The Aztecs at Independence

The Aztecs at Independence: Nahua Culture Makers in Central Mexico, 1799–1832 consists of six chapters mainly devoted to studying the rhetoric of death in four altepeme (indigenous towns; singular, altepetl) in the Metepec region of the Valley of Toluca in early nineteenth-century Mexico. Miriam Melton-Villanueva analyzes more than 150 wills written in the Nahuatl and Spanish languages by indigenous notaries (escribanos) from San Bartolomé, Ocotitlan, Yancuictlalpan, and Totocuitlapilco. This set of wills, which the author calls “the Independence archive,” is located in the former convent of San Juan Bautista, in the current city of Metepec. Instead of merely comparing the similarities and differences between the wills and the aforementioned altepeme, Melton-Villanueva contextualizes them within the regional tendencies of written culture through an assessment of similar eighteenth-century sources from the Archivo de Notarías de Toluca.According to Melton-Villanueva, the escribanos of the parish of Metepec transmitted and changed the local rhetoric of death during the transitional period of independence. They were able to accomplish this task because they were born into strong social and religious institutions that promoted such cultural autonomy. Notaries were members of recognized professional lineages, as in preconquest Mexico, and were part of what the author calls the fiscalía—that is, an elective religious governing structure grounded in the altepetl. Although under the jurisdiction of the church, these fiscalías had close connections with secular cabildos (indigenous municipalities). In addition to the notaries, the fiscalía was composed of fiscales, alguaciles, and topiles. The progression from topile to fiscal was common but not automatic. Merit and financial capacity seem to have factored into men's continued service. Finally, the author of The Aztecs at Independence shows the democratic character of these local religious corporations, which involved the participation of nearly 90 percent of the male population.From the many hallmarks of Nahuatl-language continuity in Spanish wills—issued mainly by women from San Bartolomé, Ocotitlan, Yancuictlalpan, and Totocuitlapilco—the author points to the aggregation and dismembering of words, the avoidance of the use of prepositions, especially a (to), and the use of n at the end of words. In San Bartolomé, nevertheless, there is a particularity: wills use the formula mi cuerpo y lodo (my body and mud), which reveals the persistence of the Nahuatl concept of the body as notlallo noçoquiyo (earth and clay or mud), instead of using the sole Spanish word cuerpo (body). In Yancuictlalpan escribanos used prepositions correctly, while in Ocotitlan it was common to use the Nahuatl-derived expression mañana u otro día (tomorrow or the day after tomorrow) to refer to the future. Ocotitlan was also the first altepetl where, around 1814, notaries adopted Spanish and definitively abandoned Nahuatl. On the other hand, through the assessment of wills belonging to the Archivo de Notarías de Toluca Melton-Villanueva shows the changes to notarial conventions in the aftermath of the colonial period. The largest rupture took place in regard to the expression mi cuerpo y lodo. Carefully conducted research reveals that the use of this Nahuatl-derived formula is uncommon in the Independence archive.Nicely written, Melton-Villanueva's book changes the general assumption that writing in Nahuatl ended before 1800. Furthermore, she considers how, in contrast to the invisibility of the fiscalía in Spanish records, the wills of the Independence archive show that the escribanos, as official fiscalía notaries, continued to construct altepetl autonomy, as they had for centuries. Although the author splendidly presents the work of the escribanos as maintaining and changing the rhetoric of death, the responsibilities of fiscales, alguaciles, and topiles are not thoroughly assessed. It would have been interesting to recover the knowledge already available about them, constructed from Spanish bureaucratic sources, something the author seems to ignore. In the Valley of Mexico, for example, members of the fiscalía were sometimes elected, whereas others were appointed by the priest or even by the alcaldes de cabildo (secular mayors). Their tasks involved checking that men and women were occupying their own temascales (bathrooms), burying the dead, ensuring that parishioners attended mass, and keeping them from getting drunk. It was not unusual for members of the fiscalía to exert pressure.In the final chapter of The Aztecs at Independence, Melton-Villanueva analyzes with finesse two types of subaltepetl informal cofradías (brotherhoods) dedicated to the cult of household saints and ancestors and serving, perhaps, the functions of a small tlaxilacalli (a preconquest territorial subdivision of the altepetl). However, Melton-Villanueva fails to grasp the dynamic interactions between fiscalías, cabildos, and the informal cofradías, as they are already known not only in the Mexican landscape but also in the Andes. In the Valley of Mexico, for example, these associations were liberally created by the vecinos (neighbors) with the sole purpose of serving the cult; the alcaldes de cabildo were also deeply involved in this work. As in Metepec, these cofradías were part of a complex of celebrations that connected the population of the parish on several levels and differentiated among them at the same time. Cofradías functioned similarly in the indigenous towns of the intendancy of Lima. Indeed, cofradías in the Valley of Mexico and in Lima would prove to be essential actors in the transition from a colony to a republic, conducting innumerable fights inside the constitutional municipalities in order to keep control of the land in which their identities were rooted. In the end, one must consider the question posed by John Chance and William Taylor: Is the cabildo the core of the community? This question, which Melton-Villanueva recalls, should be rephrased in terms of the fluxes, interconnections, and contradictions of both secular and religious local organizations, since, as is widely known, in nonmodern societies those two spheres of social life were not separated; on the contrary, they were deeply embedded in each other

Ancient history · Archaeology · Ethnology · Independence (probability theory) · Indigenous · Jurisdiction · Nahuatl · Political science · Rhetoric · Theology · History · Latin American history and culture · Law · Philosophy