Archaeology and Ethnohistory in the La Montaña of Guerrero: Patterns in the Political and Territorial Expansion of a Tlapaneco-Mixteco Polity in Post-Classic Mesoamerica

Goals and Problems

The purpose of this dissertation is to study issues associated with the territorial expansion of the altepetl of Tlapa-Tlachinollan, a middle size autochthonous Mesoamerica polity located in eastern Guerrero, México (Figure 1). Territorial expansion is defined as the annexation of formerly independent political units into one’s sovereignty by any means possible.

In this research the altepetl was considered the basic unit of political expansion (García Martínez, 1987; Lockhart, 1992; Carrasco, 1999). The altepetl was the native state of Central and Southern México. It was organized into a modular-like political structure in which a group of kin-related rulers (teuctlatoani) exercised the legitimate right to use force against the inhabitants of a given territory. Internal and external competition between ruling lineages for the control of land, people, and preciosities promoted the annexation of weaker modules.

Tlapa-Tlachinollan was a middle size multi-ethnic polity located in the Mixteca-Tlapaneca-Náhuatl region (Figure 2). Information on its indigenous political history was available from a large corpus of local pictorial documents found in the region (Villela, 1996). Two pictorial codices of this corpus: the Codex Azoyú 1 and Codex Azoyú 2 narrate the political history of the altepetl of Tlapa-Tlachinollan from A.D. 1300 to A.D. 1565 (Figures 3 and 4, shown below). The important political events mentioned in these two documents describe the conquest of some twenty places located over eastern Guerrero (Figure 5, shown below). Both documents depict the place names of the defeated rival polities and the approximate time in which they were conquered or annexed to the political sphere of Tlapa-Tlachinollan.

If these place names can be associated with Postclassic archaeological sites in the geography of eastern Guerrero, then the sequence, direction and extend of territorial expansion would be known. This would provide opportunity to study the geopolitical strategies used by Tlapa-Tlachinollan’s leaders in their expansion and to reconstruct the dynamics of political interaction in eastern Guerrero.

Constanza Vega Sosa (1989) has studied this problem and has identified most of the place names in the codices correlating them with modern and colonial Pueblos of eastern Guerrero. She also wrote the first comprehensive interpretation of Codex Azoyú 1 (Vega Sosa, 1991). Since then other authors have reinterpreted and/or corrected some of her identifications (Rubí, 1998; Vélez, 1998; Carrasco, 1999; Jiménez, 2000). Nevertheless, features such as the exact position, structure, size, and architectural dimensions and design of the archaeological sites were unknown.

The codices Azoyú 1 and 2 were painted in Tlapa around A.D. 1565 and were used in the Spanish courts by the powerful Alvarado-Cortés lineage to claim political and territorial rights under the colonial system. This biases the narration in favor of the deeds of this ruling lineage, leaving some doubt about the historical reliability of the recorded events. As a result it is difficult to use these documents at face value. It is even harder to prove that the events portrayed in the codices really happened or that they happened in the same way or at the same time as they are depicted in the narration.

This problem needed to be solved to use the codices as a hypothetical framework for Tlapa-Tlachinollan’s political expansion. Critical analysis was carried out to evaluate the accuracy of these accounts. In order to address the issues in this research it was necessary to undertake archival research in the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) in México City. I examined a variety sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century documents that discuss territorial controversies and land litigations made by the local señoríos during the creation of Spanish-like Indian municipalities. I was trying to find documents that: (1.) deny or contradict the information contained in the codices of Azoyú, or (2.) support the accounts of the codices.

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