Week Three

Though the Nahuatl writings found transcribed in volume five of the Florentine Codex is viewed as a primary source based on when it was written and who was credited as the narrator, I feel that it should also be viewed as a secondary source; or at the very least a skewed and biased primary source. From the onset, the reader is told that this collection of moral narratives were written down by nobles and translated by Fray Bernardino de Sahagun. What does this mean? Simply, this accounting was written by the upper echelon of the remaining conquered Aztecs and further translated by a Spanish missionary, whose own culture and predisposition influenced how the material was written down. Women were not taught to read or write by the conquering Spaniards, rather, they were relegated to the role of mother, maid and inamorata. The selections we read ranged from marriage blessings to manners and childbirth. The advice to the male was simple; work hard, stay sober, and procreate to ensure their lineage. The advice to females was to wait for your parents to marry you off, procreate, have and raise children while tending to the home, and to anticipate death at any of these stages. I also felt that a “blessed” married woman would have male offspring if she and her husband were obedient to God. I also noticed numerous references to life that were precluded their colonization by the Spanish. In the vague conversation between the grandmother and her daughter and grandsons, the conversation alludes to former aspects of their native customs. In the line, “that you took from your secret cases and chests, the precious feathers and plumes…” the author is talking about former symbols of noble birth and lineage that had to be hidden once their people had been conquered. A few paragraphs later the grandmother talks of how many relatives their family and community once had and then questions their deaths;
“But now everywhere our Lord is destroying and reducing the land, we are coming to an end and disappearing. Why? For what reason?”
This seems to directly relate the deaths of the natives, from warfare and disease, at the hands of the Spanish Christians. It is curious that Sahagun printed this statement considering the implications that would accompany it. The next references she makes are with regards to the native’s former pagan and uncivilized ways. She asserts that they too were raised in temples and yet, someone, either the narrator or the translator, chose to refer to these as “demon temples”, thus making a further reference to the carvings and statues outside the temple; which were obviously that of as demonic by the missionary.
There was also great pride taken in describing the “education” of the male children, while the females received only a few sentences, describing their lessons in housekeeping. The older female goes on to describe the downfall of her people of their civilization through adulterous females and their sexual escapades. This seems closer to Christian references to the Garden of Eden, and the fall of Babylon and Sodom and Gomorrah rather than actions the native population would have taken given the similarities to the defiling of virgins. Once again it also obscurely places blame on females for the ruin of lives, both past and present.
Though Sahagun should be praised for his collection, even if he did only use male perspectives on his narratives, caution should be noted to the reader for the amount of sexism and bigotry was also penned within the volumes of the Florentine Codex.