Miguel Leon-Portilla – författare

This volume presents ancient Mexican myths and sacred hymns, lyric poetry, rituals, drama, and various forms of prose, accompanied by informed criticism and comment. The selections come from the Aztecs, the Mayas, the Mixtecs and Zapotecs of Oaxaca, the Tarascans of Michoacan, the Otomís of central Mexico, and others. They have come down to us from inscriptions on stone, the codices, and accounts written, after the coming of Europeans, of oral traditions.It is Miguel León-Portilla's intention ""to bring to contemporary readers an understanding of the marvelous world of symbolism which is the very substance of these early literatures."" That he has succeeded is obvious to every reader.

For at least two millennia before the advent of the Spaniards in 1519, there was a flourishing civilization in central Mexico. During that long span of time a cultural evolution took place which saw a high development of the arts and literature, the formulation of complex religious doctrines, systems of education, and diverse political and social organization.The rich documentation concerning these people, commonly called Aztecs, includes, in addition to a few codices written before the Conquest, thousands of folios in the Nahuatl or Aztec language written by natives after the Conquest. Adapting the Latin alphabet, which they had been taught by the missionary friars, to their native tongue, they recorded poems, chronicles, and traditions.The fundamental concepts of ancient Mexico presented and examined in this book have been taken from more than ninety original Aztec documents. They concern the origin of the universe and of life, conjectures on the mystery of God, the possibility of comprehending things beyond the realm of experience, life after death, and the meaning of education, history, and art. The philosophy of the Nahuatl wise men, which probably stemmed from the ancient doctrines and traditions of the Teotihuacans and Toltecs, quite often reveals profound intuition and in some instances is remarkably -modern.-This English edition is not a direct translation of the original Spanish, but an adaptation and rewriting of the text for the English-speaking reader.

In this second English-language edition of one of his most notable works, Miguel León-Portilla explores the Maya Indians' remarkable concepts of time. At the book's first appearance Evon Z. Vogt, Curator of Middle American Ethnology in Harvard University, predicted that it would become ""a classic in anthropology,"" a prediction borne out by the continuing critical attention given to it by leading scholars.Like no other people in history, the ancient Maya were obsessed by the study of time. Their sages framed its cycles with tireless exactitude. Yet their preoccupation with time was not limited to calendrics; it was a central trait in their evolving culture.In this absorbing work León-Portilla probes the question, What did time really mean for the ancient Maya in terms of their mythology, religious thought, worldview, and everyday life? In his analysis of key Maya texts and computations, he reveals one of the most elaborate attempts of the human mind to penetrate the secrets of existence.

Who were the poets of Mexico in the days of Aztec splendor? What were the poems of a culture so different from our own?In this first English-language translation of a significant corpus of Nahuatl poetry into English, an expansion of his classic Trece poetas del mundo azteca, Miguel León-Portilla was assisted in his rethinking, augmenting, and rewriting in English by Grace Lobanov. Biographies of fifteen composers of Nahuatl verse and analyses of their work are followed by their extant poems in Nahuatl and in English.The poets - fourteen men and one woman - lived in the central highlands of Mexico and spoke Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, Texcocans, Tlaxcalans, and several other chiefdoms. These authors of ""flower and song"" (a Nahuatl metaphor for poetry, art, and symbolism) lived during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Sources for the poems included indigenous ""codices,"" books of songs"" now unfortunately lost, and renditions of them preserved by the Nahuatl oral tradition, which survived the Spanish Conquest and were recorded by several young natives in two manuscripts.

He was sent from Spain on a religious crusade to Mexico to ""detect the sickness of idolatry,"" but Bernardino de Sahagún (c. 1499-1590) instead became the first anthropologist of the New World. The Franciscan monk developed a deep appreciation for Aztec culture and the Nahuatl language. In this biography, Miguel León-Portilla presents the life story of a fascinating man who came to Mexico intent on changing the traditions and cultures he encountered but instead ended up working to preserve them, even at the cost of persecution.Sahagún was responsible for documenting numerous ancient texts and other native testimonies. He persevered in his efforts to study the native Aztecs until he had developed his own research methodology, becoming a pioneer of anthropology. Sahagún formed a school of Nahua scribes and labored with them for more than sixty years to transcribe the pre-conquest language and culture of the Nahuas. His rich legacy, our most comprehensive account of the Aztecs, is contained in his Primeros Memoriales (1561) and Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España (1577).Near the end of his life at age 91, Sahagún became so protective of the Aztecs that when he died, his former Indian students and many others felt deeply affected.Translated into English by Mauricio J. Mixco, León-Portilla's absorbing account presents Sahagún as a complex individual-a man of his times yet a pioneer in many ways.

For hundreds of years, the history of the conquest of Mexico and the defeat of the Aztecs has been told in the words of the Spanish victors. Miguel León-Portilla has long been at the forefront of expanding that history to include the voices of indigenous peoples. In this new and updated edition of his classic The Broken Spears, León-Portilla has included accounts from native Aztec descendants across the centuries. These texts bear witness to the extraordinary vitality of an oral tradition that preserves the viewpoints of the vanquished instead of the victors. León-Portilla''s new Postscript reflects upon the critical importance of these unexpected historical accounts.

Estudio que representa un testimonio de la sabiduría de hombres y mujeres que vivieron hace siglos en el México indígena, conocidos como la antigua palabra huehuehtlahtolli. Con este vocablo se abarcaba un gran conjunto de discursos y enseñanzas que eran legado de la propia cultura.

Además de la trascripción del texto, León-Portilla nos ofrece un estudio minucioso del "Nican mopohua", una de las vastas composiciones indígenas que con mayor detalle y belleza refiere la aparición, mensaje y milagros de Tonantzin, "Madre de todos los dioses" en el cerro del Tepeyac hacia el siglo XVI.

Los mesoamericanos comenzaron a desarrollar, siglos antes de la era cristiana, incipientes formas de escritura. No todos llegaron a poseer una escritura completa; correspondió a los mayas la invención de tal logro. El propósito del autor es valorar el largo proceso que marcó el destino de la palabra indígena a partir de la Conquista.

Con el título Toltecáyotl, Miguel León-Portilla nos remite a un concepto utilizado por los nahuas para entender el legado cultural proveniente de los toltecas tocando varios temas como: la historiografía prehispánica, el pensamiento mítico, las ideas de número, tiempo y espacio, sus ideales en la educación, literatura y organización social.

Estudio que representa un testimonio de la sabiduría de hombres y mujeres que vivieron hace siglos en el México indígena, conocidos como la antigua palabra huehuehtlahtolli. Con este vocablo se abarcaba un gran conjunto de discursos y enseñanzas que eran legado de la propia cultura.

Se ofrece una descripción del tesoro invaluable que conforman los testimonios de la expresión de numerosos grupos indígenas de México. Sus fuentes abarcan pinturas y bajorrelieves prehispánicos, códices, transcripciones en el alfabeto latino, realizadas a partir de la conquista española.

El descubrimiento de América marcó el encuentro entre dos mundos radicalmente distintos. Se desarrolló entonces una extraordinaria empresa dirigida a captar y describir las particularidades de los idiomas nativos. Esta obra analiza y valora dos gramáticas con que se abrió camino a la comprensión de la Babel americana: Arte de la lengua mexicana de fray Andrés de Olmos, misionero convertido en lingüista, quien logró una honda captación del náhuatl, y Arte de la lengua de Michuacán de fray Maturino Gilberti, que fijó un nuevo canon y nos legó la primera gramática impresa en el Nuevo Mundo.

Esta versión de la historia de Baja California nos acerca a una historia vasta. Desde los primeros pobladores que ocuparon la región cerca del año 10,000 a. C., hasta su actualidad, este estado ha ido cambiando su identidad debido a su peculiar ubicación, ya que estando tan alejado de la capital del país y a la vez muy cercano a un país infinitamente más desarrollado económicamente, su identidad se va transformando debido a esta situación. Conformando una pluralidad y convergencia de distintas influencias, Baja California es uno de los estados más multiculturales del país.

Cuadro completo de lo que fue la evolución cultural de los pueblos nahuas, y su conciencia histórica. También se explican sus tradiciones, los ideales religiosos y guerreros, sin olvidar el pensamiento filosófico que les dio raíz y el legado espiritual.

Humanistas de Mesoamérica es una ampliación de los libros Humanistas de Mesoamérica I y II publicados por el FCE en 1997.En esta nueva edición, Miguel León-Portilla ofrece en solo tomo un recorrido por los humanistas prehispánicos hasta los contemporáneos, en un texto que ofrece un panorama de aquellos que dedicaron su vida al estudio y consolidación de las culturas originarias de Mesoamérica.

Se ofrece una descripción del tesoro invaluable que conforman los testimonios de la expresión de numerosos grupos indígenas de México. Sus fuentes abarcan pinturas y bajorrelieves prehispánicos, códices, transcripciones en el alfabeto latino, realizadas a partir de la conquista española.

Con un prólogo de Ángel María Garibay, esta es la primera y única obra de teatro que ha escrito Miguel León-Portilla, inédita hasta ahora. Ahondando en la visión náhuatl del mundo, el investigador emérito de la UNAM y miembro de El Colegio Nacional nos lleva a imaginar cómo habrían concebido los antiguos mexicanos el drama existencial del hombre al tomar conciencia de su ser sin reposo, en un universo en que todo es fugaz.

Penetrar en los arcanos de la historia y del pensamiento nahuatl a traves de sus propias palabras es acercarnos al corazon de un pueblo que vivio la grandeza y el infortunio en carne propia. Miguel Leon-Portilla, con el profundo conocimiento que poseia de la antigua palabra, logro llegar hasta los mas intimos sentimientos que formaron las bases de una filosofia, de una manera de entender el mundo presente en mitos, relatos, anales, codices y muchas otras formas que expresaron la manera de pensar de un pueblo. Conocedor de las fuentes historicas y de la arqueologia, nos lleva por senderos que recorren multiples esencias de las sociedades nahuas que poblaron el Valle de Mexico. Los antiguos mexicanos no solo nos introduce en el mundo de la flor y el canto, sino que nos acerca al quehacer del artesano, a la vida cotidiana, a las ensenanzas y consejos que el padre vierte al hijo y la madre a la hija. Nos deja, pues, labrados con sus propias palabras la imagen y el rostro de un pueblo.