The Origin of Jaltepec

The "Black Hole of Jaltepec"

The Selden Codex has a known history. It is recognized as a palimpsest. That is to say, it had been erased and a new story or history was drawn on to the older manuscript. The Selden was then used in a post-conquest court battle to claim disputed land near Jaltepec.

 

Previous seminars had discovered what had become known as "The Black Hole of Jaltepec." Dr. John Pohl from Los Angeles, California and Father Robert Williams from Austin, Texas, the two experts on Mixtec Codices, tackled this mysterious aspect of the codex during Spring Break at the 1998 Maya Meetings, a Texas workshop held every year in Austin, Texas. These workshops inititated in 1978, were conceived by Linda Schele as a vehicle for deciphering the Maya glyphs.
As the years passed, other Mesoamerican texts were added to the curriculum. It eventually included the Mixtec codices. The expertise of Dr. Pohl and Father Williams in reading these codices, culminated in the answer to the problem of the "Black Hole" that had puzzled Mixtec scholars for a long time.

 

The "Black Hole of Jaltepec" was an integral part of the Selden. Located between pages 9 and 11 of the codex, it seemed to contain information that had no bearing on the rest of the manuscript.

 

During the course of the workshop, long discussions were presented as to what was implied in this section of the codex. It was determined that the sacred bundle (the bones of the nuhu spirit as seen in the third section of this manuscript) and the toponymic glyph name for the city did not appear on these pages. Since it was known that this document was used in a post-conquest court hearing, it had to have some bearing on the final verdict of case: the disputed land was awarded to Jaltepec.

 

This codex illustrates the need for proper paperwork in a land dispute. A secondary record of such a need is found in a Tlaxcalan festival, related by Professor M. Patrick, during a geography class in the late 70's. The festival is clearly a message to tell post-conquest visitors from other parts of Mesoamerica, that proper papers were necessary if one laid claim to any land after the conquest.
The message was done in actions interspersed with symbolic meanings. It was said that the men did not have any papers to prove that they owned the "bull." They were taken to jail. The women stormed the jailhouse and freed their menfolk. Today, after this event is played out in mock seriousness, there is a great celebration while the bull is bar-b-qued. But did the participants of long ago actually go to jail over an animal? It is quite possible that animal only a symbol of a rumbling, burping volcanic land.

 

Jaltepec, the Hill of Sand, apparently took the message of the festival to heart. An old manuscript was sacrificed to "prove" to the Spanish court that they and they alone owned the disputed land. And the court agreed.
The Spanish court decided that the parade of people on the mats and coming to the mats, illustrated in Selden's pages 9 through 11, had to be a part of the on-going lineage after the sacred bundle and toponymic glyph was removed from the polity.

 

It could not be determined from the information given what had occurred to remove, not only the sacred bundle from the temple, but also the glyph which identified the city as a political entity. However, a sacrifice of hearts of battle victims to the sun was shown as the reason for the return of the bundle to the temple and the reappearance of the glyph for Jaltepec.

 

After the Selden was read through, the participants of this workshop returned to this mysterious section of the codex. They began to look at the only element left in this dynastic puzzle: that of the lineage of the rulers. Within the pages of the "Black Hole," ten marriages of traceable descendants were celebrated on the mat of Jaltepec. Foreign women came to the mat from outlying cities. The time span in pages 9 through 11 covered 222 years. The ten marriages apparently supplied a recognizable line of descendants (22 years per couple) which was acceptable to the Spanish court in the Nueva España.

 

The persistence of Dr. John Pohl and Father Robert Williams paid off. The mystery of the "Black Hole of Jaltepec" was solved. Thanks to the vision an foresight of Linda Schele, the Maya Meetings has again proven its worth in the world of Mesoamerican scholarship.