What happened to indigenous life after contact with the Spanish? In the complex interaction of cultures, how and to what degree did traditional ways persist? What role did religion play? Sustaining the Divine in Mexico Tenochtitlan addresses these and other questions by focusing on Mexico City in the colonial era. Moving beyond the standard narrative of Spanish domination, author Jonathan Truitt uses Nahuatl- and Spanish-language sources, drawn from multiarchival and multinational research, to provide an innovative look at indigenous life on the southern half of the island capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. While Spanish authority was important, indeed central, it was far from omnipotent and depended each day on the assistance of the indigenous people. In many ways, Nahua life continued much as it had prior to Spanish contact. While certain elements of precontact life, such as public human sacrifice, were eliminated, others, such as traditional gender roles or belief in divinity, persisted. Before and after contact, religion was central to life on the island capital. Truitt uses Spanish and indigenous interactions with religion as a window on daily life in the city. As quickly becomes clear, Nahua men and women were active in most areas of city life. They took pride in their achievements, defended their religious buildings, fought against abuse, and ignored the idea that women should not be active members of the community. While change occurred during this era, it was controlled and directed as much, if not more, by the indigenous population as by the Spanish. Truitt's innovative use of previously neglected Nahua and Spanish documents sheds new light on indigenous life in New Spain, making Sustaining the Divine in Mexico Tenochtitlan an important contribution to a deeper understanding of the era.

Mexico's Spiritual Reconquest brings to life a classically misunderstood pícaro: liberal soldier turned Catholic priest and revolutionary antipope, "Patriarch" Joaquín Pérez. Historian Matthew Butler weaves Pérez's controversial life story into a larger narrative about the relationship between religion, the state, and indigeneity in twentieth-century Mexico. Mexico's Spiritual Reconquest is at once the history of an indigenous reformation and a deeply researched, beautifully written exploration of what can happen when revolutions try to assimilate powerful religious institutions and groups. The book challenges historians to reshape baseline assumptions about modern Mexico in order to see a revolutionary state that was deeply vested in religion and a Cristero War that was, in reality, a culture clash between Catholics.

The year is 1921, and Francisco Madero is president of Mexico. Just last year he and his top general ousted the long-standing president (some say dictator), Porfirio Diaz, who is now in exile. But the country is far from stable. A basic cultural rift between the elite and the poor portends unrest and a sequence of revolts. Students are assigned to play characters that are charged with stabilizing their country and preventing further civil war. The goal is to reform Mexico and make it a better nation for all of its inhabitants—but Mexicans and foreigners worry that without a firm hand, Mexico's governance might spiral out of control. At what cost will progress come?

Offers a social history of the Mexican mission enterprise, emphasizing the centrality of indigenous politics, economics, and demographic catastrophe.

Tracing the historical development of Mexico from the pre-Hispanic period to the present, the Historical Dictionary of Mexico, Third Edition, is an excellent resource for students, teachers, researchers, and the general public. This reference work includes a detailed chronology, an introduction surveying the country’s history, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section includes cross-referenced entries on the historical actors who shaped Mexican history, as well as entries on politics, government, the economy, culture, and the arts.

This engaging book provides a brief, accessible introduction to the broad sweep of Mexican history, from pre-contact civilizations to the present. John Sherman explores the nation’s rich pre-Columbian heritage, including the great pyramids of Teotihuacán, while a stand-alone chapter addresses the Yucatán Maya, including a detailed account of Chichen Itzá. The drama of the conquest ushers in Mexico’s three colonial centuries. The author brings to life the pageantry of viceregal reign, the power of the Roman Catholic Church, the poignancy of Sor Juana’s poetry, the Virgin of Guadalupe, hacendados, silver barons, and pirates. The turmoil of the Hidalgo revolt, the loss of Texas, a cataclysmic war with the United States, French invasion, and the triumph of Benito Juárez define the era of early nationhood. He shows how the shrewd dictator Porfirio Díaz is toppled in rebellion, as Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa ride again. Exploring the breadth of the twentieth century, Sherman uncovers the roots of a vested oligarchy that still dominates Mexico today. In clear, vibrant style, he tells the dramatic tale of a nation whose history is integrally tied to that of the United States. Focusing on political and economic processes, the author provides a crisp narrative, enhanced with a rich array of maps and illustrations.

The term cacica was a Spanish linguistic invention, the female counterpart to caciques, the Arawak word for male indigenous leaders in Spanish America. But the term’s meaning was adapted and manipulated by natives, creating a new social stratum where it previously may not have existed. This book explores that transformation, a conscious construction and reshaping of identity from within. Cacicas feature far and wide in the history of Spanish America, as female governors and tribute collectors and as relatives of ruling caciques—or their destitute widows. They played a crucial role in the establishment and success of Spanish rule, but were also instrumental in colonial natives’ resistance and self-definition. In this volume, noted scholars uncover the history of colonial cacicas, moving beyond anecdotes of individuals in Spanish America. Their work focuses on the evolution of indigenous leadership, particularly the lineage and succession of these positions in different regions, through the lens of native women’s political activism. Such activism might mean the intervention of cacicas in the economic, familial, and religious realms or their participation in official and unofficial matters of governance. The authors explore the role of such personal authority and political influence across a broad geographic, chronological, and thematic range—in patterns of succession, the settling of frontier regions, interethnic relations and the importance of purity of blood, gender and family dynamics, legal and marital strategies for defending communities, and the continuation of indigenous governance. This volume showcases colonial cacicas as historical subjects who constructed their consciousness around their place, whether symbolic or geographic, and articulated their own unique identities. It expands our understanding of the significant influence these women exerted—within but also well beyond the native communities of Spanish America.

What does it mean to theorize Christianity in light of the decolonial turn? This volume invites distinguished Latinx and Latin American scholars to a conversation that engages the rich theoretical contributions of the decolonial turn, while relocating Indigenous, Afro-Latin American, Latinx, and other often marginalized practices and hermeneutical perspectives to the center-stage of religious discourse in the Americas. Keeping in mind that all religions—Christianity included—are cultured, and avoiding the abstract references to Christianity common to the modern Eurocentric hegemonic project, the contributors favor embodied religious practices that emerge in concrete contexts and communities. Featuring essays from scholars such as Sylvia Marcos, Enrique Dussel, and Luis Rivera-Pagán, this volume represents a major step to bring Christian theology into the conversation with decolonial theory.

The newest volume of the benchmark bibliography of Latin American studies.

Staging Christ’s Passion in Eighteenth-Century Nahua Mexico explores the Passion plays performed in Nahuatl (Aztec) by Indigenous Mexicans living under Spanish colonial occupation. Though sourced from European writings and devotional practices that emphasized the suffering of Christ and his mother, this Nahuatl theatrical tradition grounded the Passion story in the Indigenous corporate community. Passion plays had courted controversy in Europe since their twelfth-century origin, but in New Spain they faced Catholic authorities who questioned the spiritual and intellectual capacity of Indigenous people and, in the eighteenth century, sought to suppress these performances. Six surviving eighteenth-century scripts, variants of an original play possibly composed early in the seventeenth century, reveal how Nahuas passed along this model text while modifying it with new dialogue, characters, and stage techniques. Louise M. Burkhart explores the way Nahuas merged the Passion story with their language, cultural constructs, social norms, and religious practices while also responding to surveillance by Catholic churchmen. Analytical chapters trace significant themes through the six plays and key these to a composite play in English included in the volume. A cast with over fifty distinct roles acted out events extending from Palm Sunday to Christ’s death on the cross. One actor became a localized embodiment of Jesus through a process of investiture and mimesis that carried aspects of pre-Columbian materialized divinity into the later colonial period. The play told afar richer version of the Passion story than what later colonial Nahuas typically learned from their priests or catechists. And by assimilating Jesus to an Indigenous, or macehualli, identity, the players enacted a protest against colonial rule. The situation in eighteenth-century New Spain presents both a unique confrontation between Indigenous communities and Enlightenment era religious reformers and a new chapter in an age-old power game between popular practice and religious orthodoxy. By focusing on how Nahuas localized the universalizing narrative of Christ’s Passion, Staging Christ’s Passion in Eighteenth-Century Nahua Mexico offers an unusually in-depth view of religious life under colonial rule. Burkhart’s accompanying website also makes available transcriptions and translations of the six Nahuatl-language plays, four Spanish-language plays composed in response to the suppression of the Nahuatl practice, and related documentation, providing a valuable resource for anyone interested in consulting the original material. Comments restricted to single page plays composed in response to the suppression of the Nahuatl practice, and related documentation, providing a valuable resource for anyone interested in consulting the original material