THE AMERICAS

75:3/July 2018/561–597
COPYRIGHT BY THE ACADEMY OF
AMERICAN FRANCISCAN HISTORY
doi:10.1017/tam.2018.5

 REVIEWS 
PRE-COLUMBIAN AND COLONIAL HISTORY
Texcoco: Prehispanic and Colonial Perspectives. Edited by Jongsoo Lee and Galen
Brokaw. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2014. Pp. xi, 265. $70.00 cloth.

Lee and Brokaw have compiled an interdisciplinary collection of symposium papers that
conveys the state of the field of Texcoco studies and calls for more innovative research.
The first two chapters offer a sound overview of the existing literature on Texcoco, from
the early codices through the twentieth century, and introduce areas of further research.
Collectively, the various chapters do well in achieving the key objective “of sorting out
prehispanic from the colonial” in Texcoco history and in offering a corrective to the
“false landscapes of interpretation [that had emerged] along with the good ones” (51).
Individually, the works aptly model ways to ferret out pre-Hispanic features from texts
reshaped by Texcocans as they forged a position for their city-state in the new Hispanic
world emerging around them.

As these articles reinforce, Texcocans took advantage of the upheaval of conquest to

successfully refashion Texcoco as a preeminent city-state, by which means they hoped
to carve out a powerful position within the Spanish empire. Jongsoo Lee demonstrates
in Chapter 3 how the Texcocan chroniclers manipulated their city’s past and status
as a tribute collection site to portray it to the Spaniards as having once been an equal
member of the Triple Alliance, when in reality it was a “junior partner” (69). No equality
between Texcoco and Tenochtitlan had existed, Lee effectively argues, and Texcoco had
been subordinate to Tenochtitlan in the Mexicas’ political and tribute system and had
only delegated powers to collect tribute from lesser cities. Early historians had been
swayed by Texcocans’ propaganda from the conquest era that conflated their tributary
role with independence and projected back in time their supposed rule over other cities.

Several authors excel at revealing additional layers within well-known texts. Lori Diel
demonstrates that the Mapa Quinatzin was a product of Texcocan ambition and that
other texts from the Valley of Mexico contain deliberate omissions regarding the historic
dominance of Texcoco. By “collaps[ing] time and, in doing so, freez[ing] Texcoco
at the height of its power,” the compiler offered an “idealized and stable view of
the city and domain” (119, 141). Ethelia Medrano offers an intriguing analysis of
the well-known inquisition trial and execution of don Carlos de Texcoco, arguing
convincingly that subjects in Ghent, questioning the emperor’s authority, shaped and

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 562 REVIEWS

even predetermined Carlos V’s response in 1539 to a typical resistance movement in

New Spain. Leisa Kauffmann’s chapter makes a compelling argument that despite its
being heavy laden with European and Christian imagery, Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s portrayal
of Nezahualcoyotl retained Nahua cultural elements. Kauffmann convincingly argues
that structural elements of the stories reveal coded cosmographic messages, like the
role of trees or the means of communication with gods, that Nahuas would immediately
recognize.

The chapters by Camilla Townsend, Amber Brian, Bradley Benton, and Pablo García
Loaeza shed light on the intricacies of relations among the Texcocan elite. Townsend
demonstrates well the role of polygyny behind the succession wars within the
Aztec Empire. García Loaeza effectively argues that Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s “genealogical
historiography” was not merely an imported method nor a syncretic exercise but instead
an indigenous reckoning of generations “purposely adapted to fit a new setting.”
Scholars should look not for inaccuracies in Ixtlilxochitl’s work, he advises, but for
the symbolism not readily apparent to “modern perceptions” (235). Collectively, the
articles emphasize and reveal the indigenous agency of Texcocan elites during and after
conquest as they resituated themselves in the new geopolitics of Spanish control.

Randolph-Macon College MATHIAS BERGMANN

Ashland, Virginia
mbergmann@rmc.edu

Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl and His Legacy. Edited by Galen Brokaw and Jongsoon
Lee. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016. Pp. vi, 306. $60.00 cloth.
doi:10.1017/tam.2018.6

This edited volume, consisting of nine independently authored essays, serves as a

comprehensive introduction to the growing body of scholarship on Fernando de Alva
Ixtlilxochitl. Alva Ixtlilxochitl was a mixed-race historian (a castizo, or child of a mestiza
mother and a Spanish father, rather than a mestizo) working during the first half of
the seventeenth century. He is best known for writing several histories of the pre-
Hispanic past and the conquest era, and for collecting an archive containing both
pictographic texts and written documents that ultimately made its way into the library
of don Carlos Sigüenza y Góngora, who along with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is widely
recognized as one of the major intellectuals of seventeenth-century Mexico. The current
volume provides a state-of-the-art summary of recent scholarship by a new generation
of scholars whose interdisciplinary orientation bridges the study of colonial literature
and history.

Alva Ixtlilxochitl, based in Tetzcoco and with a disputed familial claim to the cacicazgo
of Teotihuacan, was clearly a member of the colonial elite. Sigüenza y Góngora’s
recognition of his historiographical significance was echoed by nineteenth and twentieth

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