Cocoliztli Outbreak of 1576

This page comes from the Aubin Codex, a manuscript written in 1576, at the peak of another dreadful cocoliztli outbreak. The Nahuatl text reads, “In August [1576] illness spread. Blood came from our noses. Priests confessed us in our homes and brought us food. Doctors healed us. And then the bells went quiet, they did not announce funerals anymore, as if we had abandoned the church” (Dibble 1963:85). The images include an Indigenous man bleeding profusely from his nose (middle) as well as a Europeanized image of death carrying a Christian cross (bottom), perhaps referring to a procession that took place on Sunday, September 16, to plea for divine help against the illness. 

The year 1576 started a cycle of epidemic outbreaks that brought the already diminished Indigenous population of Central Mexico to ruins. Following an agricultural year marked by drought and famine, the dreadful cocoliztli shattered the region yet again. The outbreak began in Mexico City and extended across Mesoamerica, killing nearly two million people—approximately half of the remaining Indigenous population. It was followed by wave after wave of other illnesses that brought fears of total annihilation.

Juan Bautista de Pomar reported that “for cocoliztli, no remedy has been found. Only two groups of people were able to prevail: the rich people, dressed, well covered, and well fed, and those who lived in the warmer lands; while the poor and those who lived in cold and dry regions suffered the most. Why this is so [no one knows]” (Cook 1998:102). The unequal impact of epidemics continued for centuries. Amerindians not only lacked immunity to the myriad novel viruses, but they were also subjected to exploitative labor regimes and precarious living conditions that made them easy prey to epidemic illnesses, as were the enslaved African descendants brought by colonists to replace the decimated Native labor in the fields and mines fueling European splendor. This legacy of systemic discrimination established during the colonial period continues today, with the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affecting Indigenous and Afro-descendent populations in the Americas.

Image Source

• London, British Museum, Aubin Codex, 1576, fol. 60r. Courtesy of the British Museum, © The Trustees of the British Museum. 

Further Reading

• Acuna-Soto, Rodolfo, et al. “Megasequía y mega-muerte en México en el siglo XVI.” Revista Biomédica 13, no. 4 (2002): 289–92.
• Cook, Noble David. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650. New Approaches to the Americas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
• Dibble, Charles E. Historia de la nación mexicana: Reproducción a todo color del Códice de 1576 (Códice Aubin). Colección “Chimalistac” de libros y documentos acerca de la Nueva España 16. Madrid: J. Porrúa Turanzas, 1963.
• Herzog, Richard. “How Aztecs Reacted to Colonial Epidemics.” JSTOR Daily, September 23, 2020. https://daily.jstor.org/how-aztecs-reacted-to-colonial-epidemics/.