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Verdades y mentiras en torno a don Diego de Mendoza Austria Moctezuma

2020; Duke University Press; Volume: 100; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-7993232

1527-1900

Amber Brian,

History and Politics in Latin America

Don Diego de Mendoza Austria Moctezuma, the sixteenth-century cacique and indigenous governor of Tlatelolco, carried two of the most recognizable names of the colonial period. He was the namesake of the first viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, and the huei tlatoani Moteuczoma Xocoyotzin, whose names were linked in don Diego's surname by “Austria,” suggesting the Hapsburg dynasty. María Castañeda de la Paz's extraordinary study unravels all that is encapsulated in this name and its potent legacy. However, as she notes in the opening paragraph, her study is not of the governor of Tlatelolco but rather of how this name was associated with the production of documents of questionable legitimacy in the later colonial period. Noble natives, like the true descendants of don Diego, brought before authorities alphabetic and pictorial documents that supported claims to lands and position based on the status and deeds of their ancestors. Those records provide pragmatically motivated narratives of the history of native families and towns. Castañeda de la Paz's study deals with a corpus of documents related to don Diego that were associated with native individuals and communities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who were not actually his descendants. Verdades y mentiras en torno a don Diego de Mendoza Austria Moctezuma teases from a wide range of archival sources the story of these not exactly false (though not exactly truthful) documents, who authored them, and why. These materials, as Castañeda de la Paz makes clear, provide a window on networks of native individuals and families interested in, for a variety of reasons, maintaining connections to the native past.Don Diego de Mendoza Austria Moctezuma appears widely in colonial documents, including coats of arms, primordial titles, and wills. Stephanie Wood was a pioneer in analyzing parts of this corpus, particularly the variety of primordial titles known as the Techialoyan Codices, and deciphering the role of a muleteer by the name of don Diego García de Mendoza Moctezuma in their production. Castañeda de la Paz provides an overview of studies by Wood and others that laid the groundwork for this more comprehensive investigation of the figures involved with the production and dissemination of documents associated with don Diego. The book is organized into an introduction, four chapters, and a conclusion. Chapter 1 addresses the royal house of Tlatelolco and specifically don Diego and his three sons—Melchor, Gaspar, and Baltasar—and their descendants. Chapter 2 expands the scope of the study from Tlatelolco to the state of Hidalgo, where in the seventeenth century the descendants of don Diego's son Baltasar established connections with an Otomi community. These are the key contacts that led to the exchange of ancestral materials from the royal house of Tlatelolco with the group of Otomi from Hidalgo, including the muleteer don Diego García. Chapter 3 focuses on a philological study of a selection of alphabetic documents, and through that analysis Castañeda de la Paz illuminates not only the nature of the documents but also the nature of the relationship between the Otomi families from Hidalgo and the true descendants of don Diego. Chapter 4 dives even more deeply into the question of the creation of pictorial documents, including primordial titles, specifically the Techialoyan Codices. At each stage of this study, Castañeda de la Paz meticulously traces the process of copying and circulating documents as she also sheds light on the authors of this trove of materials.In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as many noble native families were losing status and lands, they sought to solidify their positions by preparing and presenting to authorities materials that proved the history of their families and the deeds of their ancestors. Though Castañeda de la Paz is not the first to note that some of these documents are reproductions produced outside the family lineage they purport to prove, Verdades y mentiras takes the study of the materials and the figures associated with them to an unprecedented level of analysis and synthesis. Castañeda de la Paz's careful study of the connections between these documents and the individuals associated with them concludes that the key figure is the muleteer don Diego García, who learned the art of crafting documents from his uncle, Joseph, and his father, Roque. In the final paragraph of the book, Castañeda de la Paz cautions the reader to take heed of the lessons found in the case she presents: scholars must take great care in working with materials from the late colonial period that appear to be copies of sixteenth-century documents. She goes on, however, to clarify that there were understandable exigencies that motivated the falsifying of documents. Native individuals, families, and communities struggled more and more urgently as the decades and centuries of colonial rule went by, and it was in that context that they sought ways to avoid, as Castañeda de la Paz says, the depths of misery. The truth and fiction of these documents need to be understood as products of those dire circumstances.