The ''Anales de Tlatelolco'' (''Annals of Tlatelolco'') is a codex manuscript written in Nahuatl, using

Latin characters The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Ital ...

, by anonymous

Aztec The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl ...

authors. The text has no pictorial content. Although there is an assertion that the text was a copy of one written in 1528 in Tlatelolco, only seven years after the fall of the Aztec Empire, James Lockhart argues that there is no evidence for this early date of composition, based on internal evidence of the text. However, he supports the contention that this is an authentic conquest account, arguing that it was composed about 20 years after the conquest in the 1540s, and contemporaneous with the Cuernavaca censuses. Unlike the

Florentine Codex The ''Florentine Codex'' is a 16th-century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. Sahagún originally titled it: ''La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España'' (in English: ''Th ...

and its account of the

conquest of the Aztec Empire The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, also known as the Conquest of Mexico or the Spanish-Aztec War (1519–21), was one of the primary events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. There are multiple 16th-century narratives of the ev ...

, the Annals of Tlatelolco remained in indigenous hands, providing authentic insight into the thoughts and outlook of the newly conquered Nahuas. The document is the only one that contains the day the Aztecs exited Aztlan-Colhuacan, as well as the day of the founding of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Its authors preferred to remain anonymous, probably to protect them from the Spanish authorities. It is suspected these authors later became the sources for

Bernardino de Sahagún Bernardino de Sahagún, OFM (; – 5 February 1590) was a Franciscan friar, missionary priest and pioneering ethnographer who participated in the Catholic evangelization of colonial New Spain (now Mexico). Born in Sahagún, Spain, in 1499, ...

's works. The priest Ángel María Garibay K. provided one translation of the manuscript into Spanish in 1956, while James Lockhart published the Nahuatl text and a scholarly translation to English in 1991 in ''We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico.'' It is also variously known as ''Unos Annales Históricos de la Nación Mexicana'' ("Some Historical Annals of the Mexican Nation"), ''La relación anónima de Tlatelolco'', “Manuscript 22”, and the "Tlatelolco Codex" (also a true codex called thus exists). The manuscript is held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. The most important publications in Spanish are: the published one by Antigua Libreria de Robredo, Mexico 1948, introduction of Robert Barlow, translation and notes of Henrich Berlin; the most recent by Conaculta, Mexico 2002, translation of Rafael Tena, Col. Cien de México, 207pp. (). Background on the text and a popular translation to English for classroom use can be found in ''The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico'' by

Miguel León-Portilla Miguel León-Portilla (22 February 1926 – 1 October 2019) was a Mexican anthropologist and historian, specializing in Aztec culture and literature of the pre-Columbian and colonial eras. Many of his works were translated to English and he was ...

and Lysander Kemp.León Portilla, Miguel, and Lysander Kemp. 1962. ''The broken spears; the Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico''. Boston: Beacon Press.

References

Aztec codices 1530 books 16th-century history books History books about the 16th century Nahuatl literature 1540s in New Spain Bibliothèque nationale de France collections {{manuscript-stub