Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies

abstract:

Spanish Crown policies of the colonial period in Mexico brought waves of forced indigenous reorganization (congregación) and legal processes of formalized distribution and titling of lands (composición). Both threatened and at times negated indigenous land rights and by extension corporate unity. At the same time, the Spanish court system provided a venue for indigenous peoples to advocate for themselves and contest encroachment of their territories. In this context, many indigenous communities of Mexico brought forth indigenous-language alphabetic and pictographic manuscripts—today known as "primordial titles"—as evidence of their rights to lands. Through an analysis of the Nahuatl-language primordial title of San Matías Cuixinco, this essay offers a systematic analysis of the culturally specific ways in which the stories in primordial titles worked together to ensure the indigenous people's survival as a coherent socio-political unit vis-à-vis their land base. Emphasis is placed on the context in which titles were produced and circulated, the material form they took due to cultures in contact, and a consideration of the underlying conceptual framework—(i)ixiptlatl complex, cellular principle, and macehua—that would have made these manuscripts meaningful to the people who created them.