which ended up in the Jesuit convent of San Pedro y San Pablo at Sigüenza’s death, was catalogued in the mid-eighteenth century by the Italian Lorenzo Boturini Benaducci. This archive continued to be studied by Jesuits and criollo seculars during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and has been associated with the emergence of a Mexican historiography and national identity
The last years of the seventeenth century close an era of historiography written by educated natives. Educated Indigenous people pragmatically used the alphabetic and legalistic Spanish system to their advantage but not without consequences. Some scholars have seen that in Peru and in New Spain, the reliance on a juridical system arbitrated by the colonial power created a dependency that weakened the natives’ capacity for self-determining confrontation, limiting resistance to lack of cooperation (Stern 1982, 311; Borah 1982, 284). Writing local histories at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries provided temporary solutions for continuing tradition and securing positions of high status, as was the case for Tezozomoc, Ixtlilxóchitl, and others. But once the generation of educated natives declined, the steady use of local histories as sources to appeal privileges or to authenticate territorial rights – as Indigenous communities do in the Títulos or Códices Techialoyan – continued to feed ethnic fragmentation and struggles among the natives. Conceivably, ethnic divisions weakened the possibilities of native communities’ unification for radical resistance.
The narratives produced by ethnically diverse individuals in the Colegio and after its decline are important sources for critical investigations in different areas of research, from linguistic perspectives, to those of the social sciences, cultural studies, and postcolonial theories. Written after the shock of the conquest under an alien political and ideological hegemony, these narratives provide inquiry in the processes of meaning-making and representation. Since neither the colonizers nor the colonized were two antagonistic and monolithic factions, the multiple interactions and relations among these groups have to be taken into consideration when enquiring about processes and productions of identities in these narratives. The diffusion of writing and written materials was one of the most powerful tools of colonization in Indo-America, but was also the vehicle for different types of negotiations and creativity. Perhaps textual productions from the in-between spaces produced by colonization provide the “location and energy of new modes of thinking whose strength lies in the transformation and critique of the ‘authenticities’ of both Western and Amerindian legacies” (Mignolo 2001, xv). These narratives are also testimonies that remind us that Latin American histories have the modalities of an aggressive concert started 500 years ago in which the hierarchy of “harmony” is constantly interrupted by counterpoint and dissonance.
References and Further Reading
References
1 Allen, Heather. “Constructed Discourse in Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s Chronicles,” in Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl and His Legacy. Ed. Galen Brokaw and Jongsoo Lee. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016, 153–178.
2 Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Fernando. History of the Chichimeca Nation. Ed. trans. Amber Brian, Bradley Benton, Peter B. Villella, and Pablo García Loaeza. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019.
3 Alvarado Tezozomoc, Hernando. Crónica Mexicana. Edición. José Rubén Romero Galván. Estudio codicológico y paleografía, Gonzalo Díaz-Migoyo. México: Universidad Autónoma de México, 2021.
4 Alvardo Tezozomoc, Hernando. Crónica mexicayotl. Obra histórica de Hernando de Alvarado Tezozómoc editada por Domingo Francisco de San Antón Muñón Chimalpáin Cuauhtlehuanitzin con fragmentos de Alonso Franco, con notas, estudio introductorio, paleografía, traducción, apéndice calendárico e índice de Gabriel K. Kruell. México. UNAM, 2021.
5 Anderson, A. and S. Schroeder. “Introduction,” in Codex Chimalpahin. Vol. 1. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
6 Baudot, Georges. Utopia and History in Mexico: The First Chronicles of Mexican Civilization (1520–1569). Trans. Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellana and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano. Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1995.
7 Borah, W. “The Spanish and Indian Law: New Spain,” in The Inca and Aztec States 1400–1800. Eds. George A. Collier et al. New York: Academic Press, 1982, 265–288.
8 ———. “The Alva Ixtlilxochitl Brothers, and the Nahua Intellectual Community,” in Texcoco: Prehispanic and Colonial Perspectives. Eds. Jongsoo Lee and Galen Brokaw. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2014, 201–218.
9 Brian, Amber. Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s Native Archive and the Circulation of Knowledge in Colonial Mexico. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2016.
10 Brokaw, Galen and Jongsoo Lee. Eds. “Introduction,” in Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl and His Legacy. Tucson:University of Arizona Press, 2016.
11 Burkhart, L. The Slippery Earth. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989.
12 Carrera Stampa, M. “Algunos aspectos de la Historia de Tlaxcala de Diego Muñoz Camargo,” in Estudios de historiografía de la Nueva España. Eds. H. Díaz-Thomé, et al. Mexico City: Colegio de México, 1945, 93–142.
13 Colonial Latin American Review. “Volume with Six Articles Dedicated to don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl,” 23/1 2014.
14 Cortés, Rocio. “Los capítulos perdidos en la Crónica mexicana de Hernando de Alvarado Tezozomoc,” Colonial Latin American Review, 12/2 (2003): 149–167.
15 Cortés, Rocio. El “nahuatlato Alvarado” y el “Tlalamatl Huauquilpan.” New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 2011.
16 Costilla Martínez, Héctor. Historia adoptada, historia adaptada: La crónica mestiza del méxico colonial. Madrid: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2019.
17 Annals of His Time: Domingo Francisco de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Cuauhtlehuanitzin. Editors and Translation. James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder and Doris Namala. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.
18 ———. Chimalpahin’s Conquest: A Nahua Historian’s Rewriting of Francisco López de Gómara’s La Conquista de México. Edited and Translated. Susan Schroeder, Anne J. Cruz, Cristián Roa-de-la-carrera, and David E. Tavarez. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.
19 ———. Chimalpáhin y La Conquista de México. Eds. Susan Schroeder, David Távarez, and Cristián Roa. Mexico City: National Autonomous University of Mexico 2012.
20 Cuevas, M. Historia de la Iglesia en México. Vol. 1. Mexico City: Patria, 1946.
21 Dupeyron, Guy. Indios Imaginarios E Indios Reales En Los Relatos De La Conquista De México. Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 2002.
22 Elliot, J. H. “Cortés and Montezuma,” in The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Eds. G. M. Joseph and T. J. Henderson. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002, 105–109.
23 García Loaeza, Pablo. “Credible, Accurate, and Approved: Fernando De Alva Ixtilxochitl and Mexico’s Patriotic Historiography,” in Fernando De Alva Ixtlilxochitl and His Legacy. Eds. Galen Brokaw and Jongsoo Lee. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016, 257–282.
24 García, Luis Reyes and Andrea Martínez Baracs. Historia cronológica de la Noble Ciudad de Tlaxcala. Mexico: Universdidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, 1995.
25 Garibay, M. A. Historia de la literatura nahuatl. Vol. 2. Mexico City: Porrúa, 1954.
26 Gruzinski, S. The Conquest of Mexico. Cambridge: Polity
