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

This book explores colonial indigenous historical accounts to offer a new interpretation of the origins of Mexico's neo-Aztec patriotic identity.

Peter B. Villella (Author)

9781107129030, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 January 2016

368 pages, 12 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.64 kg

'… deftly exposes how both indigenous elites and creoles selectively employed the historical past to serve the different needs of each body. … Villella's work is impressive in its use of archival sources to cast a brighter light on the myriad ways natives, and even creoles, engaged history to further their ambitions …' Mark Christensen, Latin American Research Review

Modern Mexico derives many of its richest symbols of national heritage and identity from the Aztec legacy, even as it remains a predominantly Spanish-speaking, Christian society. This volume argues that the composite, neo-Aztec flavor of Mexican identity was, in part, a consequence of active efforts by indigenous elites after the Spanish conquest to grandfather ancestral rights into the colonial era. By emphasizing the antiquity of their claims before Spanish officials, native leaders extended the historical awareness of the colonial regime into the pre-Hispanic past, and therefore also the themes, emotional contours, and beginning points of what we today understand as 'Mexican history'. This emphasis on ancient roots, moreover, resonated with the patriotic longings of many creoles, descendants of Spaniards born in Mexico. Alienated by Spanish scorn, creoles associated with indigenous elites and studied their histories, thereby reinventing themselves as Mexico's new 'native' leadership and the heirs to its prestigious antiquity.

1. Introduction
2. The natural lords: asserting continuity, 1531–66
3. Cacique informants and early Spanish texts, 1535–80
4. Cacique-chroniclers and the origins of Creole historiography, 1580–1640
5. Cacique-hidalgos: envisioning ancient roots in the mature colony
6. Cacique-patrons: Mexicanizing the Church
7. Cacique-letrados: an Indian gentry after 1697
8. Cacique-ambassadors and the 'Indian nation' in Bourbon Mexico
9. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Gynaecology & obstetrics [MJT], Clinical & internal medicine [MJ], Medicine [M]