The Codex Osuna: A Landmark Nahua Lawsuit in Early Colonial Mexico City with Sofia Yazpik

The Early Modern Research Group (EMRG), sponsored by the Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies, is pleased to announce a works-in-progress presentation this Thursday, March 6 from 12:00-1:00 pm PST on Zoom. Sofia Yazpik (PhD Student, Art history) will present a paper titled The Codex Osuna: A Landmark Nahua Lawsuit in Early Colonial Mexico City. For more information, please see the flyer above and the abstract below. The organizers hope you will be able to participate in this thought-provoking discussion and share your feedback with the speaker as they develop their project!

To register for the Zoom link, please click here.

Abstract

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. It 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.

About the Speaker

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.