Power, politics, and persuasion: The painted histories of the Tira de Tepechpan
Description
A pictorial annals history created in the relatively minor city-state of Tepechpan in the first century after the conquest of Mexico, the Tira de Tepechpan records Tepechpan's history on the upper register and the history of the Mexica capital, Tenochtitlan, on the lower register. Working at different times, a number of artists and scribes contributed to the Tira; thus, the Tira records multiple histories. In this examination of the painted history, I take a diachronic focus and place the Tira in its correct historical context(s) By identifying and correlating the work of the different artists and scribes, I reveal that Spanish colonial policies shaped this indigenous history. Indigenous communities wished to earn cabecera rank, and aware of Spanish criteria for such rank, the artists of the Tira present the history of Tepechpan adhering to these criteria. Furthermore, indigenous pictorials often were admitted into Spanish courts of law, and it has been proposed that the Tira was created for use in a lengthy lawsuit between Tepechpan and its subject Temascalapa. My comparison of the Tira with the lawsuit reveals that the manuscript was not made specifically for the suit nor was it submitted as evidence. Instead, I propose that the Tira was an all-purpose document that could be used in various circumstances to argue the autonomy and prestige of the community A final intriguing aspect of the Tira de Tepechpan is the fact that Tepechpan was once subject to Texcoco, yet that city is virtually absent in this history. Instead, the principal artist of the Tira paints a portrait of Tepechpan as a major ally of Tenochtitlan, the ruling power in the Aztec empire; by doing so, he hopes to establish the prestige of Tepechpan. After the conquest and with the emergence of the Spanish as the new imperial leaders, the artists of the Tira shift the focus of their histories to show Tepechpan as a principal ally of the Spanish. In Mesoamerica, alliance with the victors, regardless of ethnic affiliation, was paramount; by painting such a situation, the artists of the Tira hoped to make it true