Incumbents and Challengers: Indigenous Politics and the Adoption of Spanish Material Culture in Colonial Xaltocan, Mexico

Abstract

Historical documents record instances in the 16th and 17th centuries in which elites from Xaltocan, an indigenous town in the northern Basin of Mexico, requested permission to wear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.