In The Misadventure of the Mason, an illustrated panel from the 16th-century Codex Mendoza, we see a builder falling to his death and the punishment of those deemed responsible — ordered by the Aztec ruler. The image shows multiple stages: the accident, the ruler’s deliberation, and the beating of the negligent parties.
This pre-colonial legal scene reveals a complex indigenous justice system — one with codes of liability, authority, and repair. Yet the Codex Mendoza, created for Spanish audiences, was itself an act of colonial surveillance. It translated Aztec legal practices into a European-readable format — part ethnography, part control.
Legally, the image tells two stories. First, it shows accountability law in an early form: the idea that harm has consequences, and that rulers mediate justice. Second, it reveals how colonialism uses law to document, appropriate, and reinterpret native systems — often to erase or overwrite them.
The panel is thus a double-layered legal artifact. On one level, it reflects indigenous norms around compensation and punishment. On another, it marks the beginning of legal erasure — where native systems are subordinated to colonial codes, often violently.
Today, this image reminds us that law is not neutral. It travels with power, and it rewrites as much as it records. The Codex Mendoza becomes a legal palimpsest — a document of both justice and loss.