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The first section of the manuscript (folios 1r to 18r) cogently represents the growth of the Mexica State. As Barbara Mundy shows in this volume, the altepetl of Tenochtitlan is the main protagonist of this narrative, which follows a dual axis composed of military conquests on one hand and brief biographies of the lords of Tenochtilan on the other. The second section of the manuscript (folios 18v to 56r) articulates the relationship between the Mexica capital and its vassals related to the collection of tributes and taxes.2 The choices made by the artists who produced the Codex Mendoza regarding the inclusion or omission of the types of objects involved in this process of taxation emphasize both the value allotted to finished products—highlighting a social structure based on the division and specialization of labor—and the performativity of such documents.3 In the third section of the manuscript (folios 56v to 71v), the artists charged with producing the codex depict the inhabitants of the Mexica State, creating unprecedented pictorial compositions that echo the rhetoric of order and beauty developed in the first two sections and that simultaneously humanize the events and social relations with which they are concerned.