with Tlatelolca, 54–55, 142; in invasions of Central America, 59, 71, 84, 221, 223, 225, 275; defeat of, 61–63, 216; in Nahua-Spanish alliances, 77–79, 89; history, 96, 110, 198 Tenochtitlan: and Central America, 14, 38, 77, 79, 158; imperialism, 16, 40–60, 143, 198; and Tollan Zuyuá, 29, 37; and Triple Alliance, 37–38, 140; defeat of, 60–62, 65–66, 89, 181; in Nahua-Spanish alliances, 62–64, 79, 144, 220; histories of, 96; in Justicia 291, 120 Tenustitan, Parcialidad de, 51, 133, 161, 167– 68, 171, 186, 202–3, 227–28, 260. See also Tapia, Juan de Teotihuacan, 13, 17, 20–37 passim, 42, 66, 142 Tepeaca, 46n13, 51, 53, 80, 108, 137, 144 Tequicistlán, 105. See also Rab’inal Tescuco, Parcialidad de, 51, 133, 161, 167, 171, 173–74, 186, 202–3, 206, 228

Texcoco: in Classic period, 20; and Triple Alliance, 37, 54–56, 59, 140; and Aztec imperialism, 45, 49, 53, 143; and defeat of Tenochtitlan, 61; in invasions of Central America, 63–64, 147, 161, 173, 223; under Spanish colonial rule, 153. See also Acolhua; Lona, Pedro de la Texcoco, Lake, 29, 37, 41n5, 42, 53–54, 61 Textiles, 48, 159–60, 163 Tezcatlipoca, 140–41 Tikal, 17, 21, 23–28, 35–36 Tlacopan, 37, 49, 59, 143–44 Tlacuiloque, 101, 104–10 passim Tlalmanalco, 78, 140 Tlaloc, 37, 199 Tlaloc War Costume, 24 Tlamanalco (Chalco, Mexico), 78 Tlatelolca (Mexica), 8, 30, 41n5, 53–55, 62, 71, 142 Tlatelolco, 40, 55–56, 61, 144 Tlaxcala, 38; in invasions of Central America, 40, 51, 78, 85, 115, 117, 142–43, 212, 249–50, 280–83; and Triple Alliance, 42, 47, 51–59 passim; alliance with Spanish, 64, 89, 144–46, 153–54, 204, 261, 266; Postclassic confederation, 138–40; compadrazgo in, 227 Tlaxcalteca: in invasions of Central America, 48, 50, 59, 71, 79–80, 85, 90, 114–16; in Ciudad Vieja, 51, 89, 113, 133, 154–59, 166, 170, 176, 204, 217, 221, 226, 269, 276n14, 278; and Tenochca, 51–52; and Cholulteca, 52, 60; and Huejotzinga, 56–57; and Spanish, 60–68 passim, 71, 89, 153, 218–19, 222, 261, 281; in Justicia 291, 119, 123–30; in northern New Spain, 145–46, 282; in Santiago de Guatemala, 151; in Paseo del Pendón Real, 186–87; in Fiesta del Volcán, 192, 194–95, 198–203 passim; in Santa Ynés Petapa, 225. See also Ceynos, Antonio; Montejo, Joan; Muñoz Camargo, Diego; Oçelote, Francisco; Oñate, Francisco de; Tascala, Juan de; Xicotencatl, Lucía; Xicotencatl, Luisa Techquilvasin

318 / Index Tlaxilacalli, 136–37, 144 Toj (lineage), 33, 34, 36 Tollan Zuyúa, 20, 27–36, 110 Tolteca-chichimeca, Historia, 7, 28–30 Toltecs, 14–15, 27–36 passim, 134, 142 Totonicapán, 112, 122–23, 130, 132, 146–47, 161n85, 165–66, 236n10, 244, 264 Totonicapán, Titulo de, 28, 38 Trade, 20, 22, 28, 36, 44, 50, 55, 77, 133, 148, 159–64, 172, 257 Tribute: and Aztec imperialism, 38, 44–55 passim, 77, 135; exemption, 67, 76, 111, 117, 120–31 passim, 202n56, 267, 281–82; and Mexicano identity, 114–15, 119–20, 128, 131, 133, 165, 170–75, 187–88, 225, 230, 261, 274; and ethnic identity, 114–15, 138, 145, 147, 216, 232, 253–54; and Reservados, 204, 206, 226–27n113; in Santiago de Guatemala, 214, 251n59; and earthquake of Santa Marta, 261, 264–65, 270 Triple Alliance, 37, 41, 48, 50–56, 59, 77, 79, 144, 215 Tula (Hidalgo), 29–37 passim, 42, 142 Tututepec (Oaxaca), 58, 216 Tzacualpa. See San Miguel Escobar Tzeltal Maya, 17 Tz’utujil Maya, 2–3, 44, 81, 232, 238 Uaxactún, 21, 23–24 Usagre, Diego de, 84n29, 86, 221–22 Uspantlán (El Quiché), 86, 105 Utatlán (El Quiché), 1, 63, 80–81, 91, 102, 115, 216 Utatlán, Barrio de (Santiago), 114–15 Uto-Aztecan, 16 Uxmal (Yucatan), 29 Valladolid. See Comayagua Vásquez, Francisco, 153–55 Vecinos: definition of, 111 Velasquez, Juan, 63 Verapaz, 86, 112, 156 Villanueva, Diego de la, 122, 126 Volcán de Agua, 93, 104, 148

Weaponry, 45–46, 78, 98, 108, 189, 201 Women, 90–92, 208–9, 215, 226. See also Compadrazgo; Family; Mestizos Xelajuj (Quetzaltenango), 80, 101 Xetulul (Zapotitlán), 80, 101, 233n2 Xicotencatl, 216, 218–19, 223 Xicotencatl, Lucía, 159, 219–20 Xicotencatl, Luisa Techquilvasin, 159, 164, 215–19 Xicotencatl el Mozo, 281 Xigualos. See Shigualos Ximénez, Francisco, 157n70, 186 Xochimilco: in invasions of Central America, 40, 89; and Triple Alliance, 45, 49, 52–53, 56, 143; and Parcialidad de Chinampa, 51; and defeat of Tenochtitlan, 61–62; in Nahua-Spanish alliances, 66, 143–44; Postclassic migration from, 137. See also Chinampa Xoconusco (Chiapas): and Triple Alliance, 38, 48, 77; Nahua-Spanish conquest of, 63, 76, 80, 84–85, 102; in Justicia 291, 120, 123–24, 130; Nahua colony in, 132, 146, 221, 232; and trade routes, 160, 163–64. See also Çiguacoatl, Marcos Xolotl, 58–59 Xpantzay, Las Historias de los, 28 Yllescas, Hernando de, 90, 157 Yucatan, 3, 16, 29–30 Zaachila (Oaxaca), 58, 138 Zacualpa (Baja Verapaz), 33 Zaculeu (Huehuetenango), 37 Zapotecs: in invasions of Central America, 10, 50–51, 58–59, 71, 80; relations with Mixtecs, 57–58, 68; and Triple Alliance, 57–59; Nahua-Spanish conquest of, 68; languages, 72, 138, 232; in Justicia 291, 76, 123–25, 127–28, 158, 203; in Postclassic period, 138–39; in Ciudad Vieja, 139, 158, 166, 170, 177; in Antequera, 144 Zapotitlán (Suchitepéquez), 80, 100