Project 1521

Project 1521 is a California cadre of poets, writers and artists who came together in response to the 500 years since the arrival of Hernan Cortéz to the Americas and to reflect on the artist Sandy Rodriguez’s contemporary Codex Rodriguez-Mondragón. In October, 2021, independent HINCHAS Press (www.hinchaspress.com) published Tlacuilix: Tongues In Quarantine (ISBN #978-1-954640-90-0), a collection of contemporary poetry. Like their counterparts during the 1560’s pandemic in Mexico after the arrival of Hernan Cortéz, the poets of Project 1521 wrote through a catastrophic pandemic and lock-down.

Guided by the tlaquilos who wrote the Florentine Codex, the poets touch the themes of cultural subjugation, hybridity, and intertextuality. The writers are Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, Gloria Enedina Alvarez, Julia Bogany, Darren J. de Leon, Sara Harris Ben-Ari, Arminé Iknadossian, Diana Magaloni, Linda Ravenswood de Montano. Project 1521 writers created new text in response to original artworks by Sandy Rodriguez.

Project 1521 contends with the living history of the Spanish decimation of the Aztec people and actively seeks ways to mitigate the effects on the children of the Americas, highlighting the skills, concepts, and knowledge of past scribes as a way to understand our current textual landscape. In 1576, the indigenous scribes and artists finishing the Florentine Codex sequestered to survive a raging plague.

Tlacuilix: Tongues In Quarantine is the first book by Project 1521, a California cadre of poets, writers, scholars, and artists. The book honors people who have endured family separations, colonialism, and institutional violence through cultural affirmation and various forms of resistance.