Tlaxcala

Tlaxcala (full name Tlaxcala de Xicohténcatl; from the Náhuatl Tlaxcallan), famous in the Conquest of Mexico as an indigenous city-state in the highlands of Mexico, east of the capital. The 2005 census reported the city's population as 15,777 and that of the surrounding municipality as 83,748. Prior to European contact, Tlaxcala was a vital pocket of independent Nahuatl, Otomí, and Pinome speakers who had resisted absorption into the surrounding Aztec Empire. For about two centuries the Tlaxcalans and the Mexica had enjoyed good relations; the former were important trade partners. But wealth accumulated by Tlaxcalan merchants became the envy of the imperialistic Mexica leaders, and a century of conflict began in the early fifteenth century. Wars between the neighboring rivals became frequent yet indecisive and took on a traditional, ceremonial aspect called xochiyaoyotl, literally "Flowery War," a heated contest not originally intended to incur battlefield deaths. Mexica soldiers used this to sharpen battle skills, to obtain honor, and to secure captives to sacrifice later to their gods.

The constant friction with Tlaxcala suited Motecuhzoma, but he did not foresee how it would push the Tlaxcalans into the arms of the Spaniards in their march against Mexico-Tenochtitlán. The Tlaxcalans had become impoverished because of cut trade lines and, constantly facing war, were anxious to throw off their adversaries completely. Still, in 1519 the Tlaxcalans first fought the Spaniards for two weeks, suffering considerable losses, before surrendering and siding with them to fight their traditional enemies. Thereafter, thousands of Tlaxcalans accompanied Spaniards in the battles of conquest all over Mexico and on distant frontiers, many never to return home, either because they died or because they settled with Spaniards, becoming their naborías (dependents), or formed model communities for them on the frontier, setting an example for nonsedentary indigenous peoples and helping hold new territorial acquisitions. One example is San Estéban de Nueva, founded next to Saltillo in 1591.

The Tlaxcalans set an example that was followed by other resisters of Aztec rule, but none became so renowned or so well rewarded, partly because of the tireless campaigns by Tlaxcalans to secure privileges as a result of their alliance with the Europeans. Tlaxcalan assistance proved to be a vital factor in tipping the scale in the lopsided battle between the few Spaniards and the large and powerful Aztec empire, and the victors were not allowed to forget their allies. Thus, Tlaxcalans were exempted from the usual pattern of having a Spanish city superimposed over theirs and having their people's labor and tributes divided among Spanish encomenderos (encomienda grant holders), a departure that makes their colonial history unique.

See alsoMotecuhzoma I; Nahuas; Otomí.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The best source on pre-Conquest Tlaxcala is Diego Muñoz Camargo, Historia de Tlaxcala (1892). Charles Gibson, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century (1952), provides good coverage of the Conquest era and after. Rich new sources in Nahuatl have afforded a more detailed description of Tlaxcalan life, clarifying, among other things, the complex four-part division of the province; see James Lockhart, Frances Berdan, and Arthur J. O. Anderson, The Tlaxcalan Actas: A Compendium of the Records of the Cabildo of Tlaxcala (1545–1627) (1986). The reference to the Tlaxcalan community of the north comes from Leslie Scott Offutt, "Urban and Rural Society in the Mexican North: Saltillo in the Late Colonial Period" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1982), p. 9.

Additional Bibliography

Cuadriello, Jaime. Las glorias de la república de Tlaxcala: O la conciencia como imagen sublime. Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM, 2004.

Muñoz Camargo, Diego. Historia de Tlaxcala: Ms. 210 de la Biblioteca Nacional de París. Edited by Luis Reyes García and Javier Lira Toledo. Tlaxcala: Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala/Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, 1998.

Rendón Garcini, Ricardo. Breve historia de Tlaxcala. Serie Breves Historias de los Estados de la República Mexicana. México: El Colegio de México, 1996.

Ward, Thomas. "From the 'People' to the 'Nation': An Emerging Notion in Sahagún, Ixtlilxóchitl and Muñoz Camargo." Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 32 (2001): 223-234 and especially 229-233.

                                      Stephanie Wood