NICAN TLACA COLLECTIVE IDENTITY.

NICAN TLACA COLLECTIVE IDENTITY

Mexican And Mexican American Colonial Era Identity Of Resistance, Power And Liberation For The 21st Century And Beyond.  

The term Nican Tlaca means “people here” and it is derived from the Nahuatl language. Nahuatl means  “to speak clearly”, “to speak intelligently”.Nahuatl is the language of the Nahuas, an ethnic group from which the Mexica are part of.

Nican Tlaca referred to the original inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico that is also known as the Basin of Mexico - the heart of Anahuac where the great City of Mexico-Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325 along with numerous city-states who were also of the Nahuatl speaking family or Nahuatlaca “Nahuatl speaking people”. Nican Tlaca as a term and its implications as an identity has been a part of historical records and documentation throughout the 1500s and early 1600s. Nican Tlaca was a statement and a clear distinction from European Spaniards who were the oppressors of “the local people” described as Nican Tlaca, Nican Titlaca, Nican Chaneque and Macehualli. Although Macehualli referred to Indigeous people it widely described “commoners and Human beings”. Nican Tlaca however, made a distinction between the foreigners' European oppressors and the Original Inhabitants of Anahuac.

The following are attestations, excerpts and historical records of the usage of Nican Tlaca:

Headword:  Nican Tlaca.

Principal English Translation: 

people from here, local people, indigenous people, native people (see attestations) (singular: nican tlacatl; we people here: nican titlaca)

Orthographic Variants:

nicantlaca, nicantlacah

Attestations from sources in English: 

■ "Through much of the sixteenth century, before 'macehualli' became dominant, the same sense had been expressed by the phrase nican titlaca, 'we people here,' which faded after 1600. Chimalpahin, however, still sometimes uses it as a stylistic alternative to 'macehualli' or uses the two as a pair for effect. The expression is quite transparent, and we have retained the literal translation."

- Annals of His Time: Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala, eds. and transl. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 17.

■ nicantlacah = local men (Tula, 1570) 

- John Frederick Schwaller, "Constitution of the Cofradía del Santíssimo Sacramento of Tula, Hidalgo, 1570," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 19 (1989), 222.

■ quipalehuizque yn amo çan iyuhqui nican tlacatl oc çenca yehuantin yn hueca tlaca quimopalehuilizqui = They will help the foreigners more than they will help the locals

- Fray Alonso de Molina, Nahua Confraternities in Early Colonial Mexico: The 1552 Nahuatl Ordinances of fray Alonso de Molina, OFM, ed. and trans., Barry D. Sell (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2002), 118–119.

■ Nican moteneoa, injc cioatlanja in nican tlaca = Here is related how the natives sought wives (central Mexico, sixteenth century)

- Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 127.

■ yn njcan tlaca = the natives (central Mexico, sixteenth century)

- Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 1 -- The Gods; No. 14, Part 2, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1950), 3.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

■ Av in aquin neҫiz aҫo governador aҫo alcaldeme aҫo regidorme yz ҫan ipampa anoҫo ipampa comunidad quincuilia in intlaxtlavil macevaltin ynic cecemilhuitl quimotlaqueviya castilantlaca anoҫo nican tlaca in tla vel neltiz ca aca quichiva y napa ixquich quixtlavaz = Y aquel que se descubra, gobernador, alcalde o regidor, que por sí o por causa de la comunidad quite a los macehuales el salario, por el cual cada día los castellanos ocupan a la gente de aquí, si se comprueba que alguien hace esto, lo pagará por cuadruplicado. (Cuauhtinchan, Puebla, s. XVI)

- Luis Reyes García, "Ordenanzas para el gobierno de Cuauhtinchan, año de 1559," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 10 (1972), 296–297. 

https://nahuatl.uoregon.edu/content/nican-tlaca

There are of course other examples that make reference to Nican Tlaca as a “term for Indigenous peoples”. These can be found in the works of James Lockhart:

■ The Nahuas After The Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Century.

■ We The People Here: Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico. 

Note: The sources within these books are not only early accounts by the Spaniards but also revealing documents written in the Nahuatl language in sixteenth-century Mexico.

Other sources of the term Nican Tlaca referring to our people (los naturales):

The Florentine Codex General History Of The Things Of New Spain By Fray Bernardino de Sahagun (16th Century) :

■ The Gods. Book 1, Chapter 1- Huitzilopochtli;

■ The Beginning of the Gods. Book 3, Chapter 1-Those who go to Mictlan;

■ Rhetoric And General Philosophy, Book 6 Chapter 23-The arranging of marriage; and 

■ The Conquest of Mexico, Book 12 Chapter 38. 

Nican Tlaca extends to all our people of the Western Hemisphere or Americas as an acknowledgment that we are the Original Inhabitants of this land, of this continent we call Cem-Anahuac.

Terms like Native and Indigenous are broad and can refer to any group of people on this earth. Nican Tlaca on the other hand, describes our existence in resistance and identifies us Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Central Americans as the people here in solidarity with our First Nation and Native American people in contrast to European American colonizers and their colonial labels of Latino/a and now Latinx, Hispanic, Raza, Mestizo, Red, Brown, Native, and all those other labels that stem out of colonialism.

We are not people from Spain who killed an estimated 23,000,000 to 25,000,000 of our Nican Tlaca population in Mexico and Central America. We are not Portugues, French, Italians, or Romans because we are not people who are rooted in Southern Europe. Europeans invaded our homelands, mutilated, massacred, robbed and raped our populations in Mexico, Central America and the rest of our people of North and South America.

They used smallpox as a biological weapon to neutralize and murder our Nican Tlaca Mexica people to easily steal and enslave the remaining population on our continent.

For this reason we are Nican Tlaca. It is an act of resistance, a method to reconstruct ourselves accordingly in our identity as one with our people.

Note: Nican Tlaca is not a term or a concept that seeks to homogenize, shame or discredit the vast complexity and diversity of any of our nations or tribes on our continent. We are one people, diverse yet related with a common history of accomplishments and a history of being colonized by the evil children of Europe.

Nican Tlaca is just the Nahuatl way of referring to all of the Original Inhabitants of our Cem-Anahuac continent. 

A.N.L.M.