The protagonism of Texcoco in the Hispano-Indigenous Wars between 1519-1521: The representations of Ixtililxochitl II in texts from the 16th and 17th centuries in the Valley of Mexico.
Conquest of Mexico, Texcoco, indigenous protagonism.
The research aims to analyze the discursive representations of Don Hernando Ixtlilxochitl II and the city of Texcoco in letters and chronicles written during and after the conquest of Tenochtitlan in the 16th and 17th centuries in New Spain. In these works, produced by different social actors, we find distinct accounts of the same episode. In some of these texts, it is reported that Ixtlilxochitl II was one of the great indigenous conquerors and Texcoco the main allied city of the Spanish. Based on this, we will use the methodology of discourse analysis to investigate these different representations. In addition, the study draws on debates surrounding the notion of representation, present in the texts of Roger Chartier and François Hartog. Based on these reflections, our main hypothesis is that different historical traditions have given rise to multiple discursive processes regarding the same events. In this way, we observe how the accounts construct discourses with more or less emphasis on groups and individuals who participated in the wars of conquest during the years 1519 to 1521. Besides, these disputes clearly demonstrate the contemporary debate over who should — or should not — be considered the conquerors. Therefore, this research contributes to the New History of the Conquest by analyzing the leading role of an indigenous person in sources that have already been extensively studied, but which, until now, is still little known in the thematic field.