Abstract

This chapter seeks to tease out the political philosophical content from the historical and literary sources produced by Indigenous people during the first phase of the New World’s colonization. To this end, the chapter will focus on an analysis of the figure of Nezahualcóyotl, king of pre-Hispanic Texcoco, based on the works of two chronicles from New Spain: Juan Bautista Pomar’s Relación de la ciudad y provincia de Texcoco (1582 CE) and Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl’s Historia de la nación chichimeca (1625 CE). The attention to these sorts of sources seeks to recognize them as useful examples of an Indigenous political philosophy insofar as they could be read as an alternative starting point for a critical and wider inquiry into the role of Indigenous knowledge in Latin American philosophy.