Difference and Belonging in Preconquest and Early Colonial Central Mexico: A Perspective from the Florentine Codex

As is well known, the classification of subjects in colonial Spanish America according to origin and kinship hinged on the presence of three major populations—Spaniards, Indigenous people, and Africans—whose offspring gave rise to the creation of labels for castas that focused in part on phenotype characteristics, such as skin tone and hair, as dramatized in mid- and late colonial paintings. But how did those proto-ethnic classificatory systems compare to preconquest notions of difference in Indigenous communities? This presentation interrogates the multiple discourses about group identity and group origins that circulated among the Mexica before the conquest and in early colonial times, some of which were preserved as commentaries on various Central Mexican Indigenous communities in Book 10 of the sixteenth-century encyclopedic compendium known as the Florentine Codex. Since there are few sources that address proto-ethnic distinctions and discourses about group identity in preconquest Mesoamerica, these commentaries shed light on notions of identity that revolved around linguistic and cultural distinctions. Most strikingly, while these discourses emphasized modes of sustenance, types of dress, and personal appearance, they did not stress the phenotypic distinctions that were the base for early and mature colonial distinctions among castas and “nations.” In closing, this presentation examines the significance of preconquest modes of distinction for the eventual emergence of colonial discourses about difference.