Tlaloc Rites and the Huey Tozoztli Festival in the Mexican Codex Borbonicus

This study examines the unusual colonial Codex Borbonicus image of a pre-Columbian springtime festival known as Huey Tozoztli. It attends to the special prominence the Borbonicus gives to the rain god Tlaloc, a dedication at odds with more usual venerations to the maize goddess. The Borbonicus provides temporal specificity for its veintenas by including year dates in its pages that anchor its contents within historical time, probably 1507. Given that, this study considers the ways in which multiple calendrical cycles might have intermeshed in that singular year and frames Huey Tozoztli as an unusual, historically specific event yoking ritual activity to contemporary historical concerns.