Tlaxcalan Histories of the Conquest and the Construction of a Cultural Memory

Abstract

This article presents an interpretation of the visual and written histories of the conquest of New Spain produced by authors and painters from Tlaxcala during the 16th century as highly formalized elaborations of the cultural memory of these events being constructed by the elites of that Indigenous city at that time. By reconstructing the ritual and performative aspects of these discourses, it seeks to recover the complexity of Indigenous historical genres, and of the social memories they underpinned. It also argues that the Tlaxcalan memory of the conquest was highly successful and spread to numerous Indigenous communities over New Spain, lasting until the end of the Colonial period and beyond, until it was undermined by the Nationalist history of the conquest produced by the elites of independent Mexico.

Keywords

• conquest
• cultural memory
• historiography
• pictography
• tlaxcala
• mexico