The (dis) authorization of the use of the Nahuatl language in the legislation of New Spain

Abstract

This article seeks to document the ambivalent legal policy of the Castilian Crown on the (dis)authorisation of the use of the Nahuatl language in New Spain.

We propose as a thesis that this ambivalence was due to the fact that the Nahuatl language was used in New Spain as an instrument of power by both the King and the missionaries to implement a system of domestic social organization in which the indigenous people saw them as their protective parents.