An earlier version of this article was published in 2018.
Our view of the world has been largely permeated by Western cartographers. It was they who established the canon of contemporary cartography and who influenced the development of science on a global scale. It happened in Europe, in Asia and also in AmericaOnce the Spanish conquerors arrived in those territories and imposed their customs, languages and knowledge.
We recently saw how America took its name through a singular name. This interesting fact does not mean, however, that the indigenous peoples of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica had not previously made their own maps. These relics are scarce today due to the difficulties of their conservation, but those that still survive are authentic gems in the history of maps. And one of them, the Quetzalecatzin codex, is already available on the net.
Thanks are due to the Library of Congress of the United States, whose vast collection of manuscripts, old maps and classic photographs is free on its website. A few weeks ago, the organization turned over for the enjoyment of all concerned the Quetzalecatzin codex, a very rare example of a Mesoamerican map influenced early by the Spanish conquest. An example of how both cultures hybridized forever.
The map dates from 1593, a century after Columbus’s ships had landed on the Caribbean islands. By then, the Spanish colonies were in an early stage, yet to be administratively defined, and the definitive hodgepodge of native settlers and European settlers was in its infancy. For this reason, great traces of Mesoamerican culture managed to survive and mold, until giving an idiosyncratic and independent form, to the American nations of the future.
But that evolution would take centuries, and in their first colonized century, the Mesoamerican Indians still preserved much of their cultural legacy. During those years, the Spanish authorities laid the foundations for the administrative government of New Spain, which caused many indigenous families to launch exhaustive maps that illustrated the vast possessions controlled by their lineage. The one that shows the Quetzalecatzin codex responds to the name “De León”.
The map was made following the classic native techniques, which places it as a paradigmatic example of the cartographic ability of the Mesoamerican peoples. The distance it covers is the equivalent to the north of the current Mexico City with Puebla, more than one hundred kilometers, and on it various mountains, rivers, valleys and the family heads of the surname are represented. Ideally, the code represented the territorial aspirations of the Of Lion, already Christianized, whose lineage went back to Quetzalecatzin XI.
Quetzalecatzin XI was one of the most powerful monarchs in the region a century ago, around 1480. He is represented on the map with the typical clothing of the Aztec civilization and serves as the starting point for the long lineage of a century to which the De León family. Proof of the hybridization of Mesoamerican and European culture is that while the code is written in nahuatl, the Aztec language, the alphabet used is Latin. In the same way, many figures respond to Castilian names such as Alonso or Mateo.
This small description of an important local community today serves as an example of transition between the Aztec manuscripts (with their outlined figures, their hieroglyphic place names, their painting technique transmitted from generation to generation by Mesoamerican masters) and the European colonists (with their references to churches and public squares, their Spanish names and their Latin alphabet). In short, a photograph of Mexico from the 16th century in which the fusion between the two cultures was still very early, but already irreversible.
The map, also a genealogical thread, is one of the many on which the imperial authorities would build the vast cartographic archive of their American possessions. But significantly, it had a very political and local purpose, and it was none other than to describe which indigenous families had possessed those lands in a secular way. Its eminent Aztec patina, the clear Mesoamerican influence, makes it today an example of very exceptional indigenous cartography. A science that, over the years, would fade.
As we said, there are other maps of the time that today represent a wonderful opportunity for archaeologists and historians to understand the Mesoamerican world, and how it adapted to the traumatic arrival of Europeans. The Library of Congress has several, like this map of the Oztoticpac lands. However, few are as beautiful, detailed and colorful as the Quetzalecatzin codex, a glimpse into a period of historic transition.