"Communities of memory" in the Valley of Toluca: The Town of Metepec, 1476-1643

A close study of Metepec's tale of remembrance brings to light distinct and unique representations of significant episodes and social and political circumstances in its pre-Cortesian past, as well as in the early colonial period. These divergent representations were created by closed circles of factions, neighbors, elders, and kin in this "community of memory" who wished to claim special rights and prerogatives over their shared past. As such, the Códice de Metepec represents a prototype of a dispersed and highly fragmented "canonic tale" that is made up of autochthonous memory plots of various ethnic and splinter groups that tell their own stories of the past in a very different manner though they are within a single community. These distinct and often individualistic memory plots were reworked many times within the primary, local, microcosmic sphere of this community before they shifted to an outside sphere of impact substantially distanced from what united the local people.