Mapping Indigenous Land: Native Land Grants in Colonial New Spain by Ana Pulido Rull (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mapping Indigenous Land: Native Land Grants in Colonial New Spain by Ana Pulido Rull Paula López Caballero (bio) Mapping Indigenous Land: Native Land Grants in Colonial New Spain by Ana Pulido Rull University of Oklahoma Press, 2020 DURING THE FIRST CENTURY of Spanish colonization in the Americas, the most common means of obtaining plots of land—for Indigenous peoples as well as Spaniards—was to request a royal land grant (mercedes reales). The grants were documents issued by the representatives of the king in Spain's colonies: the viceroy and the Real Audiencia. In New Spain (present-day Mexico), records created to request, oppose, or negotiate these land grants included a painting or map as part of the evidence presented by parties involved. Forty-eight examples of these paintings, created between 1571 and 1617, are stored in the Mapoteca of the Archivo General de la Nation. From this corpus, Pulido Rull selected fourteen paintings for detailed analysis, which along with their legal records form the empirical basis of this book. Pulido Rull's historical investigation is complemented by infrared and ultraviolet radiation analysis of these documents, which makes it possible to document how the maps were modified, possibly during the course of legal arguments. The book also includes twenty-seven color plates and fifty-one black-and-white images. Pulido Rull argues that these maps were sites of cross-cultural communication between Indigenous peoples and Spaniards in which Indigenous views regarding disputed lands can be observed. She proposes understanding these maps as subjective interpretations of space created according to a specific intentionality. They can therefore be read as a mechanism for the participation and negotiation of Indigenous painters, as well as those they represented, in the legal processes for awarding land grants. The book comprises five chapters. After a clear, concise introduction, the first chapter provides general historical context on legal processes for obtaining lands. This pedagogical chapter is useful for nonspecialists. The second chapter, the book's longest, may be read as the flip side of the first one, as it examines the most formal aspects of the whole corpus of maps: pictorial strategies for representing space, questions related to the maps' authorship, and the graphic conventions used within them. Chapter 3 examines records, created mainly by Indigenous nobles, for requesting land grants. Analysis of these records demonstrates the opportunities available to these elites and the [End Page 177] privileged position they managed to maintain throughout the first century of colonization. The fourth section analyzes records in which maps were used to oppose land grants. In contrast to the previous chapter, this chapter displays the practical rather than legal limits of the colonial system: upon reviewing the cases, it is clear that bending the law was a common practice for magistrates, above all to favor Spaniards over Indigenous peoples. The final chapter presents cases in which Indigenous peoples affected by land grants opted to negotiate instead of simply opposing the grants. Analysis of these cases clearly illustrates the multiple ways in which maps contributed to legal processes and resolution of conflicts. The most explicit example is that of Huixquilucan (State of Mexico), where a Spaniard requested two plots of land for goat herding. In order to prevent goats invading plots used for crop cultivation, the town authorities presented a map to the courts. The visual discourse of this document organizes space in such a way that implies that land grants could only be awarded in specific locations. This message is actually retained as an argument in the written transcriptions of the record, showing how the artist had the opportunity not only to represent the territory of the town but to influence the decision of the magistrates and judges by favoring the position of the affected Indigenous residents of Huixquilucan. In short, the multiple, rigorously and minutely analyzed cases in this book are clear examples of the complexity and reach of the perspective that Pulido Rull develops. The promising hypothesis she proposes is to understand, in the same analytical movement, both the practical exercise of the law established by the colonial order and the artistic expression developed by mapmakers. In doing so, Pulido Rull contributes to the...