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There appears to be no concrete evidence in these texts that the manuscript we know as the Codex Mendoza was either the first report sent to the emperor and to Mendoza’s brother (the account of Huitzilopochtli’s ascent) or the second promised report, the historical scope of which goes well beyond that of the Codex Mendoza (particularly regarding Quetzalcoatl). Moreover, the history of the foundation of Tenochtitlan as told in the first report is notably different than that rendered in the Codex Mendoza. Meanwhile, the second report was apparently informed by the Relación de Michoacán, which Viceroy Mendoza had commissioned in 1539-40, in which the contents of the Codex Mendoza became but a chapter in a more comprehensive history of the peoples of New Spain.

Alongside studies that sought to ratify the link between the manuscript and the viceroy, a group of academics continued their research on the possible authors of the Codex Mendoza’s text. In 1938, Wigberto Jiménez Moreno (cited in Nicholson 1992, 2) suggested that bishop Juan González was the author of the texts in the Codex Mendoza, basing his conclusion on a reference to the years and duration of the rules of the lords of Mexico in the Florentine Codex. In 1941, after performing a calligraphic analysis similar to Clark’s, Federico Gómez de Orozco (1941) ratified Jiménez Moreno’s hypothesis after concluding that the final mark in folio 71v was a “G”. Finally, in 1963, Woodrow Borah and Sherburne Cook (1963, 31) concluded that the aforementioned mark was a “Q,” further complicating the already exigent task of finding the author of the manuscript’s texts.