Rare Codex To Help Solve Mysteries of Mexico’s Past

After nearly two decades of sitting in a cramped safety deposit box, a 16th century manuscript called crucial to understanding Mexican history has resurfaced—and scholars from Harvard are joining an effort to decipher the long-lost historical gem.

Scholars from Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center will join Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Anthropologia, to study, restore and publish their findings about the rare codex, which survived the Spaniards’ purge of manuscripts in the 16th century.

“The codex is, in terms of importance to scholars, like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls in a rural town in Mexico,” said Ann Seiferle-Valencia, a third year graduate student in anthropology who is writing a dissertation on the codex.

Rudenstine Professor for the Study of Latin America David Carrasco, who is coordinating the project, said Harvard will help coordinate and facilitate the completion of the project.

“We don’t always hear about Mexican scholarship as we should,” Seiferle-Valencia said. “The Rockefeller Center can...prevent the codex from being squirrelled away in an anthropology department.”

John H. Coatsworth, Gutman professor of Latin American Affairs and director of the David Rockefeller Center, announced the codex’s discovered last weekend at a luncheon where a color reproduction of the 16 panels of the codex served as the table centerpieces.

Harvard and Mexico will work together on the project, with Harvard mainly handling the research side and Mexican conservationists tackling the restoration, Carrasco said.

Carrasco said that they are already planning two conferences—one in Mexico and one in the U.S.—where scholars will present papers on the codex.

Carrasco said the scholars aim to return the codex to Cuauhtinchan, the place where it was originally made.

“We want the people of Cuauhtinchan to know their own history,” said Angeles Espinosa, the codex’s owner.

Codex Rediscovered

The codex has a long and murky history. In 1963 the codex was declared a national treasure of Mexico, but sometime after that it disappeared from the public eye—until Espinosa recovered it.

The codex, painted on indigenous paper, dates back to the 16th century and tells the story of a community through pictoral representations of its history.

In the 16th century Spanish explorers burned many documents—including many similar codices, Carrasco said.

Only four ethnographic codices remain, of which “this is the best and the most important,” Espinosa said.

“The codex comes from a family of documents from the same town,” Seiferle-Valencia said. “This is the largest, the most heavily illustrated and one of the most complex. It’s the jewel of the group.”

Espinosa, an art enthusiast who owns a private art museum, first heard about the codex almost two decades ago, when its previous owners contacted her and invited her to see it.

“It is very powerful,” she said. “If you asked a child to read it, maybe they could understand it better than we do...I saw it, and I kept dreaming about it.”

But the owners refused to sell Espinosa the treasure. After viewing the codex three times—folded and tucked away in its dark safety deposit box—and repeated attempts to acquire it, the owners finally agreed to sell it to her.

Although the codex project will be privately funded—and the work itself cannot leave Mexico for legal reasons—Espinosa, a trustee of the David Rockefeller Center, approached Coatsworth about getting the Center involved with the project after a board meeting.

“Mrs. Espinosa was the primary impetus for this project,” Seiferle-Valencia said. “She wants to know about the codex, to get scholars involved, and to contribute to the public.”

Espinosa said she hopes the codex will help people to “better understand all Mexican history.”

—Staff writer Ella A. Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@fas.harvard.edu.