Musto Observatory

This session, sponsored by the Bibliographical Society of America, explores indigenous Mexica and Quecha manuscripts created between the 14th and early 17th centuries in what is today Mexico and Peru. The impact of European colonial culture on the manuscripts’ creation and interpretation will be analyzed through a variety of approaches. The presentations will also consider how the manuscripts’ creators conveyed their lived cultures, and whether the manuscripts enable otherwise ephemeral aspects of those cultures, such as music and movement, to be recovered.

Examining the sixteenth-century Mexica manuscript Cantares Mexicanos through sound studies and a performative lens, Gema Valencia-Turco proposes that the texts, influenced by both pre- and post-conquest contexts, constitute a genre in themselves. Rather than purely literary expression, they represent a type of early-colonial libretto constituting a new generation’s response to an imposed new life. George Thomas focuses on an early 17th-century Quecha manuscript, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s New Chronicle. Through comparing the New Chronicle with printed illustrations in imported works of literature, Thomas demonstrates how Guaman Poma appropriated their imagery and, in so doing, presented a critique of Peruvian colonial rule. Taking a historiographical perspective, Seonaid Valiant discusses Zelia Nuttall, a self-trained scholar who raised awareness of the indigenous manuscripts of Mexico through her facsimile editions. Drawing on the manuscripts’ depictions of astronomical practices, Nuttall developed a ceremony to demonstrate the “shadowless moment” sacred to the Mexica. She then worked to institute a school festival based on this ceremony, hoping to impart the significance of ancient Mexica culture to future generations.