Parallel Histories: Conquest, Sovereignty, and Property in Alva Ixtlilxochitl and His Sources

Abstract This article explores how colonial Mexican historian Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl challenged colonialist ideologies of dispossession in his narration of pre-Hispanic events. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Indigenous communities in central Mexico experienced a series of epidemic outbreaks and encroachments on their lands by Spanish settlers. In this context, Alva Ixtlilxochitl identifies the Spanish conquest of Mexico, which established both political authority and the supreme territorial claim, as a prerequisite for subsequent violations of Indigenous land rights. This article argues that his Historia de la nación chichimeca (History of the Chichimec Nation) offers a counternarrative to colonial justifications for land dispossession by drawing an analogy between colonial situations and the Chichimec occupation of the Toltec territory. His unique approach is illuminated through comparison with his earlier works and crucial sources like the pictorial Codex Xolotl and Torquemada’s Monarquía indiana (Indian Monarchy).