Remy Jackson

From Mesoamerican Codices to Twentieth-Century Otomí Artists’ Books: Amate Papers in Rare Book Libraries and Special Collections Departments

Amate, a proto-paper traditionally made from the inner bark of trees from the Moraceae family of flowering plants, has an extensive history with origins in ancient Mesoamerican cultures from the region of present-day Mexico. In the 1500s, Spanish invasion of the region prompted rapid cultural loss and transformation resulting in devastating consequences, including the systematic destruction of Indigenous books. To further suppress Indigenous cultures, Spanish authorities prohibited the production of amate and replaced it with European papers. However, the tradition of creating amate survived, was passed down through generations, and remained significant among Indigenous communities of Mexico. In the twentieth century, amate became a popular substrate for paintings, artists’ books, and bookbindings. Because of amate’s fragility, uniqueness, and hand-made nature, many rare book libraries and special collections departments own various significant manuscripts and documents composed of it. This article examines amate at ten such collections and provides suggestions for related future outreach and exhibitions. From Mesoamerican codices to twentieth-century Otomi artists’ books, amate materials provide opportunities to promote meaningful community engagement, enhance collective expertise, preserve cultural heritage, and enrich researchers’ understandings of the book- and paper-making practice in Mesoamerica and Mexico.

Introduction

Amate (Spanish: papel amate, Nahuatl: amatl) is a proto-paper traditionally made from the inner bark of native trees from the Moraceae family of flowering plants, including wild fig and mulberry trees.1 Amate has an extensive history, with origins in ancient Mesoamerican cultures from the region of present-day Mexico.2 In the 1500s, the Spanish invasion of the region prompted rapid cultural change, loss, and transformation resulting in devastating consequences, including the systematic destruction of Indigenous books. To further suppress Indigenous cultures, Spanish authorities prohibited the production of amate and replaced it with imported European papers.3 However, the tradition of creating amate survived, was passed down through generations, and remained significant among several Indigenous communities of Mexico. In the early twentieth century, amate became a popular substrate for paintings, artists’ books, bookbindings, and other works of art.4 Because of the fragility, uniqueness, and hand-made nature of amate, many rare book libraries and special collections departments own various significant manuscripts and documents composed of it. This article examines amate at eleven such collections, including The Latin American Library at Tulane University, Newberry Library, and the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; a survey conducted for this article found amate in over one hundred collections worldwide.5 From Mesoamerican codices to twentieth-century artists’ books, amate materials provide opportunities to foster meaningful community interactions, preserve cultural knowledge, and deeply enrich researchers’ understandings of pre-Hispanic cultures, languages, and customs.

Amate Production

Although amate is described as “bark paper,” several scholars, such as Dr. Sidney E. Berger, categorize it as a “proto-paper.” Proto-paper is defined as “a material that is not paper (i.e., it was not produced from macerated and matted fibers) but that looks like and can function like paper.”6 The process of making amate has several steps.7 Once the inner bark is stripped from the tree, it is boiled until it is pliable.8 The clumps of string-like fibers are then sorted, with the lighter and darker fibers separated. A stone is used to pound, soften, and flatten the moist fibers to create an even, thin sheet or strip.9 Customarily, the stone (Nahuatl: amahuitequini) has an “ovoid or rectangular shape with a slot on each side for easier handling.”10 Afterward, the sheets and strips are laid out carefully on a wooden board and set out to dry naturally in the sun and air. The sheets are produced as solid, or “woven” with strips of amate fibers that create an open framework consisting of a pattern (e.g., crisscrossed or circular). The fibers are “woven” by separating vertical strips from each other, with distance between the horizontal strips, as well, to form small holes throughout the sheet. In praxis, amate is created in three colors—a standard light cream, a dark brown (or “chocolate amate”), and “one version mixing light and dark pulps into what is called “marbled amate.”11 Contemporary amate may be dyed in a variety of colors, including pinks, reds, or light blues. In addition to colors, amate is sometimes produced in long strips to create patterns, such as a large circle made from dark- and cream-colored radii extending from the center.

Despite the introduction of European technologies and papers in the colony of New Spain, amate production endured. In his study of Mexica and Maya papermakers, Victor Wolfgang Von Hagen included a detailed description of the process of making amate.12 This description, written by Francisco Hernández de Toledo (ca. 1515–1587), provided insight into similarities between historic and then-contemporary processes of producing amate. Under the orders of Philip II of Spain, Hernández, a naturalist and court physician, embarked on a seven-year expedition to Mexico.13 During one of his frequent visits to Tepoztlán, he studied Mexica papermaking and the process of manufacturing amate. He wrote:

To fashion the paper, they cut the larger branches from the tree . . . these are softened in water and allowed to soak all night on the river banks. On the following day, the outer bark is removed and cleaned of its outer crust with rock ‘plances’ shaped for the purpose, grooved with striations, and with a bunch of willow twigs passed through a hole and twisted for a handle. The bark is beaten out thoroughly with these stone beaters. It is thus rendered pliable. After this it is cut into strips, which are easily joined together by beating the bark again with a smoother stone. They are then polished (by means of a xicaltetl—a certain varnish of white stone, upon which was painted or gilded; or a certain smooth stone which served for polishing) and so finally fashioned into sheets of two dodrans [18 inches] long and one and one-half dodrans [13.5 inches] wide.14

The process of producing amate remains largely unchanged since its Mesoamerican origins, with only a few contemporary adaptations. With Indigenous artisans in Mexico—such as Alfonso García Tellez (Mexican/Otomí, active 1970s–80s), Camila Hernández (Otomi, b. 1937), and Marcial Camilo Ayala (Nahua [San Agustín Oapan], 1951–2016)—drawing upon millennia-long practices, amate demonstrates the flexibility and adaptability of Indigenous paper- and book-making customs in Mexico.15

Mesoamerican Origins

Using amate represents an enduring Mesoamerican convention of recording knowledge and conducting ceremonial rites.16 Tracing back to at least the Classic Period (250–900 CE), Mesoamericans encoded information into books and manuscripts composed of amate.17 In the pre-Hispanic Basin of Mexico, the Mexica empire controlled a vast expanse. Built on an island in the middle of the western swamps in the shallow Lake Texcoco, the capital, Tenochtitlan—now known as Mexico City—was the “hub of an urban network” and “the cynosure of the [Mexica] empire.”18 To manage this political, economic, and religious center, the imperial administration relied on paper for documentation, communication, and transmission of knowledge.19 The books and documents created in Tenochtitlan were often connected to the management of the empire. They were created with various materials such as animal hide, maguey (agave), amate paper, and, later, European paper. After preparing the substrate, scribes, or painter-scribes (Nahuatl: tlahcuilohqueh), recorded information using “a complex graphic communication system of heavily standardized drawn forms.”20

Within the Mexica empire, amate was predominantly used for religious documentation, trial records, annals, calendars, and ceremonial dress.21 Significantly, it was integral to lists for the tribute system: apart from its expansive trading network, the city of Tenochtitlan required immense quantities of tribute from regions it had conquered; amate was one of the most valued tributes.22 Imperial administrators kept a record of “precisely written tribute lists” of what was due.23 For example, the Codex Mendoza (ca. 1541),24 created by sixteenth-century Nahua scribes, specifies that “twenty-four thousand resmas of [amate] are to be brought yearly to the storehouse of the ruler of Tenochtitlan.”25 (fig. 1.)

Further, Codex Mendoza identified “forty-two centers of papermaking and records that two cities, Amacoztitlan (literally, amatl- [paper], coztic- [yellow], tlan- [place of], i.e., “Place of the Yellow Paper”) and Itzamatitlan (itztli- [obsidian], amatl- [paper], tlan- [place of], i.e., “Place of the Obsidian, or Black, Paper”) paid a tribute of nearly half a million sheets of paper every year.”26 Although not composed of amate paper, it is one of the “earliest, most detailed, and most important post-conquest accounts” documenting imperial tribute lists, historical narratives, and practices of daily life among the Mexica.27

Figure 1. An illustrated catalog of the annual tribute paid by the towns of the empire to the last empire, Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin (Montezuma II, 1466–1520). The catalog includes the amount of amate required as tribute in the lower right corner. Folio 23v of the Codex Mendoza, ca. 1541, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00486220/.
Photo: © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, CC-BY-NC 4.0.

Apart from recording bureaucratic processes, the Mexica used amate to create documents recording authorized accounts of their history and official cartographies.28 The Codex Xolotl (<1542) is a significant example of “Nahua history-writing and map-making.”29 Throughout ten pages of amate, it records “three centuries of migration, community foundations, genealogies, ethnic alliances, and martial conflict, amongst other events.”30 Another notable example is Ordenanza del Señor Cuauhtemoc (Ordenanza, 1520), housed at the Latin American Library at Tulane University.31 The Ordenanza includes a map of properties in Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco copied from an ancient original. The manuscript also features drawings and texts regarding land and fishing rights dating from about 1430 and reaffirmed by Cuauhtémoc (1497–1525) in 1523. Further, the Ordenanza includes a migration map tracing the history of the Mexica to the rule of Itzcóatl (1380–1440).

Within the worldview of the Mexica, amate was sacred. Mundy explained that amate “was conceived of as a kind of skin—a place where things happen, an essential to the being.”32 The recognition of amate as a type of “skin” derives from the material used in its production: tree bark. In the religious thought of the Mexica, the ‘skin’ (paper) enabled one to transform into a sacred being. Priests and ritual specialists often used brightly colored and folded amate adornments to transform themselves into powerful supernatural entities.33 For example, in the Codex Borbonicus (ca. 1519–1521),34 one of the screen-folds that preserves knowledge of the priests provides an image of “a ritual specialist who’s been carefully dressed to become the embodiment of a deity. Most of the costume that enables this [embodiment] . . . is made out of amate paper.”35 (fig. 2.)

The costume and adornments included an “amacalli, an amate crown on the head, and amacuexpalli, long colored streamers that descend from the headdress meant to imitate hair.”36 In their research on papermaking traditions of Mexico, Sandstrom and Sandstrom expanded on the notion of amate as a sacred material and noted that Mesoamerican peoples

used [amate] to make books concerning their religious beliefs, adorn statues of the deities and decorate temples, fashion priestly regalia, accompany the dead on their journey to the afterlife, dress sacrificial victims before putting them to death, make offerings to the deities in their pantheon, and divine the future.37

Indeed, throughout the Mexica empire, amate was regarded as a highly prominent and sacred material. It was used in various ways, from cartographies to ceremonial costumes, to manage the empire’s vast political, religious, and economic activities.

Figure 2. Festival of Ochpanitzli, detail of priest wearing amate costume and adornments. Codex Borbonicus, p. 30, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Codex_Borbonicus

The Spanish Invasion and Survival of Amate

In 1519–1521, the Spanish invasion of the region prompted significant cultural loss and transformation, including the systematic destruction of Indigenous books. By 1521, Tenochtitlan and the Mexica political state were toppled by Spanish conquistadors. During their eradication of pre-Hispanic objects from this region, Spanish colonists and Roman Catholic clergy recognized the significant role of amate and worked to systematically destroy it by confiscating and burning thousands of sacred books.38 Upon the 1529 arrival of Juan de Zumárraga (1468–1548), the first Bishop of Mexico,

books from every quarter [were collected], especially the ‘royal library’ at Texcoco, and [Zumárraga’s agents] had them brought to the marketplace at Tlatelolco. There, the [books] were piled mountain-high. Monks approached from all sides and set the torch to this gigantic pile of [knowledge].”39

To further suppress Indigenous knowledge and culture, Christensen explained, the Spanish authorities prohibited the production of amate and replaced it with imported European forms of paper.40

In the colony of New Spain, Indigenous artists and writers adopted many new European technologies, including alphabetic writing, European papers and inks, and bookbinding structures.41 Throughout the Colonial Period (1521–1821), Indigenous artists and writers created hundreds of manuscripts. Surviving examples from this period, including the “Codex Aubin” (ca. 1576)42 and the Codex Azcatitlan (1530),43 demonstrate that artists and writers deftly learned new technologies, languages, and writing conventions. However, while some conformed to European standards, others employed historical techniques, signifying resistance.44 A fascinating example that illustrates the complexities of cultural contact is Siguense unos sermones de dominicas y de santos en lengua mexicana (ca. 1540–1563, a.k.a. the “Newberry manuscript”).45

The creation of this codex was overseen by Bernardino de Sahagún, a Franciscan friar who organized the creation of the Florentine Codex.46 Although the Indigenous co-authors used the format of European codices, they demonstrated subversion by using native materials, likely amate, as the substrate.47 Despite the destruction of books and the prohibition of amate, the methods continued, were passed down, and survived among Indigenous cultures, including the Otomi.

The Otomi of San Pablito, Pahuatlán, Mexico: From Tourist Items to Artists Books

In the rural, mountainous town of San Pablito, Pahuatlán, located in the state of Puebla, Mexico, generations of Otomi artisans continue to manufacture amate.48 For the Otomi, this is an “expression of indigeneity, an assertion of the collective rights of the community, and a connection to the past through techniques passed from one generation to the next.”49 Samuel Correa, coordinator of the association Ya Mumpot Ei Pati (“those who make the healing amate paper”), emphasized the ways in which amate production is maintained through oral legends and contemporary artisanry by Otomi healers (curanderos) in San Pablito.50 Curanderos cut amate into intricate representations of figural spirit entities (muñecos, dolls, or figures; singular: muñeco) for cures, treatments, rituals, and religious ceremonies.51

Beginning in the late 1960s, Otomi artisans began making materials and crafts composed of amate to sell in Mexico’s tourist markets.52 The artworks presented in the markets included amate-based paintings, drawings, and collages. Amate became a highly commercialized staple within the local economy which led to an overharvesting of native Ficus trees.53 The Otomi learned that Ficus trees needed time to regrow the bark until another harvest. In response, the community sought alternative methods for creating amate: changing types of bark used, logistics of bark collection, and treatment of the bark fiber.54 Additionally, the people of San Pablito adapted to using other types of trees, such as the Jonote tree (Heliocarpus appendiculatus), which can be debarked and processed into amate all year.55

Otomi artists, including Alfonso García Tellez, created artwork that expanded beyond the demands of the tourist market. Between the 1970s and 2000, García Tellez, a self-described curandero, produced a series of bound books made from light-cream and dark-brown amate with cut-out muñecos pasted onto amate substrates including Historia de la Curación de Antigua de San Pablito Pahuatlán Puebla.56 Each muñeco is a mirror image, the result of “a long-established technique of folding pieces of amate in half and then cutting them to the desired shapes.”57 These artist’s books include handwritten descriptions of the muñecos, the spiritual entities they represent, and the ceremonies in which they were used.58 According to Fleming, “Over nearly four decades and with the help of members of his family, García Tellez made hundreds of copies of each book . . . however, no two copies are exactly alike—each copy is, by design, unique.”59 Thus, throughout his work, García Tellez demonstrated the intrinsic relationship between amate and the preservation of ancestral knowledge.

Conclusion: the Significance and Challenges of Amate in Rare Book Libraries and Special Collections Departments

The examples discussed herein are a few among many in institutions that own amate materials. As a delicate, unique, and hand-made material with ancient and contemporary uses, amate will take many forms in library collections—including fragments, documents, manuscripts, cut-out figurines, artists’ books, and bookbindings.60 These collections illustrate “the important connections between the spoken word, handmade substrates, and cultural memory—in books and artworks.”61 However, one significant challenge arises when these materials become institutionalized in rare book libraries and special collections departments. Although these institutions prioritize the preservation of fragile and valuable works, this practice inherently “disrupts access to collections.”62 For example, because of the fragility and significance of the material aspects of Siguense, it is one of few items for which the Newberry Library restricts access. The Newberry Library mitigated some access restrictions by fully digitizing the manuscript and making it accessible online.

Stephanie J. Beene, Lauri M. González, and Suzanne M. Schadl challenged museums and cultural heritage stewards to rethink their approach to diversity and inclusion, asking:Instead of viewing rarified collections as dusty wares to be carefully preserved, how might we, as stewards of communal spaces and artworks, provide better access and outreach so that communities can interact with pieces that richly symbolize their homes, their traditions, their native languages, and their families? Many universities, museums, libraries, and archives write mission statements that speak to multiculturalism, inclusion, and diversity, but words on the page mean little without context. How do we leverage these noble goals into performing better outreach and engagement with our communities and their collections, which are entrusted to us?63

Pegno and Farrar took this a step further. They advised that institutions turn toward

collaborating with partners and individuals in ways that do not privilege singular or dominant narratives [where] individuals become producers of knowledge, where exhibitions are being planned through a constellation of perspectives, and the objects displayed are created as a product of dialogue and collaboration.64

Another way for institutions to increase community interaction and engagement is through workshops and activity days. For example, the Museo Nacional de Antropología (Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology) offers workshops encouraging children and adults to engage with amate traditions. In one workshop, participants learned about the journey of the Mexica from Aztlán to the Valley of Mexico and the formation of Tenochtitlan and were also taught how to create a small replica, using amate, of the Boturini Codex (ca. 1550, also known as Tira de la Peregrinación).65

Rare book and special collections librarians should provide enhanced access to amate materials through digital collections, collaborative partnerships, and community empowerment. To increase accessibility, rare book and special collections librarians should reconsider approaches to exhibits and outreach initiatives.66 The Latin American Library at Tulane University uses its extensive collection of Mesoamerican, colonial, and modern amate materials in exhibitions and class instructions. By incorporating amate materials in object-based library instruction, librarians can create interactive experiences that encourage critical engagement and active learning. As Arnold pointed out,

Given its long history in Central Mexico, paper can serve as the point of orientation for examining radically different worldviews. Paper serves as the material point of conjunction that navigates between Indigenous and colonial contexts. The place of paper in materially orienting these distinct worldviews moves us into a direct, and often uncomfortable, confrontation with the otherness of Nahua understandings.67

Furthermore, the use of amate materials can enhance understanding and appreciation of Nahua, Mesoamerican, and Mexican cultural heritage, identity, and history.

Amate was, and continues to be, an integral element in Indigenous religious systems, the transmission of information, and the preservation of knowledge and cultural heritage. It is essential for rare book and special collections libraries—particularly those specializing in Latin America—to prioritize the collection of amate in all its diverse forms. As both physical and cultural objects, amate materials offer rare book and special collections librarians the opportunity to promote meaningful community engagement, enhance collective expertise, thoughtfully preserve cultural heritage, facilitate the transformative use of primary sources by researchers, and enrich our understanding of the book- and paper-making traditions in Mesoamerica and Mexico.