In three centuries of domination Spain tried to impose on the people of Mexico its legal culture inherited from Rome, with celtíberas Germanic traditions and nuances, and to some extent succeeded in imposing forms of law; but the Indian had for hundreds of centuries tradition of a very different culture; both physically and psychically, could not be confused with Spanish; by somatic and mental composition reacted differently to the facts of life, it could be said that there was a sui generis preparing for adaptation of related media, inherited from ancient generations in all the cells of your body. The Spanish law would not alter the substance of the rising of the human act, the legal act, which is made in the depths where the will, where the ends and means of conduct prepares selected.
Spain did wonders in law pigs to build the bridge for mutual understanding. Such legislation, based on direct factual information, and inspired by the end of high moral and theological speculation, won the possible approach, although not to the adjustment, the Indian reaction was equal to that of the Spanish to the social phenomenon ; but what he achieved was due to the full realization that had the race factor should not be overlooked, if you wanted to make a harmonious coexistence between Spaniards and Indians.
Because of this clear awareness of the race factor as important element in the right, even the forms of this were not entirely European; I wanted to keep everything in the Indian was not fundamentally incompatible with the new; and yet, the opposition between form and substance, between reality and appearance was germ decomposition insincerity and warned foreigners who came to New Spain, and crashed to the viceroys who arrived Peninsula They did not understand that special mix of social elements.
Mexico independent of Spain and dazzled by the idea of equality, which caused much excitement in Europe; profession did ignore racial differences and resolutely launched on the path of applying foreign law to our environment, leaving everything Indian, or Indian adaptation, the Spanish legislation adopted overseas.
But the native was there with all its attributes, and the distance was growing by the bridge that legislation had built by dint of patient work have been destroyed. The disorder, anxiety and revolutionism of Mexico had in this one of his most efficient causes.
– The uncertainty of the law
The last revolution, from 1910 to date, has given prominence to social elements less adapted to European culture, and movement, as a result, has had interesting that while Mexican intellectuals are still rushing to seek European formulas for the resolution of our legal cases, and looking in Italian, German and even Russian writers, doctrines applicable, the Indian quietly makes his mentality prevail, and what stable and oblivious to political hatred has made the revolution has the appearance of a return to the methods of the Council of the Indies. Until then the work would be constructive; but has gone further, and the influence of the Indian has dominated anarchically with its tendency to vagueness of the law, the throwback to the primitive cultural stage in which, as noted by Sir Henry Sumner Maine, there were provisions of a general nature but what he calls themistos, ie decisions of individual cases, without submission to a general rule.
Hence the laws that today give the most radical revolutionaries, and they seem to satisfy the boldest assumptions, tomorrow they themselves violate them, and that invoked in defense of a right which, with European mentality, the thought stable, they branded as reactionary. This may seem monstrous, it is perfectly natural for a pre-Conquest spirit. The Constitution of 1917 marked the time when an official way the Indian mentality began to emerge. Some argue that the constitution is socialist; but she starts listing the rights of the individual and gives workers freedoms and privileges that allow them to society in check regardless of government itself; which is not an obstacle to that when the government wants, find constitutional texts that empower them to reduce them to order or for the confusion.
– Influences of Indian legal sense of the development of Mexican law
It is the feel of the Indian, who acts as legal obstaculizante force movement in the direction of European culture.
Thus the legal sense of the Indian is very important factor in the history of law in Mexico; He has worked actively and powerfully throughout our lives; but in the dark, without himself realizing sometimes, because the strength comes from the breasts of a soul inaccessible mystery which we have not already care to penetrate, let alone expose our laws, lest it be said that we enemies of the principle of equality and we tried to return to the odious distinction of race.
So if Mexicans are very few lawyers who study our Spanish legal traditions, no one of importance to the knowledge of Indian law, that is, of Indian culture as it relates to the rules of coexistence; and respected scholars and teachers have told us that the study of such matters is mere curiosity impractical, because such a right has no influence in Mexico today.
I think that way at all I deferring, I should devote special attention to the sources that we can inform the legal notions of former Indian Cortes, or contemporary with the Conquest and the introduction of Spanish law.
– Common mistake of writers on indigenous law
Not that we lack full of writers who have dealt with such interesting stuff; but the few who have taken the approach that study with the narrator of curiosities, and have been led by a secret desire to show how advanced they were our Indians in legal matters, what likeness had their laws with those of the peoples Europe, and even how superiors were sometimes from a moral point of view.
The early missionaries who could collect the traditions of the natives themselves who had lived under them, took them maybe people just started on such knowledge, since it is known that in history and ritual primitive peoples are the exclusive domain of the priesthood, and priests who remained after the conquest had stealthily hide his character, and, if unsuccessful, there must have been not very communicative when it touched their ancient gods, they have continued to regard as having true and as enemies of those missionaries, and very worthy of faith in his statements, since it is known how, in the same Egypt, in which the facts were kept even with phonetic stone inscriptions, the narratives are adulterated to follow the likes of Victor or ruler who he reigned, and there can deduce how much more confident stories could vary only memory or memorativa painting.
For its part, the missionaries kept trying to find a solution to a theological problem which was to explain how, if Christ had come to redeem men and had, for the diffusion of their doctrines, commanded his apostles to preach all over the globe these men had received the gospel and what had made his teachings. This made them look for similarities attributed to altered memories of a possible preaching the doctrines of Jesus, and forcing analogies, they were in the Aztec religious ritual in the footsteps of the sacraments of the Catholic Church. And both they and the other Spaniards could not escape the influence of the similarities, often remote, which induced to see in the forms and institutions of civil life of peoples, legal and social ideas that those were traditional and forth Naturally his spirit. And they saw a senate in a confederation between Tlaxcala and Mexico, Texcoco and Tlacopan, and electors for the crown of empire and property rights and procedural laws, etc., etc.
We should not reject what we see in these authors systematically; Rather, we believe that there is some truth in it; but we must be alert and guard against a risky generalization, always trying to find well-known facts in confirmation or correction of what they left us those early writers.
This would lead us to take first place as a source of legal history of the Indians to their manuscripts and paintings that have been preserved to this day. But it should be noted that, as is said, but not everyone agrees on this, many of these paintings were destroyed by Catholic priests as a way to wean the natives of their ancient idolatry, and it may be that in this destruction would lost valuable information that would help us to clarify points that remain without proper illustration. But what would the Mexican archeology cherishing the paintings, but the explanations and legends in the other they let the missionaries and their disciples or to be made, by order of the authorities, for the Indians, now in its language, and in Spanish, but Spanish lyrics? I would be lost in a maze of conjectures about the meaning of such strange figures.
Even with these interpretations have to be careful, because otherwise we would be in danger of accepting the story of deluge, the ark to the human couple perpetuating the species escaped, with the dove that brought the news the withdrawal of the waters, etc., etc.
– Sources of Indian information: codices
But, taken with due caution, that news must be very valuable.
By order of the first Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, it was formed by Indians versed in painting documents, code, in memory of the viceroy, called Mendocino historians; Each painting takes its English interpretation. The first part contains the annals of Mexico, from the founding of the city, year by year, with the length of each king’s reign and achievements made. The second realizes the tribute paid to Moctezuma; interesting because it tells us of the tax population, extension of the rule, the resources available to the industries of Indians in every place, since the taxes were paid in kind. The third is the most interesting for our purposes, because it describes the customs, from the birth of a child and ceremonies which he did; education from three to fifteen; marriage and rites; education of young nobles in the temples and their preparation for the army; warriors, their weapons, degrees and awards; civil officials, legacies and merchants; and how the courts to administer justice; the trades of carpenter, lapidary, silversmith, decorator with feathers, etc .; the parties of the year, the offenses and penalties that were punished. It is why the Viceroy omitted nothing substantial, and ordered the materials with a suitable method; and, fortunately, this codex has come down to us and has been edited several times; Lord Kingsborough published, with other Indian codices, in his famous collection Antiquities of Mexico; and is favored by the circumstance of having been made by order of the viceroy, whose cult reputation and honored guarantees that all care must have put in the work and carefully in the selection and testing of materials.
Although not of equal value, for those qualities, there are other paintings that provide data about the law among the Aztecs, as the Codex Telleriano-Rheims; Enrollment of taxes from the National Museum; Vatican Code, Part part written in figures and in Nahuatl with European characters; Ramirez Code; Tepexpan Strip, Indian paper; Borgiano Codex, which contains the civil and religious calendars; Fejervary Codex, which is a treaty of timing and place names, as well as the significance of some symbols, names of kings and other objects; but otherwise we see archaeologists differ in their opinions and sometimes make speculations that have no value to reveal a powerful imagination.
Very few people have made the study of these documents from a particular legal matter, and worth it undertake our legal, based on our archeology with the methods used in similar investigations in other countries, and seeking the traces of culture Indian law has made the Mexican law.
The study of indigenous languages has to be invaluable to penetrate the legal ideas of the Indian peoples, for there is nothing like language that allows us to know the thoughts and feelings. When considering what should the science of law and, above all, its history, between the Aryans peoples, etymology and the study of the linguistic roots, fruits that could be obtained in the unexplored field of understood languages of the nations that occupied the vast territory that is now Mexico. A law de Indias ordered to teach the natives to the Spanish language, because, it was said, the dialects of the people were not appropriate to express the concepts of Christianity words. Are legal ideas were for ?, What was the similarity and what the difference in concepts expressing the words of Indian languages compared with the Spanish? Important as these issues to the psychologist, they are even more for the lawyer who wants to penetrate into the spirit of primitive Mexican races, to take away the pieces of legislation for a gradual adaptation of these people to contemporary culture.
– The monuments
The monuments that remain, and indeed in many of those towns, scattered throughout the territory of Mexico; temples, palaces, idols, fortresses, astronomical memorial stones and stelae or by such available; but never remains of private houses, rooms of those who built such monuments, the studious man suggest ideas of life in past centuries lived in those places. In the presence of these remains we can not fail to experience more deeply perhaps than before the ruins of the cities of Egypt, Greece or Italy, the feeling of mystery, while those people were careful to convey in writing, headstones and bronzes News of their customs, their facts and the causes of their ruin, before the remains of the oldest villages in Mexico, know nothing about it; or an inscription cared for leaving us even knew the name of those who lived around many of those temples and palaces; the mystery is unfathomable imagination and artistic archaeologist has, in computing time and in the figures of the calendar, and idols common to the peoples of the same race, often serve as a guide; but they do not carry very far. The Mayans and some other race related to them, inscriptions on monuments used: but so far no money has been able to boot your secret, except in regard to the calendar, numbering, toponymy and perhaps something more; but out there we are today equidistant from the knowledge of the culture calculiforme Yucatan they were the first European researchers. However, these silent monuments can provide valuable assistance to the investigator of the legal life of its authors, who with patience and insight, but unencumbered by imaginary concepts, know questioning.
– The interpretation of the codices
Among the Spanish sources on the history of Mexican law, it must begin by interpreting the Indian manuscripts or paintings, which source is properly mixed and transition between old and new, as it collaborated Indians and Spaniards.
It ranks first Mendocino Codex, which, as already said, was made by the Viceroy Mendoza knowledge of Emperor Charles V and his advisers in Indian affairs, and therefore obeyed an educational plan, which did not we could imagine better. The purpose of this codex, as a work of initiation into the knowledge of these things land, gives the work, at once, an encyclopedic and practicality, which makes it qualifies Chavero of “a hieroglyphic dictionary”, thus giving in short, very useful idea of the document.
Codex interpreters Telleriano Rheims penetrate into the studio and we explain the theogony and cosmogony ideas Mexicans, as well as provide us details of his story.
A father Rios, Dominican friar, the Vatican interpreted code revealing great competence in the cosmogony and theogony of the Indians.
The Borgiano Code was interpreted by Father Lino Fabregas, and his work is considered one of the most important Mexican antiques, but his work has been lost and Chavero only gives account of a specimen that was in power, translation handwritten fact the lawyer Don Teodosio Lares, author of the Commercial Code, enacted in time of the dictatorship of Santa Anna.
The Codex Zumarraga, led to Spain by Don Sebastian Fuenleal, president of the Second Court who came to New Spain, and published by Joaquin Icazbalceta in the Annals of the Mexican Museum, was written with consultation of old and priests of the Ancient Mexicans and keeping in view his paintings, some of them stained with human blood, and its data are highly appreciated Aztec chronology.
It is not known who the interpreter of the Codex and the Codex Aubin, who performed their work in Nahuatl language, accompanying explanation to the figures and with translation into Spanish.
It is believed that the Annals of Cuauhtitlán were interpreting a painting done in Nahuatl language following the conquest by a very competent Indian. The historical part extends from the year 271 AD and realizes people who lived in Anahuac Aztec before the invasion.
There are other paintings that have not been baptized and are designated by numbers; They refer to the Toltec people, chichimecas, Acolhuas, Tepaneca tlatelolcos, Mexicans and Tlaxcalans.
All this wealth of material has so far been much studied mainly by people seeking information of legends and traditions; but few investigate the spirit of the legal life of those peoples.
