chronological markers: A.D. Latin Anno Domini, "year of our lord," and C.E., Common Era. These two markers are, respectively, paired with B.C., "before Christ," and its secularized equivalent, B.C.E., "Before Common Era."
.
Altar Q, Copan
refers to a square stone monument from the Classic Maya site of Copan (now in northwest Honduras). Carved in A.D. 775, the sides of Altar Q depict sixteen rulers of Copan, beginning in A.D. 426 with the dynastic founder Lord Yax Kuk' Mo.
.
Anales de Cuauhtitlan Nahuatl
refers to a document, circa 1570, that provides a chronological history from the Toltecs to the Spanish Conquest, including conquest lists, tribute lists, and a list of communities subject to Texcoco. The first part is known as the Codex of Chimalpopoca.
.
Andalusian
(from Arabic Al-Andalus) from Andalusia--southern Spain.
.
Aztec
(Nahuatl aztlatl, "white" or "heron," and -tecah, "residents of, people from;" people from Aztlan) is the general term for Nahuatl-speaking peoples living in Central Mexico in the late Postclassic and early colonial periods. The term "Aztec" encompasses a number of different groups, including the Mexica, the group centered at Tenochtitlan.
.
Aztlan
(Nahuatl aztlatl, "white" or "heron," and -tlan, "place of, at," thus "Place of Whiteness" or "Place of Herons") refers to the mythical northern island homeland of the Mexica, which the Mexica ancestors left at the start of the journey that would bring them to Tenochtitlan.
.
Añute
(from sixteenth-century Mixtec a-, "place where something exists, mouth," and ñute, "sand") "Place of Sand," Jaltepec.
B
B.C., B.C.E.
chronological markers: "Before Christ" and its secularized equivalent, "Before Common Era." These two markers are, respectively, paired with A.D. (Latin Anno Domini, "year of our lord") and C.E. (Common Era).
.
Bacabs/Ritual of the Bacabes
refer to the Maya medical treatise, containing the prayers/incantations used for curing forty-two different ailments. The manuscript was named by its 1914-15 purchaser, William Gates, after the four sky-bearing Maya deities (bacabs) frequently mentioned in the prayers. The manuscript--now housed at Princeton University--was probably copied from an older text at the end of the 18th century. Concerning the Bacabs, Diego de Landa wrote: "Among the multitudes of gods which this nation worshipped four were very important, each of them called Bacab. They said that they were four brothers whom God placed, when he created the world, at the four points of it, holding up the sky so that it should not fall. They also said of these Bacabs that they escaped when the world was destroyed by deluge. They gave other names to each one of them and designated by them the part of the world where God had placed him, bearing up the heavens, and they appropriated to him and to the part where he stands one of the four dominical letters" [Diego de Landa, RELACIÓN DE LAS COSAS DE YUCATÁN (circa 1566)].
.
Batz'
(twentieth-century Quiché Maya) a monkey.
.
Borgia group
five Mesoamerican screenfold manuscripts (Codices Borgia, Cospi, Fejérvary-Mayer, Laud, and Vaticanus B) probably painted in what is now the state of Puebla in the Postclassic and early colonial periods. Their content focuses on divination. The group takes its name from the Codex Borgia, a manuscript once owned by Cardinal Borgia and now housed in the Apostolic Library of the Vatican.
C
C'at
(twentieth-century Quiché Maya) net.
.
Caso, Alfonso
(1896-1970) Mexican archaeologist and anthropologist; his work centered on Mixtec and Zapotec archaeology and epigraphy. Also interested in contemporary indigenous people, in 1949 he helped to create the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI).
.
Caste War
Yucatec Maya uprising, 1847-1855, which nearly succeeded in wresting control of the Yucatan peninsula from Ladino rule.
.
Central Mexico
general geographic term for the highlands and valleys surrounding the Valley of Mexico (the location of the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan and contemporary Mexico City).
.
Chalcatongo
(from Nahuatlchalcal-in, "crayfish," -ton-tli, diminutive, and-c(o), locative suffix; "Little Crayfish Place") Mixtec community and location of the "Skull Place" shown in the codices, an oracular shrine and ancestor bundle burial cave presided over by the Mixtec goddess Lady 9 Grass. The Mixtec name for the town is Ñuundaya, from ñuu, "place, town" and daya, "underworld."
.
Charles V
(1500-1558) was King of Spain as Charles I (1516-1556). In 1519 he was left the Habsburg lands in Central Europe and designated Holy Roman Emperor (1519-1558) and given the title Charles V, and he ruled over most of Christian Europe as a political leader and secular head of the church. Charles I (Charles V) was King of Spain when Cortés invaded the Americas.
.
Chichimec
(from Nahuatl chichi, "dog," and -tecah, "residents of, people from"; thus "Dog People") general term for nomadic hunting and gathering "barbarians" from the deserts of northern Mexico. The Mexica considered themselves to have been one of seven Chichimec groups originating in a mythical Place of the Seven Caves.
.
Chilam Balam/Books of Chilam Balam
(Yucatec Mayan chilam, "spokesman," and balam, "jaguar") a corpus of twelve books from different towns in the Yucatan peninsula. Written in Mayan with alphabetic script, they chronicle Maya history beginning in the seventh century, and are particularly focused on the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries.
.
Cholula
Central Mexican community and religious center located east of Puebla, famed in Precolumbian times for its market, its polychrome ceramics, and its central Great Pyramid, still an important religious shrine today.
.
Cihuacoatl
(from Nahuatl cihuatl, "woman," and coatl, "serpent," thus, "Woman Serpent") Aztec earth goddess and mother of Huitzilopochtli.
.
Classic
second main period in Precolumbian chronology, dating from ca. A.D. 200 to ca. A.D. 900. See Formative, Postclassic.
.
Cloud Men
beings with red and white striped bodies and faces who descend from the sky in the War of Heaven narratives in the Codex Nuttall (pages 4, 21).
.
Codex Borbonicus
early colonial copy of a Precolumbian screenfold book from Central Mexico, written in pictures with Spanish glosses. Its content focuses on the calendar, listing the patron deities of twenty 13-day "weeks," a count of 52 years, and a listing of the festivals of the 18 months of the solar year. The Codex Borbonicus is currently housed in Paris at the Bibiothèque de l'Assemblée Nationale.
.
Codex Boturini
sixteenth-century Aztec pictorial document that chronicles their migration from Aztlan to Mexico, as guided by Huitzilopochitli.
.
Colonial Period
in Mesoamerica, the period from the Spanish Conquest or Invasion (1521) to the end of the Wars of Independence (1810-1821) in which the government of New Spain was controlled by the Spanish Crown in Europe.
.
Convention 169
refers to the 234th Session in November 1986 of the Governing Body of the International Labor Organisation (ILO), which placed on the Agenda for the 75th Session of the ILO conference an item on the "Partial Revision of the Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention, 1957 (No. 107)," now known as Convention 169 (Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention). The Proposed text of the revision was published in ILO Report VI (2B), (Geneva 1989), ILConf, 76th Session, 1989. The Provisional Record of the 76th Session contains the Report of the Committee, the proposed Convention and a Resolution on ILO action ILC, Provisional Record 25 and 25A of 25 June 1989 and 27 June 1989. The Convention 169 called for the prevention of discrimination against indigenous and tribal peoples in all regions of the world; a recognition of their own institutions, ways of life, and economic development; and recognition of their ability to maintain and develop their identities, languages, and religions, within the framework of the states in which they live; a recognition of the fundamental human rights of indigenous peoples, their laws, values, customs, and perspectives; and so forth.
.
Copan Classic
Maya site in northwest Honduras. The inscriptional record at the site spans from A.D. 159 to A.D. 822. See Altar Q, Copan.
.
Cortés, Hernán
(1485-1547) born in Medellín, Castille, Cortés arrived in the Caribbean in 1504. He was mayor of Santiago, Cuba, in 1518 when the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, ordered him to begin an expedition to Mexico. This order was canceled in 1519, but Cortés continued on, founded the city of Vera Cruz and, with the help of thousands of indigenous allies, eventually "conquered" the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521. Cortés was made the Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca, but he and his relatives gradually lost political power in New Spain and became a target of Inquisition investigations in the late 1520s. He wrote a series of five letters to Spain's King Charles V describing his initial expedition and conquest.
D
Dominican
members of the Order of Preachers founded in 1215 by Spanish-born Catholic priest Domingo de Guzmán (Saint Dominic). Dominican friars first came to New Spain in 1526. Their initial missionary work focused on Central Mexico (Mexico City, Puebla, Tlaxcala, and Morelos) and soon expanded to Oaxaca.
