Juchatengo

Juchatengo belonged to the Chatino country of southern Oaxaca, where neighbouring communities and hereditary lords defended claims through both local knowledge and colonial legal procedures. Maps and paintings could carry evidence about territory and descent. They were therefore more than illustrations: their figures and written signs entered arguments over the rights of a cacicazgo, a hereditary indigenous lordship.

In 1717 Juchatengo and Ixtapan supplied such figures and lettering for maps and paintings presented in the proceedings concerning the cacicazgo of Don Agustín Carlos Pimentel. Both settlements are identified as Chatino in the historical account. The episode places Juchatengo within a network of communities capable of contributing knowledge and documentary material to a lordship's legal affairs. Its people appear here through their participation in the production of evidence, as local traditions and ways of representing the land encountered the requirements of colonial litigation.