Don Diego García de Mendoza Moctezuma: A techialoyan mastermind?

Resumen

One of the most puzzling aspects of the unusual Techialoyan manuscripts of colonial Mexico is the question of authorship. Thanks to the painstaking work of Donald Robertson, who made a catalog of all known Techialoyan codices and published it in the Handbook al Middie American lndians in 1975, we do have a sound knowledge of the basic features of the genre. But scholars are still asking precisely when were these manuscripts made? By whom? Were they composed and distributed by a school of forgers? Were they prepared with the express purpose of fooling the courts into believing they were ancient and legitimate corporate land titles in the native tradition? Or were they made primarily for the sake of the communities they served, to fill the void of missing titles and strengthen the collective memory of age-old claims? How much local input do they contain? Can the town histories and genealogical and territorial claims be substantiated? How accurate were those claims?