Reading Between the Lines: An Indigenous Account of Conquest on the Missing Folios of Codex Azcatitlan

Abstract

Sometime between 1565 and 1743, three folios were removed from the central Mexican manuscript known as Codex Azcatitlan. Two of the missing folios were part of section referring to the conquest history in this manuscript. Through an analysis of extant images and the comparison with other indigenous accounts of the conquest, this study makes an argument for the possible content on these pages and proposes that the missing folios recorded significant sacrificial events and acts of violence against the Spaniards that were of great importance to the indigenous Tlatelolca authors and their intended indigenous audience. This paper argues that those images that might have been considered most offensive to a Spanish Christian viewer were excised, at a time when censorship was on the rise in New Spain.