Nahua repositories of social memory: The seventeenth-century mexican primordial titles

Through the analysis of two exemplary sources pertaining to the genre of the Nahua primordial titles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the aim of this essay is to contribute further to our understanding of how this distinct Nahua colonial genre can be used for the study of Nahua social memory during Spanish colonial times. More precisely, what this present essay endeavors to identify the subtextual and supra-textual layers in these two sources. Second, it aims to highlight the replicated memory formulas applied in these specifi c texts; and third, to analyze the role of Christianity in these memory plots. By way of these three aspects, the task of this present study is to demonstrate that customs of remembrance, deeply rooted in the practice of a collective social memory were still cherished and kept vibrant during the mid colonial period.