Elizabeth Hill Boone

THE “COATLICUES” AT THE TEMPLO MAYOR

The colossal “Coatlicue” sculpture has usually been interpreted as a representation of the female supernatural Coatlicue (Serpents Her Skirt) who gave birth to the Mexica patron deity Huitzilopochtli, or it has been identified as the cult figure of Cihuacoatl (Woman Serpent) or Tlaltecuhtli (Earth Lord). This paper offers an alternative reading of the monumental statue, one that recognizes the existence of at least three nearly identical “Coatlicues” and thus recontextualizes the monument as one of a larger set. The iconography of these great stone females points to their identity as Tzitzimime, celestial demons who were understood to descend to devour humankind if the sun were to fail. According to the Mexican chroniclers, a cadre of these fearsome monoliths dominated the sculpture progam of the Templo Mayor.

The petroglyphic prayers on the sun stone of Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina

Abstract The Sun Stone of Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina is one of the major monuments revealed by excavations in and around the Aztec Templo Mayor since 1978. Featuring the sun disk on its top surface and the Mexica conquest of 11 enemy polities on its cylindrical sides, it is considered a gladiatorial stone, similar in both iconography and function to the later Stone of Tizoc. While Tizocs stone locates its conquest scenes between earth and sky bands, this sun stone uniquely places its conquests between two bands of repeating motifs. The authors argue that these bands are extraordinary examples of pictographic texts that parallel and likely called forth ritual speech acts. The iconography and patterning of the motifs reveal the bands to be visual exhortations or prayers related to human sacrifice specifically associated with Tezcatlipoca. The complex pattern of the repeating motifs is rhythmic and reflects the discourse structure of Nahuatl high speech.

This new world now revealed: Hernán Cortés and the presentation of Mexico to Europe

Three years after Hernan Cortes affected the conquest of the Aztec empire and the destruction of the Mexica Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, a visualization of that great city at its peak was offered to the reading public of Europe. It was presented by means of a woodcut accompanying the 1524 publication of Cortes’s second letter to the Hapsburg emperor Charles V, which reproduced a plan of Tenochtitlan, pictured as an island city surrounded by its lakes and, on the left, a map of the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico (figure 1). The plan of Tenochtitlan is well known: it has been analyzed from several perspectives and is often illustrated and invoked by those interested both in Aztec Mexico and in city plans in general; these scholars almost always ignore the map, however. Likewise, the map has been attended to by cartographic historians interested in the early mapping of the Gulf of Mexico, but they, in turn, ignore the city plan. The plan and the map appear together in the woodcut, however, which requires us to consider them thus within a single presentation and in the specific context of Cortes’s letters to Charles that describe his remarkable exploits in Mexico. This article considers the plan and the map, together with the accompanying inscription, to achieve several goals. First, I hope to contribute to our understanding of the city plan as a document that describes Tenochtitlan before its destruction, when it was on the cusp of being secured for Charles. Then I turn to the coastal map to explain its special features and its origins within the circle of Cortes. The map and the plan were based on drawings sent from the Americas, likely separate documents sent at different times, but they complement and take meaning from each other through their union in the woodcut. Their features allow me to argue that the coastal map and the city plan are integrated components of a conscious strategy to present to Europe the vast extent and incredible riches of New Spain. It was a strategy that served two goals. One was to celebrate Charles V as an imperial Caesar whose realm had been greatly expanded by the addition of a new American empire. The accompanying inscription also articulates this position. The other goal was to aid Cortes’s own ambitions to cement his control of central Mexico and to extend his authority to even more of the lands newly discovered. The woodcut advances arguments made in the text of the second letter to legitimize Cortes’s actions by highlighting the great prize he was bringing to his emperor. The woodcut print was included as a foldout plate in the Latin translation of Cortes’s second letter, Praeclara de Nova maris Oceani Hyspania Narratio . . ., published in Nuremberg in 1524 by Friedrich Peypus, a publisher known for his scientific and humanistic works. Its full title, in translation, conveys the exciting flavor of the work: ‘The splendid narrative of Ferdinand Cortes about the New Spain of the Ocean Sea, transmitted to the most sacred and invincible, always august Charles, Emperor of the Romans, King of the Spaniards, in the year of the Lord 1520; in which is contained many things worthy of knowledge and admiration about the excellent cities of their provinces. . . above all about the famous city of Temixtitan and its diverse wonders, which will wondrously please the reader.’ This second letter is usually bound with the fourth decade of Peter Martyr d’Anghiera and sometimes also with the Latin translation of Cortes’s third letter to Charles, which Peypus also issued that year. The five letters sent from Mexico to Charles V between 1519 and 1526 have generally been acknowledged as self-serving discourses styled by Cortes to justify and legitimize his deeds in Mexico and to bolster his stature as a devoted servant of the Crown. As Cortes’s original mission was only to explore, trade, and rescue any survivors of previous explorations — all under the auspices of Diego Velazquez, the governor of Cuba — Cortes’s break with Velazquez and his reconstitution as an independent agent of conquest and colonization freed him to report directly to Charles, but his actions also required Charles’s forgiveness. The letters are works of self-authorization, which downplay the previous explorations by Hernando de Cordova and Juan de Grijalva and blacken the reputation of Velazquez while presenting Cortes as the most loyal, and successful, of royal subjects. The second letter is particularly important in this respect because it describes the rich empire that Cortes acquired for Charles. It tells of the march into Tenochtitlan, describes the features of the marvelous and famed Aztec city, and suggests the vastness of Moctezuma’s empire; crucially, it includes Moctezuma’s speech to Cortes by which the Aztec emperor voluntarily surrendered his empire to Charles. Although this second letter must also explain the Spaniards’ expulsion by the angry citizens of Tenochtitlan, the subsequent third letter recounts the siege and eventual conquest of the Aztec capital. Following Moctezuma’s early speech of donation, however, all of Cortes’s subsequent actions toward victory in Mexico

Seeking Indianness: Christoph Weiditz, the Aztecs, and feathered Amerindians

Christoph Weiditzs Trachtenbuch (costume book) of c. 1529–1530 pictures the dress, physical characteristics, and activities of people of varied social ranks and occupations from different regions of the Netherlands and Spain, including the Aztecs who accompanied Hernando Cortés to Spain in 1528 and joined the court of Charles V. Responding to the intense European interest in regional dress, Weiditzs thirteen paintings of indigenous Americans offered what has long been considered an eyewitness account of the Aztecs. This essay argues that although some were Mexicans, all were Brazilianized, and most were rendered as exotics on display, with physical and sartorial features fabricated from prints, descriptions, and objects representing the Americas that were circulating in Europe at the time. The dissonance between Weiditzs painted images and the Mexicans who visited Charless court, points up how difficult it was for Weiditz and the European public to recognize real ethnic, cultural, and social distinctions among indigenous peoples and, to the contrary, how easily diverse objects and images from the American were entangled to compose a generic Indianness.