The Material Text in Latin America: Local Traditions and Intercultural Dialogue

This session explores indigenous Mexica and Quecha manuscripts created between the 14th and early 17th centuries in what is today Mexico and Peru. The impact of European colonial culture on the manuscripts’ creation and interpretation will be analyzed through a variety of approaches. The presentations will also consider how the manuscripts’ creators conveyed their lived cultures, and whether the manuscripts enable otherwise ephemeral aspects of those cultures, such as music and movement, to be recovered.

Examining the sixteenth-century Mexica manuscript Cantares Mexicanos through sound studies and a performative lens, Gema Valencia-Turco proposes that the texts, influenced by both pre- and post-conquest contexts, constitute a genre in themselves. Rather than purely literary expression, they represent a type of early-colonial libretto constituting a new generation’s response to an imposed new life. George Thomas focuses on an early 17th-century Quecha manuscript, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s New Chronicle. Through comparing the New Chronicle with printed illustrations in imported works of literature, Thomas demonstrates how Guaman Poma appropriated their imagery and, in so doing, presented a critique of Peruvian colonial rule. Taking a historiographical perspective, Seonaid Valiant discusses Zelia Nuttall, a self-trained scholar who raised awareness of the indigenous manuscripts of Mexico through her facsimile editions. Drawing on the manuscripts’ depictions of astronomical practices, Nuttall developed a ceremony to demonstrate the “shadowless moment” sacred to the Mexica. She then worked to institute a school festival based on this ceremony, hoping to impart the significance of ancient Mexica culture to future generations.

About The Presenters

The Diving God Ceremony: Zelia Nuttall’s revival of an Aztec ceremony culled from Mexican Pictorial Manuscripts

Seonaid Valiant, Arizona State University (Associate Curator for Latin American Studies and Interim Curator for Rare Books and Manuscripts at the ASU Library)

Zelia Nuttall was a self-taught Mexican-American scholar who used her expertise in seven languages to locate and study Mexican pictorial manuscripts located across European archives. Nuttall is best known for her work publishing spectacular facsimiles of Mexican codices, in particular the Codex Tonindeye and the Codex Magliabechiano. These pictorial documents were crafted in the early modern period by indigenous peoples of Mexico and were often accompanied by interpretive texts by Spanish priests. Nuttall studied these manuscripts and learned how to interpret the astronomical practices of Mexico’s ancient cultures. Through her research, she became aware that Indigenous peoples in Mexico had celebrated an astronomical event that she came to call the “shadowless moment.”

Drawing on information from the pictorial manuscripts, Zelia Nuttall developed a ceremony that she called the “Diving God,” intended to demonstrate the “shadowless moment” that was sacred to the Mexica. Every spring from 1928 to 1932, Nuttall performed this elaborate ceremony in the garden of her home in Mexico City, where, for a few brief moments over a few days, the sun cast no shadow when it reached its zenith. She worked diligently to share this moment with the Mexican public and helped to establish a school festival based on the ceremony and its historical importance.

Seonaid Valiant will discuss how Zelia Nuttall located the codices and how she then developed her ceremony based on the images and interpretive texts from the pictorial manuscripts to revive the celebration.

“Poetry vs Poetic Expressivity: Cantares Mexicanos and the Alterity of Artistic Production”

Gema Valencia-Turco, University of Pennsylvania (PhD Candidate, Hispanic Studies)

The sixteenth-century manuscript, Cantares Mexicanos (Mexican Songs), displays vestiges of a cultural tradition which has been preserved and accessed through a Western-European construction: the Latin alphabet that transformed the Mexica language into a written version of Náhuatl, collected in book form, and under the legacy of Christian-medieval thought. This collection of song-poems has been studied under the lens of literature and translation studies limiting the interpretation of the work by only considering the written manifestation of the Mexica’s language and culture. Scholarly investigation solidified its content as an example of literary expression of pre-Hispanic origins, but around half of the pieces were composed post-conquest. I propose that these songs-poems, influenced by both pre and after the conquest contexts, are a genre in itself: not Náhuatl poetry but a unique example of a new generation’s response to their imposed new life. By applying sound studies and a performative lens, the manuscript could be considered an entry point of a complex cultural expression: a type of early-colonial libretto where song, sound, music, dance, costumes, and communal participation are a unified artistic manifestation. Would an interdisciplinary approach allow for an undivided or non-fragmentary reading of a sixteenth-century Mexica notion of “poetic” expression?

“Medieval Spanish Literature in the Illustrations of Guaman Poma’s New Chronicle”

George Antony Thomas, California State University at San Bernardino (Department Chair, World Languages and Literatures)

This paper explores the appropriation of imagery from European books in Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s indigenous manuscript, the New Chronicle (1615?). The illustrations from Guaman Poma’s encyclopedic history of Inca civilization and colonial Peruvian society are frequently adaptations of printed illustrations from imported works of medieval Spanish literature. While scholars have provided ample evidence of the interactions between this indigenous author and European print culture, they have generally focused on Guaman Poma’s familiarity with indigenous catechisms, devotional literature, and historical chronicles. There are few comprehensive studies on the influence of printed book illustrations from works of medieval Spanish literature in relation to Guaman Poma’s manuscript. This paper will explore how the artwork from three popular works, Cárcel de amor (1492), Exemplario contra los engaños (1493), and La Celestina (1499), influenced the drawings in the New Chronicle. This comparison will not only make clear how Guaman Poma adapted early conventions for illustrating books, it will also demonstrate that indigenous authors and artists had access to a variety of circulating print matter in colonial Peru. Furthermore, Guaman Poma’s appropriation of these classics of medieval Spanish literature allowed him to adapt the conventions of European print culture to present a critique of colonial rule.

Discussant:

Dana Leibsohn, Alice Pratt Brown Professor of Art at Smith College. 

Dana is a member of Smith’s Latin American and Latino/a Studies Program and serves as General Editor of the interdisciplinary journal Colonial Latin American Review.