Aiming Colonial Discourse Back at its Source: The Colonial Pre-Hispanic Past of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitls Historia de la nacin

chichimeca

Leisa Annette Kauffmann

Margarita Zamora, in an article entitled Historicity and Literariness: Problems in the Literary Criticism of Spanish American Colonial Texts, notes that colonial literature came to be studied as such due to changing conceptions of history. She argues that, unlike our idea of a verifiable truth inherited from eighteenth-century positivism, truth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was understood as that which was guaranteed by an authority. Historical facts were not transformed into truth until they were consecrated by the power of tradition or by the personal prestige of the author. Hence, there is a discursive displacement in these [colonial] texts from the representation of events themselves to the imaginative elaboration and interpretation of the historical occurrence. The representation of historical action is always placed at the service of the interpretation of a suprahistorical Truth (337-38). Thus, when society could no longer accept colonial histories as truth, it began to read them as literature. Of course, historians and history as a discipline has, since structuralism and post-structuralism and the linguist turn in the social sciences in general, re-evaluated this positivistic notion of truth, and begun to question the implications of the narrative nature of histories. Part of acknowledging and assessing the impact of the narrative nature of historical texts fits in well with Zamoras notion that colonial histories have a double meaning: one which is natural (empirical and literal) and another which is supernatural (metaphysical and allegorical) (338). In other words, in analyzing a colonial history, it is imperative to keep track of the distinction, long made in literary studies, between discourse and history, or between the way things are talked about and the events that (as history presumes in distinction to fiction) happened. As Jonathan Culler puts it, To identify something as a narrative we must in principle be able to distinguish the sequence of events from the narrative presentation, imagining other ways of presenting the same eventsin a different order, from a different point of view, with different evaluative judgements. Now of course in the case of literary narratives, this distinction is clearly a fiction, a product of the narrative itself. When we turn to historical, non-fictional narratives, the problem is somewhat different. Here is [sic] principle events certainly do exist prior to and independently of any particular narration of them, but it proves notoriously difficult to isolate events from presentation. (7-8) In her article, Zamora points out that the way the history of events was described (and sometimes invented) in the colonial period was at the service of, or determined by, the ideology of conquest--the providential mission of a global Christianity and Spanish imperial domination, in which writers of texts sought the approval of colonial authorities of both church and state (338-39). This occurs in different ways for different writers, however.

For those colonial histories written by indigenous or bi-cultural writers, the cultural mediators as Rolena Adorno calls them in her article entitled The Indigenous Ethnographer: The indio ladino as Historian and Cultural Mediation, this European notion of writing histories that accorded with European principles of truth, its providentialist ideology of conquest, and that were sanctioned by European authorities, takes on specific qualities. Writing from the margins, the indigenous ethnographers, Adorno notes, often made certain adjustments to their depictions of the pre-conquest or non-European world in order to make their histories (and the indigenous world(s) they describe) conform to those expectations. First, Adorno notes that these writers, indios ladinos as they were called (a term that implied their abilities in the Spanish language and adaptation to Spanish culture, as well contained a hint of fear of rebellion), tended to represent themselves as a lord or leader of their ethnic group thereby endowed to speak authoritative on behalf of it; second, their documents were legal in nature, and almost invariably aimed at gaining some sort of rights, privileges or properties from the crown; third, the works all glorify the dynastic tradition to which they belong; fourth, they elevated their groups cultural achievements above those of all other groups and claimed their own language to be superior to all other indigenous languages; fifth, they made use of pre-Hispanic as well as European sources for their ethnographic histories; and, sixth, they made sure to highlight their ancestors religious conversion and military support of the Spanish conquest. Given the religious justification of the Spanish conquest, Adorno notes that, ..the post-1492 arrival of Christianity is portrayed as a natural narrative development and an implicit fulfillment of the divinely ordained preparation for the gospel (391). While the writers could play up certain elements of their tradition, however, they had to censure or ignore others. For example, almost all of the writers she discusses (and she includes in her corpus writers from Andean and Nahua groups) distance their groups from the practices of human sacrifice and idolatry, and claimed monotheism as an aspect or element of their groups pre-Hispanic religiosity. Moreover, Adorno notes that these scholars were often writing at a time, when the failure and set-backs of the conversion process were obvious, and when researchers, for purposes of extirpation, were beginning to investigate continuing practices of ritual and idolatry, a topic that these writers generally avoided discussing in order not to seem knowledgeable about them, and hence suspect to authorities of the Inquisition (39395). Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (1578?-1650), was a prolific Mexican historian of the seventeenth century. He was a direct descendent on his mothers side of the royal lineage of the Acolhua dynasty centered in the town of Texcoco in the north-western lake region of the Central Valley and part of the famous Triple Alliance (along with Tenochtitlan and Tlacopan) said to have been in control of nearly all of Mesoamerica at the time of the arrival of the Spanish. Fluent in Nahuatl and Spanish, Alva Ixtlilxochitl was a cultural mediator not only in terms of his history-writing, but also as an employed interpreter in the Juzgado de Indios or the Indian Court in Mexico city and an appointed juez gobernador (or lead judge or leader) to various Nahua communities in the early to mid-seventeenth century. As can be expected, his legal knowledge as well as his knowledge of and access to historical records such as those that showed the genealogy of his family, proved helpful in defending his mothers inheritance to the cacicazgo of the town of San Juan Teotihuacana position which gave her lands, servants, exemption from tribute and taxation (OGorman 38-42). At the same time that Alva Ixtlilxochitl sought benefits from the Crown, however, he was not uncritical of it. In the growing tension between creoles and peninsulars of the era, there is evidenceincluding a dedication of one his works to the creoleminded archbishop Juan Perez de la Serna (who was a family friend) (OGorman 29) and his

familys connections to a family (de la Mota) descended from a conquistador who helped Corts and received an encomienda (Sell and Schwaller 8) that Alva Ixtlilxochitl was partial to the former. The purpose of this paper, however, is not to trace Alva Ixtlilxochitls external political affiliations but rather to read his last history, commonly referred to as the Historia de la nacin chichimeca (hereafter referred to as the HNC), as a work of hybrid historiography that bears within it an inherent critique of Spanish colonial rule. A historical ethnography of the Acolhua peoples from the migration of the first Chichimec king, Xolotl, up through the siege of Tenochtitlan, where the manuscript trails off, lost to posterity, the HNC and Alva Ixtlilxochitl, proves not to have been a passive recipient of European domination. In every respect, the HNC is a hybrid history, full of ambivalence, representing a Nahua past that had already been reinterpreted by the time he wrote about it, and which Alva Ixtlilxochitl was to interpret and imagine once againin accordance with his own present. It is the culmination and the synthesis of his previous works; although Edmundo OGorman, who edited and published the only critical volume of his complete works, gives only circumstantial evidence for stating its time of redaction (because it mentions Torquemada as a source, it had to be written after 1615), I would argue that its content also bears out the assumption that it was Alva Ixtlilxochitls last written work, as it puts together his earlier histories (of the creation and first settlements of the Central Valley and another one dealing solely with the conquest). Significantly, it also contains almost all of the rhetorical/ideological devices that Adorno says are typical of the writing of the indios ladinos. First, it is an attempt to place pre-Hispanic history into the Christian scenario of world or universal history; second, as Salvador Velasco has discussed at length, it serves to press the claims of his family as descendents of the indigenous elite (89-97); third, the Acolhuas are the last group seen to adopt the practice of human sacrifice, and do so only upon the grudging acceptance by their famous poet-king Nezahualcoyotl in the face of pressure from other Nahua leaders; fourth, Nezahualcoyotls reluctance therein stems largely from his belief in a single dios incgnito, (or unknown or indecipherable god) which means that he also abhors the idolatry and polytheism of the other leaders; fifth, it emphasizes how Nezahualcoyotls son, Ixtlilxochitl, fought beside Corts and was instrumental in gaining victory for the Spanish during the assault on Tenochtitlan in 1521; sixth, the Acolhuas are seen to be superbly cultured peoplesdescendents of the Toltec heritage in which agriculture, writing, great cities, and the arts were important features of civilization; seventh, Alva Ixtlilxochitls ancestors are seen as having happily awaited the coming of the Spaniards and joyfully received baptism and the Catholic faith with open arms. Moreover, it is quite clear from reading the HNC that Alva Ixtlilxochitl specifically left out any mention of the idolatry of his ancestors and of those who were considered to have been practicing it still: he dedicates a great deal of space to describing the beautiful recreational palaces of Nezahualcoyotl at Tetzcotzingo, without mentioning, as Patrick Lesbre has pointed out, that it was a known center of human sacrifice before the conquest, and the object of vicious rumors of the same or similar idolatrous practices in Alva Ixtlilxochitls day (336). The fact that Alva Ixtlilxochitl mentions nothing about this could be, as Rolena Adorno argues, a symptom of self-protection as well as being expressive of his desire to exalt his community in the face of his Christian audience. Although he coincides in these, and nearly all of the above-mentioned characteristics of writing from the margins that Adorno describes, the story, so to speak, of this historys discourse, of the way it represents events, does not end there. In the HNC, Alva Ixtlilxochitls posture is not merely assimilatory and defensive--it is also subversive and contestatory in that it aims some of the great mores and values of the Christian

Empire back in the direction from which they came. Although there are many instances of this aiming back of colonial discourse, this paper focuses only on discussing his record of three often interrelated types of catastrophes know to have affected, in different degrees, both the preHispanic and the colonial Central Valley: flooding, famine, and epidemic. The narrative with which and in which Alva Ixtlilxochitl depicts these events reveals that aside from remembering /historicizing the occurrence of the great floods, famines, and epidemics of the pre-Hispanic era, Alva Ixtlilxochitl could have been evoking those of the colonial epoch as wellwriting, in a way, colonial history in disguise. Dedicating chapter sixty-six of his history to describing a major flooding caused by the breakage of a water reservoir called Acuecuxatl, Alva Ixtlilxochitl writes, Parece por las historias que hasta los elementos pedan a Dios venganza y se levantaban contra el rey Ahuitxotzin que tan religioso se mostraba en el culto de sus falsos dioses; y as en este tiempo queriendo traer a la ciudad de Mxico por una tarjea de argamasa el agua de un ojo que est en el pueblo de Huitzilopochco cerca del de Coyoacan, llamado Acuecuxatl, abriendo para el efecto, sali tan gran golpe de agua y tan viva que pareca quererse subir por las paredes de las casas de la ciudad, con tan gran violencia que en breve espacio de tiempo la aneg y ahog mucha gente de ella; y por otra parte de la laguna se levantaban muchas oladas de ella, que caus gran terror y espantos a todos los que las vean, que pareca que se levantaban hasta el cielo, que fue caso prodigiossimo y admirable, por cuya causa todos los ms que pudieron escapar con las vidas desampararon la ciudad. (198) The Mexica king, Ahuitxotzin, having been in some low lying rooms located amidst his gardens when the waters surged through, crashed into a doorway which fell apart upon him while attempting to flee. He was badly wounded, living thereafer in a very sickly condition. After the catastrophe, notes Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Ahuitxotzin asked Nezahualpiltzintli (the son and heir of the great Acolhua figure, and Alva Ixtlilxochitls hero, king Nezahualcoyotl) to help him, so that he could fix the devastation that the flooding had caused in Mexico. Replying in the affirmative, writes Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Nezahualpilzintli se holg de que se ofreciese ocasin en que poder dar gusto a los mexicanos y al seor de ellos, porque con esto se aseguraba sus asechanzas y mala voluntad que le tenan por la muerte que dio a su princesa, y as convoc a todos los arquitectos de su reino, y con ellos se fue con mucha gente y muchas canoas cargadas de estacada, cespedera, cal y otros materiales a Huixilopochpo, y llegado al ojo de agua, l mismo por su persona entr dentro de l y con ciertos artificios que hizo ataj el agua, y la meti dentro de una fuerte caja y cerca de argamasa, de manera que con esto se cerr el ojo y el agua se fue secando; y volvi por la ciudad de Mxico en donde visit al rey Ahuixotzin y le consol de sus trabajos, el cual qued muy agradecido, y repar su ciudad. (198-99) This short episode in the long series of events pertaining to the lives of the Acolhua kings, although seemingly insignificant, acquires greater weight when looked at in light of colonial history. One of the most important sources of information on pre-colonial aqueducts and irrigation complexes, according to Doolittle, and a work that Alva Ixtlilxochitl owned, the Cuauhtitlan Annals (part of the Codex Chimalpopoca) discusses the same, or else a similar event,

stating that in the year 1499 a stream called Acuecuxatl from Coyoacan overflowed and flooded the entire region, including Mexico. According to this latter text, the ruler of Tenochtitlan at this time was the elder Moteuczomatzin (not Ahuitzotl), and it was not him, but the ruler of Tetzcoco, Nezahualcoyotzin, who decided to build the aqueduct: 13 Rabbit [1467]. In that year Nezahualcoyotzin went and guided the water, so that it flowed for the first time into Tenochtitlan. And they came and quickened it with Tepeyacahuaque, sacrificing them to the water. [Up until] then, people were still going to Chapoltepec to draw water. In this depiction of the pre-Hispanic past, Nezahualcoyotl intervenes for a Mexica lord in the construction of an important water-channeling project. It wasnt the same project that Alva Ixtlilxochitl attributes to his son Nezahualpilzintli, however, but another one that ran from Chapoltepec into Mexico. Although Alva Ixtlilxochitl had a copy of the Cuauhtitlan Annals in his possession, most scholars have assumed that he did not refer to it as a source for his histories, with Schwaller and Sell arguing that it could just as likely have been in the possession of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitls brother Bartolom, who was also a writer (13-14). Perhaps Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl had a different source other than the Cuauhtitlan Annals that he made exclusive use of in his representation of the event. Whatever the case may be, the particular version of the event that he tells allows him to elevate the Acolhua king over the Mexica king in importance and thus gain favor for his ancestors and hence himself in the face of colonial officials and posterity. Moreover, on the level of narrative, rather than event (or discourse rather than history), it was important for Alva Ixtlilxochitl to provide a reason for Nezahualcoyotls intervention and help in the project, and to tie it into the plot of their tense relationship up to that point: for Nezahualcoyotl the succor he provided to Ahuitzotl provided him with an opportunity to assuage offenses he had previously rendered the king. In addition, however, the generosity of Nezahualcoyotl and his determination to fix the situationhis personal and self-risking interventionas well as the Mexica leaders apparent rapidity in repairing his city--stand in marked contrast to the reaction of Spanish colonial officials to the problem of flooding in Alva Ixtlilxochitls time. In Aztecs Under Spanish Rule, Charles Gibson notes that the flooding actually provided the motivation for the crown to encourage the reinstitutionalization of the pre-Hispanic labor system in which each local ethnic unit called the calpulli loaned out labor for public works and other tribute obligations on a rotating basis, and the arrangements made for working on the desage almost exact copies of those that indigenous texts recorded were used by Ahuizotl, the Mexica tlatoani, in the construction of the Acuecuexotl, or dam. He writes, Viceroy Velasco asked the (Indian) governors of the three main towns of Mexico, Tacuba, and Texcoco for the ancient paintings showing the foundation of the city and the methods they and their ancestors had used for protecting it from flood. Having studied various proposals the viceroy decided that it could be done most quickly and effectively in accordance with the painting and as the Indians used to do it. In the vice-regal order Xochimilca labor was included with that of Mexica. Except for this, the labor organization in 1555 bears a striking similarity to Ahuitzotls organization of labor for the Acuecuexco aqueduct in the pre-Spanish period. That the two were related

historically, and that the similarities were not merely coincidental, cannot be doubted. (27-28) In a work entitled El desage del valle de Mxico durante la poca novohispana, Jorge Gurra LaCroix writes that despite numerous problems with flooding, in the years 1555, 1580, 1604, only after a major flood in 1607 did the Spanish government finally get serious about building the desage and solving the flooding problem. The work did not go so well, however, and finally in 1621 the new Viceroy, Gelves, sent from Spain to crack down on corruption and protect its imperial benefits and status, put an end to the plan. Esta drstica medida con las contradicciones que contiene, writes Gurra, fue la responsible del mayor desastre que ha padecido la ciudad, pues estuvo anegada seis aos, destruyndose buena parte de sus construcciones, despolbndose por muerte o abandono de sus vecinos (104). This flood, taking place in 1621 along with Gelves unpopular stances on tribute collection and his effort to put an end to illicit trade and grain speculation precipitated a popular revolt in 1624 that ended with his flight and replacement by another viceroy. Thus, the colonial situation in which Alva Ixtlilxochitl was living and writing was in no way unaffected by the same problems of flooding and water systems that were faced by the pre-Hispanic rulers. It was not the king who intervenes in the name of civilization building, as in the Cuauhtitlan Annals version of that historical event, that Alva Ixtlilxochitl portrays in his rendition of the flood of 1499, but Nezahualcoyotl the king who intervenes after the disastrous flood has taken place due to the negligence of another king. Nezahualcoyotl, unlike Gelves, and the many officials who preceded and succeeded him, was able to act swiftly to repair the damage. As can be expected, floods brought crop failure in the region, and the major challenge, upon the flooding of Mexico city, aside from its ruined streets and buildings, was to keep its people fed. In general, histories of the colonial era rarely discuss famine per se as a problem faced by the peopleindigenous, mestizo or Europeanof that era. However, Bustamante reports that, although after 1521 indigenous texts give more importance to noting earthquakes, comets, and epidemics that were, ms visibles y aterradoras que el hambre, one of the major purposes for which Vasco de Quiroga founded his famous hospital and utopian community was to, alimentar a los indgenas, lo que era tambin practicado en los hospitales fundados para tender las enfermedades y asistir a los pobres (49). He also notes the heart-wrenching ending of the Cdice Telleriano Remensis, whose last date of 1561, he writes, hecha sin nimo y con desesperacin, describes terrible hunger and dying and great cold (49). These last pages of the manuscript, Bustamante declares, son de un valor psicolgico y tico absoluto para comprender el profundo sentimiento de derrota del pueblo azteca, cuarenta aos despus de la prdida de Tenochtitlan (49). Likewise, Elsa Malvido writes that from 1519 on, El hambre se presentaba en forma endmica y epidmica, desde el hambre oculta hasta la inanicin absoluta. Ambas formas afectaban diferencialmente a las clases sociales y preferentemente a los pobres y a los nios, siendo consecuencia no sco de la crisis agrcola sino del modo de produccin colonial (semiesclavismo, peonaje, indios laboros, sistema de haciendas y tiendas deraya que imperaba) (180). In the records on the pre-Hispanic years, however, famine presents itself as a persistent problem, recorded as being caused by lack of rain, too much rain, devastating frosts or freezing, political upheaval, etc., as is evident from several excellent articles in a compilation undertaken by Enrique Florescano and Elsa Malvido and entitled Ensayos sobre la historia de las epidemias

en Mxico.1 Providing an overview of the colonial literature on this topic, these articles indicate that while colonial reports of famine in the pre-Hispanic epoch from various ethnic traditions (including Maya and Mixtec) often comment on how supplies, reserves, or stores of grainoften those held back for planting and the next years harvestwere consumed by the people in desperation, texts from the Nahua traditions also frequently describe how the rulers did everything in their power to alleviate the suffering of their people by opening all the stores of grain, lifting tribute requirements, or allowing citizens to migrate to different regions and sell themselves (or their children) into slavery for food. Carlos Viesca T. summarizes from the texts of the Crnica X tradition (Mexica-centered histories written from the same source, including those by the Dominican friar Diego Durn, as well as the indigenous author Fernando Alvarado Tezozmoc) along with Alva Ixtlilxochitl and later writers, the reactions of the leaders of the Triple Alliance to an especially devastating famine which began sometime around 1450. Moctezuma Ilhuicamina, Netzahualcyotl and Totoquihuatzin, he writes, lifted tributes for the six years in which the famine lasted and opened the stores of grains gathered from tribute payments, handing out corn, beans, chile, cha, etc., among the poor (160). Finally, when there was nothing left to hand out, people ate plants and sticks, and finally migrated to outlying areas (the tierra caliente of the Totonacs) which were not affected by famine, and sold themselves into slavery (160-62). Indeed, Alva Ixtlilxochitl insists over and over again on the generosity and compassion of the line of Acolhua kings toward their people in times of crisis. In the HNC, Nezahualcoyotl is seen to lift the tribute demand and to open his stores of grain in order to feed the people and alleviate their suffering. Human sacrifice was the last recourse. This response occurs not just once, but again and again. For example, in chapter seventy, right before Alva Ixtlilxochitl begins his description of Moteuczomas rise to power over the region. He writes, En el ao siguiente (despus de la jura del rey Moteuchzoma) que fue en el de 1504, muri Tehueuetzin, seor de la provincia de Auauhnhuac, y sucedile Itzcoatzin; en el siguiente de 1505, fue el hambre, y sucesivamente el de 1506, que llamaron matlactilomey calli y ce toxtli, de tal manera que en toda la tierra no se cogi ningn fruto, si no fue en las provincias y sierras de Totonacapan, de donde tuvieron algn refugio; y as llamaron a esta hambre netotocacahuloc, que como si dijsemos el hambre remediada de Totonacapan, y los reyes Nezahualpiltzintli, Motecuhzoma y Totoquihuatzin abrieron sus trojes y socorrieron a sus sbditos y vasallos, y por un ao les remitieron los tributos. (210) Whether or not these great kings of the pre-Hispanic past, whose triple alliance has already been argued by Susan Gillespie to be a colonial in(ter)vention, really gave out food is a question that, in order to be answered with more clarity or certainty needs further investigation. Perhaps there are pre-Hispanic antecedents for describing the actions of the leaders in this way. However, it is also important to question the reason for the persistence and popularity of this theme in colonial Nahua texts.

See for example, Rosaura Hernndez Rodrguez, who notes that hunger was principally caused by falta de alimentos, ocasionada a su vez por las sequas. Otras veces la abundancia de lluvias, las heladas y los rudmentarios mtodos de cultivo (146). Other writers in the collection add warfare as a theme, among other more minor causes.

Why were colonial writers from the Nahua tradition who read and reported on the preHispanic world so certain to include this leitmotiv among their tales, and not only to include it, but also to narrate it in such a way that their readers were not likely to forget the generosity and compassion of even the most idolatrous kings? Certainly, it is one way in which indios ladinos like Alva Ixtlilxochitl exalted the noble line from which they descended and thus reinforced their pleas for privileges from the Crown and the protection of their lands, as Adorno points out. Possibly, there is another purpose, however. While acknowledging the interested nature of all writing, including that of the marginalized groups of the Spanish colonies, Adorno writes that texts from these sectors were nevertheless not full of the didacticism typical of the elite histories of the day, that they were not, designed to inspire men to great deeds in the king's service or the exercise of virtue and valor in the name of Spanish imperial culture. These were not exemplary tales which the sons of Texcoco and Tlaxcala could emulate in the future. Would it not be possible, however, to imagine that these writers aimed the didacticism of Spanish histories back at the Spaniards themselves instead of at the sons and daughters of Texcoco and Tlaxcala? Could not the Spanish colonial authorities have benefited from reading about the generosity and charity of the pre-Hispanic kings in times of economic crisis? Certainly, if the food supply of the colonial years was not as persistent or devastating of a problem as it seems to have been in the years before the Spanish conquest, the distribution of the food supply was an even greater problemor a problem that received more attention in the records dealing with the events of the colonial years. Again, there seems to be various points of view on the matter. First, Carlos Viesca T., reading the 17th century annalist from Chalco Amequamecan, Chimalpahin, notes that, according to colonial texts, Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco and the regions immediately surrounding it were the last ones to suffer from the great famine of 1450. The Chalca, on the other hand, heavily subjected and persecuted by the Mexica, were the first (160-61). One scholar notes that the vicregal authorities in Mexico City, after much flooding and loss of crops in the immediately surrounding territory, were forced to extend their arms and increase the tribute burdens (or enforce existing ones) in regions more distantly located. Perhaps the obvious and best conclusion, here, is that food supplies and stores are always greater near the centers of power and control, and military might implies a certain leverage to extort food from those who had (or have) it. Whatever the case may be, if there were no complaints as to the injustice of such a situation in the records relating to the pre-colonial era, they abound in those pertaining to the colonial era. As mentioned above, the revolt of 1624 and much of the resentment against Viceroy Gelves was directed at his crack-down on grain speculators. And, although one source mentions that the Spanish officials lifted tribute requirements in times of war, other sources are not as optimistic about the actual generosity of the imperial viceroyalty. As Bustamante puts it, referring to the revolt of 1692, El maz y el trigo escaseaban en la poblacin ms que por la prdida de las cosechas, por el monopolio que de ellos haban hecho algunos especuladores (53). Although the idea was to break up the grain speculators, the Crown could never effectively do so, because they never managed to keep enough grain the psitos and sell though the centralized alhndigas to effectively drop prices. And, while the Crown might have tried to regulate the prices of foodstuffs, and to open rather empty stores of grain, they certainly did nothing to alleviate the ever-increasing demands for tribute monies they imposed upon these communities. Charles Gibson points out that,

The largest single expenditure of the Indian communitieswas the Spanish tribute.This was a burden that no community was able to bear consistently over a long period, and it was the one that brought the greatest stress to community finance. The 1560s, the period of major changes from Indian to Spanish systems of tribute exaction, mark the beginnings of large-scale tribute deficit in the towns. Arrears developed gradually, through delays in payment and modest accumulations of debts, to become a standard condition of community financial life. In the 1570s and 1580s many towns fell seriously into debt for back tributes. Even in 1570 Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco owed ten thousand pesos and Texcoco owed nine thousand pesos. (217) The solution to this debt, according to Gibson, took a number of forms, including the use of force in tribute collection, the demand for money instead of maize when harvests failed or yields were weak, prorogation of payments of back tributes required annually, conversion of tribute into labor obligations or the provision of supply materials, and the impositions of land rentals (217). But the principal Spanish method for ensuring as high as return as possible within the tribute assessments, he says, was punishment (217). In these cases, however, it was not the worker or the Spanish officials that the Crown went after, however, but the Indian government: After the late sixteenth century, community tribute debts were treated as the personal debts of the gobernadores and of members of the cabildo. Indian officials unable to pay were jailed as criminals. Their houses, lands, and other properties were seized and sold, and the proceeds were taken as full or partial payment of tribute debts. The debts were held to be inheritable by the descendents and executors of deceased gobernadores. In times of flood and limited harvests in the seventeenth century, maize payment fell disastrously behind. (218) The situation, writes Gibson, only came to an end with Independence (219). Thus, it seems as if the policy encouraged the exploitation and over-taxation of indigenous communities by the Indian governments who were held responsible in case of bad harvests or lack of funds. Those appointed to positions of leadership certainly risked a great deal, and it seems that the corregidores and Indian governments, often working in tandem, regularly embezzeled money and collected a great amount of extra or illegal taxes, called derramas, from their subjects (210211). Alva Ixtlilxochitls representation of Nezahualcoyotl lifting the tribute, irregardless of its relationship to the pre-Hispanic past, cannot escape its association with the figure of Nezahualcoyotl-as-Christian-prince already constructed by him. Nor can it escape its association with Nezahualcoyotl-as-pagan-idolater as portrayed by Alva Ixtlilxochitl and as part of the general Spanish viewpoint. Nezahualcoyotl is, in this case, more Christian than either the Christian Viceroy or the King himself: the proto-Christian, but nevertheless pagan king lifts tributes while the real Christian king, it seems, insists on payment at any cost. It is clear that, in both the pre-Hispanic and colonial times, flooding and/or famine and as well as outbreaks of disease more often than not went hand in hand. The record of pre-Hispanic epidemics, and the secondary material that treats it, is confusing and contradictory. In general, it seems that there was very little epidemic illness in the pre-colonial times although there are texts that discuss a few such eventsincluding the HNC. Interestingly, Alva Ixtlilxcohitl connects his depiction of epidemic to his discussion of the great famine of 1450. According to this text, the people die in mass numbers not of starvation of but of cold, and coughing. He writes,

[] en el ao de 1450 que llaman matlactli tochtli fue tan excesiva la nieve que cay []que se arruinaron y cayeron muchas casas y se destruyeron todas las arboledas y plantas, resfri de tal manera la tierra que hubo un catarro pestilencial con que murieron muchas gentes y en especial la gente mayor; y los tres aos siguientes se perdieron todas las sementeras y frutos de la tierra, en tal conformidad que pereci la mayor parte de la gente. [] segn era la calamidad que sobre esta tierrra haba venido y la hambre tan excesiva que muchos vendieron sus hijos a trueque de maz en las provincias de Totonacapan, en donde no corri esta calamidad [] luego se aument ms la enfermedad y mora tanta gente que pareca que no haba de quedar personal alguna [] Y aunque Nezahualcoyotzin en su tierra y reino, Moteuczomatzin y Totoquihuatzin en los suyos, hicieron todo lo posible por socorrer a sus sbditos y vasallos [] viendo que no cesaba la calamidad se juntaron todos tres[] a tratar el remedio ms conveniente para este efecto: los sacerdotes y strapas (60) de los templos de Mxico dijeron, que los dioses estaban indignados contra el imperio y que para aplacarlos convena sacrificar muchos hombres y que esto se haba de hacer ordinariamente, para que los tuviesen siempre propicios. (149 150) There are several indications in this passage that, if the historical record (probably a xiuhtlapohualli) that Alva Ixtlilxochitl was citing actually indicated a frost and famine (of which there are colonial examples) and disease (of which there seem to be very few other colonial examples), he meant his description to reflect the epidemics of the colonial era. First, he directly compares the great population of those times to the greatest city of New Spain, showing that he was directly and consciously comparing the old and the new: y el menor pueblo de aquellos tiempos tena ms gente que la mejor ciudad que el da de hoy hay en la Nueva Espaa[]. Second, he actually mentions that the calamidades of that era were the first ones to occur: y como las cosas de esta vida tienen mil mudanzas y nunca faltan calamidades (como las que en esta sazn acontecieron y fueron las primeras) (150). In other words, he clearly but indirectly references those that followed. The fact that he begins his report by noting the great abundance and prosperity of the population before the epidemic also, in my mind, serves as a haunting reference to the contrast between the before and the after of the epidemic debacles of the colonial era. Alva Ixtlilxochitl begins the above passage by describing how populated and productive the lands were before the event, and even indirectly links them to the colonial calamities: Estando las cosas del imperio en grande prosperidad por la abundancia de mantenimientos y mquina grande de gentes (que era de tal manera que hasta los montes y sierras fragosas las tenan ocupadas con sembrados[](150). Population loss suffered before the Spanish, he seems to say, got concerned reactions and helpful responses (even if they were not, ultimately, enough). Moreover, although it is true that Alva Ixtlilxochitl is not the only purveyor of the Nahua creation story to do so, he leaves survivors of the catastrophe of each age to pass on into the next. This indicates, somehow, that although great disasters and death befall a people, all is not lost. Intentional or not, it is a small indication of hope at a time when the indigenous population of New Spain had reached its lowest point. In the preceding page, I have tried to juxtapose Alva Ixtlilxochitls representations of flooding, famine and epidmic with both the colonial and the pre-Hispanic records of such events. By so doing, not only is it possible to see how the colonial present of the writer shaped his view of the past, but also how he used that past as a means of launching an underground criticism at Spanish colonial rule. To those who afford him privileges in court, and to whom his work is

destined, the rule of the great pre-Hispanic kings that Alva Ixtlilxochitl heroizes cannot help but form a mirror in which these authorities can view and judge their own actions in similar situations. The allegorical truth that Alva Ixtlilxochitls history represents and services is that the arrival of Christianity fulfilled the destiny of Anhuac; the lesson it imparts is that the hands in which its successful plantation rests are not always worthy or capable of tending their mission. To colonization, writes James Clifford in The Predicament of Culture, Many traditions, languages, cosmologies, and values are lost, some literally murdered; but much has simultaneously been invented and revived in complex, oppositional contexts. If the victims of progress and empire are weak, they are seldom passive (49).

WORKS CITED

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