Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico, 1500–1800

Abstract

Almost six decades ago, Charles Gibson applied his characteristic economy to the task of tracing the trajectory of the Aztec aristocracy through the colonial era. The unique path of this social group led from early and successful attempts to preserve social and economic status to an eventual decline brought about by factors including tributary policies adopted in response to demographic collapse in the sixteenth century. With the exception of Tlaxcala, where cacique families enjoyed remarkable continuity in government well into the eighteenth century, the fate of the Aztec nobility was largely sealed during the first century of Spanish presence.In his engaging and comprehensive Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico, 1500–1800, Professor Peter Villella takes the reader beyond this well-established narrative to examine the conditions and strategies that allowed generations of indigenous noble families from diverse ethnic groups to preserve some recognizable guise of their original status under increasingly adverse circumstances. The author painstakingly shows how the Indian nobility developed and exploited its ties to sectors of a creole elite that was still finding its footing in colonial society. Whether through cooperation or rivalry, native and creole elites came to depend on and borrow from each other as they forged their respective self-images and promoted their own agendas. This mutual dependence is evident in each group's use of the indigenous past in its ongoing attempts to legitimize its social place.Borrowing early on from Spanish legal traditions, indigenous elites developed a rhetoric of self-presentation based on exaltation of their lineages, allegiance to the crown, and devotion to Christianity. With slight variations, these basic themes would remain a fixture of arguments that Indian litigants and petitioners made to colonial authorities. For their part, Spaniards who married into the Indian nobility saw the indigenous past as a source of prestige and legitimacy, even when the family in question preserved few if any local cultural traditions. Beginning just after the fall of Tenochtitlan and continuing through and beyond the colonial era, both creoles and Indians revisited the past in response to real or perceived social challenges. This long process gave rise to an impressive corpus of historical writings that reflects the active collaboration of indigenous writers, friars, and creole intellectuals. Professor Villella thus invites us to view Mexican historiography as the product of a close but contentious collaboration between the indigenous nobility and the creole elite.This chronological study is divided into chapters with titles that reflect the social roles that caciques assumed at different stages of colonial history. The reader thus follows their transformation from informants on historical and cultural matters to full-fledged chroniclers and later Hispanized hidalgos, administrators, church patrons, and outspoken defenders of the dignity of indigenous people during the Enlightenment. Eighteenth-century caciques occupied new places in the colonial hierarchy, and they understood two things: adaptation remained vital to their survival, and the old definitions of Indian nobility had long ago lost currency. In this sense, Professor Villella's complex account can be read as an illustration, albeit in the colonial context and with the looming presence of the creole elite, of a notion advanced by European scholars and jurists at the time—namely, that honor and nobility are largely intelligible and commensurate across cultures.Specialized readers will be familiar with some of the documentary sources, episodes, and historical characters that Professor Villella introduces in this book, an unavoidable byproduct of the combination of synthesis and original research (a combination carried out here in particularly compelling fashion). Chapter 4, for example, focuses on the well-known generation of chroniclers that included Juan Bautista de Pomar, Hernando de Alvarado Tezozomoc, and Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl. The author nonetheless brings a fresh perspective to this familiar territory, exploring the ways that these writers and public officers codified many of the themes that would eventually inform nineteenth-century Mexican nationalist thought.Professor Villella's carefully documented account of the circuitous development of Mexican nationalism seems to give David Brading's suggestions greater focus and precision. The study's generous chronological and conceptual span give Professor Villella the space to touch on numerous topics of very recent scholarship (such as honor, indigenous historiography, and Indian conquerors), a convergence that further enriches an already engaging and thought-provoking monograph. Further work remains to be done on the question of how we talk about the indigenous elite in eighteenth-century Mexico, especially when we include a creole counterpart that had already acquired a rather different configuration. Professor Villella's welcome scholarly contribution will surely encourage further research on this and other aspects of the historical evolution of native elites across colonial Latin America.