tlalmilli (TK217r)

This painted example of iconography refers to a parcel of land that was to be planted in maize (what we are giving the label tlalmilli, which seems to align with the Spanish gloss and it concurs with the reading by Marc Thouvenot in TLACHIA, https://tlachia.iib.unam.mx/tepetlaoztoc/K15_A). The land is represented by the rectangle simply drawn with a black line. Above it is a brown trapezoidal container (likely a measure of corn kernels, such as a fanega or an almud, both Spanish terms that entered Nahuatl). The corn kernels are visible in black and white looking over the rim of the wooden container. The colonial overlord (an encomendero in this case, who held a grant to extract tribute in kind and labor from the Nahua community) was expecting to be paid the huge sum of 3,200 loads of maize from the pueblo’s agricultural landholdings. 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.