aa
chronic, Ixtlilxóchitl, New Spain.
The objective of this investigation is to analyze how the chronicler, Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (1578-1580), constructed the social and political power of his ancestors, the indigenous elites (the acolhuas of Texcoco), in order to protect their right sand privileges during the late 16th andearly 17th centuries in New Spain. We consider that the texts written by Ixtlilxochitl present the histories of the indigenous elites of Texcoco follow some models of European writing, as a chronology based on the Christian thoughts.
Scholars assert that Ixtlilxochitl describes members of the indigenous elites of Texcoco as having the most exceptional characteristics – according to the vision of European culture –in comparison with other local ethnic groups. In his writings, Ixtlilxochitl emphasizes the social and political power that these indigenous elites of Texcoco had in pre-Hispanic times especially.
Ixtlilxochitl high lights the social and political differentiations that existed between the indigenous elites and the common members of the “altepeme”. However, the traditional forms of social and political differentiation were under going changes in the historical context lived by the chronicler, when several administrative changes occurred in New Spain, for example, that would diminish the privileges of the indigenous elites, for allowing the common members of society to have access to positions and privileges that were once occupied only by such elites.
There fore, the texts developed by Ixtlilxochitl narrate the trajectory of the indigenous elites of Texcoco and preserve fundamental information for the proofand protection of the rights that the indigenous elites had held since the pre-Columbian era, as in the case of the Ixtlilxochitl family it self, which had privileges dueto accessto the position of “San Juan Teotihuacan Cacicazgo