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Mariana Castillo Deball in collaboration with Cooperación Comunitaria
Codex Humboldt Fragment 1/Codex Azoyú Reverse 2
Raw earth tiles
Courtesy of the artist and Cooperación Comunitaria

Most of the known precolonial and colonial codices are in Europe, far from where they were created. Such is the case of Codex Azoyú, which was divided into three parts: the fragment known as the Codex Azoyú I, held by the library of Mexico City’s Anthropology Museum; and the Codex Azoyú II Reverse and the Humboldt Fragment I, which are held by the Berlin State Library. This document is a record of the tributes paid by the Kingdom of Tlachinollan in Tlapa (Montaña de Guerrero) to Tenochtitlan between 1461 and 1521.

In this piece, Castillo Deball collaborates with the organization Cooperación Comunitaria to reinterpret the Codex Azoyú, abstracting the grid of tributes into a mural of raw earth. The figures that appear on these tiles represent the textiles, metals and baskets of gold paid by those in the Tlapa region to the Mexica Empire. Prepared alongside community members from La Montaña, this project was installed on the façades of two community centers in Malinaltepec, Guerrero. Given the impossibility of restoring the original document, this piece aims to build a bridge between the codex’s contents and the place where it was created. Affective forms of restitution such as this encourage discussions on how the inhabitants of one geography have historically related to outside powers and how these negotiations continue to the present day.