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Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

How many of these are by Aztecs about Aztecs?

* "The first is called Map of the Founding of Tetepilco, and is a pictographic map which contains information regarding the foundation of San Andrés Tetepilco ...": San Andrés Tetepilco must have been Spanish, of course.

* "The second, the Inventory of the Church of San Andrés Tetepilco ...": Churches would be Spanish.

* "Tira of San Andrés Tetepilco, is a pictographic history ... comprising historical information regarding the Tenochtitlan polity from its foundation to the year 1603.": At least it seems to be about Aztecs.

Why were the first two books about Spanish topics but written in the local language? If Spanish people writing, wouldn't they write in Spanish? If Aztecs were writing, why would they care to record these things? I suppose the latter is plausible if they were absorbed into Spanish society.

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The Aztec Empire fell in 1521, but of course its people didn't disappear. If the codices date after 1603, that's plenty of time for the Spanish to influence their lives, even without full absorption.

That San Andrés Tetepilco has a partly-Spanish name now doesn't necessarily imply that Spaniards had a role in its founding or lived there in significant numbers at the time the codices were written. The church might have been founded by a Spanish missionary, but it might also have been an Aztec convert instead. The history apparently also covers events that happened under Spanish rule, so it's not entirely about a non-Spanish topic either.

> San Andrés Tetepilco must have been Spanish, of course.

It is not. I mean, yes, the “San Andrés” part of the modern name of the settlement (from a church there built not long after the conquest) is, but its one of Itzapalapan settlements that was later conquered by the Aztecs, so an Aztec codex about its founding is Aztecs writing about pre-Aztec history.

> “The second, the Inventory of the Church of San Andrés Tetepilco …”: Churches would be Spanish.

Yeah, unlike the colonization of the United States, the native peoples were still present in and often the bulk of communities after the conquest of Mexico, they weren’t simply displaced for the Europeans (not to say the Spanish were better, but the pattern of colonization was very different.) So, while the Church was built under the direction of the Spanish, it would have been built and attended largely by locals, who would record things for the same people anyone would record things about the community they live in.

Fun fact: the descendants of Moctezuma still live today as Spanish nobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Moctezuma_de_Tultengo

Yeah Spanish colonialism was very different from English colonialism. The Spanish attempted to coopt and convert the local population, not displace and kill them. That’s not to say it wasn’t a nasty process but to this day there are millions of people in Mexico who speak Nahuatl (the Aztec language) as their first and primary language.

> The Spanish attempted to coopt and convert the local population,

Population densities in Mexico and throughout much of what is Latin America were considerably higher than in the North.

Also IIRC the number of Spanish colonists who came to the Americas during the 17th century is about the same as the number of immigrants to the English colonies on the East Coast. Considering how massive the Spanish empire was there just weren’t that many Europeans there. Trying to subjugate and assimilate the natives was really the only option they had.

Sure, underlying conditions were different and partially explain the different colonizing strategies. Doesn’t change the fact that there were key differences that manifest themselves in evidence like these newly discovered codices.

The Spanish brutally conquered the Aztec empire, killed a large part of the population, murdered leaders, detroyed a/the holy city, ...

> If Aztecs were writing, why would they care to record these things?

The oldest (known) Christian art from America is this featherwork from 1539 made by the nephew of Moctezuma:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/722118

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