Colonial Mexico Research Articles

"A Great Bundle, a Large Packframe": Carrying Burdens to Create Nahua Communities in Colonial Mexico

"A Great Bundle, a Large Packframe": Carrying Burdens to Create Nahua Communities in Colonial Mexico

Trail of Footprints: A History of Indigenous Maps from Viceregal Mexico

Alex Hidalgo’s innovative study of Indigenous mapmaking and intellectual history considers some sixty painted maps produced for legal proceedings in Oaxaca spanning across three centuries, from the 1570s to the 1730s. From the perspectives of patrons and painters, as well as the materials and modes of authentication that were applied to maps, Hidalgo masterfully demonstrates that Indigenous mapmaking evolved over the course of the colonial period, as opposed to declining at the end of the sixteenth century as scholarly narratives have tended to argue. By placing Indigenous maps at the center of the study and presenting a distinct perspective with each chapter (patrons, painters, materials, and authentication), Hidalgo puts forth a compelling and comprehensive view of Indigenous mapmaking that highlights the nuances and complexities of how Indigenous maps were understood and used, arguing that Indigenous maps fostered new ways of thinking about the rationalization, spatialization, and acquisition of land for diverse members of colonial society over the course of what he calls the “long middle years of the colonial period” (3).From the patrons’ perspective, Hidalgo focuses on a case study of one Mixtec town’s plight to defend five acres of land against nearby Spanish ranch owners in three separate court cases that took place over several decades in the sixteenth century. In his analysis, Hidalgo emphasizes the distinct ways in which maps were understood by competing audiences and how maps were just one of many kinds of documentation that were presented in legal cases, along with boundary walking, witness testimonies, oral readings and translations of maps, and various acts of verification. From the painters’ perspective, Hidalgo considers how Indigenous painters were among an elite social group that held specialized knowledge and shaped thinking about spatial organization. Hidalgo’s compelling analysis of several maps made by the same artist over time demonstrates how a single artist adapted his approach based on the context of each map commission, exercising power and privilege in terms of how land was presented. In the chapter on materials, Hidalgo invites readers to consider the expertise that was required to make the inks, pigments, and substrates of maps. Specialized knowledge from both Europe and Mexico was adapted over time by skilled craftspeople whose material mastery enabled maps to be made. In the final chapter on authentication, Hidalgo paints a vivid picture of how maps were scrutinized and rigorously verified by court officials, emphasizing that officials were reliant on Indigenous painters and translators when it came to local geography and languages as part of the process. Hidalgo also highlights a shift in Indigenous mapmaking over the course of the colonial period, where sixteenth-century maps were primarily centered on land petitions in response to imperial policies while later in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, maps were more often used to defend patrimonial lands due to increased population and competition over land. As a result, the standards used to petition and measure maps shifted, as well. In the epilogue, Hidalgo considers the afterlives of Indigenous maps within archives and private collections, presenting a thorough analysis of Boturini’s collection.Hidalgo’s well-researched book presents a narrative of a vibrant and evolving Indigenous mapmaking tradition that adapted over the course of the colonial period, drawing from “social memory, indigenous and European conceptions of space and ritual, and Spanish legal practices” (2). Among the greatest contributions of his study are his reassessment of Indigenous mapmaking over the course of the colonial period and his focus on Indigenous intellectual history of Oaxaca. What is more, Hidalgo’s masterful translation of complex details from primary source documents into stimulating narratives will appeal to a broad readership interested in the history of colonial Mexico.

Maternal Landscapes: An Answer to the Problem of Women’s Education in Colonial Mexico

In Sor Juana’s Respuesta a Sor Filotea (1691), she advocates for the education of women in colonial Mexico through emphasizing the figure of mothers as educators. I contend that Sor Juana uses the figure of the mother and maternal spaces to promote a more inclusive education system for women, enabling the pursuit of higher education, traditionally a male domain. Furthermore, by advancing this inclusivity, Sor Juana criticizes the idea that a mother’s role was solely to give birth. Ultimately, this article shows how Sor Juana reconceptualizes motherhood and femininity as an essential means of transmission and reproduction of culture.

On Three Aesop Fables in Colonial Mexico

This essay seeks to reflect on Aesop’s fables translated into Nahuatl during colonial Mexico. To this purpose, and following an approach grounded on cultural translation, I will identify the main contents of three selected fables in order to underline the scope of their teachings throughout the relations among the contexts and the meanings of certain concepts translated into Nahuatl.

Testaments of Autonomy: How Women's Social and Economic Mobility Transformed Under Nahua and Spanish Influence

Did European gender values undermine the autonomy of Indigenous women in colonial Mexico? This article will answer the aforementioned question by examining women’s lives in Mexico during the colonial period from approximately 1500 to 1800. Close analysis of last wills and testaments left behind by women in Culhuacan during the sixteenth century demonstrate that they enjoyed greater avenues of social mobility than did women in Toluca during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This analysis will inform readers of the evidence drawn from these cultures and the significant conclusions it generates. An examination of two separate corpuses of last wills and testaments left behind by Indigenous Mexican women exposes variances in women’s avenues of social mobility under Nahua and Spanish influence in Culhuacan and Toluca during the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, respectively. Prior to Spanish invasion, Nahua culture gave the women of Culhuacan economic and social autonomy. Certain pre-Hispanic privileges, such as holding public offices, were still conserved at the end of the 16th century. However, a gradual replacement with Spanish values and structures that was nearly complete by the 18th century diminished women’s autonomy. But no matter how much their independence decreased, women still did all they could with what they had.

Pizzigoni, Caterina, and Camilla Townsend. Indigenous Life after the Conquest: The De la Cruz Family Papers of Colonial Mexico

Pizzigoni, Caterina, and Camilla Townsend. Indigenous Life after the Conquest: The De la Cruz Family Papers of Colonial Mexico

Sobre William Taylor, Fugitive Freedom. The Improbable Lives of Two Impostors in Late Colonial Mexico

-

Taylor, William B. (2021) Fugitive Freedom: The Improbable Lives of Two Impostors in Late Colonial Mexico, University of California Press (Oakland). 224 pp. £20.00.

Taylor, William B. (2021) <i>Fugitive Freedom: The Improbable Lives of Two Impostors in Late Colonial Mexico</i>, University of California Press (Oakland). 224 pp. £20.00.

Indigenous Life after the Conquest: The de la Cruz Family Papers of Colonial Mexico

Caterina Pizzigoni and Camilla Townsend's translation of a set of Nahuatl-language documents represents the 16th volume in Latin American Originals, a series edited by Matthew Restall that presents translations of primary source texts with specialist scholarly apparatus. Colonial-era wills and other forms of mundane documents have long provided scholars a rich source of material to study Indigenous history, notably in the groundbreaking work of the late James Lockhart. The materials in Pizzigoni and Townsend's Indigenous Life after the Conquest are distinctive in this tradition because the records belonged to a single family and were maintained by that family over centuries. As Pizzigoni and Townsend explain in their introduction, the de la Cruz family from the Toluca Valley were elite but not noble. They were the sort of family whose wealth and status grew in the colonial period, much to the chagrin of Indigenous families descendant from the great tlatoque who ruled over central Mexico before the arrival of Europeans. The core set of de la Cruz documents was initially identified by Lockhart in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City. He shared transcriptions of the materials with Pizzigoni, who in turn located additional records related to the family in various archives. In this slim volume, Pizzigoni and Townsend present translations of five of these documents accompanied by a robust introduction that provides insight into the multiple generations of family members who produced them.The lengthiest of the texts, the first document is titled “The de la Cruz Family Record Book,” and it, unlike the remaining four documents, is presented initially in Nahuatl as transcribed from the manuscript and then in English translation. Don Pedro de la Cruz began the book in 1647 to keep records of donations he made to local churches. A decade later, around the time that don Pedro assumed the role of gobernador of the altepetl of Tepemaxalco, the book evolved to become a repository of other events related to his community, in the tradition of Nahua historical annals, or xiuhpohualli. This book would be maintained by the family until the nineteenth century. The final entry is in the year 1842, decades after Mexican independence. The document provides an extraordinary window on the daily lived experiences of Nahua elite families during the colonial period. We find records of financial accounts and labor tribute, descriptions of harvests and building projects including evolving repairs and additions to the church, and entries detailing the specific positions that individuals in the community held. The notations are remarkable for the precision with which they capture daily life in an Indigenous community, as the authors recorded events they deemed significant, ranging from an eclipse to the donation of a bell to the church and the purchase of chickens used to entertain guests from Mexico City. The quotidian becomes noteworthy through its sheer consistency and duration.Document 2 provides records for the year 1658 from a tribute roll maintained by don Pedro de la Cruz during his first eight years as governor of Tepemaxalco, from 1657 to 1665. In addition to alphabetic notations of monetary tribute, the document contains a duplicate accounting in non-European pictoglyphic notations that show contributions from each tlaxilacalli, or subdistrict of the altepetl. Document 3 provides the seventeenth-century birth records of members of the de la Cruz family found in the Archivo Parroquial de San Pedro y San Pablo in Calimaya, Mexico. Document 4 is the will of don Pedro de la Cruz, dated 1667, while document 5 is the will of his son-in-law don Juan de la Cruz, dated 1691. Don Juan's will was written with care over a period of time and reflects with great consideration how his assets should be distributed and how his death should be remembered in his church and community. This final document is followed by several brief scholarly supplements, including an epilogue, a note on language and orthography, and a glossary.Renowned experts, Pizzigoni and Townsend bring their knowledge of colonial Nahuatl as well as Nahua cultural and social history to these unique sources. The ancillary materials situate the corpus of colonial-era manuscript records for the reader, while the documents themselves provide a rich depiction of daily life for the de la Cruz family, an Indigenous family whose members held leadership positions in their local community over the course of centuries. In this way, these records attest to the survival and endurance of Indigenous lives and traditions under Hispanic colonial rule.

Review: Rubens in Repeat: The Logic of the Copy in Colonial Latin America, by Aaron M. Hyman; Clothing the New World Church: Liturgical Textiles of Spanish America, 1520–1820, by Maya Stanfield-Mazzi

Review: <i>Rubens in Repeat: The Logic of the Copy in Colonial Latin America</i>, by Aaron M. Hyman; <i>Clothing the New World Church: Liturgical Textiles of Spanish America, 1520–1820</i>, by Maya Stanfield-Mazzi

Free Women of African Descent - The Capital of Free Women: Race, Legitimacy, and Liberty in Colonial Mexico. By Danielle Terrazas Williams. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022. Pp. 296. $65.00 cloth.

Free Women of African Descent - The Capital of Free Women: Race, Legitimacy, and Liberty in Colonial Mexico. By Danielle Terrazas Williams. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022. Pp. 296. $65.00 cloth. - Volume 79 Issue 4

Religious Conversion in Early Colonial Mexico - The Epidemic of 1576 and the Birth of Christianity in the Americas. By Jennifer Scheper Hughes. New York: New York University, 2021. Pp. 244. $35.00 cloth.

Religious Conversion in Early Colonial Mexico - The Epidemic of 1576 and the Birth of Christianity in the Americas. By Jennifer Scheper Hughes. New York: New York University, 2021. Pp. 244. $35.00 cloth. - Volume 79 Issue 4

Understanding the Complexities of Latin American History and Identity: Andares and Mexican Indigenous Representation in Southwest Virginia

Understanding the Complexities of Latin American History and Identity:Andares and Mexican Indigenous Representation in Southwest Virginia Dominique Polanco This essay about Mexico-based theatre company Makuyeika Colectivo Teatral is part of a series of writings by Virginia Tech faculty, staff, and community members that contextualize Moss Arts Center visiting artist performances. The guest ensemble performed Andares, a work about Indigenous peoples in Mexico, at the Moss Arts Center on October 12 and 13, 2022. The play Andares was a unique and important opportunity for the Virginia Tech community, especially those of us who are Latinx. It is a rare treat to have Latin American stories on the stage at the Moss Arts Center, particularly those featuring Indigenous and Indigenous-descended actors. Issues of Native and Queer visibility and invisibility in Mexico are prominently depicted in this show. The artists who created the play present the intersectional aspects of their lives in Mexico. Many of the issues portrayed stem from Indigenous and colonial histories. The prejudices and violence date back to the time when Europeans first invaded Abya Yala and Turtle Island (current-day American continents and the Caribbean Islands) in 1492. That was when the notion of European superiority and Indigenous inferiority developed into a colonial mentality that is regrettably still present throughout the Americas. My paternal grandmother's family is from Uruapan, Michoacán, a city in the western state of present-day Mexico. Uruapan is in the ancestral homelands of the P'urhépecha people, from whom I descend. My great-grandparents migrated to northern Illinois in the early twentieth century and were one of [End Page 127] only a handful of Mexican families in Rockford when they had and raised my grandmother and her siblings. My father and I were born in Southern California, putting us closer to Mexico, but still removed from our family. Nevertheless, I have returned to my history and heritage through multiple means, one of which is my research. As a Mexican-American art historian who specializes in Indigenous manuscripts from colonial Mexico, I am aware of the violence and long-term consequences for Indigenous people that arose from European invasion. Andares masterfully depicts the subjugation of Native cultures. Europeans targeted language, among other things, in the larger goal of erasing Indigenous civilizations from their own ancestral lands. In the case of colonial Mexico, priests codified and created dictionaries for languages such as Nahuatl, P'urhépecha, and Otomí for the purpose of converting and forcefully supplanting Indigenous culture with Christianity. Moreover, the Church attacked notions of gender and sexuality. Many Indigenous groups of Mesoamerica (the Indigenous cultural region covering present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and western El Salvador) understood gender and sexuality outside of the European-Christian fixed binary. Mesoamerican concepts of pleasure, self-expression, and religious importance were different than those in Europe. Mechanisms like the Spanish Inquisition were transplanted from Iberia to record and persecute behaviors that contradicted the rules of the Church in colonial society. The Church also authorized special task forces on "idolatry" to persecute Native peoples and communities. Sentences ranging from corporal punishment to the full expulsion from Catholic society instilled fear and a colonial mentality that have unfortunately persisted in Latin America. Indigenous people learned to surveil and self-regulate beliefs, practices, and customs that the Church denounced in the sixteenth century. The characters of Andares tell various experiences of ongoing violence in their lives resulting from the commodification of their ancestral homelands. The theft of land and natural resources, both essential and sacred, have led to the breakdown of cultural traditions and understanding. Furthermore, poverty, pollution, and the lack of access to basic necessities like clean water and healthcare continue to affect Indigenous people in Mexico and all of Turtle Island and Abya Yala. These are all violent and traumatic effects stemming from the Spanish Invasion when Indigenous people and their land were exploited for European profit and privilege. [End Page 128] Community was and continues to be an important means of survival for Indigenous people and their cultures. Native people were spiritually connected to the lands they inhabited, which were part of their origin stories. These connections were inherent in the rituals they...

Review: Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks

Review: <i>Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks</i>

The Franciscans in Colonial Mexico ed. by Thomas M. Cohen, Jay T. Harrison, and David Rex

The Franciscans in Colonial Mexico ed. by Thomas M. Cohen, Jay T. Harrison, and David Rex

Empire of Eloquence: The Classical Rhetorical Tradition in Colonial Latin America and the Iberian World

Empire of Eloquence: The Classical Rhetorical Tradition in Colonial Latin America and the Iberian World

Negotiation and Alliance on Display: Nahuas and Franciscans in the Production of Early Colonial Theatre

In early colonial Mexico, theatrical representations were considered one of the most effective tools of evangelization. While traditional narratives of missionary work tend to underscore the control of the Franciscans over the Nahuas, and therefore over the production of cultural artifacts such as plays, power relations were not unilateral, as the Franciscans encountered linguistic and cultural barriers that required the collaboration of the Nahuas. This article provides an analysis of two early plays, La conquista de Rodas and La conquista de Jerusalén, in which it is possible to see a negotiated, but necessary, collaboration between Franciscans and Nahuas. It argues that such collaboration was possible due to a system of relations in which Franciscans and Nahuas were constantly negotiating and making concessions based on their political and social needs. It shows that they used these performances to display their own social and political messages.

Editorial Commentary

Editorial Commentary

Alonso de la Vera Cruz’s Manuals and the University of Mexico in 16th Century: Teaching Theology and Arts from a Missionary Perspective

The creation of the University of Mexico (1553) favoured the intensification of the processes of translation of normative knowledge between Europe and America, which had already begun with the arrival of the first Spanish conquistadores and missionaries to the New World. This article offers a synthesis of the recent historiography on the University of colonial Mexico, to be profiled as a missionary Studium, clearly differentiated from the European models with which it has tended to be compared (in particular, Salamanca). Focusing on the printed works of the Augustinian friar Alonso de la Vera Cruz (1507-84), one of the first teachers at the University of Mexico, we find representative examples of the type of propaedeutic teaching of the Arts (Logic, Natural Philosophy) which was common in the particular academic context of 16th-century New Spain. On the other hand, the theological production of Vera Cruz illustrates well the strategies of flexibilization and localization that were put into practice in order to successfully translate the preexisting Christian normativity to unforeseen and challenging contexts.

Cortical bone maintenance and loss in Colonial Mexico City: Analysis of sex‐ and age‐related differences

AbstractPrevious research has demonstrated significant age‐ and sex‐related differences in bone loss in European populations. This study utilizes metacarpal radiogrammetry to analyze cortical bone thickness and bone loss for a sample of indigenous individuals (n = 120) from the Hospital Real San José de los Naturales (HSJN) skeletal collection in Colonial Mexico City. The results indicate statistically significant differences between males and females in total length, total width, and cortical thickness, but no difference in the standardized cortical index measure. There are significant differences in age groups for all measures except total length and the population follows a similar pattern of decreased cortical index over the life course. When age and sex are considered together, females begin this bone loss from young to middle adulthood with continued loss in old adulthood; however, males do not see a decrease in cortical index until old adulthood. While these results are consistent with previously reported patterns of bone loss, the HSJN population has higher levels of peak cortical bone in young adulthood than any archeological European populations. We suggest that this increased peak bone mass may reflect differences in diet that include higher levels of calcium and magnesium as a result of the traditional practice of softening corn by boiling it in limewater (nixtamalization). Similarly, a small sample of African descendant individuals (n = 5) from the HSJN population was compared with the averages for indigenous individuals in the collection and indicated a variation in bone size, though predominantly higher levels of cortical index that may also suggest important population differences that should be further explored. This research provides important comparative data on bone maintenance and loss that supports previous hypotheses that a higher nutrient diet in modern populations may be the key factor in increased peak bone mass compared with archeological populations.