El censo de Calihtec del Ms. Mexicain 393, Biblioteca Nacional de Francia

A is work consists of a transcription and translation of the Calihtec census, which includes the majority of the Manuscrit Mexicain 393 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. In the mid-sixteenth century, Calihtec was a calpolli (neighborhood) of the altepetl of Tepoztlan in the Marquesado del Valle de Oaxaca owned by don Hernando Cortés. Around 1538, legal issues associated with Cortés’s estate led to a general census of the Marquesado people. Today, only fragments survive of this Nahuatl census, known in the literature as the “padrones de Morelos” or “the book of tributes.” A ey are scattered among the libraries of Mexico, Poland, and France and describe various towns of the altepetl Yauhtepec and Tepoztlan. A e Calihtec record is the second most complete of the surviving records of Tepoztlan’s nine principal calpolli–it only lacks two or three folios. Here we present its content in a reconstructed order, which allows to understand Calihtec’s internal structure. A e codicological study of the document along with an analysis of its content shows that the BnF put the Mexicain 393 together from two separate fragments (one of them published here), which came from diD erent owners. Like other fragments of the Marquesado census, the Calihtec record provides data for studying early colonial Nahua from numerous perspectives, among them tribute, family, Christianization, or calpolli.