‘They no longer belonged to the governor, but to the king’: the politics of being in the Huexotzinco Codex

In 1531, three Indigenous men from Huexotzingo, a town about 100 km east of Mexico City, testified in a contentious trial. The witnesses, Baltasar, Lucas Tamaueltetle, and Esteban Tochel, found themselves amid a conflict between Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and three former members of Mexico’s Primera Audiencia (First High Court), judges Juan Ortíz de Matienzo, Diego Delgadillo, and president Nuño Beltran de Guzmán, also a conquistador. Cortés claimed that the former officials had unlawfully demanded tribute payments and services from Huexotzingo, one of his encomienda claims. A two-year legal battle ensued, yielding what is known today as the Huexotzinco Codex. It consists of eight plates (láminas) on native paper (amatl) with pictographic writing, plus a 79-folio manuscript on European paper. At first sight, the Huexotzinco Codex is the simple product of a legal dispute between rival colonizing factions, treating an Indigenous altepetl (city-state or town) as a mere pawn. However, upon closer examination, the depositions by Huexotzingo’s principales (noblemen) Baltasar and Lucas Tamaueltetle, and that of Esteban Tochel, a macehual (commoner), confirmed Cortés’s accusations. In addition to general mistreatment of the Huexotzinca, the three men accused the ex-judges of demanding material resources and manual labor from the altepetl for the construction of their private residences, along with the Dominican monastery, in Mexico City. Yet what stands out amid their declarations are lengthy and detailed accounts of the human and material resources demanded by Nuño de Guzmán for his 1529–1531 conquest expedition to northwestern Mexico, the future Kingdom of New Galicia. Among the exactions were a horse to transport a Huexotzinca leader to the war front, a military banner depicting a Madonna with Child adorned with gold and feathers, and hundreds of men readied for battle. As supporting evidence, a group of principales presented eight images on amatl depicting the requisitioned items. The images were produced between 1529 and 1531 by unknown tlacuilos (painters/writers). This article centers Indigenous experiences and voices present in the Huexotzinco Codex. It follows a key principle in the field of Native American and Indigenous Studies: that scholarship about Indigenous subjects in historical sources must bring to light narratives emphasizing Native knowledge and agency, particularly in colonial