LITMIR.BIZ

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Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, or the Florentine Codex, conceives itself as a linguistic project in which the accumulation of examples of proper Nahuatl, which would also document idolatries, superstitions, auguries, and omens, among other things, would aid missionaries in writing sermons in Nahuatl and confessing Indians:

To preach against these matters, and even to know if they exist, it is needful to know how they practice them in the times of their idolatry, for, through [our] lack of knowledge of this, they perform many idolatrous things in our presence without our understanding it. And, making excuses for them, some say they are foolishness or childishness, not knowing the source whence they spring (which is pure idolatry). And the confessors neither ask about them, nor think that such a thing exists, nor understand the language to enquire about it, nor would even understand them, even though they told them of it. (Sahagún, 1950-82: 1, 45-6)

      Beyond the Historia general and its pedagogical end of training preachers and confessors in the art of Nahuatl, Sahagún wrote a series of doctrinal texts that address Nahuas. The so-called enciclopedia doctrina would include the appendix to Book 1 of the Historia general, “Las veintiseis adiciones a la postilla” and “el apendice a la postillao las siete colaciones.” This last text is a fragment. In his Spanish and Nahuatl edition of these texts Arthur Anderson also includes the Exercicio quotidiano, a text that was found among Chimalpahin’s papers. The Exercicio quotidiano includes the following note at the end: “I found this exercise among the Indians. I do not know who produced it, nor who gave it to them. It had many errors and incongruities. But in truth it may be said that it was done anew rather than that it was corrected. In this year of 1574. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún” (Anderson and Schroeder, 1997: 2, 183). Note that the handwriting is Chimalpahin’s. We must remember that at least part of Chimalpahin’s intellectual formation was under the Dominican friars in Amaquemecan.

      An echography of internal voices would attend to the different forms of devotion and conversion implicit in evangelical writings. As Edmundo O’Gorman has correctly pointed out in writing about Las Casas’s De unico vocationis modo, the Dominican and Franciscan orders differed in the emphasis they placed on the will and the understanding in their evangelical practices (O’Gorman, 1942: 31 – 60). Neither is the will an exclusive domain of the first nor is the understanding of the latter. Both reason in addressing Indians and both presuppose on the part of Indians a desire to accept the articles of the faith. However, the habitus they pursue differs (Rabasa, 1998). Observe that the Exercicio quotidiano emphasizes the formation of an intellectual habit, which to my mind seems indicative that it was written under Dominican supervision.

      Sahagún’s doctrinal writings have two modalities. In the first, Sahagún exposes the falsehood and cruelty of the pagan gods. One can trace instances of these modalities in the appendix of Book 1 and the Apéndice de la postilla. In the appendix of Book 1 he limits himself to making declarative statements: your gods are false, hence you must abandon them. That’s how it is, period. In the second, Sahagún works on declarative sentences that establish the tenets of the faith that all Christians must accept and are under the obligation of believing. Again, there is no reasoning; rather he works on the transformation of desire and the will. Sahagún seeks an affective transformation of the subject. The source of knowledge is the truth of the Gospel, of those who know how to interpret the divine word. The objective is to infuse in the Indian subject “the desire of the desire that will take him to love by the love of God” (Sahagún, 1993: 33). Truth is transparent; it is only a matter of developing the will to desire living according to Christian principles. But the realization of this “will to desire” would be further complicated by the fact that faith entails a participation in grace. In this regard it foments a habitus of the will that prepares the subject for recognizing and receiving the gift of faith. A glance at the Apéndice de la postilla will find the repetition of the terms “desire” (nequilia), “your obligation” (monauatil), and “it is necessary” (monequi). Needless to say, one finds descriptions of Heaven and Hell that should motivate the new life of the neophyte. Among these fully converted Christians, whose desires are in perfect harmony with the teachings of the church, one would find the Tenochca elite, to which the Nahua historian Fernando de Alvarado Tezozómoc belonged and celebrates in his Crónica mexicáyotl: “With this, here ends the account of the ancient ones who were the first Christians, the noblemen who were the first neophytes” (Anderson and Schroeder, 1997: 1, 62). Tezozómoc’s internal voice is consistent with what Sahagún seeks to implant. He defines himself as a Christian and constitutes himself as the inheritor of the ancient histories of the Mexican: “But these accounts of the ancient ones, this book of their accounts in Mexico, we have inherited. These accounts certainly are in our keeping. Therefore we too, but especially our sons, our grandchildren, our offspring, those who will issue from us, they too will also guard them. We leave them for them when we die (Anderson and Schroeder, 1997: 1, 60 – 2).

Let us now examine the language of learning and knowledge in the Exercicio quo- tidiano. The refrain now consists of “it is necessary that you should know [as in the Spanish saber]” (ticmiximachiliz), and “it is necessary that you should know [as in the Spanish conocer]” (ticmatiz). If the language of care opens the discussion of the nature of love, “it is necessary that you care for the love with which God is loved and the love by which your neighbors are loved,” the meditation for Saturday ends by placing the emphasis on knowledge: “Clearly this is the knowledge (iximachoca) by which the only Deity, God, is known, and the love with which he is loved, and the knowledge (iximachoca) by which your neighbors are known, and the love by which they are loved, and the nature of good love. Take [all these admonitions] very much to heart” (ibid.: 169). The Exercicio quotidiano emphasizes the creation of a habitus that will lead to the understanding of the Deity. It certainly also entails a transformation of affect, but it no longer resides in desire and the will, rather on the intellectual preparation of the soul for the reception of grace and the knowledge it imparts. Once the Exercicio quotidiano establishes the need to live by the Ten Commandments and the obligation to confess all sins, it goes on to compare the soul to a milpa, a cornfield: “This is esteemed to be like seeding and planting. For your soul is a spiritual field, and you are to take care of the spiritual green corn stalk that is aforementioned keeping of the divine commandments and living in accordance with the virtues” (131-3). This recommendation is systematized when it insists on the development of an intellectual habitus:

      To this work is necessary that you apply yourself if you wish to be saved. And it is necessary that you importune God each day and each night, so that he will strengthen you and you will perform your obligations well. For later, when you become a follower of what is good and righteous, you will be much comforted. You will live as if in a fresh, green field. (133).

The Exercicio quotidiano juxtaposes explanations of the nature of God to discourses that constitute a first person that the reader will assume to direct himself or herself to God. This is a text to be read silently and internalized by the reader. It records voices directed to the reader, and also reproduces voices that the reader will use to address God. This is the terrain in which the Nahua historians Tezozómoc and Chimalpahin were intellectually formed. To what extent were their internal voices, which critically reflect on the task of collecting the accounts of the elders and establishing the criteria for the identification of more credible versions, formed by this kind of training in self-examination? But also, to what extent did this critical habitus also lead to the interrogation of the colonial institutions that surrounded them? Indeed, these questions should not make us exclude what, for lack of a better term, we may define as an autochthonous critical thought. The accounts that Chimalpahin and Tezozómoc collect document the genres of speech acts that supplemented the pictographic histories. Beyond the alphabetical texts, pictography provides leads for an inquiry into native critical thought.

      Writing Pictograms

      In its most elemental form alphabetical writing exerts violence on the pictographic by denying the status of writing to the latter. This is what Walter Mignolo has defined as the “tyranny of the alphabet.” This “tyranny’ does not merely refer

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