Transcending Conquest: Nahua Views of Spanish Colonial Mexico
Abstract
Columbus arrived on North American shores in 1492, and Cortés had replaced Moctezuma, the Aztec Nahua emperor, as the major figurehead in central Mexico by 1521. Five centuries later, the convergence of "old" and "new" worlds and the consequences of colonization continue to fascinate and horrify us. In Transcending Conquest, Stephanie Wood uses Nahuatl writings and illustrations to reveal Nahua perspectives on Spanish colonial occupation of the Western Hemisphere.
Mesoamerican peoples have a strong tradition of pictorial record keeping, and out of respect for this tradition, Wood examines multiple examples of pictorial imagery to explore how Native manuscripts have depicted the European invader and colonizer. She has combed national and provincial archives in Mexico and visited some of the Nahua communities of central Mexico to collect and translate Native texts. Analyzing and interpreting changes in indigenous views and attitudes throughout three hundred years of foreign rule, Wood considers variations in perspectives--between the indigenous elite and the laboring classes, and between those who resisted and those who allied themselves with the European intruders.
Transcending Conquest goes beyond the familiar voices recorded by scribes in central colonial Mexico and the Spanish conquerors to include indigenous views from the outlying Mesoamerican provinces and to explore Native historical narratives from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. Wood explores how evolving sentiments in indigenous communities about increasing competition for resources ultimately resulted in an anti-Spanish discourse, a trend largely overlooked by scholars--until now. Transcending Conquest takes us beyond the romantic focus on the deeds of the Spanish conqueror to show how the so-called "conquest" was limited by the ways that Native peoples and their descendants reshaped the historical narrative to better suit their memories, identities, and visions of the future.
... So predisposed were they to accept the new faith that, as Robert Haskett writes of Cuernavaca's leaders, it was as if "the arrival of the Franciscans merely awakened their latent Catholic selves" (Haskett 2010:247). 25 Colonial Nahua historical chronicles of other genres as well, such as year count annals, absorb the Spanish invasion and its attendant epidemics and other upheavals into the record in a matter-of-fact manner, not as the dawn of a new era (see especially Wood 2003). While these perspectives may seem to gloss over the traumas of the transition to colonial rule, they uphold a sense of historical continuity and legitimacy for the colonial altepetl. ...
... "Th e Star Sign" presents the three tlahtohqueh-plural of tlahtoani, the Nahua term for rulers or, in the colonial period, high-level offi ce-holders-as if they were conquest-era Nahua elites, like the ancestors in the títulos and other histories. Th ey 25 On the títulos genre see also Lockhart 1992, Haskett 2005, Wood 2003, Sousa and Terraciano 2003 speak in a very devout, respectful, polite, and humble manner that resembles the formal oratory in Nahuatl collected in the sixteenth century by the Franciscans fray Andrés de Olmos and fray Bernardino de Sahagún. 26 Especially when they speak to Jesus and Mary, they echo the language recorded by Sahagún, for example when they address the infant Christ as "you jewel, you quetzal feather" and describe the burdens of rulership he will later face as "the carrying frame, the instrument of bearing, which is heavy, which cannot be lifted, which is unbearable." ...
... The primordial title, or título, was an important colonial Mesoamerican genre consisting of "a community history that promoted local interests, particularly related to land ownership, often those of the local dynasty or dominant noble families" (Restall 2003a: 122). Extant títulos in Mesoamerican languages have been widely studied by colonial ethnohistorians (e.g., Haskett 2005;Sousa and Terraciano 2003;Wood 2003), who have stressed how títulos are both similar to yet different from colonial Spanish genres, including the probanza-an issue I revisit below. ...
... This strategy-in which indigenous elites incorporate a first-conquest encounter into the stream of local history while simultaneously giving the event a positive spin-has been widely documented by scholars (e.g., Diel 2008, Haskett 2005Schroeder, 2010;Wood 2003). Here, the text's synthesis of both genres is enabled by the congruence between their respective animating agendas, which align around partisan self-interest. ...
In this article, I argue for placing the study of translators and translation processes more squarely at the center of ethnohistoric research. I focus on two texts well known to scholars: a seventeenth-century text written in Chontal Maya and its contemporary translation into Spanish. I discuss how translation practices contributed to the creation of the Chontal text and then analyze the systematic discrepancies between it and the contemporary Spanish translation. I show that even where the translation closely follows the original, the message is radically altered. This case speaks to issues commonly found in colonial encounters, while inviting deeper engagement with translation as a special site where colonial relations are constructed.
... 6 Deardorff's work continues the study of the parallels in the imperial management of "Moriscos", "Indios", and Mestizos (Cardaillac, 2012;Phillips-Quintanilla, 2018;Cook, 2013) and the development by "native" elites throughout the Empire of similar strategies to counter imperial pressure and legitimize their social position (Adorno, 1989;Deardorff, 2016;Cárdenas Bunsen, 2018;Cook, 2020). Likewise, Deardorff's study contributes decisively to previous scholarship on the imperial native subjecthood (Matthew & Oudijk, 2007;Wood, 2012), the role of local devotions in the legitimation of "native" elites (Dean, 1999;Cuadriello, 2011;Drayson, 2016;Osowski, 2022), and the appropriation of colonial legal language and rhetoric by "native" elites to define what it meant to be "Indio," "Mestizo" (Jackson, 1999;Villella, 2016;Díaz, 2017), or "Morisco" (Soria Mesa, 1995;García-Arenal & Rodríguez Mediano, 2013), and claim their place in the Spanish Empire (Van Deusen, 2015; Puente Luna, 2018;García-Arenal & Rodríguez Mediano, 2013). Finally, the book reflects current research on the interconnectivity of the Spanish imperial territories (Cardillac, 2012;Cook, 2016Cook, , 2020 and the impact of the "purity of blood" ideology and its ramifications (Martínez, 2008;Soria Mesa, 2016;Cook, 2021). ...
... Al iniciar este siglo, esta tendencia se ha acentuado más y se publicaron varios estudios sobre el proceso de la «conquista española», en los que todos señalaron la participación de gran número de las huestes indígenas de diversos grupos étnicos, sin las cuales esta empresa militar no habría podido cumplirse. En términos reales, los autores afirman que los indígenas fueron agentes protagónicos determinando su propio destino en los momentos críticos, cuyo objetivo consistía en salvaguardar sus propias entidades políticas contra viento y marea (Matthew & Oudijk, 2007;Oudijk & Restall, 2008;Wood, 2003;Wood, 2014). 1 Laura E. Matthew, a su vez, realizó un análisis de los soldados indígenas procedentes del Altiplano Central de México que acompañaron a Pedro de Alvarado para conquistar los reinos mayas de Guatemala. Lo más novedoso de su trabajo es el planteamiento diacrónico de estudiar la trayectoria histórica de los indígenas, desde la época prehispánica hasta la contemporánea: de la longue durée o de larga duración, según la terminología planteada por Fernand Braudel. ...
Recientes investigaciones sobre las sociedades mesoamericanas durante y después de la «conquista» española han revelado de manera pormenorizada cómo los indígenas actuaron por su propia iniciativa obedeciendo a sus intereses particulares ante una realidad literalmente cambiante. Estos estudios exigen reconsiderar nuestro paradigma conceptual sobre la historia de dicho periodo, en la que como agentes activos mantuvieron su sociedad sin ruptura alguna, es decir una historia de larga duración o la longue durée. Esta nueva perspectiva analítica y metodológica, no obstante, aún no alcanza al estudio de la geografía política de los mayas de Yucatán y la única excepción sigue siendo el modelo que he venido planteando desde hace tres décadas. En este trabajo, por ende, demostraré las características de la geografía política de los mayas de Yucatán desde el Posclásico hasta el siglo XIX e indicaré la importancia de estudiarla con base en la «lógica» o perspectiva indígena. Luego, discutiré lo que puede implicar el notorio contraste que existe entre mi modelo y los demás como una dicotomía conceptual inconsciente que persiste entre los investigadores, lo cual se puede esquematizar como una dicotomía proveniente de dos saberes asimétricos: lo indígena y lo nuestro académico. Al término de este trabajo resaltaré mi esperanza en los jóvenes estudiosos indígenas que intentan buscar otra forma de hablar de su historia ancestral.
... Native people also resorted to local knowledge and forms of representation to support their claims, despite Spanish disinclination to take such evidence seriously. These included maps that blended European and Indigenous styles, and a genre of painted histories and genealogies known as the Techialoyan codices (Wood, 2007(Wood, , 2012. Native towns also generated a written genre of Native-language documents known as primordial titles that recounted the migration of the community's founding ancestors, the marking of territorial boundaries, the consecration of the community's Church, and the establishment of the Native town council (cabildo) (Cortés Márquez & Reyes García, 2004;Haskett, 2005;Oudijk, 2003;Menegus Bornemann, 1994b, p. 208;Oudijk & Romero Frizzi, 2003;Romero Frizzi & Vásquez Vásquez, 2003Sousa & Terraciano, 2003). ...
Indigenous communities in colonial Spanish America used imperial law to preserve, create, defend, and expand their landholding. This chapter analyzes Indigenous claims to customary land tenure and possession in response to a Spanish imperial program of land titling known as the composiciones de tierras and other challenges to communal territory in the Ñudzahui (Mixtec) region of Oaxaca. The land titling program dovetailed with the expansion of the livestock economy, population growth, and an increase in tribute and taxes during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In a context of increasing scarcity and pressure to normalize landholding, many Native communities went to court with competing claims to land. But Indigenous pueblos also came together to create plural ownership that allowed them to pool resources and share territorial jurisdiction. Through partnership contracts—the Spanish notarial form in which plural ownership was legally instantiated—Native authorities preserved or extended the territorial expanses of their communities, challenged or whittled away at the property of powerful Native elites ( caciques ), and transformed customary claims into new legal rights with an eye to securing the territorial integrity of their communities for the future.
... Seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Mesoamerican primordial titles commemorated a distant time in which a community's ancestors converted to Christianity and encountered Spanish conquerors (Wood 2003). In contrast with these formulaic depictions, the Yalalag yoo lahui presented themselves as neophytes who, more than a century and a half after the arrival of Christianity in Northern Oaxaca, had made only modest progress toward Christianity. ...
Context
This article presents a translation and analysis of the only extant formal confession of human sacrifice written in an Indigenous language in the colonial Americas. An analysis of this document, written in Northern Zapotec by the town officials of Yalalag in 1704, provides numerous insights about how a community deployed traditional rhetoric to seek mercy from their civil magistrate, and to provide a justification for committing acts of idolatry and child sacrifice. Rather than aligning with the canonical middle ground (nepantla), often used as a yardstick, this confession eloquently and incisively places Northern Zapotec society in tentative terrain point in terms of their knowledge of Christianity, and depicts Christianization as a long-term process, which confessants boldly tied to latent forms of negotiation.
... Muchos de los usos y conocimientos ancestrales sobre los ecosistemas presentes en el territorio mesoamericano continúan vigentes en las poblaciones actuales que viven en esta gran área cultural y constituyen soluciones avanzadas de uso integrado y sostenible de dichos ecosistemas, como ha sido documentado en diversas investigaciones (Ávila 2009;Espinosa 1996;Heyden 1983;Wood 2003). Diversos investigadores han advertido sobre los peligros de este escenario y han recalcado la necesidad de contar con estudios científicos de sostenibilidad a largo plazo, previos al establecimiento de los desarrollos turísticos de clase mundial, así como con instituciones y legislaciones que estén exclusivamente dedicadas a la planeación científica del desarrollo costero, para que éste responda a las necesidades locales y sea consecuente con el uso ancestral de los patrimonios natural y cultural en la región (Benavides 2009, Capurro y Franco 2011, Franco 2011, Fraga 2006, 2011. ...
Existe un Uso Ancestral Maya de la naturaleza y de la cultura en toda la extensión de la Península de Yucatán, que ha hecho posible que ahora contemos con atractivos paisajes naturales y culturales en las zonas marinas y costeras y en los sitios arqueológicos y comunidades tradicionales de Yucatán, Quintana Roo y Campeche. Estos patrimonios quieren aprovecharse en la actualidad como paisajes y tradiciones por las firmas internacionales inmobiliarias y los desarrollos turísticos Premium para sus fines empresariales, dejando de lado la sostenibilidad que se ha conseguido en un lapso de más de tres mil años con los usos tradicionales y los derechos ancestrales de los pobladores originarios, enfocados consuetudinariamente en preservar el conocimiento y transmitir el saber que la han hecho posible, a las nuevas generaciones mayas.
Ya que la Península de Yucatán es un Gran Ecosistema Kárstico Tropical, sumamente sensible a las actividades humanas actuales, particularmente a su reciente urbanización costera, que se ha dado con mayor intensidad en su costa oriental –la Riviera Maya- pero que ahora ha avanzado hacia la costa de los estados de Yucatán y de Campeche, al estudiarla de modo científico y planear su desarrollo económico para los próximos 50 o cien años, debemos considerar toda esta gran región en su conjunto geológico peculiar y también su situación geográfica privilegiada respecto al mar y las costas tropicales.
También debemos tener en cuenta que este Gran Ecosistema ha sido aprovechado por la civilización maya en forma continua, motivo por el cual han surgido ciudades, estados, naciones y formas de organización social, que aprovechan de manera sostenible los ecosistemas peninsulares de acuerdo con un modelo ancestral que ha sido perfeccionado a lo largo de los milenios.
La investigación realizada en los tres estudios de caso: La región de Tulum y el desarrollo Maya Zamá en la costa de Quintana Roo; la región de Xcambó y el Flamingo Lakes Golf and Country Club Resort en la costa de Yucatán y la región de Champotón y el Aak Bal Marina Village and Beach Resort, en la costa de Campeche, muestra que en la actualidad se está impulsando desde las distintos instancias de gobierno federal, estatal y municipal un Nuevo Modelo de Expropiación y Apropiación Patrimonial, propio de la Industria de los desarrollos Turísticos Premium. Estos desarrollos se establecen en grandes extensiones de territorio nacional de entre 400 a 900 o más hectáreas de superficie, muy ricas en patrimonio natural como selvas, lagunas, cenotes, manglares y regiones costeras estratégicas, así como en patrimonio cultural como sitios arqueológicos y comunidades mayas con conocimientos milenarios. Estas empresas trasnacionales compran a muy bajo precio y modifican estos lugares patrimoniales con la complicidad de las autoridades gubernamentales. En ellos construyen campos de Golf, lagos artificiales, hoteles, áreas residenciales y diversas atracciones para recibir a vacacionistas y jubilados de Estados Unidos, Canadá o Europa que quieran buscar una segunda residencia. Al hacer esto destruyen y alteran el paisaje local, cuyo subsuelo es muy frágil a todas estas perturbaciones, lo que lleva a la contaminación de las reservas de agua subterráneas, la salinización de los manglares, la destrucción de las selvas y su biodiversidad y la
contaminación de las playas y mares que tanto requiere dicha industria, como ya sucede en la Riviera Maya.
Al mismo tiempo estas industrias aprovechan los legados culturales, como las zonas arqueológicas y los conocimientos milenarios sobre la biodiversidad para hacer negocio, mercantilizando este patrimonio para el turismo de masas e impidiendo su uso y disfrute por parte de la población local. Esto sucede también con las playas, que pasan de ser públicas a privadas. Por eso decimos que es un modelo insostenible desde el punto de vista científico, social, político y económico.
En contraposición encontramos que, en estas mismas regiones estudiadas, al igual que en toda la península, existen usos ancestrales de los ecosistemas que han permitido su aprovechamiento por las comunidades rurales durante más de tres mil años para la satisfacción de necesidades de vivienda, alimentación, vestido, salud, religión etc.
Como este Paisaje Cultural ha sido utilizado de manera racional durante más de tres mil años por la cultura maya, el Modelo Ancestral de Uso del Territorio y su Patrimonio ha quedado plasmado en la ubicación de los diversos sitios arqueológicos que allí existen, los cuales marcan de manera estratégica la manera más inteligente de aprovechar los diversos ecosistemas: selva, sabana, manglares, islas de barrera, zonas marinas, etc. Estos sitios tienen tal importancia como marcadores del orden en el paisaje que se han convertido en santuarios milenarios, lo cual hace que se mantenga un fuerte vínculo con la población local.
Estos santuarios facilitan la continuidad del Modelo de Uso Ancestral del Territorio y su Patrimonio, el cual se encuentra vivo en los usos, costumbres y conocimientos milenarios que las comunidades rurales de la península utilizan y actualizan a diario para relacionarse con dichos ecosistemas, mediante actividades como la agricultura de milpa, la medicina maya, la construcción de casas tradicionales, la producción de miel, la piscicultura, la pesca, la cacería, la religión, la organización social, etc. Este Modelo Ancestral de Uso del Territorio se basa en el aprovechamiento diversificado de los recursos naturales, mediante muchas actividades de bajo impacto que consideran factores como la época del año y las condiciones específicas de cada lugar. Esto no sucede con el modelo de la industria turística, el cual hace a la población dependiente de una sola actividad, la cual a su vez depende de una época del año y de que existan ciertas condiciones climáticas, sociales, económicas y de salud específicas. Una de las principales estrategias para la preservación del Paisaje Cultural Peninsular en el largo plazo es el conocimiento y difusión de este Modelo Ancestral.
... Mientras que el historiador indígena Chimalpahin (2012) decide editar y anotar el texto canónico de 1552 sobre la conquista de México por Francisco López de Gómara, un grupo heterogéneo de autores locales transcriben narrativas orales, combinan textos alfabéticos con tradiciones pictográficas, y preparan "probanzas" y "títulos" para demonstrar la posesión de tierras comunales desde "tiempo inmemorial", o debido a litigios entre comunidades. Estos textos incluyen no solo los bien conocidos títulos primordiales redactados en náhuatl (Wood 2003;Haskett 2005), o zapoteco (Romero Frizzi, Vásquez Vásquez 2003;Romero Frizzi 2012;Romero Frizzi y Vásquez Vásquez 2013), sino también catecismos pictográficos (Boone, Burkhart y Tavárez 2017). Para sustituir la idea de que estas memorias resultan ser falsas o hechizas, este artículo propone la noción de una refracción de la memoria para entender las transformaciones en narrativas indígenas sobre la conquista. ...
This article proposes the idea of refracting memories to understand the transformation of historical memory of Mesoamerican communities in the 17th and 18th centuries.
This process is illustrated through the analysis of divinatory manuals that contained references to the arrival of Spanish, and through the Probanza of Yelabichi, a Northern Zapotec text that narrates the military and spiritual conquests and the ethnogenesis of Zapotecs, Mixes, and Chinantecs, as if they were part of the same process. The second document, introduced in a lawsuit in the 1750s, allows us to analyze how collective interests refracted the events of the conquest to form a series of enchained memories that shaped colonial Zapotec identity.
Este artículo presenta el concepto de memorias refractadas para comprender la
transformación de la memoria histórica en las comunidades mesoamericanas de los siglos xvii y xviii. Este proceso se ilustra a través del análisis de manuales adivinatorios que contenían referencias a la llegada de los españoles y a través de la Probanza de Yelabichi, un texto zapoteco del norte que narra las conquistas militar y espiritual y la etnogénesis de los zapotecas, mixes y chinantecos como si fueran parte del mismo proceso. El segundo documento, presentado en una demanda judicial de la década de 1750, nos permite analizar la manera en que los intereses colectivos refractaban los eventos de la conquista para constituir una serie de memorias encadenadas que conformaban la identidad zapoteca colonial.
... Although Charles Gibson had published excellent studies of colonial Nahuas in the 1960s (Gibson 1964(Gibson , 1967, the new focus was on the recovery and translation of notarial or mundane texts written in indigenous languages, such as wills, petitions, annals, land transfers, legal testimony, and community histories. The historian James Lockhart exerted particular influence within this approach, contributing his 1992 masterwork, The Nahuas after the Conquest, among other publications (e.g., Lockhart 1991Lockhart , 1993, and training students who analyzed Nahuatl materials-among them Sarah Cline (1986), Robert Haskett (1991Haskett ( , 2005, Susan Schroeder (1991), Rebecca Horn (1997), Stephanie Wood (2003), and Caterina Pizzigoni (2012)-or extended his approach to other languages: Kevin Terraciano (2001) for Mixtec, Matthew Restall (1997) for Yucatec. As Lockhart's students in turn trained others, this approach, labeled the New Philology (see Restall 2003), spread further. ...
... Although Charles Gibson had published excellent studies of colonial Nahuas in the 1960s (Gibson 1964(Gibson , 1967, the new focus was on the recovery and translation of notarial or mundane texts written in indigenous languages, such as wills, petitions, annals, land transfers, legal testimony, and community histories. The historian James Lockhart exerted particular influence within this approach, contributing his 1992 masterwork, The Nahuas after the Conquest, among other publications (e.g., Lockhart 1991Lockhart , 1993, and training students who analyzed Nahuatl materials-among them Sarah Cline (1986), Robert Haskett (1991Haskett ( , 2005, Susan Schroeder (1991), Rebecca Horn (1997), Stephanie Wood (2003), and Caterina Pizzigoni (2012)-or extended his approach to other languages: Kevin Terraciano (2001) for Mixtec, Matthew Restall (1997) for Yucatec. As Lockhart's students in turn trained others, this approach, labeled the New Philology (see Restall 2003), spread further. ...
... Although Charles Gibson had published excellent studies of colonial Nahuas in the 1960s (Gibson 1964(Gibson , 1967, the new focus was on the recovery and translation of notarial or mundane texts written in indigenous languages, such as wills, petitions, annals, land transfers, legal testimony, and community histories. The historian James Lockhart exerted particular influence within this approach, contributing his 1992 masterwork, The Nahuas after the Conquest, among other publications (e.g., Lockhart 1991Lockhart , 1993, and training students who analyzed Nahuatl materials-among them Sarah Cline (1986), Robert Haskett (1991Haskett ( , 2005, Susan Schroeder (1991), Rebecca Horn (1997), Stephanie Wood (2003), and Caterina Pizzigoni (2012)-or extended his approach to other languages: Kevin Terraciano (2001) for Mixtec, Matthew Restall (1997) for Yucatec. As Lockhart's students in turn trained others, this approach, labeled the New Philology (see Restall 2003), spread further. ...
... The early conquistadors burnt almost every indigenous document they found in the area of Cholula. According to González Hermosillo (2012), only four other illustrations made by tlacuiloque (plural for tlacuilo) are well known: the Manuscrito del aperreamiento (Boornazian-Diel 2012), the map of Chalchiapan(Deylen 2003), the Lienzo de Cuauhtlantzinco(Wood 2012) and the Códice de Cholula(González- Hermosillo and Reyes-García 2002). Nevertheless, the three documents I Chicomoztoc, the hill of the seven caves from plate 5 of the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, 1545-1563 (5HTCh). ...
In 1521, the Spanish conquistadors defeated the Nahuas of Central Mexico. Spain was ruled at the time by the House of Habsburg, and its administrators became familiar with the German concept of Landschaft. By 1570, they used this concept to prepare and launch a survey of the indigenous communities which called themselves-and their lands-altepetl. The purpose of this paper is to show to what extent the terms Landschaft and altepetl are equivalent since modern scholars have described both as organized "communities" subject to a customary "law" and possessing a specific piece of "land". The main obstacle for this comparison is that in the sixteenth century the Spaniards did not have a word equivalent to landscape, and they used words like pueblo, pago and pintura instead, depending on the context. This paper describes the general characteristics of the altepetl in Central Mexico and focuses on its representation by analysing some maps made after the conquest in the area of Cholula, current State of Puebla. The comparison of Landschaft, pueblo and altepetl in historical context is pertinent for cultural geographers since it was during the sixteenth century that the concept of landscape, as we know it today, was taking shape.
... 20. Gruzinski 1993;Wood 2003. 21. ...
After the conquest of Mexico, colonial authorities attempted to enforce Christian beliefs among indigenous peoples-a project they envisioned as spiritual warfare. The Invisible War assesses this immense but dislocated project by examining all known efforts in Central Mexico to obliterate native devotions of Mesoamerican origin between the 1530s and the late eighteenth century. The author's innovative interpretation of these efforts is punctuated by three events: the creation of an Inquisition tribunal in Mexico in 1571; the native rebellion of Tehuantepec in 1660; and the emergence of eerily modern strategies for isolating idolaters, teaching Spanish to natives, and obtaining medical proof of sorcery from the 1720s onwards. Rather than depicting native devotions solely from the viewpoint of their colonial codifiers, this book rescues indigenous perspectives on their own beliefs. This is achieved by an analysis of previously unknown or rare ritual texts that circulated in secrecy in Nahua and Zapotec communities through an astute appropriation of European literacy. Tavarez contends that native responses gave rise to a colonial archipelago of faith in which local cosmologies merged insights from Mesoamerican and European beliefs. In the end, idolatry eradication inspired distinct reactions: while Nahua responses focused on epistemological dissent against Christianity, Zapotec strategies privileged confrontations in defense of native cosmologies.
... 58 Guardino (2010). 59 ; Oudijk y Romero Frizzi (2003); Menegus (1994); Wood (2003). 60 No es mi intención hacer un catálogo comentado de todos los artículos que pueden considerarse de historia social en esta publicación, sino seguir ciertos desarrollos y tendencias. ...
El artículo analiza el desarrollo de la historiografía social sobre el periodo colonial de México a partir de los artículos publicados en la revista Estudios de Historia Novohispana. En su primera parte narra y comenta los primeros acercamientos al tema, reconstruye la manera en que sociedades científicas e instituciones académicas organizaron la producción y difusión de conocimientos, así como la vías de arribo y recepción de nuevas tendencias historiográficas. En la segunda comenta cuestiones relacionadas con las discusiones sobre los conceptos de resistencia, pacto social, vínculos sociales, historia sociológica e historia cultural de la sociedad y discute la manera en que diferentes autores han abordado estos temas. Concluye que los artículos examinados, dentro de su inevitable variedad, muestran un eclecticismo que incorpora elementos, métodos y perspectivas de sucesivas corrientes de pensamiento.
... This selectivity plays out in the element of authorial choice at every stage of the practice of literacy: what part of a text or act a practitioner reproduced, how it was used, and why (Faudree, this issue). The interplay of accumulation and selectivity highlights how the cultural setting of literacy was created by the source language and of its broader linguistic and social implications, including local pronunciation and the act of writing, choices about orthographic heterodoxy and whether to borrow, the extent of popular literacy, and how the graphically illiterate received texts and incorporated them into their literate practices (Faudree, Knowlton, this issue; Lockhart 1992; Matthew and Romero 2012; Villa-Flores 2007; Wood 2003). With this in mind, one can see literacy as more a process than a condition. ...
Two longstanding literate worlds, Spanish and Mesoamerican, met and remade each other as part of colonial encounters. The 2012 International Workshop on Indigenous Literacy in Mesoamerica and the Colonial World at the John Carter Brown Library (JCB) at Brown University hosted a diverse group of scholars to debate the social consequences of colonial Mesoamerican literacy. This issue of Ethnohistory is the result of that productive interaction. Comparing highland and lowland Mayan, Mixtec, central Mexican Nahuatl, and southern Nahua (Pipil) literacy from the Late Postclassic (AD 1200–1521) to the present day reveals commonalities as well as regional, and even individual, variation in the form, method, and consequences of literate practices. Investigating literacy allows us to move beyond debates about what constitutes writing per se and instead recognize that inscribing, no matter the method, was part of a sustaining environment of literacy that gave expressive practices their relevance and value in colonial Mesoamerica. In his master chronicle of the history of Guatemala Recordacion Florida, Francisco Antonio Fuentes y Guzman (1972: 74) argued that writing in all its forms fulfilled a basic human need, that “la necesidad es madre de la humana industria” (necessity is the mother of human industry). While Fuentes’s philosophy was overly functionalist, he recognized the social place of reading, writing, and having texts—that is, literacy. Writing (communicating by inscribed marks) has seen more scholarly attention in the last decade or so, but the cultural context, consequences, and practice of literacy has garnered far less scholarly attention (Salomon and Hyland 2010). Considering literacy rather than writing systems opens a path to resolv
... New Philology developed out of research on colonial Mesoamerica, a region with abundant indigenously produced documents, though it has also influenced scholarship of other regions such as the Andes (see Durston's 2008 comparison of ethnohistorical research in the two regions). New Philologists pay special attention to documents Lockhart termed "mundane" that prior to his influence were rarely studied, such as testaments (Kellogg andRestall 1998, Pizzigoni 2007), land documents (Wood 2003), and local government records (Haskett 1991, Lockhart 1992, Terraciano 2001, Terraciano et al. 2005. Such analysis involves tracking the individual lives and concrete events documented in the sources, an approach facilitating narratives stressing disparity between the subjective experiences of the colonized and the colonizers as documented differentially in the texts produced by each group -what Lockhart (1999,2007) has called "double mistaken identity." ...
In this paper the authors argue for a unified approach to the study of language, culture and history. Such an approach would study language as a social and historical phenomenon, while also paying attention to the way that history is itself a linguistic construct, and the role of discourse and discourse about language in shaping history. The authors advocate a combination of methods and theories from linguistic anthropology, ethnohistory and historical linguistics to elucidate the links between social and cultural processes, historical process at the microscale of interaction and in the longue duree, and language change.
... Recent scholarship has explored indigenous views and explanations of the Spanish conquest, often cast in terms of pre-Columbian historiography and religion (Schroeder 2010;Sousa and Terraciano 2003;Wood 2003). Throughout Mesoamerica, the Spanish conquest and the introduction of Christianity were repeatedly represented in terms of an overarching model of the past that conceived a series of successive eras that came to an end and were eventually superseded by new creations, often marked by the advent of a new sun (Asselbergs 2004: 192-95;Díaz Balsera 2008;Jansen 1997;Magaloni Kerpel 2003). ...
A major debate in the history of the Spanish conquest of Guatemala revolves around Tecum (Tecún Umán), the K'iche' captain who died in confron-tation with Pedro de Alvarado, according to sixteenth-century indigenous texts. Analysis of these texts shows that Tecum's death was recast in terms of widespread solar myths that provided an overarching framework to explain the rise and fall of Mesoamerican rulers and cities. His fate was explained as an ineludible outcome that created the conditions for the advent of a new era, marked by the introduc-tion of Christianity and the colonial order. Thus, these texts made the conquest understandable in terms of indigenous historiography and religion. The portents described in these narratives stimulated the growth of Tecum's legendary status, partly explaining his controversial standing in Guatemala's historiography and poli-tics. Modern versions of the Dance of the Conquest perpetuate the mythical motives that first appeared in the sixteenth-century narratives. The death of K'iche' captain Tecum (also known as Tecún Umán) at the 1524 battle of Quetzaltenango is one of the most contentious events in the history of the Spanish conquest of Guatemala. Since colonial times, Tecum has been the center of debates among historians, politicians, and the Gua-temalan public at large. Some deny his very existence or question the reli-ability of the extant sources, while others comment favorably on their consistency with one another. Further controversy ensued over Tecum's des-ignation as a national and military hero in 1960 and, recently, over his role as a contested symbol of Maya resurgence (Muerte de Tecún Umán 1963; Nelson 1999: 13–17; Otzoy 1999; Taracena Arriola et al. 2004: 65–70; War-ren 1996: 96–97).1 The debate echoes shifting views on the reliability of native sources for New World historiography (Cañizares-Esguerra 2001)
Después del quincentenario del viaje a Abya Yala de Cristóbal Colón en 1492, la búsqueda para un entendimiento menos eurocéntrico de las invasiones españolas derivó en una nueva corriente historiográfica sobre los grupos mesoamericanos que participaron como aliados en la derrota del imperio tenochca y las invasiones de Centroamérica entre 1519 y 1540. Este giro historiográfico de carácter internacional cuestionó la idea misma de la conquista española y provocó distintas reacciones en diferentes países. Su aportación más importante ha sido metodológica, insistiendo en una integración más completa entre la historia mesoamericana, hispana, y republicana.
Resumen: En el presente trabajo se analiza la transmisión de la tradición oral de los pueblos nahuas durante la época colonial y contemporánea; parte de este conocimiento se documentó en manuscritos, lienzos, mapas, genealogías. En ellos se plasmó un fragmento de la visión del mundo mesoamericano. La vida ritual, los discursos sagrados, el culto a los ancestros, a los dioses que viven en el entorno de los pueblos, en los cerros y que son considerados como sagrados. Una de las premisas principales que guía este trabajo es que las comunidades indígenas son entidades que producen conocimiento, y una parte de este, lo podemos ver en la documentación que ha llegado hasta nosotros. La comunidad es la que en forma oral guía a los tlacuiloque ('escribanos') en la documentación de su propia historia. Palabras clave: Tradición oral; pueblos indígenas; mapas; lienzos; nahua; México.
Abstract: The present work analyzes the transmission of the oral tradition of the indigenous peoples during the colonial and contemporary period and how it was documented in manuscripts, canvases, maps, and genealogies. In these documents, a part of the vision of the Mesoamerican world was expressed: the ritual life, the sacred discourses, the cult of the ancestors and the gods that live in the areas surrounding the towns and in the hills that are considered sacred. One of the main premises that will guide this work is this: the indigenous communities are entities that produce knowledge, a part of which we can see documented in their documentation. The community's oral narrative is what guides the tlacuiloque ('scribes') in the representation of their history.
El presente libro, de manera colectiva, pretende reflexionar diversos aspectos de la Conquista de México-Tenochtitlan, de tal suerte que, al final de su lectura, las y los lectores tendrán una visión más crítica y vasta de este proceso histórico a 500 años de haber sucedido. Aun cuando es complejo, las y los autores, jóvenes especialistas en el tema, ofrecen miradas actuales con un lenguaje asequible para el público interesado, debatiendo antiguas ideas y proponiendo formas diferentes de interpretar este suceso en el que se incorporan otras fuentes, otros agentes y otros contextos. Por tanto, el y la lectora también podrá conocer distintas formas de conquista en otros territorios mesoamericanos, varios años después de la caída de Tenochtitlan, así como las estrategias bélicas o de negociación implementadas por los conquistadores.
¿La conquista fue el final de la historia para los mexicas? El objetivo de este texto es ofrecer algunas respuestas a esa y otras preguntas, a fin de demostrar la necesidad de revisar textos indígenas para comprender la complejidad tanto de los eventos
políticos que ocurrieron entre 1519 y 1521, como las concepciones bajo las cuales esos acontecimientos fueron registrados en las historias.
The concept of writing violence points to the ways in which violence is written about and the ways writing itself exerts violence in colonial and postcolonial texts. In its most benign form, the consequences of writing violence institute developmentalist tropes that place Christianity and its institutions as historical necessities within spiritual and material teleology. Laws and the definition of religious motivations can obviously be unmasked as offering ideological alibis, but the question of ideology can also be pursued in the examination of the categories used in recording information. Writing the discovery entails a systematic ordering of the world on a blank page. It is a textual production that intends to locate the new lands within a new picture of the world. The reproduction of phonetic sound has defined the criteria for tracing the evolution of forms of inscriptions from pictography to alphabetical writing; only alphabetical writing constitutes true writing.
El hispanismo o la fascinación por todo lo “español” tienen una larga tradición en los Estados Unidos. El fenómeno ha tenido tanto manifestaciones populares como académicas, y por lo tanto debe tratarse de una manera amplia cuando se tiene en cuenta la historiografía de la América Latina colonial producida por académicos anglófonos, tanto dentro como fuera de los EE. UU. Los apologistas, críticos y todos los demás han tenido que lidiar con el legado hispano en las Américas, tanto en lo cultural como en lo religioso, económico, ambiental y de otro tipo. Este ensayo rastrea las principales preocupaciones o preguntas “hispanas” que generaron subcampos académicos y escuelas durante el último cuarto de siglo más o menos entre los anglófonos que investigan sobre América Latina colonial. La pregunta sigue siendo: ¿En qué medida el hispanismo o la preocupación por los múltiples legados coloniales de España han impulsado estas tendencias historiográficas? ¿Se ha desvanecido el hispanismo o simplemente ha tomado nuevas formas?
This chapter investigates the relation between political conceptions of native authors and their self-portrayals. Drawing on the works of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl in this context raises a number of questions: What image does he present of himself in the struggle for the conservation of his family’s traditional rights? What narrative strategies does he use in the process? But also: how did Spanish and native conceptions of the past and of political organization influence each other in shaping the chronicler’s self-image? By answering these questions, the chapter can contribute to a more general discussion about native participation and strategies in colonial negotiations, as well as whether such struggles influenced the formation of new, hybrid forms of narration and of social or political belonging.
This essay examines a text from Tlatelolco, written in Nahuatl, known by the Spanish-language title "List of Rulers", which is considered part of the Annals of Tlatelolco. The narrative recounts how Cuauhtemoc and other tlatoque went with Cortés to Honduras, where the Nahua leaders were murdered unjustly, followed by the sudden appearance of two valiant warriors from Tlatelolco. The analysis locates the same two heroes in Book XII of the Florentine Codex, and considers their importance in the oral tradition and social memory of the Tlatelolca.
JacksonRobert H.. Conflict and Conversion in Sixteenth Century Central Mexico: The Augustinian War on and Beyond the Chichimeca Frontier. Leiden: Brill, 2013. 282 pp., 171 colour photographs, 1 map, 13 tables. ISBN: 9789004232457 (hbk.). $152. - Volume 38 Issue 1 - Andrew B. Fisher
Can research on implicit bias shed light on issues related to teaching Latina/os in philosophy? Yes, with caveats. In particular, no one will be surprised to learn that implicit bias against (and among) Latina/os and Latin Americans is severely understudied. While Latina/os make up the largest minority group in the United States, recent estimates suggest that there is more than six times as much research on stereotyping and prejudice against African-Americans as there is against Latina/os. I speculate about some causes and remedies for this disparity, but my primary aims in this essay are different. First, I attempt to stitch together the general literature regarding anti-Latina/o bias with the general literature regarding bias in education in order to convey some of the basic challenges that bias likely poses to Latina/o students. Second, I consider whether Latin American philosophy might itself serve a bias-reducing function. Specifically, I sketch—in tentative and promissory terms—how the traditional “problem” of group identity explored in Latina/o and Latin American thought might function as part of the “solution” to the stereotypes and prejudices that have helped to sustain an exclusionary atmosphere in Anglo-American philosophy. Given the dearth of literature on the situation of Latina/os in philosophy, my claims here build on findings about the situations of minorities in education more broadly.
Historical documents record instances in the 16th and 17th centuries in which elites from Xaltocan, an indigenous town in the northern Basin of Mexico, requested permission to wear Spanish clothes, carry swords, and ride horses. Spanish artifacts, especially tin-enameled serving vessels known as majolica, are found scattered in peripheral contexts in Xaltocan, but they are not associated with the main plaza or indigenous elite areas around the plaza. Combined, these data suggest that at least two groups of indigenous people adopted Spanish material culture with different goals and strategies in mind: upper elites who marked their bodies with the insignia of power (Spanish dress and weaponry), and lower elites or commoners who adopted Spanish ceramics in feasts for display that could help them subvert structures of power and move up in the social hierarchy.
Los pueblos de indios de la Nueva España crearon, a fines de la época colonial, una forma de defender sus territorios ante la amenaza de colonos españoles, criollos y otros indios que usurpaban ilegalmente terrenos e intentaban rentabilizar el control de las tierras. Empezaron a producir un tipo de textos, sus Títulos Primordiales, que presentaban en los juicios para demostrar la titularidad de sus posesiones. No son textos del tipo administrativo, sino que insertan narraciones con los acontecimientos pasados más importantes para la comunidad. Pero principalmente son escritos que fueron pensados para persuadir a los receptores de la veracidad de sus argumentos. Buscaban convencer, en lo lingüístico y textual, para tener efecto en la vida real: que no se les arrebatase sus tierras. En este trabajo se abordará la aproximación a este tipo textual mediante el estudio, desde la pragmática lingüística y el análisis del discurso, del Título Primordial de Santiago Sula, un documento paradigmático del género. Con ello se quiere demostrar que el Título Primordial de Santiago Sulase caracteriza por una estructura argumentativa con un narrador que dispone de distintos tipos de argumentos y otras estrategias textuales para reforzar la única conclusión final: la defensa dela tierra.
Based on the philosophical theories of post-foundationalism and post-colonialism, this paper examines the theories of distributive justice and its relevance to legal theory. The paper analyzes the main legal texts of the conquest of America: the capitulations of Santa Fe, the papal bulls, the laws of Burgos and the requerimiento and explain the character of such legal fictions. Finally, argue for the importance of postcolonial theory to the study of the History of Law in Latin America.
The first Mexican empire of the sixteenth century (the reign of Moctezuma II, 1502–20)The second Mexican empire of the sixteenth century (the Spanish invasion, 1517–42)Creating New Spain (1524–72)The long conquest of the north (1540–1606)The colonial crucible (1519–1610)A Select Bibliography of Sixteenth-Century Mexico
In 1643, a Moluccan
mestizo
soldier named Alexo de Castro was arrested by the Holy Office of the Inquisition in the multicultural Manila
barrio
of Binondo. Suspected of secretly observing the Muslim faith in Manila, Castro faced inquisitorial investigations that culminated in his trial and punishment in Mexico. Based on evidence from Philippine, Mexican, and Spanish archives, this article examines Castro’s inquisition trial in the broader context of the seventeenth-century Hispano-Asian Pacific world that stretched from Mexico to Manila and the Moluccas. Within its permeable and shifting maritime boundaries, this transpacific cosmopolis was shaped by notions of Catholic universalism and orthodoxy present both in Spanish imperial ideology and in local adaptations. This article draws upon the Castro trial to reveal the tensions of this expanding world. On the one hand, Alexo’s
mestizo
genealogy and conversion to Catholicism, his work as a go-between in the Moluccas, and long career as a soldier for Spain and Portugal all reveal, on an intimate scale, the innumerable transits that interconnected this seventeenth-century world. On the other, Castro’s trial exposes the political-religious anxieties of Manila’s inquisitors, who saw in Castro a global threat posed by cosmopolitan New Christians – the
moriscos, conversos
, and indigenous converts whose adaptability and mobility helped to build this transpacific cosmopolis but also seemed to undermine it. By juxtaposing Alexo’s court arguments with those of his inquisitors, this study explores the limits of pluralism, cosmopolitanism, and exclusivism on this volatile seventeenth-century Pacific frontier.
Political, Economic, and Institutional ChangePopular Religion, Societal Mores, and Ethnic IssuesPastimes, Intellectual Culture, and Artistic LifeBibliography
In 1521, the Spanish conquistadors defeated the Nahuas of Central Mexico. Spain was ruled at the time by the House of Habsburg, and its administrators became familiar with the German concept of Landschaft. By 1570, they used this concept to prepare and launch a survey of the indigenous communities which called themselves—and their lands—altepetl. The purpose of this paper is to show to what extent the terms Landschaft and altepetl are equivalent since modern scholars have described both as organized “communities” subject to a customary “law” and possessing a specific piece of “land”. The main obstacle for this comparison is that in the sixteenth century the Spaniards did not have a word equivalent to landscape, and they used words like pueblo, pago and pintura instead, depending on the context. This paper describes the general characteristics of the altepetl in Central Mexico and focuses on its representation by analysing some maps made after the conquest in the area of Cholula, current State of Puebla. The comparison of Landschaft, pueblo and altepetl in historical context is pertinent for cultural geographers since it was during the sixteenth century that the concept of landscape, as we know it today, was taking shape.
This paper traces the history of a catechetical quiz widely used in colonial New Spain. A succinct summary of Jerónimo de Ripalda's catechism directed at less “capable” Christians, the text makes its first appearance in works published in the 1630s by secular clergy posted in indigenous communities. Jesuit father Bartolomé Castaño, laboring in the colony's northern missions, published the questionnaire's most frequently repeated version in 1644. Renditions in Spanish and in 11 (or more) native languages vary somewhat in the number of questions and the exact questions asked, but a large number of shared questions, presented in the same order, allow the versions to be treated as variants of a single text, which I here call the “Little Doctrine.” That this seventeenth-century text is a standard component of pictographic catechisms calls into question the conventional placement of these pictorial manuscripts into the evangelical tool kit. I here propose a later origin for the genre, as one of the legitimating strategies pursued by indigenous elites in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I suggest that pictographic catechisms supported elites' claims that they accepted Christianity immediately upon the arrival of the friars, learning doctrine in pictographic writing because they had not yet adopted alphabetic script. I compare pictographic versions of the text with alphabetic ones and note how indigenous artists transformed a text intended for “crude” native people into a testimony to the wisdom and faith of their picture-literate conquest-era ancestors.
This article reviews recent literature on indigenous people and the legal systems in colonial Mexico and the Andes, with special emphasis on legal engagement as a form of politics and the making of legal culture. Through mastery of alphabetic writing systems, literacy, and Spanish language, native peoples used colonial courts as an arena in which to resolve conflict within and among Indian municipalities, and with Spanish officials, both civil and ecclesiastical. In this way, the legal system facilitated the negotiation of colonial rule, including the growth and transformation of legal institutions and practices, and the relationship between Indian and Spanish jurisdictions. The legal system also provided an arena for cultural encounter in which Spanish and native forms of law and knowledge were circulated and constructed. Scholarship on these topics is growing fast, putting ethnohistory into an exciting dialogue with comparative studies of law and empire.
The article offers a thematic analysis of the lords' discourse as a means of contextualizing and historicizing the works of don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl. Students of the famous chronicler of Tetzcoco will recognize the parallels between his historical vision and how the natural lords of an earlier era explained and represented themselves to Spanish authorities. In the Annals of Cuauhtitlan a different version exists: the people burned their leader exactly as they had been ordered, and his ashes rose to the heavens in the shapes of gorgeous birds. Four days passed, and then his spirit became a stars. Alva Ixtlilxochitl left room for his prophecy to be read differently: this was the key to any compelling prophecy, after all, as his years of literary experience had taught him. One apparent meaning was that Quetzalcoatl's descendant, Nezahualcoyotl, would carry on his thoughtful works, and then his people would suffer calamity at the hands of others, presumably the Spaniards.
This article seeks to further contribute to our understanding of the outcomes of earlier Nahua-Spanish alliances after Guatemala was pacified. The richly documented struggles of the Maya-Pok'omam communities around Lake Amatitlan in Guatemala between 1524 and 1580 reveal - in microcosm - the larger processes some of them stretching back into the pre-contact period that Mesoamerican scholars call ‘conquest-after-conquest.’ As this essay highlights, fifteen years after the initial phase of the Spanish conquest of Guatemala had ended, Nahua conquistadors from Central Mexico initiated their own colonization of Maya-Pok'omam towns, mobilizing both Nahua and Kaqchikel migrant groups to settle there. Within these Maya towns, the Nahua conquistadors impinged upon Maya economic assets, sharing them with their Dominican allies while maintaining political and social control over their local Maya subjects. Nahua economic and political encroachment of Maya assets finally brought about distinct and recognizable currents of Maya dissent against their foreign overlords, in parallel to the revival of local historical legacies of self-rule.
The study focuses on the gradual development of collection of materials and a method that not only provides essential overall comparisons with the Testaments of Culhuacan, but also shows the existence of strong subregional differentiation within the Toluca Valley in the late colonial period, and also the nature of cultural change in the Nahua society. The testaments under study are mostly taken from the eighteenth century and a smaller but very important element from the second half of the seventeenth century. Initially, the study takes into account only one large locality as the basis to reveal no subregional diversity, which becomes evident after the second analysis. The study applies the technique of meticulous transcription, translation, and close analysis of the terminology and substance of the Nahuatl texts to a larger segment of documents. It shows important features that differentiate the whole concept from earlier testaments.
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