Mexico's Indigenous Past

Mexico's Indigenous Past PDF Author: Alfredo Lopez Austin
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806137230
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
This handsomely illustrated book offers a panoramic view of ancient Mexico, beginning more than thirty thousand years ago and ending with European occupation in the sixteenth century. Drawing on archaeological and ethnohistorical sources, the book is one of the first to offer a unified vision of Mexico's precolonial past. Typical histories of Mexico focus on the prosperity and accomplishments of Mesoamerica, located in the southern half of Mexico, due to the wealth of records about the glorious past of this region. Mesoamerica was only one of three cultural superareas of ancient Mexico, however, all interlinked by complex economic and social relationships. Tracing the large social transformations that took place from the earliest hunter-gatherer times to the Postclassic states, the authors describe the ties between the three superareas of ancient Mexico, which stretched from present-day Costa Rica to what is now the southwestern United States. According to the authors, these superareas–Mesoamerica, Aridamerica, and Oasisamerica–cannot be viewed as independent entities. Instead, they must be considered as a whole to understand the complex reality of Mexico's past and possible visions of Mexico's future.

Mexico's Indigenous Past

Mexico's Indigenous Past PDF Author: Alfredo Lopez Austin
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806137230
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
This handsomely illustrated book offers a panoramic view of ancient Mexico, beginning more than thirty thousand years ago and ending with European occupation in the sixteenth century. Drawing on archaeological and ethnohistorical sources, the book is one of the first to offer a unified vision of Mexico's precolonial past. Typical histories of Mexico focus on the prosperity and accomplishments of Mesoamerica, located in the southern half of Mexico, due to the wealth of records about the glorious past of this region. Mesoamerica was only one of three cultural superareas of ancient Mexico, however, all interlinked by complex economic and social relationships. Tracing the large social transformations that took place from the earliest hunter-gatherer times to the Postclassic states, the authors describe the ties between the three superareas of ancient Mexico, which stretched from present-day Costa Rica to what is now the southwestern United States. According to the authors, these superareas–Mesoamerica, Aridamerica, and Oasisamerica–cannot be viewed as independent entities. Instead, they must be considered as a whole to understand the complex reality of Mexico's past and possible visions of Mexico's future.

Mexico's Indigenous Communities

Mexico's Indigenous Communities PDF Author: Ethelia Ruiz Medrano
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607320177
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
A rich and detailed account of indigenous history in central and southern Mexico from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries, Mexico's Indigenous Communities is an expansive work that destroys the notion that Indians were victims of forces beyond their control and today have little connection with their ancient past. Indian communities continue to remember and tell their own local histories, recovering and rewriting versions of their past in light of their lived present. Ethelia Ruiz Medrano focuses on a series of individual cases, falling within successive historical epochs, that illustrate how the practice of drawing up and preserving historical documents-in particular, maps, oral accounts, and painted manuscripts-has been a determining factor in the history of Mexico's Indian communities for a variety of purposes, including the significant issue of land and its rightful ownership. Since the sixteenth century, numerous Indian pueblos have presented colonial and national courts with historical evidence that defends their landholdings. Because of its sweeping scope, groundbreaking research, and the author's intimate knowledge of specific communities, Mexico's Indigenous Communities is a unique and exceptional contribution to Mexican history. It will appeal to students and specialists of history, indigenous studies, ethnohistory, and anthropology of Latin America and Mexico

Indigeneity in the Mexican Cultural Imagination

Indigeneity in the Mexican Cultural Imagination PDF Author: Analisa Taylor
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816530661
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Since the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1917, the state has engaged in vigorous campaign to forge a unified national identity. Within the context of this effort, Indians are at once both denigrated and romanticized. Often marginalized, they are nonetheless subjects of constant national interest. Contradictory policies highlighting segregation, assimilation, modernization, and cultural preservation have alternately included and excluded Mexico’s indigenous population from the state’s self-conscious efforts to shape its identity. Yet, until now, no single book has combined the various elements of this process to provide a comprehensive look at the Indian in Mexico’s cultural imagination. Indigeneity in the Mexican Cultural Imagination offers a much-needed examination of this fickle relationship as it is seen through literature, ethnography, film and art. The book focuses on representations of indigenous peoples in post-revolutionary literary and intellectual history by examining key cultural texts. Using these analyses as a foundation, Analisa Taylor links her critique to national Indian policy, rights, and recent social movements in Southern Mexico. In addition, she moves beyond her analysis of indigenous peoples in general to take a gendered look at indigenous women ranging from the villainized Malinche to the highly romanticized and sexualized Zapotec women of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The contradictory treatment of the Indian in Mexico’s cultural imagination is not unique to that country alone. Rather, the situation there is representative of a phenomenon seen throughout the world. Though this book addresses indigeneity in Mexico specifically, it has far-reaching implications for the study of indigenaety across Latin America and beyond. Much like the late Edward Said’s Orientalism, this book provides a glimpse at the very real effects of literary and intellectual discourse on those living in the margins of society. This book’s interdisciplinary approach makes it an essential foundation for research in the fields of anthropology, history, literary critique, sociology, and cultural studies. While the book is ideal for a scholarly audience, the accessible writing and scope of the analysis make it of interest to lay audiences as well. It is a must-read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the politics of indigeneity in Mexico and beyond.

Native Peoples of the Gulf Coast of Mexico

Native Peoples of the Gulf Coast of Mexico PDF Author: Alan R. Sandstrom
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816524112
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
For too long, the Gulf Coast of Mexico has been dismissed by scholars as peripheral to the Mesoamerican heartland, but researchers now recognize that much can be learned from this regionÕs cultures. Peoples of the Gulf CoastÑparticularly those in Veracruz and TabascoÑshare so many historical experiences and cultural features that they can fruitfully be viewed as a regional unit for research and analysis. Native Peoples of the Gulf Coast of Mexico is the first book to argue that the people of this region constitute a culture area distinct from other parts of Mexico. A pioneering effort by a team of international scholars who summarize hundreds of years of history, this encyclopedic work chronicles the prehistory, ethnohistory, and contemporary issues surrounding the many and varied peoples of the Gulf Coast, bringing together research on cultural groups about which little or only scattered information has been published. The volume includes discussions of the prehispanic period of the Gulf Coast, the ethnohistory of many of the neglected indigenous groups of Veracruz and the Huasteca, the settlement of the American Mediterranean, and the unique geographical and ecological context of the Chontal Maya of Tabasco. It provides descriptions of the Popoluca, Gulf Coast Nahua, Totonac, Tepehua, Sierra „Šh–u (Otom’), and Huastec Maya. Each chapter contains a discussion of each groupÕs language, subsistence and settlement patterns, social organization, belief systems, and history of acculturation, and also examines contemporary challenges to the future of each native people. As these contributions reveal, Gulf Coast peoples share not only major cultural features but also historical experiences, such as domination by Hispanic elites beginning in the sixteenth century and subjection to forces of change in Mexico. Yet as contemporary people have been affected by factors such as economic development, increased emigration, and the spread of Protestantism, traditional cultures have become rallying points for ethnic identity. Native Peoples of the Gulf Coast of Mexico highlights the significance of the Gulf Coast for anyone interested in the great encuentro between the Old and New Worlds and general processes of culture change. By revealing the degree to which these cultures have converged, it represents a major step toward achieving a broader understanding of the peoples of this region and will be an important reference work on these indigenous populations for years to come.

Soldiers, Saints, and Shamans

Soldiers, Saints, and Shamans PDF Author: Nathaniel Morris
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816541027
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
The Mexican Revolution gave rise to the Mexican nation-state as we know it today. Rural revolutionaries took up arms against the Díaz dictatorship in support of agrarian reform, in defense of their political autonomy, or inspired by a nationalist desire to forge a new Mexico. However, in the Gran Nayar, a rugged expanse of mountains and canyons, the story was more complex, as the region’s four Indigenous peoples fought both for and against the revolution and the radical changes it bought to their homeland. To make sense of this complex history, Nathaniel Morris offers the first systematic understanding of the participation of the Náayari, Wixárika, O’dam, and Mexicanero peoples in the Mexican Revolution. They are known for being among the least “assimilated” of all Mexico’s Indigenous peoples. It’s often been assumed that they were stuck up in their mountain homeland—“the Gran Nayar”—with no knowledge of the uprisings, civil wars, military coups, and political upheaval that convulsed the rest of Mexico between 1910 and 1940. Based on extensive archival research and years of fieldwork in the rugged and remote Gran Nayar, Morris shows that the Náayari, Wixárika, O’dam, and Mexicanero peoples were actively involved in the armed phase of the revolution. This participation led to serious clashes between an expansionist, “rationalist” revolutionary state and the highly autonomous communities and heterodox cultural and religious practices of the Gran Nayar’s inhabitants. Morris documents confrontations between practitioners of subsistence agriculture and promoters of capitalist development, between rival Indian generations and political factions, and between opposing visions of the world, of religion, and of daily life. These clashes produced some of the most severe defeats that the government’s state-building programs suffered during the entire revolutionary era, with significant and often counterintuitive consequences both for local people and for the Mexican nation as a whole.

Beyond Alterity

Beyond Alterity PDF Author: Paula López Caballero
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816535469
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
A sweeping look at the complicated concept and history of Indigeneity in Mexico--Provided by publisher.

These People Have Always Been a Republic

These People Have Always Been a Republic PDF Author: Maurice S. Crandall
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469652676
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Spanning three hundred years and the colonial regimes of Spain, Mexico, and the United States, Maurice S. Crandall's sweeping history of Native American political rights in what is now New Mexico, Arizona, and Sonora demonstrates how Indigenous communities implemented, subverted, rejected, and indigenized colonial ideologies of democracy, both to accommodate and to oppose colonial power. Focusing on four groups--Pueblos in New Mexico, Hopis in northern Arizona, and Tohono O'odhams and Yaquis in Arizona/Sonora--Crandall reveals the ways Indigenous peoples absorbed and adapted colonially imposed forms of politics to exercise sovereignty based on localized political, economic, and social needs. Using sources that include oral histories and multinational archives, this book allows us to compare Spanish, Mexican, and American conceptions of Indian citizenship, and adds to our understanding of the centuries-long struggle of Indigenous groups to assert their sovereignty in the face of settler colonial rule.

Urban Indians in a Silver City

Urban Indians in a Silver City PDF Author: Dana Velasco Murillo
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804799644
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
In the sixteenth century, silver mined by native peoples became New Spain's most important export. Silver production served as a catalyst for northern expansion, creating mining towns that led to the development of new industries, markets, population clusters, and frontier institutions. Within these towns, the need for labor, raw materials, resources, and foodstuffs brought together an array of different ethnic and social groups—Spaniards, Indians, Africans, and ethnically mixed individuals or castas. On the northern edge of the empire, 350 miles from Mexico City, sprung up Zacatecas, a silver-mining town that would grow in prominence to become the "Second City of New Spain." Urban Indians in a Silver City illuminates the social footprint of colonial Mexico's silver mining district. It reveals the men, women, children, and families that shaped indigenous society and shifts the view of indigenous peoples from mere laborers to settlers and vecinos (municipal residents). Dana Velasco Murillo shows how native peoples exploited the urban milieu to create multiple statuses and identities that allowed them to live in Zacatecas as both Indians and vecinos. In reconsidering traditional paradigms about ethnicity and identity among the urban Indian population, she raises larger questions about the nature and rate of cultural change in the Mexican north.

Homage to Chiapas

Homage to Chiapas PDF Author: Bill Weinberg
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781859847190
Category : Chiapas (Mexico)
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
Vividly depicts the grassroots struggles for land and local autonomy.

Mexican Indigenous Languages at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

Mexican Indigenous Languages at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century PDF Author: Margarita Hidalgo
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110197677
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
This volume explores the reversing language shift (RLS) theory in the Mexican scenario from various viewpoints: The sociohistorical perspective delves into the dynamics of power that emerged in the Mexican colony as a result of the presence of Spanish. It examines the processes of external and internal Indianization affecting the early European protagonists and the varied dimensions of language shift and maintenance of the Mexican colonial period. The Mexican case sheds light upon language contact from the time in which Western civilization came into contact with the Mesoamerican peoples, for the encounter began with a demographic catastrophe that motivated a recovery mission. While the recovery of Mexican indigenous languages (MIL) was remarkable, RLS ended after fifty years of abundant productivity in MIL. Since then, the slow process of recovery is related to demographic changes, socioreligious movements, rebellion, confrontation, and survival strategies that have fostered language maintenance with bilingualism and language shift with culture preservation. The causes of the Chiapas uprising are analyzed in connection with the language attitudes of the indigenous peoples, while language policy is discussed in reference to the new Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples (2003). A quantitative classification of the MIL is offered with an overview of their geographic distribution, trends of macrosocietal bilingualism, use in the home domain, and permanence in the original Mesoamerican settlements. Innovative models of bilingual education are presented along with relevant data on several communities and the philosophies and methodologies justifying the programs. A model of Mazahua language use is presented along the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale.