The final colored page of the Codex Mexicanus (left) introduces incessant calamities. Under 3 House (1573, bottom left) sits Antonio Valenciano, ruler of the Native sphere of Mexico City, alumnus of the College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, and one of the authors of the Florentine Codex. To his right flows a stream of water, moving right and downward, likely referring to the dismal failure of the overflowing Santa Fe aqueduct that was supposed to alleviate the pervasive water crisis. Above 5 Reed (1575), there is the place sign of Chapultepec, indicating an Indigenous-led project to bring water from Chapultepec into troubled Mexico City. The unending water crisis fueled one of the worst epidemics of the century, the great cocoliztli outbreak of 1576, represented here by a skull hovering above 6 Flint (1576) and 7 House (1577). Above 8 Rabbit (1578) appears a glyphic compound of a hand and water, and above it the word mayanalloc, “there was hunger.”
The compound crises of epidemics, famines, and water shortages led to exceptionally high mortality. The Indigenous population, already greatly diminished by decades of epidemics and colonial abuse, fell to levels of near extinction. The archbishop of Mexico estimated that more than half of the Indigenous population had perished between 1576 and 1583. That was the last year the Codex Mexicanus artists recorded completely. The next page (right) presents bare sketches for the years 1584–1590, their emptiness signaling a calendar left incomplete amid precipitous social decline.
Image Source
- Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Mexicain 23–24 (Codex Mexicanus), ca. 1590, fols. 86 and 87. Courtesy of gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.
Further Reading
- Cook, Noble David. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650. New Approaches to the Americas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
- Diel, Lori Boornazian. The Codex Mexicanus: A Guide to Life in Late Sixteenth-Century New Spain. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018.
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