Tlaxcala's 'redondez' and the making of new worlds: from global empire to Indian province in Descripcion de la ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala (1581-1585)

Tlaxcala, an indigenous province in New Spain, was an ally to Hernan Cortes and an active participant in the wars of conquest against the Mexica Empire. In their position and identity as Indian conquistadors both during the conquest wars and the colonial period, the Tlaxcalteca nobility sought to defend its lands, interests, and privileges against competing exterior entities and forces. Countering these threats, Tlaxcala appropriated and developed a variety of discourses-heraldry, relaciones de meritos, primordial titles- and ritual practices and performance to defend its territorial and political integrity. This article analyzes another Tlaxcalteca discourse, not yet identified and studied by scholars, in Diego Munoz Camargo's Descripcion de la ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala (1581-1585). By proposing the term and concept rhetoric of the sphere, this article examines its use by Munoz Camargo to articulate a cartographic representation of Tlaxcala's territory as a circular, enclosed, and immune space. Intimately tied to the world-like nature of Tlaxcala's circular representation, the article argues, is the assertion, through both text and image, of a nativist revision of conquest and the emergence of a Tlaxcalteca territory and identity.