Works-in-Progress Session: The Codex Osuna: A Landmark Nahua Lawsuit in Early Colonial Mexico City

Presented by Sofia Yazpik, Ph.D. Student, University of California, Los Angeles

Hosted by the Early Modern Research Group

Online event via Zoom
To register, please visit: https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/27QJuD5aR7CWYepuuHGUBA

The Codex Osuna, or the Pintura del gobernador, alcaldes y regidores de México (Painting of the Municipal Governor, Judges, and Councilors of Mexico), is a pictorial and Nahuatl-language text produced by Nahuas for a legal dispute in Mexico City during the sixteenth century. This type of pintura, or pictorial writing, functioned as legitimate evidence that Indigenous peoples could present to viceregal authorities in a legal dispute. Completed in 1565, the Indigenous municipal governor, judges, and councilors from Mexico City utilized these pinturas to accuse the Spanish viceroy and judges of the Real Audiencia of exploiting the Indigenous population by physically abusing them and not paying them for their labor. This codex demonstrates how Indigenous litigants strategically used the Spanish legal system to defend their rights against corruption and exploitation.

The Codex Osuna is a valuable resource for deepening our understanding of how the Spanish legal system functioned in New Spain and how Indigenous litigants strategically presented their cases to defend their rights and property within this colonial institution, particularly during the politically tumultuous period of the 1560s. By focusing on pictorial writing in particular, Yazpik’s research project seeks to demonstrate the Codex Osuna’s historical significance in the early colonial period by examining how Indigenous peoples utilized their own creative forms of expression within the Spanish legal system.

Sofía Yazpik is a third-year Ph.D. student in History at UCLA. Her research focuses on Mesoamerican codices, presently examining an early colonial legal pictorial and alphabetic-writing manuscript from central Mexico. She is interested in Indigenous productions of knowledge, the relationship between pictorial and alphabetic writing systems, and early modern collecting practices. Prior to her graduate studies at UCLA, she received her bachelor’s degree in Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked in museums and university collections ranging from pre-Hispanic to Modern and Contemporary Latin American art.

Image: Viceroy don Luis de Velasco passing the command to Indigenous municipal judges and constables to ensure for good governance in the Codex Osuna, ca. 1565, National Library in Madrid, fol. 471v