There is a passage in the Historia general y natural de las Indias (1526–57) in which the chronicler Fernández de Oviedo complains that words are inadequate to describe the natural wonders of the newly discovered lands.1 In his opinion, the New World needed the masterful eye and hand of a Berruguete, a Leonardo or a Mantegna. As we look at this graphic image of Macuilxóchitl, we see not a Renaissance painting nor a modern map but something stranger. We see an ox and a horse seemingly heading upriver, floating churches and three seated human figures deep in conversation. It is for us a dreamlike image which only needs a leaning fiddler to complete a work of Chagall, the famous surrealist painter. Our tendency to see this picture as closer to a work of art than to a scientific document is not merely a consequence of our familiarity with Chagall’s neo-primitivism; it also follows from our rather limited understanding of what constitutes knowledge.
This picture of Macuilxóchitl forms part of an iconographic corpus of local knowledge typical of the so-called hybrid, or mestizo, painted maps of New Spain produced in response to the official questionnaires used to compile the Relaciones geográficas or Geographical Accounts of the Indies. The corpus includes some 75 maps distributed between the General Archive of the Indies in Seville, the Benson Library at the University of Texas at Austin and the Royal Academy of History in Madrid, from which our example comes.
The origin of these painted maps reaches back to the 1570s, when López de Velasco – the senior cosmographer of the Council of the Indies, the advisory body charged with managing imperial affairs – drew up questionnaires that were sent to officials in all corners of the Indies, including Hispanic America. The council wished to compile information about the natural resources, inhabitants and environmental conditions of the realm. Some of these questions were astronomical and geographical, relating to the precise locations of towns and villages (altitude, observation of stars and eclipses, distances in leagues between settlements, etc.). Others specifically requested ‘outlines, drawings or painted figures’ of communities and territories. With this information López de Velasco intended to compile an atlas of the New World. However, as often happens in such endeavours, the interrogator’s questions generated unanticipated responses. The history of intercultural exchange is full of misunderstandings. So, while the council requested astronomic positions, data, observations, hydrography and geometry, some local authorities commissioned drawings or paintings from those who were most familiar with the art of illustration and had local knowledge of the environment: the tlacuilos, ‘painters’ or ‘scribes’ in Nahuatl, either members of the native elite or answerable to them. There was logic in this decision, since – as Barbara Mundy notes in her classic study – while the Spaniards were the masters of the written word, the realm of the image belonged to the native inhabitants, whose manner of recording or writing was to a large extent visual, dominated by logograms, glyphs and pictograms.2 Between the word and the image was a space of creative translation capable of producing a documentary record that may have presented challenges to its interpreters.
Macuilxóchitl was a small village in the diocese of Antequera in the province of Oaxaca. The painted map was created in April 1580 in response to the instructions issued by the Council of the Indies. The picture is, by our aesthetic standards, bleakly beautiful. The first thing we may notice today is how Euclidian geometry, astronomical observations, parallels and meridians are irrelevant to its composition. So too is the technique of perspective, that successful device of the quattrocento for locating objects in space. Here the animals and churches appear to float, as do the roads and the river, which seem to tie themselves in knots in the air. The inverted anthropomorphic sun on the right, the radial layout of the settlements following the customary conventions of the positioning of the church and the walled enclosures: everything flows in the enveloping momentum that art historian Alessandra Russo has so aptly named ‘circular realism’.3
Let us look closer at the glyph (the figure or symbol) drawn in the centre of the picture or painted map. Representing the name of the place depicted in the map, this central image is a toponymic glyph for the altepetl, here crowned with a crucifix. The altepetl or ‘water mountain’ was the basic unit of Nahua settlement, an ethnic or kin-based territorial concept that the Spanish translated successively as city, city-state, town, señorío (manor or domain) and even empire. Inside the water mountain, the tlacuilo has drawn a bush with five flowers, each with five petals: in Nahuatl this is read as macuilli xóchitl, or ‘five flowers’. Macuilxóchitl was a Mexican calendar god, associated with games and music, otherwise known as Xochipilli, the prince of flowers and fertility. He was also associated with the spirits of men fallen in battle, with sacrifice and regeneration. However, this god is not represented here. The glyph appears to have no meaning beyond its function as an identifier, purely toponymic or demonstrative, although of course it is marked with a cross. Today’s tourist maps would say ‘You are here’, or simply ‘The name of this place is…’.
Recent archaeological research has identified this promontory as the Cerro Danush, an important Zapotec religious centre, a sacred mountain next to the town of Quiyebelacayó – ‘five roses’ in Zapotec, perhaps alluding to five rocks which housed the earlier sanctuary. This name figures in the extensive caption of the painted map, to the left of the central glyph, written in Latin characters but in the Nahuatl language, which in turn registers the Zapotec past of the locality, still very apparent at the end of the 16th century (indeed, in San Mateo Macuilxóchitl, Zapotec is still spoken). We know from this caption and from the questionnaire prepared by the corregidor or magistrate of the area, Gaspar Asensio, that the two male figures and one female figure depicted in the glyph are Coqui Pilla (Snake Lord or Rabbit Lord), Coqui Piziatao (Golden Eagle Lord) and Yoci Xonaga Bela Laa. These two lords or chiefs are each seated on an icpalli, a seat of woven palm that signals their importance; she wears a band on her hair and sits on her heels. Apparently, these three Zapotec nobles (called tlatoque in Nahuatl) had usurped the land from the lord of Macuilxóchitl, who had in turn received it in an earlier gift from the lord of Teozapotlan, a nearby locality. The caption states that ‘one night, like thieves, the three Zapotecs stole the land from the lord of Macuilxóchitl’.
We do not know for certain the identity of the artist. It is possible that the artist was one of the five elders of the town mentioned in the Relaciones geográficas. Or perhaps it was the interpreter Juan Pérez, who served as the intermediary between the five representatives of the local community and the six Spanish authorities brought together by Gaspar Asensio, who was to guarantee the reliability of what was written and depicted. Whoever the artist was, the painted map is clearly making a historical claim on the site. In short, the painted map describes historical deeds or events as well as spaces or places.
Figure 2. Painted map of Macuilxóchitl, detail (courtesy of Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid).
But let us move out from the central glyph to explore the surrounding territory. Spreading below the feet of the three Zapotec tlatoque is the main village of Macuilxóchitl (indicated by the walled citadel around the church with its three bells) and the three teopans (monasteries) of Tlacochahuaya, San Francisco and San Juan. Making up the landscape are several species of plants and livestock.
There are agaves and prickly pears, the two quintessential Mexican plants from which are extracted foodstuffs, drinks, balsamic oils and medicines. Among the trees, some appear to be imported quinces or figs. Others are native fruit trees, such as avocados and guavas. Among the crops depicted, one looks like maize, another tobacco. All these species of plant are mentioned in the Relaciones geográficas. In a figurative rather than systematic way, the painted map complements or confirms the textual information in the questionnaire about botanical materials, medicinal practices and agricultural products.
Perhaps the most striking visual and narrative element of the painted map is the nine hoofed quadrupeds: an ox, a horse, a cow with three calves and a small flock of three sheep, one of which is nibbling on a prickly pear. These are, or for a time at least were, strange domesticated animals, as exotic to America as llamas or turkeys were to Europe. At any rate, the tlacuilo has chosen to depict Old World livestock in the territory in what appears to be a rather domesticated fashion. Were these livestock also considered usurpers, like the Zapotec lords? Or were they signs of a new prosperity for those who had survived the initial ravages of disease and war and now found solace for their altepetl under the sign of the holy cross? The Relaciones geográficas is not clear on this matter. What is clear is that this masterful landscape painting is also a historical chart of past and unfolding events, of territorial claims and environmental transformation.
The new environmental history of post-conquest Mexico would suggest that these voracious animals of the Old World wreaked havoc in the New. Grazing did not exist in Mesoamerica before the arrival of Spaniards. With the abundance of food and the rapid decline of human populations due to disease, livestock multiplied exponentially, changing the environment. The tlacuilo of our picture records this transformation of the countryside. According to Castilian tradition, pastures and grassland not cultivated for agriculture were recognised as common grazing land, an idea which seems to have swept across Macuilxóchitl, devouring its natural resources. The animals’ tracks are visible on the roads, after the footprints of the natives. There are at least two types of track, some with horseshoes, others without. These hoofprints sum up the itinerary of the animal occupation and colonisation of agrarian space formerly peopled by peasants but still ruled to some extent by native spatial concepts, chiefs and gods.
FURTHER READING
Acuña, R. (ed.) (1984) Relaciones geográficas del siglo XVI: Antequera, t. 2, vol. 1 (Mexico: UNAM).
Gruzinski, S. (1991) La colonización de lo imaginario: sociedades indígenas y occidentalización en el México español. Siglos XVI–XVIII (Mexico: FCE).
Leibsohn, D. (1994) ‘Primers for memory: cartographic histories and Nahua identity’, in Writing without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes, edited by E.H. Boone and W.D. Mignolo, 161–87 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
Leibsohn, D., and B. Mundy (2010) Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520–1820. DVD-ROM. https://vistas.ace.fordham.edu/
Mundy, B. (1996) The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciones Geográficas (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press).
Pardo Tomás, J. (2013) ‘Representación e imaginación de la Nueva España: las pinturas de las Relaciones geográficas de Indias’, in Los trazos de las ciencias: circulación del conocimiento en imágenes, edited by E. Kröppen and M.S. Menchero, 13–60 (Mexico: UNAM/Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades).
Russo, A. (2005) El realismo circular: tierras, espacios y paisajes de la cartografía indígena novohispana, siglos XVI y XVII (Mexico: UNAM/Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas).
Russo, A. (2014) The Untranslatable Image: A Mestizo History of the Arts in New Spain, 1500–1600 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press).
Sáenz-López, S., and J. Pimentel (2017) Cartografías de lo desconocido: mapas en la BNE (Madrid: BNE).
1 G.F. de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las Indias (Seville, 1535–57).
2 B. Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciones Geográficas (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
3 A. Russo, El realismo circular: tierras, espacios y paisajes de la cartografía indígena novohispana, siglos XVI y XVII (Mexico: UNAM/Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 2005).