The Codex Mexicanus documents some of the major epidemic outbreaks that afflicted Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the sixteenth century. It depicts the 1520 smallpox outbreak with the figure of a man lying horizontally and covered in pustules. A similar figure can be found over the year 1 Flint (1532, top left). The Nahuatl text above the victim reads, “there was a large sickness/pox, there was much death.” Above there is a smoking star, an astrological omen and marker of difficult times. To the right, the year 2 House (1533) is represented with the glyph for an earthquake (above), one of many that afflicted the region during these decades.
The harrowing cocoliztli outbreak of 1 House (1545, middle) is represented in the Codex Mexicanus with a figure of a man lying down, bleeding from nose and mouth. The illness killed quickly, as victims experienced copious bleeding from all bodily orifices and high fevers. Despite being the most destructive of all outbreaks in the century, it is one of the least documented, probably because the devastation was so vast that few survivors were willing or able to record it. Lasting until 1548, the outbreak killed upward of fifteen million people, reducing the already wrecked Indigenous population by nearly 80 percent.
The manuscript informs us of yet another smallpox outbreak taking place in 7 Flint (1564, right), marked by an infected man covered in pockmarks. Below the dying victim, there is a glyph for water, indicating that year’s scarcity of the precious liquid, yet another crisis that exacerbated the outbreak. In response to the water shortages, the colonial administration attempted, without success, to build and revitalize aqueducts. In addition, public reaction to a new taxation system imposed by colonial authorities that year appears in the upper register. The system required Natives to pay taxes in money—depicted here as a circle with a cross, representing a Spanish coin (tomín)—rather than in labor. The image of a man at right directing a rock at the coin, along with other rocks approaching the coin from all directions, represents the public protests against the levy.
Image Source
- Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Mexicain 23–24 (Codex Mexicanus), ca. 1590, fols. 79, 81, and 84. Courtesy of gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.
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.
- Diel, Lori Boornazian. The Codex Mexicanus: A Guide to Life in Late Sixteenth-Century New Spain. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018.
- Guevara Flores, Sandra Elena. “A través de sus ojos: Médicos indígenas y el cocoliztli de 1545 en la Nueva España.” eHumanista 39 (2018): 36–52.
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