Don Alonso envisioned concrete uses for the volume over the years—it could provide evidence in Spanish courtrooms regarding traditional landholding arrangements, for example, or it could be carried to indigenous ceremonies as a sacred object lending authenticity to the procedures. But don Alonso dedicated untold hours of his family’s time to this project for deeper reasons than these. He foresaw that once his people’s memory of the meaning of the glyphs had faded, and their communities had sunk into the poverty that Spanish demands were pushing them toward, narrowing their horizons and forcing
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