The Lienzo de Tlaxcala and the Indian Conquistadors

The conquest of Mexico can be better understood if one leaves aside the myths of European superiority and acknowledge the key role played by the Indigenous conquistadors in the defeat of the Mexica and later the formation of the realm of New Spain. Dozens of Mesoamerican polities, large and small, joined the victorious Indo-Spanish armies, and hundreds of thousands of Mesoamerican women, warriors, and assistants, participated in the twenty years of “Mesoamerican wars” that started with the war against México-Tenochtitlan, 1519–1521, and continued all across what is now Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua until the 1540s. The victorious Indigenous conquistadors produced legal testimonies and historical accounts of their feats of war to obtain rewards and privileges, often granted by the Spanish crown. The most spectacular were the lienzos, visual histories of the conquest painted on large cloths. There are many of these Indigenous accounts, but the best known and perhaps the most influential one is the Lienzo de Tlaxcala. It is the most complete account of the Mesoamerican wars, produced by the most important ally of the Spaniards, and it is also the foremost example of the historical and ritual discourses produced by the Indigenous conquistadors, as the ultimate proof of their leading role in this process. This spectacular artwork easily assimilated European pictorial conventions to the much more complex Amerindian pictographic and ritual narrative genres. As such, it was the anchor for complex ritual performances that re-enacted the feats of those wars and also allowed for the constitution of the Amerindian “complex beings” of Malinche and Santiago, the keystones of Tlaxcalan cultural memory of the conquest. Its communicative success can be proved by the fact that the Tlaxcalan embassies that presented the Lienzo de Tlaxcala and other historical books and precious gifts obtained the privileges they sought and asserted the autonomy of Tlaxcala.

ENGLISH: Islamic Jurisprudence and Geneva Convention: Searching Compatibility for Women Worriers’ Rights

This research paper evaluates the Islamic values vis-a-vis Geneva Convention concerning the rights of women warriors as prisoners of war by the victorious country. The discussion is to discover the similarities and differences between the two areas on the subject. This study focuses the probability of combining these two separate areas but common in objectivity. The Islamic law protects the women from the scourges of war in a number of ways. Similarly, the Geneva Convention also tries to protect the women as prisoners of war. This study concerns the main research question as to whether there may be the compatibility between Islamic and Geneva Convention law for developing a common code on the issue of rights of women worriers. The objective of the study undertaken is to develop a common code through reconciliation between these two separate regulations for conducting war, and ensuring the upholding of human dignity of female worriers. This will complement the existing knowledge on the issue as a guideline for all concerned in the context of International Humanitarian Law.