The time spent in Tlaxcala, if Bernal Diaz is to be believed, was largely spent seeking information and negotiating with various groups, ambassadors, messengers, and even discussing with his own men as to what to do next. Diaz spends four lengthy chapters (78-81) on this series of discussions before they get on the road again (82). There were the Tlaxcalan chiefs, the new trusted locals, there were the Cempoalan chiefs, the old trusted friends, who both advised Cortes not to proceed by way of Cholula. There was a Mexica garrison there, they said and that city had long been subservient to and followed the treacherous whims of Moctuzoma. On the other hand, there were the Mexica and then the Cholulan ambassadors who gave opposite advice. The Spaniards were welcome, and of course, would be treated as honored guests; the Tlaxcalans were the ones that could not be trusted.
As it turns out, if Diaz is to be believed, the Tlaxcalans were correct. But by his reckoning, the europeans spent seventeen days in Tlaxcala. Messengers coming and going, ambassadors to Cholula, or to Moctuzoma sent, called back, received, sent away. Much of this was even documented pictorially in what is variously called La Historia de Tlaxcala. This was of course a collection that was itself a compilation brought together, sixty + years after the events described. Ascribed to Diego Muñoz Camargo, the text marked the completion of that 'questionnaire', Relaciones Geográficas produced by Phillip II (c. 1580) and sent to all the 'towns of New Spain'. This was a locally produced reply, this chosen local 'mestizo' author, Camargos put together in the 1580's at the direction of the Tlaxcala governor, Alonso de Nava.
Helpfully, Camilla Townshend, in her book, Malintzin's Choices, gives a photo (p.75) from it and a number of other photos (pp. 69-73) from the 'Texas fragment'of one the numerous copies of this unique item. She uses these to support her argument of the centrality and power of her object of focus, the young woman Malintzin. There are a number of these and other photos of the pictures if you use any internet search. But not many.
But this 'Texas fragment' (called that because it stays in the Nettie Lee Benson Collection of the University of Texas in Austin, TX), Townshend says, the oldest version of a pictorial history of the state of Tlaxcala , was likely produced in the 1530's or '40's, after an original on cloth, now long lost. This early period did include the locals wanting to show for the whole world the marriage alliances, the negotiations, the acceptance of Xicotencatl the younger by Cortes, at a later time, when later Spaniards were trying to make their presences known in the region. The Tlaxcalans had entered into a separate agreement with the Spaniards, Cortes, and the King, the Emperor Charles V when he was undisputed leader of most of Europe and all the New World. Malintzin figures prominently in all these, sometimes larger than Cortes.
In the distance, some twenty miles distant, Mt Popocatepetl was smoking and sending off fire (Diaz, 78). As it is this year as well. The mountain's other name that this volcano is sometimes referred to is La Malinche. Cortes sent a pair of scouts to find out about it since they had never seen an active volcano before. The scout came back excitedly as, they had not only breached the smoking, spewing crest of the volcano - against the advice of the locals - but had seen beyond to the city of Mexico itself.
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references to Diaz: Bernal Díaz de Castillo: The True History of the Conquest of New Spain translated with an introduction and notes by Janet Burke and Ted Humphrey, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co, Inc. 2012
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also: Malintzin's Choices: an Indian Woman In The Conquest of Mexico, Camilla Townshend, University of New Mexico Press, as part of the series Dialogos, 2006
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