Essential Codex Mendoza, The

The Essential Codex Mendoza, edited by Frances F. Berdan and Patricia Reiff Anawalt. Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1997. xiii, 268 pp. $39.95 U.S.

Among the many first peoples of the Americas, the Mesoamericans had a writing tradition most like that of colonizing Europeans. Similarity eased the way to adoption of different ways of recordkeeping, particularly among the Nahuas ("Aztecs") of central Mexico. Less than a generation after the Spanish conquest of the 1520s the traditional pictorial codex was rapidly being displaced by Hispanized documents written in alphabetical Nahuatl (the "Aztec" language). This change corresponded to the new requirements of colonial civil and ecclesiastical authorities. It was during this transition from pre- to post-conquest cultural conventions that the core of the The Essential Codex Mendoza was produced.

The codex has been dated to 1541 and is named after Don Antonio de Mendoza, first viceroy of New Spain (1535-1550). Mendoza himself may have commissioned it. The manuscript consists of seventy-two annotated pictorial leaves. There are extensive contemporary explanations in Spanish. Nahuatl terms written in alphabetical characters accompany the multitude of indigenous persons, places, and things listed and depicted in the codex. The striking colour illustrations draw on both native and intrusive artistic precedents.

The content of the codex goes beyond just determining the human and other resources that might be used for purposes of Spanish taxation, labour drafts, and the like. There are three sections. The first relates the history of the well-known Nahua subgroup called the Mexica ("Mexicans") whose "emperor Montezuma" would later be defeated by Don Hernando Cortes. The second details the tribute rendered to the Mexicans. The third shows the daily life of the Mexicans. The first two parts have prehispanic counterparts; the third is a postconquest addition. The document's varied graphical and alphabetical elements would have been impossible without the participation of scribes and multilingual interpreters from both the Nahua and Spanish worlds.

The present oversized single volume is a briefer version of the four-volume The Codex Mendoza published earlier by the same editors. Almost the entire content is taken from Volumes Two and Four of the larger publication. This gives the reader of the smaller work access to minutely detailed page-by-page descriptions of the folios as well as to "parallel-image replicas of the pictorial folios with transcriptions and translations" (preface, vii) of the alphabetical text. Unfortunately none of the helpful explanatory chapters of Volume One are present. Among the essays whose absence were sorely felt: Edward E. Calnek's "The Ethnographic Content of the Third Part of the Codex Mendoza," Frances F. Berdan's "Glyphic Conventions of the Codex Mendoza" and Kathleen Stewart Howe's "The Relationship of Indigenous and European Styles in the Codex Mendoza: An Analysis of Pictorial Style." Thankfully sixteen of the eye-catching colour reproductions from Volume Three made the cut.

These omissions are not terminally fatal. The original four-volume set would be prohibitively expensive for use by all but the most specialized graduate students and researchers. However if the more limited one-volume version is used in conjunction with the larger work then it would be useful in classes ranging from art history and language to native studies and anthropology.

The liveliest section is that of dealing with daily Mexican life. Birth, marriage, death, professions, status markers, education, the arts as well as the art of war: all this and more passes before our eyes. Since there are several alphabetical Nahuatl texts of similar or greater length which cover much the same ground, the material per se is not unique. Nonetheless the attentive reader can get some appreciation of the more intimate side of late prehispanic Mexicans regardless of how self-serving or idealized these portraits may be, or even how much this section draws on European rather than Nahua genres.

Scholars of some distinction from both North America and Europe have long been fascinated with the Codex Mendoza. A number of attempts have been made to make it accessible to a broader audience. The editors of The Codex Mendoza and The Essential Codex Mendoza have significantly built on, and surpassed, their predecessors.

There are inevitable miscues in presenting any source as richly complex as the Codex Mendoza. They are minor but especially noticeable given the high standards of the editors. The most annoying are the sporadic errors in the indices which sometimes made finding people, places, and things difficult.

More important are what I consider to be the infrequent errors of emphasis and interpretation, for example, the references to the Otomi. This was a marginalized native group living among the Nahuas who served them as soldiers. The editors correctly mention the fear and respect that Nahuas had for Otomi prowess in war but fail to mention their equally strong disdain for whom they regarded as stupid uncivilized savages. Two pertinent examples of these prejudices about the Otomi can be found in a sixteenth-century confessional manual for Nahuas. In order to drive home the point that Nahua merchants were not to cheat their customers, the confessee is sternly warned not to take advantage of the "ycnotlaca, ym motolinia: yn otontzitzintin yn aquimahmati yn pipiltotontin" (miserable, the afflicted, the poor little Otomi, those who are simpleminded, those who are little children) (folio 36 recto, in fray Alonso de Molina, Confessionario, Mexico). Elsewhere (folio 37) sellers of avocados are admonished: "cuix ynca timocacayaua yn otontzitzinti, yn anoco pipiltotonti yn amo qualli auacatl tiquimmaca" (do you cheat the poor little Otomi or small children, giving them bad avocados?).