Description
"Lienzo" means "canvas" or "piece of cloth" in Spanish. The original Lienzo de Tlaxcala was a painted cotton sheet around 2 meters wide and 5 meters long.[1] (Figure 1)
A large scene at the top depicted the political structure of the Central Mexican kingdom of Tlaxcala. Below, a seven-by-thirteen grid of cells contained dozens of small scenes that showed how the Tlaxcalans and their Spanish allies defeated the Aztec empire. In other words, the lower portion of the Lienzo told the story of the "Conquest of Mexico" from a Native American point of view.[2] The small scenes which told this story read from left to right, top to bottom, one row at a time.
Most of the Lienzo’s narrative was told through pictures. Its artists mixed Mesoamerican and European styles in complex ways. For example, Tlaxcalan warriors were always drawn with their faces in profile, following prehispanic traditions. Malinche, the indigenous translator of Hernán Cortes, was always drawn with her face in a 3/4 view imported from Europe. The objects depicted in the Lienzo’s scenes also mixed Mesoamerican with European. Malinche was never depicted wearing New World sandals; she was always drawn wearing closed European shoes[3] (Figure 2).
Indigenous warriors were dressed in feathered body suits, wore battle standards on their backs, and held circular shields. European warriors were dressed in armor or doublets and held oval shields. Old World horses were drawn next to New World turkeys.
Most of the cells were also labeled at the top in alphabetic script. These labels were written in Nahuatl, the dominant language spoken in Central Mexico in the sixteenth century (Figure 2). Usually these labels were geographic names, indicating where each scene was taking place. Occasionally short Nahuatl phrases were written instead, describing the scene in more detail.
The original Lienzo de Tlaxcala is lost. The version you see in Mesolore has been recreated. Above all, our recreation uses images from a lithograph facsimile printed in 1892. In addition (as discussed below), the recreation is also influenced by other visual documents from the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.
History and Publications
The original Lienzo seems to have been painted around 1552, commissioned by Tlaxcala’s (indigenous) city council. The surviving council minutes for 17 June 1552 record plans to send a delegation across the Atlantic to meet with the Emperor, Charles V. As part of this delegation, a painting was to be prepared showing the arrival of Hernán Cortés in Tlaxcala and the subsequent conquest of the Aztec empire by Tlaxcalans allied with Spaniards.[4] It is entirely possible that the Lienzo was actually taken to Europe on such a journey. At least six Tlaxcalan delegations traveled across the Atlantic to present petitions before the Crown, the earliest in 1527.[5] Unfortunately, however, we have not found records that confirm the Lienzo’s transatlantic travels. The embassy to Europe first planned in 1552 took a number of years to prepare (feather capes for the ambassadors had been completed in 1556), and as far as we can tell it did not take place until 1562.[6] We do not know if the ambassadors took the Lienzo with them.
When we next hear of the Lienzo, in the late eighteenth century, it is (back?) in Tlaxcala. A copy was painted in 1773, in an updated eighteenth-century style. Shading was used extensively in this copy to give bodies and draped clothing an appareance of three-dimensionality (Figure 3).
In 1787 municipal official Nicolás Faustino Mazihcatzin y Calmecahua wrote an image-by-image description of the cloth, and said that it had been created during the reign of Viceroy don Luis de Velasco (1550-1564). Mazihcatzin also claimed that three copies once existed: one created to be sent across the Atlantic to the Emperor, one created to be sent to the Viceroy in Mexico City, and one to be kept in Tlaxcala.[7]
The 1773 copy still survives, housed in storage at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City. The fate of the original cotton cloth (or cloths, if three were painted) is unclear. One was still in Tlaxcala until the 1860s. Then, during the French occupation of Mexico (1862 - 1867), the sixteenth-century Lienzo was taken from Tlaxcala to Mexico City so that a copy could be made by the French Scientific Commission, when the Emperor Maximilian was executed (Figure 4),
And the French driven out, Tlaxcalan authorities tried to recover their stolen document. But it could not be found, and remains lost.[8]
Fortunately, a copy on paper was executed. By the mid-1880s this copy was owned by the Mexican historian Alfred Chavero. It consisted of two parts: "tracings which were taken directly from the original," along with "a very exact copy, carefully drawn, and for which colors were made to perfectly match the original."[9] In 1892 Chavero used his copy to commission a facsimile of the Lienzo for the Exposición Historico-Americana, a World’s Fair held in Madrid to honor Christopher Columbus. Photographs of Mexico’s exhibit galleries show that plates from this facsimile were on display in the very first Sala Mexicana, along with plaster copies of Aztec monumental statuary and mannequins dressed in prehispanic attire (Figure 5).
The plates of this facsimile could also be purchased (along with reproductions of other prehispanic and colonial documents) in a lavish publication entitled the Homenaje á Cristóbal Colón: Antigüedades mexicanas (Homage to Christopher Columbus: Mexican Antiquities)(Figure 6).
The tracings that Chavero used to commission the Homenaje are now also lost, and so the 1892 lithographs are our primary source of information on what the sixteenth-century Lienzo looked like.[10]
There is a problem with these 1892 lithographs, however. They—like the tracings they were based upon—each reproduce a single scene taken from the Lienzo and then surrounded by blank paper (Figure 7).
Ever since the Homenaje was published, scholars who have studied the Lienzo have treated it as a series of separate vignettes. The fact that all of these vignettes were once closely packed together in a seven-by-thirteen grid, below a massive scene of the kingdom of Tlaxcala, is ignored. The presentation of the Lienzo in Mesolore brings these separated scenes together again, to show what the document once looked like. By rejoining the Lienzo’s pieces, we can see how its creators used the seven-by-thirteen grid to create complex visual connections between different scenes. The Lienzo is one of the masterpieces of colonial Mexican art, but it could not be appreciated as such so long as it was seen only in fragments.
How can we be sure that the 1892 lithographs accurately capture what the sixteenth-century original looked like? Mesolore’s recreation of the Lienzo is made from digital scans of lithographs based on tracings taken from a cloth original. Are these copies of copies at all faithful to their sixteenth-century source? Fortunately, there are a number of ways to evaluate the quality and authenticity of the 1892 lithographs.
In the sixteenth century, the Tlaxcalans were very interested in their own past, above all because their early alliance with the Spaniards gave them leverage with the Crown. They produced a number of pictorial histories about the conquest, and two of these versions survive apart from the Lienzo.[11] The first is now housed in the Benson Latin American Collection in Austin, Texas. This "Texas Fragment" was painted around 1540 on both sides of a sheet of bark paper. Each side depicts two scenes, and these four scenes are mirrored by the images in cells 4 to 7 of the Lienzo—that is, the last four images in the first row of cells. The close parallels between the Texas Fragment and the Lienzo,in which the same basic scenes presented in the same sequential order, makes clear that the Lienzo drew on—and chose from—prior accounts of Tlaxcala’s history (Figures 8 and 9).
In general, a comparison of details makes clear that the style of the 1892 lithograph corresponds reasonably well to the style of documents painted in Tlaxcala in the mid-sixteenth century, as represented by the Texas Fragment (Figures 10 and 11).
The other visualization of Tlaxcala’s history is a manuscript now in the University of Glasgow. The first part is an alphabetic Historia de Tlaxcala completed by Diego Muñoz Camargo in 1585. The second part consists of 156 ink drawings (black in on white paper, with occasional washes) apparently created before Muñoz Camargo wrote his text (and with a complex relationship to it). Many of these scenes were copied from the Lienzo de Tlaxcala. In terms of what is represented, the scenes in the 1892 lithograph and their cognates in the Historia correspond very closely. In terms of how these scenes are drawn, however, the style of the Muñoz Camargo drawings is far more influenced by European conventions than is either the Texas Fragment or the 1892 lithograph. A comparison of the first small scene in the Lienzo with the equivalent scene in Muñoz Camargo (Figure 12) makes this clear.
Finally, as we mentioned above, a copy of the Lienzo was painted in Tlaxcala in 1773. Although the style of this copy is very much influenced by eighteenth-century aesthetics (Figure 12), the basic content and composition of the individual scenes matches the 1892 lithographs, (lithographs based on a copy of the lost sixteenth-century original). Since the 1773 copy retains the seven-by-thirteen grid, we can be confident that the position of scenes within the cells of Mesolore’s reconstruction is accurate.
All this is not to say that the 1892 lithographs—and the tracings and drawings on which they are based—are perfectly faithful to the lost cloth document. By comparing these lithographs with the Muñoz Camargo 1585 manuscript and with the 1773 copy, it is clear that the 1892 copy is incomplete. Two of the four battle standards in the top scene have been left out of the 1892 version, as have all seven cells in the final, thirteenth row (Figure 3).
(Mesolore’s digital recreation of the Lienzo restores these missing parts, marking them as restorations). But whatever its visual flaws and errors, the 1892 images of the Lienzo de Tlaxcala have clear affinities with surviving documents from sixteenth-century Tlaxcala, and are far closer to those aesthetics than are, say, the images of the 1773 copy.
As we have already mentioned, the lithographs included in the 1892 Homenaje a Cristóbal Colón form the basis for all other editions of the Lienzo. Another edition was published in 1939 by G. M. Echaniz, and another in 1983 by Cartón y Papel de México. In the same year, Cartón y Papel de México also printed a poster of the 1773 cloth copy.
Contents
Visually, the Lienzo is divided into two main parts: a large scene at the top and a seven-by-thirteen grid of smaller scenes below.[12]
The large scene depicts the political structure of the kingdom of Tlaxcala (Figure 13).
At its center is a green "mountain" glyph. This may refer to a specific peak, La Malinche, which dominates the Valley of Tlaxcala.[13] It may also be a reference to Tlaxcala’s status as an altepetl (literally "water-mountain" in Nahuatl), which was the basic unit of political organization in Central Mexico both before and after the Europeans arrived. "Tlaxcala" means "Place of the Tortillas" in Nahuatl, and yet the central mountain glyph is not marked with tortillas. Instead, it is decorated with signs of Tlaxcala’s conversion to Christianity and incorporation into the Hapsburg Empire. Within its bell-shaped outlines are a church, the Virgin of the Assumption (patroness of Tlaxcala) and a coat of arms granted by Charles V to Tlaxcala in 1535 (Figure 14).[14]
Tlaxcala’s identity as a Christian kingdom within the Hapsburg empire is underscored by the images drawn above and below the central mountain. Below, a group of seven men erects a cross: three are Tlaxcalans and four are Europeans (Figure 15).
Above, at the very top of the Lienzo, is the coat of arms of the Emperor Charles V, backed by the double-headed eagle of the Hapsburgs (Figure 16).
The location of the place sign of Tlaxcala (and its coat of arms) directly below the coat of arms of Charles V is significant. Because of the help the Tlaxcalans gave to the Spaniards in the conquest of the Aztec empire (and after political negotiations in Europe by Tlaxcalan ambassadors), Emperor Charles V granted the colonial capital an official title: "La Leal ciudad de Tlaxcala," the Loyal City of Tlaxcala.[15] This gave Tlaxcala a specific legal status. As a city, Tlaxcala was subject directly to the Crown, and not to any intermediate political authority (such as another community or a titled lord). This was the highest status a municipality could receive.[16]
Tlaxcala was what historians call a "complex altepetl," meaning that it was a kingdom formed by the unification of several smaller altepetl.[17] The majority of space around the central axis of shields and Christian symbols at the top of the Lienzo is, therefore, divided into four parts, each representing one of Tlaxcala’s component altepetl (Figure 13). Surrounding the central mountain are four indigenous buildings. Each is marked with a different battle standard to indicate which altepetl it represents. In clockwise order, these are Ocotelolco (with an eagle battle standard), Quiahuiztlan (with a quetzal feather battle standard), Tepeticpac (with a Xolotl-dog battle standard), and Tizatlán (with a heron battle standard). A procession of nobles is drawn for each altepetl, as is a grid of smaller buildings with people inside them. These buildings indicate the number of noble houses, teccalli, associated with each altepetl.[18] The two most powerful altepetl, Ocotelolco and Tizatlán, are also drawn with their own church.
Moving back towards the central axis, and surrounding the mountain and cross, are sixteen Europeans seated in folding chairs. Labels on the 1773 copy identify the three men to the right as Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenleal (bishop of Mexico City), Antonio de Mendoza, and Luis de Velasco (the first two Viceroys of New Spain) (Figure 17).
Symbols attached to these three men confirm the 1773 labels. A bishop’s miter is drawn before the man on top, and the two figures below him wear red crosses on their chests. Red crosses were symbols of the Order of Santiago, and both Viceroy Mendoza and Viceroy Velasco were knights of this order.
The identity of the thirteen men in black to the left of the central axis is less clear (Figure 17). Labels on the 1773 copy identify one as Hernán Cortés, another as the Marques, one of Cortés’ titles, and others as members of the First and Second Real Audiencia, the royal court in Mexico City. These identifications are hard to corroborate, and the fact that two labels refer to Cortés is odd. These seated men are identical, and lack the distinguishing details of the bishop and viceroys to the right. The fact that there are thirteen of them is significant. Thirteen was a talismanic Mesoamerican number (versus the European twelve).[19] It may be, then, that these thirteen figures were originally meant to indicate thirteen manifestations of Spanish power in general, and not any particular set of historical persons.
In sum, the large scene at the top of the Lienzo can be divided into five parts: the symbols of the four main altepetl surround a central axis that merges European and Tlaxcalan symbols of authority: folding chairs, shields, crosses, a mountain. Many prehispanic peoples in Mesoamerica thought of the universe as organized into five directions (North, South, East, West, and Center). The organization of the scene at the top of the Lienzo may be intended to indicate the "exemplary" structure of the colonial Tlaxcalan polity.[20]
If the Lienzo’s main scene presents an idealized map of the kingdom of Tlaxcala as it existed around 1552, the seven-by-thirteen grid of cells below travels back in time to 1519, in order to tell the story of the Tlaxcalans' alliance with the Spaniards and their joint conquest of the Aztec empire. The Aztecs were traditional enemies of the Tlaxcalans, who had managed to resist incorporation into the Aztec empire right up to the arrival of the Spaniards.
The cell-by-cell narrative begins in the upper left-hand corner. The very first cell—labeled Tlaxcalla[n] in alphabetic script—shows the rulers of Tlaxcala’s four main altepetl receiving a letter sent by Hernán Cortés (Figures 7 and 12).
The letter is brought by a messenger who stands in the middle of the seated Tlaxcalan lords. He is dressed only in a loincloth, his face is tattooed or scarified, and his long hair Is unbound. In other words, he is drawn as a social subordinate: a slave or barbarian.[21] The following six scenes depict the arrival of the Cortés’ army in Tlaxcala. In all of these initial scenes, interactions between Hernán Cortés and the Tlaxcalans are mediated by an indigenous woman (Figure 8).
This is Doña Marina or Malinche, who served as Cortés’ translator, speaking Maya, Nahuatl and, eventually, Spanish. Her linguistic and diplomatic skills made European-indigenous alliances possible.[22]
The second row of cells begins by showing conversion of the Tlaxcalans to Christianity (cell 8). Visually, the scene shows the new converts receiving communion, while kneeling before the consecrated Host. The long alphabetic gloss in Nahuatl, however, speaks of baptism (Figure 18).
With the Tlaxcalan nobles Christianized, the joint Tlaxcalan-European army sets out for Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital. The next two cells, 9 and 10, record events that took place en route in Cholula and Chalco (Figure 2).
Cell 11 takes place in the Aztec capital itself (Figure 19).
Labeled "Tenochtitlan," it shows the meeting of Cortés and Malinche with the Aztec emperor Moctezuma. Moctezuma is then taken hostage, and the scenes that follow cell 11 show the escalating tensions between the invaders and the Aztecs. Cells 14, 15, and 16 show skirmishes within Tenochtitlán.
Outnumbered and surrounded, the Spaniards and their indigenous allies finally flee Tenochtitlán at night, crossing one of the causeways that stretched across Lake Texcoco to link the island to the mainland. The events of this Noche Triste (Sad Night, as the Spaniards called it) are shown in an enormous scene spanning four cells, strikingly framed in swirling blue water. The invaders then fight their way back to Tlaxcala across a number of scenes (Figure 20).
Once safely in Tlaxcala, the Europeans (and their horses) rest and receive gifts of food. Then the invaders set off for Tenochtitlán a second time, fighting their way back to the shores of Lake Texcoco (cell 42). Cells 43 to 47 show the battles for Tenochtitlán. This time, the campaign ends in victory for the invaders. Cell 48 shows Cortés enthroned. A panache of quetzal plumes ornaments his felt hat, and Aztec nobles surrender before him (Figure 21).
The Nahuatl gloss at the top of this cell reads "Yc poliuhque mexica" (Thus the Mexica [Aztecs] were vanquished).
The thirty-nine cells which follow the fall of Tenochtitlán (almost half of the Lienzo) are devoted exclusively (and repetitively) to scenes of battle, following different campaigns as the Europeans and their Tlaxcalan allies set out to conquer the rest of the Aztec empire: traveling north to Michoacan, south to Guatemala. Over and over, the same basic template is repeated (Figure 22).
To the left is the army of the invaders, mostly indigenous but led by a Spaniard mounted on a horse. He brandishes a spear, and his steed tramples bodies underfoot. To the right, enemy indigenous warriors battle to protect their lands from conquest. Significantly, many of these indigenous enemies are dressed only in loincloths and lack the splendid battle standards of the Tlaxcalan warriors. As we saw in the first cell of the Lienzo’s grid, their undress visually relegates the non-Tlaxcalans to a subordinate status.[23] At the right-most edge of each of these cells is an ornamented mountain. Like the green mountain glyph in the Lienzo’s main scene, these place signs indicate where each battle is being fought. In addition to this pictorial place sign, all of these cells are alphabetically labeled with a place name, as well.
Before the Emperor: Mirrors and Shields
The artists of the Lienzo used its seven-by-thirteen grid to amplify the meaning of the scenes it contained. Indeed, the very use of a seven-by-thirteen grid is significant. Seven times thirteen is ninety-one, which is the sum of all the numbers from one to thirteen.[24] If the Lienzo were indeed commissioned in 1552, it was created as a thing to be brought before the Emperor, Charles V. We argue that the Lienzo was created to be an enchanted, enthralling artifact, designed to entrance the Emperor and thus make him pliable to the demands of Tlaxcalan ambassadors.[25]
Looking with care at the spatial connections between the different cells reveals a number of subtle patterns. Consider the pairing of iconolatry and iconoclasm in cells 8 and 15, stacked on top of each other (Figure 23).
Above, Tlaxcalan nobles are converted to Christianity. To the right of the Host is an image of the Virgin and Child and a crucifix. The same pairing of Virgin and Child with crucifix occurs directly below, one cell down—but the story has moved to Tenochtitlán. This scene shows an attack by the Aztecs on the palace where the Spaniards held Moctezuma hostage. Amidst a hail of arrows and stones, sacred Christian images are being consumed by flames. The pairing of cell 8 and cell 15 visually contrasts Tlaxcalan conversion with Aztec iconoclasm.
The attack on Moctezuma’s palace triggered a chain of events that culminated with the flight of the Spaniards from Tenochtitlán. Their escape is shown in a series of cells that begin just to the right of Cell 15, a sequence which unfolds in a beautiful play of positive and negative space, of water and land and shields (Figure 20).
The narrow canal-crossed streets of Tenochtitlán (cell 17) become one of the causeways (cell 18) connecting the island-capital of Tenochtitlan to the mainland, where (cell 19) the fleeing army enters a protective corridor of shields (chimalli) held by indigenous allies.
As a third example of these compositional nuances, consider the band of water that flows along the bottom and up the right-hand side of cell 51. This creates a visual moat between the cells below and to the right, but its upward flow connects cell 51 to the row above, which shows watery scenes of the conquest of Tenochtitlán (Figure 24).
Significantly, Cell 51 is the last time that the Lienzo deals with expeditions led by Hernán Cortes. The rest of the Lienzo deals with Spanish-Tlaxcalan expeditions under other Spanish captains. In other words, the channel of water in Cell 51 both divides that cell from the rest of the story which follows, and links it to scenes of Cortés’ great victory in the row above.
Many other fascinating and subtle patterns interconnect the Lienzo’s cells. Perhaps the most important patterns in the Lienzo concern issues of centrality. The seven-by-thirteen format creates a central column (the fourth), a central row (the seventh), and thus a central cell within the grid as a whole: cell 42. Compositionally, this cell’s contents are unusual; so visually striking are they that cell 42 can be picked out from a distance (Figure 25).
At the center of this cell is an architectural platform on a round island, surrounded by a round lake, and framed on four sides by lakeshore communities. This is a schematic map of Lake Texcoco and its central island—the island on which was built Tenochtitlán. Much of the Lienzo’s narrative is about how an alliance of Tlaxcalans and Spaniards conquered the Aztec empire: fighting their way to its capital city, retreating in defeat, coming back a second time for victory, and then spreading out across Mesoamerica to conquer the provinces once ruled from the island. Cell 42 is about the second, successful assault on the Aztec capital. Tenochtitlán was the dominant political power in late prehispanic Mesoamerica, and so its importance is signaled by its physical position at the exact center of the Lienzo’s grid. By stressing the centrality and importance of Tenochtitlán, the authors of the Lienzo underscored the magnitude of what they—the Tlaxcalans—had helped the Spaniards to achieve: the overthrow of the largest and most powerful empire in Mesoamerica.[26]
But the Lienzo, of course, is centered on Tlaxcala’s history. And so it is not surprising that its creators embedded a second center within its imagery—a second center that is actually far more important to the document as a whole. If cell 42 is at the exact center of the grid, moving two cells up brings us to the exact center of the cloth—originally about 2.5 meters down from the top (or up from the bottom). Cell 29 is visually flagged in a number of ways (Figure 26).
First, to the left and the right are double-wide cells which, like the unusual composition of Cell 42, stand out from a distance to the viewer. The importance of Cell 29 is further underscored by its alphabetic label: we have returned to "Tlaxcallan." Remember that the scene at the top of the Lienzo presents a schematic map of Tlaxcala (Figure 13),
And the scene in its very first cell is also labeled as taking place there (Figures 7 and 12).
Compositionally, the Lienzo presents Tlaxcala as the starting-points of its narrative as well as the central pivot around which all other events radiate.
Cell 29 does not simply place Tlaxcala at the physical center of the Lienzo’s story. It also signals a turning-point in the narrative. It contains a deceptively simple scene (Figure 27).
In the center, Cortés speaks with one of the four rulers of Tlaxcala, perhaps Xicontecatl. Malinche stands below. Floating above all three, oddly, is a battle standard. A radiating circle of green quetzal feathers bursts from a golden center. This circle stands out visually from a distance, easy to spot. But why is a feathered battle standard hanging in the air between Cortés and Xicontecatl? Its details are very interesting. Bursting out from its golden circular center are four V-shaped rays. These are sunbeams. This battle standard takes the form of a gilded, feathered sun. Cell 29 shows a golden sun rising into the sky above Cortes and Xicontecatl and Malinche, down below. The depiction of a sun rising in Tlaxcala, at the exact center of the Lienzo, is no trivial detail. In origin stories told throughout Mesoamerica, sunrises symbolically separated a past age of barbarity from the civilized age of the narrator’s present.[27] Ages of creation—and human-like beings—had existed before the present. But these prior ages were all flawed, incomplete. Their inhabitants did not practice agriculture, for example, or did not know how to properly honor the gods. These prior creations were, therefore, destroyed to make way for the properly-ordered present. Typically, strange suns burned in the sky of these previous creations. These vanished suns, plus the Four Motion sun of the present, are often depicted on Central Mexican Calendar Stones (Figure 28).
A new political order was often said to begin with the dawn of a First Sunrise. After the first attempt to conquer Tenochtitlan failed, Cortés and his joint European-indigenous army retreated to safety in Tlaxcala. According to an account written in Tlaxcala in 1562, Cortés then promised his loyal allies that Tlaxcala would have an elevated status in the new colonial order.[28] What cell 29 probably shows, then, is the conversation in which Cortés offered special privileges to the Tlaxcalans. A New Sun, therefore, dawns above an image of the covenant between Tlaxcalans and Europeans, setting the foundation for Tlaxcala’s privileged position in the colonial New Spain.
In addition to marking the exact center of the cloth, cell 29 also divides the Lienzo into two halves. This spatial division has important consequences for our understanding of the document as a whole. Cell 29 marks the beginning of Malinche’s virtual disappearance from the Lienzo. Up until this point, Malinche has appeared in 19 of the 28 scenes. In contrast, she appears in only 2 of the 58 scenes which follow (Figure 29, shading indicates cells where Malinche appears).
Her virtual disappearance cannot be explained because the scenes after cell 29 focus on battles. Up until this central point, Malinche has appeared in battle scenes again and again (Figure 2).
Nor can her disappearance be attributed to "actual historical events." We know from alphabetic accounts that Malinche was present at many of the events which are shown after cell 29 (such as accompanying Cortés on the second, successful assault on Tenochtitlán). The authors of the Lienzo, then, intentionally write Malinche out of Tlaxcala’s history after the First Sunrise in the document’s central image.
There are several ways to understand her disappearance. A number of prehispanic narratives from Mesoamerica—and from the Americas generally—involve primordial accounts of a female-dominated age replaced by a male-dominated age, or tell how a male hero defeats a powerful female predecessor.[29] The Lienzo’s gendered transition may draw on prehispanic narrative roots. This change also relates in complex and contradictory ways to the colonial order. One of the hallmarks of the Spanish regime was the predominance of men in official positions of political power—a masculine bias which had not been so extreme in prehispanic times.[30] Malinche’s disappearance after this scene may reflect this new reality. Yet at the same time the Spanish legal regime seems to have initially empowered women in its courtrooms.[31] The new power of women under Spanish rule seems to have caused some anxiety in Tlaxcala. Tlaxcala’s city council minutes from 29 April 1555—the same minutes which may record the commissioning of the Lienzo in 1552—describe plans to send a commission to Mexico City to greet the Viceroy and to complain that lordly teccalli in Tlaxcala "are coming to ruin because of new prerogatives assumed by women." A year later, the same minutes record a request for an inquiry as to whether a woman had ever been a ruler in Tlaxcala, or ever headed a lordly teccalli in the past (These complaints, of course, were voiced by an all-male institution modeled on Spanish political forms). Twenty years later, Tlaxcalan historian Diego Muñoz Camargo suggests that female property ownership and control of teccalli was a new, colonial phenomenon.[32] The erasure of Malinche, then, may be an anxious attempt to assert the fundamental androcentrism of the new colonial regime.
The gendering of the Lienzo into a first half and a second half relates in complex ways to what Federico Navarrete has observed about the role of Christian supernaturals in its imagery.[33] Navarrete argued that the Lienzo incorporates into its history the actions of two Christian supernaturals. One was female: the Virgin Mary, manifested in Malinche (a Nahuatl transformation of the name María), both as interpreter and as the mountain of La Malinche shown at the center of the main scene (a mountain decorated, you will remember, with an image of the Virgin Mary). The second supernatural was male: Santiago Matamoros (Moor-Slayer) transformed in the New World as Santiago Mataindios (Indian- Slayer). He is manifested, Navarrete argues, in the figure of a charging spear-wielding Spanish knight, trampling severed body parts underfoot (Figures 2 [above], 22, and 24).
By joining the pieces of the Lienzo together again, we can see the profoundly spatial nature of Navarrete’s observations (Figures 29 [above] and 30).
The first half of the Lienzo is dominated by scenes involving Malinche/María/Mountain, scenes that focus on dialogue and intercession--Malinche was a translator; the Virgin was and is an abogada, a lawyer who pleads with God on behalf of her human worshippers, and as we saw, indigenous women had power in colonial courtrooms that they did not have in colonial political institutions.[34] In contrast, the second half of the Lienzo is dominated by scenes involving the charging Spaniard as Santiago, scenes that focus above all on warfare. Indeed, the basic template of the "Santiago" scene is repeated 49 times in the second half of the Lienzo: a charging Spaniard on the left, a mountainous place sign on the right (Figure 30). Careful eyes can detect this visual rhythm when looking at the Lienzo from a distance. The differing appearances of Malinche and Santiago, then, further underscore the way cell 29 divides the Lienzo in two.
The fact that the Lienzo has two centers has even more implications. Both centers divide the Lienzo into two different halves. As we have just seen, cell 29 divides the Lienzo into cells dominated by Malinche and cells dominated by Santiago. Cell 42 divides the Lienzo into differently-colored halves; the cells that follow cell 42 use large amounts of yellow, green, and beige pigments, which contrast with the far more subtle coloration of cells 1 – 42. Focal point, upper half, lower half: this, multiplied by two, is the basic spatial layout of the Lienzo (Figures 31 and 32).
This is also the basic spatial layout of Mesoamerican representations of eyes and mirrors, which are depicted as circles with an upper half, a lower half, and a central focal point.
Figure 33 (above) shows a page from the prehispanic Codex Laud, a Central Mexican divinatory almanac. In the center, the skeleton-monkey being wears a red and white mirror around its neck. Directly below, in the lower margin of the page, is painted the head of the personified Rain. His red and white round eye stares out from within a round blue "goggle."
Significantly, disembodied eyeballs were also used in prehispanic and colonial art to mark the surfaces of reflective things. This probably relates to a linguistic pun in Nahuatl; the same word, ixtli, was used for both eye and surface. A shining surface (ixtli) is therefore marked by an eye (ixtli).[35] Dana Leibsohn has argued that eye-marked surfaces attached human eyes to them through a kind of visual homology.[36] Shining surfaces were "eye-catching" or "eye-popping" things. They drew humans and nonhumans together in a kind of sympathetic resonance: shining eyes attracted shining eyes.
What all this suggests is that the Lienzo, at its deepest structural levels, was conceived as a giant mirror, a giant staring eye. From a Mesoamerican perspective, the eye-like structure of the Lienzo’s imagery would have had the power to draw human eyes to it, ixtli to ixtli, in sympathetic resonance. The Lienzo’s imagery was thus made irresistibly attractive. The macro-visual image of the Lienzo as a giant mirror, a giant staring eye, may seem absurd. But from a Mesoamerican perspective this would have made perfect sense. One type of mirror common in prehispanic Mesoamerica was made out of mosaic (often turquoise or pyrite).[37] The tessellated surfaces of these mirrors, made up of dozens of stone tiles, looked a great deal like the tessellated appearance of the Lienzo, made up of dozens of painted cells (Figure 34).
Furthermore, it is well documented that Mesoamericans linked written surfaces to mirrors, and thought about reading as a kind of eye. Written documents, like the mirrors used in divination, allowed one to see into the past and future, to see things distant in time and space.[38] Finally, the Lienzo has a mirrored relationship to one of its probable sources, the Texas Fragment. You will remember that the four scenes of the Texas fragment seem to have inspired the last four scenes in the first row of the Lienzo (cells 4-7). But when the artists of the Lienzo copied the Texas Fragment, they made one major change: they reversed the order of all of the figures in the scenes (Figures 8 and 9).
The Lienzo’s relation to the Texas Fragment scenes is like that of a mirror, reflecting all of those images backwards.
And all this does not exhaust the cleverly designed structure of the Lienzo. If, on one level, it was conceived as a giant mirror, it was also conceived as a giant shield. Representations of shields are something of an obsession in the Lienzo. They are constantly depicted—only 8 of the Lienzo’s 87 small cells do not contain representations of shields. The Lienzo’s artists carefully distinguish the forms of European versus Mesoamerican shields. This is well-illustrated in cell 27, where round Central Mexican chimaltin, lobed European adargas, and oval European escudos alternate in the ranks of the massed soldiers on the left (Figure 35).
Indeed, the obsession with representations of shields within the Lienzo’s grid is underscored by the massive shield that dominates the whole composition: the coat of arms of Emperor Charles V. Like the whole Lienzo, the coat of arms of Charles V is divided into dozens of cells by vertical and horizontal lines. Each of the cells in the coat of arms bears a distinct image, and most of these images have an explicit geographic symbolism that refers to the kingdoms that made up the Holy Roman Empire (Figure 36).
This presentation of cellular geography finds echoes in the Lienzo, most of whose cells are labeled with place names and contain prehispanic-style place glyphs. As mentioned above, Charles V granted the Tlaxcalans their own coat of arms in 1535. But here, in the Lienzo, Tlaxcalan artists created a new historical heraldry on a massive scale.
It may seem strange to create a shield out of cotton cloth, but this would have been an obvious protective material in the minds of both Mesoamericans and Europeans. Prehispanic Central Mexicans had developed a style of quilted cotton armor extremely effective in repelling arrows. This quilted armor appears again and again in the scenes of the Lienzo (the quilted material indicated by a grid of lines; Fig. 7, Fig. 14 bottom, Fig. 15). It was even adopted by European conquistadors for their own protection, being lighter and cooler than armor made of metal. Cotton cloth made for an effective shield on the battlefield. And in the royal court as well. If the Lienzo de Tlaxcala had indeed been commissioned on 17 June 1552, it was an object intended to help Tlaxcalan emissaries assert and defend Tlaxcalan rights before the Emperor Charles V. Given this context for which it was most likley created, the Lienzo’s dual nature as mirror and shield make perfect sense. As a mirror, it sought to fascinate the Emperor, to draw his eyes to its complex, interconnected surface and thus seduce him into honoring Tlaxcalan demands. But as a shield, it sought to defend the rights of the Tlaxcalans in the Imperial Court. The Lienzo, then, is a perfect apotropaic device. It draws and entraps the eye, stunning the onlooker and rendering him fascinated, defenseless, malleable (Figure 37).[39]
Selected Bibliography
Anguiano, Marina and Matilde Chapa. 1976. Estratificación social en Tlaxcala durante el siglo XVI. In Estratificación social en la Mesoamerica prehispánica, ed. Pedro Carrasco and Johanna Broda, 139-141. México, D. F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.
Asselbergs, Florine. 2008, The Conquest in Images: Stories of Tlaxcalteca and Quauhquecholteca Conquistadors. In Indian Conquistadors: Indigenous Allies in the Conquest of Mesoamerica, ed. Laura E. Matthew and Michel R. Oudijk, 65-101. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Baber, Jovita. 2005. The Construction of Empire: Politics, Law, and Community in Tlaxcala, New Spain, 1521-1640. PhD Dissertation, Department of History, University of Chicago.
Bamberger, Joan. 1974. The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in Primitive Society. In Women, Culture, and Society, ed. Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, 263-280. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Brotherson, Gordon. 1992. The Book of the Forth World: Reading the Native Americas through
Their Literature. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Brotherston, Gordon and Ana Gallegos. 1990. El Lienzo de Tlaxcala y el Manuscrito de Glasgow (Hunter 242). Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl 20: 117-140.
Carrasco, Davíd. 1987. Myth, Cosmic Terror, and the Templo Mayor. In The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan: Center and Periphery in the Aztec World, ed. Elizabeth Hill Boone,124-162. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chavero, Alfredo. 1892. Explicación del Lienzo de Tlaxcala. In Homenaje á Cristóbal Colón: Antigüedades mexicanas. México: Oficina Tipográfica de la Secretaría de Fomento.
Christian, William. 1981. Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cosentino, Delia Annunziata. 2002. Landscapes of Lineage: Nahua Pictorial Genealogies of Early Colonial Tlaxcala, Mexico. PhD Dissertation, Department of Art History, University of California Los Angeles.
García-Zambrano, Angel J. 1994. Early Colonial Evidence of Pre-Columbian Rituals of Foundation. In Seventh Palenque Round Table, 1989, edited by Merle Greene Robertson and Virgina Fields, 217-227. San Francisco, CA: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute.
Gibson, Charles. 1952. Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Glass, John B. 1964. Catálogo de la Colección de Códices, Mexico. México, D. F.: Museo Nacional de Antropología and Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.
Hamann, Byron Ellsworth. 2002. The Social Life of Pre-Sunrise Things: Indigenous Mesoamerican Archaeology. Current Anthropology 43:351–82.
Hamann, Byron Ellsworth. 2004. ‘In the eyes of the Mixtecs/to view several pages simultaneously’: Seeing and the Mixtec Screenfolds. Visible Language 38(1): 68-123.
Hamann, Byron Ellsworth. 2008a. Heirlooms and Ruins: High Culture, Mesoamerican Civilization,
and the Postclassic Oaxacan Tradition. In After Monte Alban: Transformation and Negotiation in
Oaxaca, Mexico, ed. Jeffrey P. Blomster, 119-167. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
Hamann, Byron Ellsworth. 2008b. How Maya Hieroglyphs Got Their Name: Egypt, Mexico, and
China in Western Grammatology since the Fifteenth Century. Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society 152(1):1-68.
Hamann, Byron Ellsworth. 2008c. Chronological Pollution: Potsherds, Mosques, and Broken Gods
Before and After the Conquest of Mexico. Current Anthropology 49(5):803-836.
Hamann, Byron Ellsworth. 2009. Fragmentation and Redemption: The Lienzo de Tlaxcala. Paper
presented at The Clever Object Research Forum, Session 2, The Courtauld Institute of Art,
London, UK.
Houston, Stephen D., David Stuart, and Karl Taube. 2006. The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the Classic Maya. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Karttunen, Frances F. 1997. Rethinking Malinche. In Indian Women of Early Mexico, ed. Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, 291-312. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Kellogg, Susan. 1995. Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500-1700. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Kranz, Travis Barton. 2001. The Tlaxcalan Conquest Pictorials: The Role of Images in Influencing Colonial Policy in Sixteenth-Century Mexico. PhD Dissertation, Department of Art History, University of California Los Angeles.
Kranz, Travis Barton. 2007. Sixteenth-Century Tlaxcalan Pictorial Documents on the Conquest of Mexico. In Sources and Methods for the Study of Postconquest Mesoamerican Ethnohistory, ed. James Lockhart, Lisa Sousa, and Stephanie Wood (e-book). Eugene, Oregon: Wired
Humanities Projects, University of Oregon. whp.uoregon.edu/Lockhart/Kranz.pdf
Leibsohn, Dana. 2007. Seeing In-Situ: Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2. In Cave, City and Eagles’ Nest: An Interpretive Journey through Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No 2, ed. Davíd Carrasco and Scott Sessions, 389-426. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Lienzo de Tlaxcala. 1939. Cor. Prospero Cahuantzi, ed. México, D. F.: G. M. Echaniz
Lienzo de Tlaxcala. 1983. México, D. F.: Cartón y Papel de México.
Lockhart, James. 1992. The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Lockhart, James, Frances Berdan, and Arthur J. O. Anderson. 1986. The Tlaxcalan Actas: A Compendium of the Records of the Cabildo of Tlaxcala (1545-1627). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Magaloni Kerpel, Diana. 2003. Imágenes de la conquista de México en los códices del siglo XVI. Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 82: 5-45.
Mazihcatzin y Calmecahua, Nicolás Faustino. [1787] 1927. Descripción del Lienzo de Tlaxcala. Revista Mexicana de Estudios Historicos 1(2): 59-85.
Matthew, Laura E. and Michel R. Oudijk. 2008. Indian Conquistadors: Indigenous Allies in the Conquest of Mesoamerica. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
McCafferty, Sharisse D. and Geoffrey G. McCafferty. 1988. Powerful Women and the Myth of Male Dominance in Aztec Society. Archaeological Review 7: 45-59.
Monaghan, John and Byron Hamann. 1998. Reading as Social Practice and Cultural Construction. Indiana Journal of Hispanic Literatures 13: 133–35.
Nader, Helen. 1990. Liberty in Absolutist Spain: The Habsburg Sale of Towns 1516-1700. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Navarrete, Federico. 2007. La Malinche, la Virgen y la montaña: el juego de la identidad en los códices tlaxcaltecas." História (São Paulo) 26(2): 288-310.
Navarrete, Federico. 2008. "Beheadings and Massacres: Andean and Mesoamerican Representations of the Spanish Conquest. Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 53/54: 59-78.
Peterson, Jeanette Favrot. 1988. The Florentine Codex Imagery and the Colonial Tlacuilo. In
The Work of Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-Century Aztec Mexico, ed. J. Jorge Klor de Alva, H.B. Nicholson, and Eloise Quiñones Keber, 273-293. Albany: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, University at Albany, State University of New York.
Peterson, Jeanette Favrot. 1994. ¿Lengua o Diosa? The Early Imaging of Malinche. In Chipping Away on Earth: Studies in Prehispanic and Colonial Mexico in Honor of Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, ed. Eloise Quiñones Keber with the assistance of Susan Schroeder and
Frederic Hicks, 187-202. Lancaster, CA: Labyrinthos.
Pohl, John M. D. The Lintel Paintings of Mitla and the Function of the Mitla Palaces. In Mesoamerican Architecture as a Cultural Symbol, ed. Jeff K. Kowalski, 176-197. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Restall, Matthew. 2003. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reyes García, Luis. 1993. Documentos pictográficas de Tlaxcala. In La escritura pictográfica en Tlaxcala: Dos mil años de experiencia Mesoamericana, ed. Luis Reyes García, 196-236. México: Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala.
Saville, Marshall H. 1922. Turqois Mosaic Art in Ancient Mexico. New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation.
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Taube, Karl A. 2000. The Turquoise Hearth: Fire, Self Sacrifice, and the Central Mexican Cult of War. In Mesoamerica’s Classic Heritage: From Teotihuacan to the Aztecs, ed. Davíd Carrasco, Lindsay Jones, and Scott Sessions. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
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Endnotes
1. Chavero 1892, iii. This is roughly 21 feet by 7 feet; the measurements given in 1779 were 5 varas 5 sesmas by 2.5 varas in size. A vara equals 83.59 cm or 32.90945 inches; a sesma (one-sixth of a vara) equals 13.93 cm or 5.49 inches.
2. Other indigenous accounts of the conquest have been recently discussed in Restall 2003, 44-63, 100-130; Navarrete 2008; Matthew and Michel 2008.
3. Chavero 1892, 15.
4. Lockhart, Berdan, and Anderson 1986, 51.
5. Gibson 1952, 164-170.
6. Gibson 1952, 165-168.
7. Mazihcatzin [1787] 1927.
8. The story of the nineteenth-century fortunes of the Lienzo is told in Chavero 1892, iv-v.
9. "Quedó, pues, perdido el lienzo; pero por fortuna yo tengo copia exatísima, dibujada con toda escrupulosidad, y para la cual se hicieron colores enteramente iguales á los del original. Como también tengo los calcos que del mismo original se sacaron, hoy puede hacerce una reproducción fidelísima del lienzo perdido." Chavero 1892, v.
10. On the loss of the traced copy, see Glass 1964, 92.
11. Travis Barton Kranz has written the fundamental work about the writing of history in sixteenth-century Tlaxcala; see Kranz 2001; Kranz 2007.
12. The basic commentary on the images of the Lienzo remains that published by Alfredo Chavero in1892; the following paragraphs draw extensively on his commentaries.
13. Navarrete 2007.
14. Kranz 2001, 142.
15. Gibson 1952, 165.
16. Nader 1990, Baber 2005, 107-110.
17. Gibson 1952, 3-14; Lockhart 1992, 20-28; Baber 2005, 28-31.
18. Angiano and Chapa 1976; Reyes García 1993; Cosentino 2002, 174-185.
19. Tedlock 2003, 187-206.
20. See also Kranz 2001, 141; Navarrete 2008, 67.
21. On undress and social inferiority, see Houston, Stuart, and Taube 2006, 202-207.
22. Peterson 1994, Karttunen 1997.
23. See also Asselbergs 2008, 73.
24. Brotherston and Gallegos 1990, 122.
25. The arguments in this section are based on a longer discussion in Hamann 2009.
26. Magaloni (2003, 28-29), following Brotherston (1992, 92-93) points out that this scene is laid out like a quincunx-cosmogram of the universe, and presents the conquest of Tenochtitlán as a cosmic apocalypse out of which a new, Christian era of creation was born (see also Navarrete 2008, 67). Both authors deal with fragmented images, so the do not realized the physical centrality of this scene in the Lienzo as whole (which further supports their arguments). As we will see shortly, the Lienzo contains a second image of cosmic apocalypse and renewal, centered on Tlaxcala itself.
27. Hamann 2002; Hamann 2008a, 122-138; Hamann 2008c, 803-808, 813.
28. Gibson 1952, 158-162.
29. See Bamberger 1974; Carrasco 1987, 132-136; Pohl 1999,183-184, Hamann 2004, 101-107.
30. McCafferty and McCafferty 1988.
31. Kellogg 1995, 104-5
32. Cosentino 2002, 238-241.
33. Navarrete 2007; Navarrete 2008, 62-64.
34. On Mary and the saints as Christian abogados and abogadas, see Christian 1981, 55. These terms are still commonly used today in both Latin America and Spain.
35. Peterson 1988, 287-288.
36. Leibsohn 2007.
37. Saville 1922; Taube 1992; Taube 2000.
38. García-Zambrano 1994, 221; Monaghan and Hamann 1998; Hamann 2008b, 58-66.
39. Of course, these same qualities would have made it an effective object in New Spain as well, whether before Europeans or Native Americans.
Figures
1 The Lienzo de Tlaxcala, overall view.
2 Cell 9: Malinche, standing to the right and wearing red shoes, directs the European-Tlaxcalan attack against the Temple of Quetzalcoatl in Cholula.
3 Main scene of the 1773 copy of the Lienzo de Tlaxcala
4 Edouard Manet, The Execution of Maximilian, 1868-69
5 First Sala Mexicana of the Exposición Historico-Americana, Madrid, 1892-93
6 Frontispiece, Homenaje á Cristóbal Colón, 1892.
7 Title Plate (above) and Plate 1 (below) of the Lienzo de Tlaxcala from Homenaje á Cristóbal Colón, showing cell 1.
8 Comparison of a scene from the Texas Fragment with its cognate in the Lienzo de Tlaxcala (cell 4).
9 Comparison of a scene from the Texas Fragment with its cognate in the Lienzo de Tlaxcala (cell 5).
10 Comparison of drawing style in the Texas Fragment and the Lienzo de Tlaxcala: a Tlaxcalan lord (cell 4).
11. Comparison of drawing style in the Texas Fragment and the Lienzo de Tlaxcala: a mounted European (cell 10).
12 Comparison of cell 1 from the Lienzo de Tlaxcala with cognate scenes in the Historia de Tlaxcala and the 1773 copy<
