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This document was first published in Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 4, 64–69. However, the transcription, translation, and a new introduction presented here come from Lockhart's personal papers. The original manuscript is in the McAfee Collection, UCLA Resarch Library, Special Collections. [Introduction by James Lockhart:] Guzmán was the primary surname used by the dynasty that supplied many rulers and governors to the great complex altepetl of Coyoacan. The name don Juan de Guzmán was taken by the first of the postconquest ruler/governors and then in turn by the second, his son. The second don Juan de Guzmán again had a son of the same name, but he died young. The don Juan de Guzmán who is testator here is not any of the above, nor can his position in the lineage be precisely identified, but there is no doubt that he was recognized as belonging to it. In 1586 he was serving as the governor of Xalatlauhco, an altepetl in the eastern Toluca Valley with connections to Coyoacan. He was the brother (or possibly cousin) of doña Juana de Guzmán, who married the ruler of one of the three divisions of Xochimilco (Lockhart, Nahuas and Spaniards, p. 76). A previous ruler and governor of Coyoacan owed don Juan a debt, and his widow acknowledged it, as will be seen in more detail below. This don Juan de Guzmán shows signs of being well off, such as having paid 50 pesos to a silversmith and apparently having given him a reliquary worth 25 pesos to repair. But though he owns a house with land plus an orchard or two in Tetla, in the same line of endeavor as the large orchard that had long been an important asset of the ruling family, there is no hint of the widely scattered huge fields that earlier members of the line typically held. And don Juan is loaded down with debts: many of them for masses he was to perform for relatives in the past and failed to, some from loans he or his late wife received from quite humble people. Thus he does not have much to bequeath to his children. His house and the land associated with it are to be sold, to pay for his funeral expenses, masses not yet said for other people, and doubtless also to liquidate other debts. Two daughters, both doñas, will share one orchard, and don Juan’s son, don Lorenzo de Guzmán, will get another. Don Lorenzo is named after an earlier member of the line and former governor of Coyoacan (see the genealogical chart in Horn, Postconquest Coyoacan, p. 274). Don Lorenzo along with one of the daughters, presumably the elder, is made executor of the testament. A Dominican friar is present as a witness, one more sign of don Juan’s high rank. Otherwise, however, the assembly of notables one might expect is lacking. The only other witnesses are two people with humble names who might be employees in the household. Although the will is beautifully done with all the normal conventions, the name of a notary is missing. One cannot help wondering if don Juan wrote it himself. The formulas are in some cases closer to Spanish practices than usual; thus rarely does one see in a Nahuatl a statement such as is included here (lines 76–79) that anyone who comes swearing to a debt beneath a certain amount is to be paid. Done in 1622, the testament fully maintains the language of what can be called high Stage 2, perhaps from 1575 to 1610, with no hint of later developments. For example, the first word for owing money to appear in Nahuatl was pialia, the applicative of pia, “to keep, hold.” By about 1620 this verb was being displaced by huiquilia, the applicative of huica in the sense “to be responsible for,” and that was to be the definitive term from that time forward all over the Nahua world. But here we still have pialia (lines 67, 76, 83, 108, 117) and the related pialtia “to lend” (line 42). Possibly the reason is that don Juan had reached maturity many years before and was set in his ways. If he wrote the will rather than dictated it, one sees all the more why his personal style would be reflected in it (though even a notary would have followed don Juan’s wording in many respects, especially in the body of the will). Whoever did the preamble, it is quite a masterpiece, finding a place for the usual Coyoacan conventions such as referring to the visible and the invisible, but putting the whole into a marvelous composition that embodies the best in Stage 2 Nahuatl. Some pairing of phrases here lends a bit of elegance, but it is subtly done, not in the heavy, almost mechanical style of earlier, as for example in Doc. 29, the Huejotzingo letter (Perhaps the “etc.” in line 11 to represent further formulas breaks the mood a bit.) In line 7, “Can” is for “Çan,” “only.” In line 22, don Juan calls San Juan Bautista “my saint,” apparently meaning his name saint, though San Juan was also patron of the main church and of the altepetl of Coyoacan. There is no hint that don Juan had any household saints. In line 29, “tlatecpantli,” “that which is ordered or arranged,” refers specifially to the arancel, a schedule of standard prices or charges. In lines 34 and 35, two words beginning with te-, apparently “stone,” remain obscure: “temilli,” literally “stone field,” might be a rocky field or a field with a stone fence; “tecomuli,” standard tecomolli, might be a rocky depression. In line 36, “yhuan,” “and,” is inadvertently repeated. In lines 45–49, the doña Juana de Guzmán referred to is the sister (or possibly cousin) whom don Juan visited at the time of her death in 1586; he became executor of her testament (see the reference in note 1 above). In line 54 the expression itech ca, literally “something is with, attached to, him or her,” is used to mean that that person owes money to someone. The idiom shared the stage for a time with pialia as a way to speak of owing money, then largely faded out. Here “ytech catca ytomin magdalena,” literally “Magdalena’s money was with her,” means “she owed money to Magdalena.” The phrase was also used for things other than money, as when don Juan says (line 38) “notech ca missas chiquacentetl,” “six masses are with me,” i.e., are incumbent on me, I owe them to someone. In line 56, the loanword for orchard is “huerta,” not the alahuerta so widely spread in Nahuatl. The same was true in Doc. 2, the 1588 will of a noblewoman of Coyoacan. In line 57, a prefixed te- again is obscure; atlauhtli is ravine, so perhaps “teatlauhtli” is a rocky ravine. In lines 76–77, “aca,” “someone,” is advertently repeated. In line 79 we see a very common idiomatic phrase, “yehuan quimati,” literally “they know it, know about it,” but the implication is not only that they are fully informed of the situation but that decisions are left up to them, they can decide. In lines 99–109, the doña Agustina de Guzmán here was more generally known as doña Agustina de Chilapan. She was married first to don Felipe de Guzmán, ruler and at times governor of Coyoacan, and then to don Constantino Huitziméngari, son of an earlier Tarascan ruler who migrated to Coyoacan. In her testament she recognizes the debt don Juan speaks of here, though according to her it was 15 pesos, not 18. She died in 1614, and the debt went back far before that, but it had not yet been paid in 1622. We see that our don Juan was not the only member of the lineage to be dilatory with debts. -----