balanza (TK215r)

This painted example of iconography references a scale (what Nahuas would call a balanza using the loanword that came into Nahuatl from Spanish). There is no gloss or reference to the scale in the Spanish text on this page. The page shows forty gold pieces (called tejuelos in the Spanish gloss) that were paid in tribute by the people of the altepetl of Tepetlaoztoc in one year, and this manuscript was produced as part of the community’s resistance to the unreasonable taxation being demanded vis-a-vis the size of the community, especially as the population was declining as a result of diseases inadvertently brought over from Europe. Each tejuelo was worth 30 pesos in coin, a considerable value at that time. The scale is a hanging type with two round pans suspended from a tan-colored horizontal bar, each one attached to the bar by three cords. Each pan, which appears to be made from a white metal, contains a gold piece.