Postconquest Nahua Society and Concepts Viewed through Nahuatl Writings

Resumen

The Nahuas of central Mexico (often misleadingly called Aztecs after the quite ephemeral imperial confederatoon that existed among them in late prehispanic times) were the mostpopulous of Mesoamerica's cultural-linguistic groups at the time of the Spanish canquest, and they remained at the center of developments for centuries thereafter, since the bulk of the Hispanic population settled among them and they bore the brunt of cultural contact. For these reasons, more was written about them in the colonial period than about any other group, and they have been equally favored by modern scholars. Yet until the last few, years hardly anyone took advantage of the mass of documents the Nahuas produced in their own language, Nahuatl, in the time from about 1550, to ahout 1800, using the European alphabetical scrlpt which took hold among them almost immediately. It was as though Roman history were being done without Latin.