Most historians of colonial Mexico are acquainted with Chimalpahin through translated fragments of his writings, and only a few have studied the original texts or their transcriptions. Going further, Susan Schroeder has been working on a comprehensive analysis of this early seventeenth-century Chalca historian. It is a difficult job, because he produced not a systematic account but rather disconnected fragments of information. Although very parochial and snobbish, Chimalpahin’s writings figure among the outstanding sources of native history in the Valley of Mexico because they are basically consistent and trustworthy, and because they are full of Nahuatl sociopolitical concepts. This feature motivated Schroeder’s book, which may be considered as a huge footnote to Chimalpahin’s (which in turn remains to be fully and critically edited).

Schroeder’s book provides an image of preconquest and early colonial Chalco, and particularly Amaquemecan, as Chimalpahin portrayed it. Schroeder makes no attempt to penetrate other sources. Her interest “is more in discovering the thrust of Chimalpahin’s data than in establishing the objective state of things” (p. 112). After a brief study of Chimalpahin’s life and works, and a survey of the history and organization of Amaquemecan, the book centers on the analysis of sociopolitical units, social ranks, and political offices. To this end, selected pieces of Chimalpahin’s text are examined. As a result, altepetl and tlatoani rank first as central concepts in Chalco’s sociopolitical organization, well above calpulli-related concepts. A most interesting concept is that of tlayacatl, denoting the largest component part within the altepetl in Amaquemecan and other Chalco polities. The tlayacatl appears to have been a subdivision with a tlatoani of its own, a central element in a composite altepetl.

This book is an important contribution to the history of the Indians of Middle America, especially because it sheds more light on the altepetl. Although Indian and non-Indian sources alike provide a rich image of the altepetl, or pueblo de indios, as the colonial Spaniards defined it, modern historians have only recently perceived the pivotal position of this “combination of people, rulership, and land.”