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This article examines the first Spanish American lacquerwares produced by Indigenous artisans in the seventeenth century, barniz de Pasto in Colombia and Peribán lacquer in Mexico, and discusses how the evolution of the decorative motifs, techniques, and forms of these lacquerwares can establish an initial dating chronology. Over the last thirty years, a sufficient number of examples of seventeenth-century Spanish American lacquerware have come to light that are datable, whether through provenance, historical references, or radiocarbon dating, and that make possible tentative chronologies for their production. The Hispanic Society of America in New York City holds at present the most significant collection of datable pieces of barniz de Pasto and Peribán lacquerware that now provide the key dates that can serve as the basis for establishing dating chronologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among Hans Ulrich Vogel's important contributions to Chinese and world history has been his work on the outsized influence China exercised in the early history of globalization. In this brief article, we pay tribute to his careful research and deep insights by describing the interconnected circuits of exchange of three commodities – mercury, silver, and sea otter pelts – through which the early Pacific economy was articulated and transformed. Following Professor Vogel's lead, we explain how the Chinese demand that drove these exchanges fueled competitive economic expansion of European powers in the Pacific, setting in motion political, social, ecological, and economic patterns whose influence endures into the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Roman destruction of Jerusalem—as portrayed in medieval Christian legend—was a common referent in Spanish colonial historiography. In this context, it served to convey a sense of the magnitude of conquest in Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Multiple colonial texts also apply the anti-Semitic message that fundamentally characterizes this legend to the context of New Spain, justifying wars of imperial conquest as divine justice for perceived offenses against God. An anonymous Nahua translator-playwright also accommodated a version of this legend for performance to Nahua audiences. As scholars note, this play is an abridged translation into Nahuatl of an Iberian source text. This article shows how this version modifies key passages, conveys polemical commentaries in an unmistakably Nahua voice, and undermines the common application of this medieval narrative in New Spain. Rather than blame the rigors of conquest on the victims of conquest, it instead highlights error on the part of Christian empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the first Spanish American lacquerwares produced by Indigenous artisans in the seventeenth century, barniz de Pasto in Colombia and Peribán lacquer in Mexico, and discusses how the evolution of the decorative motifs, techniques, and forms of these lacquerwares can establish an initial dating chronology. Over the last thirty years, a sufficient number of examples of seventeenth-century Spanish American lacquerware have come to light that are datable, whether through provenance, historical references, or radiocarbon dating, and that make possible tentative chronologies for their production. The Hispanic Society of America in New York City holds at present the most significant collection of datable pieces of barniz de Pasto and Peribán lacquerware that now provide the key dates that can serve as the basis for establishing dating chronologies.

Copyright of Tiempos Modernos is the property of Tiempos Modernos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study addresses the economic nature of the Carrera de Campeche, a series of routes that connected southern New Spain and Guatemala through amphibious routes using rivers and land roads. The economic origin and use of different routes that were used and how they were concatenated with the alcabalatorios soils of Tabasco, Chiapas, Oaxaca and the Guatemalan Highlands are analyzed. It shows how trade and smuggling were two sides of the same process in which local products and transatlantic imports complemented each other during the last years of the Spanish colonial period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La orden franciscana en Nueva España publicó libros para las prácticas misioneras en los siglos XVII y XVIII que incluían mensajes moralizantes dirigidos tanto a los indígenas de habla hispana como a los católicos españoles. Incluían letras de varias canciones penitenciales, así como versos llamados saetas. Las canciones abreviaban los mensajes predicados por los frailes que iban de pueblo en pueblo cantando estas canciones y predicando sermones que llamaban a la gente a confesar sus pecados. Este artículo ofrece una primera transcripción y análisis de estas canciones, hasta ahora no estudiadas, sosteniendo que son esencial para el proceso misionero y sacramental a través de su vocalización y vocalidad.

This work studies one type of artistic production from the Viceroyalty of New Spain during the second half of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the following century. Furniture decorated with the technique of enconchado is studied to point out the influence of Namban lacquer as well as the relationship with enconchado painting, a better known and studied corpus than furniture, and also its link to Mexican lacquer, maque. The identification and study of three pieces of furniture that feature the enconchado technique, and a cross, probably decorated with maque, offer a complementary vision of the art of enconchado and allow us to consider enconchado furniture an independent artistic genre.

Adoration of the Magi (ca. 1695–1700), an enconchado painting attributed to Miguel González, active in Mexico in the late seventeenth century, exemplifies the refinement of the arts produced in Spanish America as a response to the taste for Asian goods during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The painting and its original mother-of-pearl inlaid frame were examined and analyzed using non-invasive and micro-sampling methods, an approach that permitted answering outstanding questions about the stratigraphy, pigments, and the use of shells throughout the painting and frame. The identification of the mother-of-pearl, determined to be from a Pinctada species, was a central focus of this study. In addition to the inlaid shells in the painting and frame, shell fragments were observed mixed with gypsum in the ground preparation of the painting by SEM–EDS. To our knowledge, this is a novel identification of marine shells in the ground of an easel painting. Traces of workmanship in the inlaid shells observed by SEM and optical microscopy are possibly connected to pre-Hispanic methodologies of mother-of-pearl refinement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traces of trans feminine pasts are scattered all across the colonial archive. In New Spain, glimpses of Indigenous trans women's lives can be found in the records of conquistadors as early as the sixteenth century. While such early colonial representations of trans femininity span myriad religious, imperial and literary contexts, they are all underpinned by one harrowing reality: the widespread, colonial pursuit of trans feminine death. To 're‐member' – á la Saylesh Wesley – trans feminine pasts in the colonial archive, this article traces structures of, and resistance to, colonial trans misogyny in the sodomy criminal trials of Mexico (1604–1771) and the Catholic missions of California (1769–1821). Pushing against an extant 'cistoriography' that has simply archived these stories within the history of sexuality, I ask: What may be gleaned by centring trans femininity and womanhood as core to not only the lives of historical subjects, but the reason many of their lives were so violently taken? By re‐membering trans misogyny in this way, we may finally name and centre the long‐erased trans feminine historical subject, illuminate the complex, changing structures of her past worlds and trace the oft‐forgotten lineages of not just trans feminine death, but trans feminine survivance in its face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to contrast the reports of the observations made of the passage of the comet of 1652 by three Novohispano scholars: Juan Ruíz, Gabriel López de Bonilla, and Fray Diego Rodríguez, with the thesis that each one held about the nature of comets. Fray Diego argued that they were superlunary; Ruíz and López de Bonilla, that they were not. Our results show that the quality of the observations, estimated from the reports that were made of them, is disparate. On the other hand, although the observations were presented as material evidence for and against the superlunary nature of comets, in actuality, in all cases the three scholars only seemed to be justifying their preexisting scholastic beliefs. Indeed, the main finding of our study is that both Rodríguez and López de Bonilla used the same argument, i.e., that the angular velocity of the comet was smaller than that of the Moon, to justify their views, in one case that the comet was superlunar, in the other that it was sublunar; in both instances, they backed their conclusions with texts from Aristotle. This shows that their observations and calculations were most likely not the deciding factor in taking a position regarding the nature of comets. Another tantalizing discovery is that Diego Rodríguez may have been the first person to observe and record the appearance of Comet C/1652 Y1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work studies one type of artistic production from the Viceroyalty of New Spain during the second half of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the following century. Furniture decorated with the technique of enconchado is studied to point out the influence of Namban lacquer as well as the relationship with enconchado painting, a better known and studied corpus than furniture, and also its link to Mexican lacquer, maque. The identification and study of three pieces of furniture that feature the enconchado technique, and a cross, probably decorated with maque, offer a complementary vision of the art of enconchado and allow us to consider enconchado furniture an independent artistic genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the diverse multiethnic setting of colonial New Spain, women faced challenges in separating themselves from marriages they considered unendurable. The Catholic Church, which exercised hegemony over definitions of marriage in the colony, controlled access to permanent, formal separation or "ecclesiastical divorce", while secular courts offered shorter-term separations generally aimed at reunifying couples. Outside of these options, flight, concealment, and bigamy, or "self-divorce," offered the only recourse for women seeking to leave an untenable relationship. While it is well known that few women sought (and even fewer were granted) ecclesiastical divorce, it is clear that many women sought separation through formal and informal means. Using ecclesiastical petitions for divorce, this paper investigates the experience of deposit (depósito) for New Spain's separated women. Deposit was likely a primary goal of women's divorce petitions. Moreover, the hegemony of marriage was less complete in reality than in ideology; the number of single women in the colony is now known to be vast, and their networks substantial. Building on Bird's and Megged's insights on separation and singleness, this paper argues that studying deposit reveals a custom that offered women of all classes a substantial degree of respite and agency in separation, particularly in the early colony, when institutional options were less formalized. Sometimes, depósito permitted lengthy separations that blurred into permanency, while at other times it served as a crucial safety valve. Nonetheless, the practice was a contested terrain on which husbands also sought to exercise power and control. Deposit, therefore, was a highly ambivalent form of "separation" in Latin America. This was undoubtedly true both in the early-colonial period and thereafter, but as colonial society matured and institutional deposit became more possible and common, men's power was enhanced. Studying the practice before the late seventeenth century therefore reveals some of the ways that early colonial societal flux authorized female agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fernán González de Eslava's fifth Coloquio espiritual y sacramental is a Christian allegorical drama from New Spain of the 1570s. It concerns Spanish attempts to 'pacify' the Gran Chichimeca, a contested desert frontier to the north of the Valley of Mexico. The antagonist of this play is a Chichimeca warrior, who challenges military and missionary attempts to conquer and convert. González de Eslava's allegory vilifies this nomadic native warrior, casting him as the very figure of sin. This piece portrays a fierce Indigenous alterity in order to justify Spanish incursions into native lands and promote a Christianizing agenda. Remarkably, the playwright portrays Chichimeca territory with reference to a major foundational narrative of central Mexican peoples. He invokes the storied trajectory of ancestral migrants who departed from legendary sites of origin in the north, and journeyed southward into the Mexican Basin, where they settled. However, the allegorical drama reconfigures this southward path, and in the place of a central Mexican foundational narrative, González de Eslava asserts a Christian narrative and symbolic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the "life" of an eighteenth-century private library that migrated from Spain to New Spain in 1765 and returned, greatly reduced, back to Europe in 1772. The collection's owner was José de Gálvez (1720–1787), a reformist Spanish statesman and recently appointed royal inspector of the Mexican viceroyalty. Standing at the crossroads of book history, the history of reading, and political history, this piece examines the library and its books from both a material and intellectual perspective. It relies on "Thing Theory," a methodological approach that opens avenues for further research on human-object relations in the Atlantic world. Examining the interplay between the owner, his ideas, his biography, and his book collection, this study expands book history's geographies and proposes a new narrative about the global dimensions of the Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the framework of the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the founding of the town of Colima, in the year 2023, this essay is presented with a concatenated exposition of primary sources, which questions the hypothesis about the change, transfer, depopulation, re–founding or second foundation of the town of Colima that has been disseminated with stripped down absences and perceptible inconsistencies in its support, presenting as its primary source the document that describes the territory of New Spain, on October 23rd, 1532, in which the neighbours of the town of Colima named it, temporarily, villa de San Sebastián de la provincia de Colima. At the same time, the supported hypothesis is proposed that led to the designation of the town of Colima under the protection against the plagues of the Christian saint guardian who fought them: the martyr Saint Sebastian. In addition, reference is made to the possible intervention and influence in order to name the town of Colima under this advocation by El Puerto de Santa María–born conqueror Alonso Lorenzo de Meltoro, who left this town to go to the new lands discovered in the twenties of the 16th century [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1805, the pueblo of Tultitlan fell victim to an ostensibly mysterious new plague. After a year of curative treatment, it spread across what is now Mexico State, prompting urban officials to authorize the use of smallpox vaccination—an intervention that elicited fierce debate steeped in tensions around Indigeneity, religion, and parental rights. Drawing on newspapers and other colonial records, the article examines how different Nahua families responded, centering their concerns and expectations—of immunization and religious and public health officials—to reframe critical questions about the gender and racial politics of vaccine history and its contested relationship to colonial rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study provides new unpublished documents on clandestine insurgent poetry in New Spain, specifically in Puebla de los Angeles (1810-1812). The social crisis caused by the Napoleonic Invasion generated a series of very diverse billboards, cards and texts that, although not necessarily based on demonstrable sources, evidenced the need to incorporate anonymous voices and thoughts into dramatic events that threatened faith and the catholic monarchy. These criticisms, from the action of the vital axis of New Spain in defense of the Catholic monarchy, have been somewhat forgotten due to the difficulty of locating and accessing primary sources that:, as in this study, bring us closer to these expressions in order to analyse and insert these voices in the social processes of their context. In all of this, the need to legitimize its own identity --political and religious-- within the Catholic monarchy on that side of the Atlantic is observed, which clandestinely took verses as a spearhead and cultural expression in the face of the drama of an incipient Civil War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the supposedly comfortable lives enjoyed by the Jesuits during the Golden Ages of the Hispanic culture. More specifically, Jesuits from New Spain. The description is made through documents and satirical verses circulating among the people to offer both the educated perspective and the widespread impression of those priests who amassed a vast amount of material wealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Investigaciones Historicas is the property of Universidad de Valladolid, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cuadernos del CEMYR is the property of Cuadernos del CEMYR (Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de La Laguna) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cuadernos del CEMYR is the property of Cuadernos del CEMYR (Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de La Laguna) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract This article focuses on the visual qualities of Alexander von Humboldt’s statistical tables in his Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (1808–1811, 2nd ed. 1825–1827) with special attention to how such composites of numbers, alphabetical script, and semiotic elements relate to narrative writing. I argue that Humboldt’s tables/tableaus open up spaces inside his narrative that fragment the reading process, inviting new conversations, connections, and ideas. Resumen Este articulo entretiene con los atributos visuales de las abundantes tablas estadísticas incluyendo en el Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne (1808–1811, 2nd ed. 1825–1827) de Alexander de Humboldt, en especial con las relaciones entre las combinaciones de números, escritura y elementos semióticos (que Humboldt llama “tableaux”) y la propia narrativa. Obran estas relaciones una fragmentación del proceso de leer, abriendo dimensiones y espacios en que se podrían manifestar nuevas conexiones, conversaciones e ideas innovadoras. Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel befasst sich mit den bildhaften Eigenschaften der vielen statistischen Tabellen in Alexander von Humboldts Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne (1808–1811, 2nd ed. 1820–1827), wobei meine besondere Aufmerksamkeit den Verhältnissen gilt, die diese aus Zahlen, alphabetischer Schrift und semiotischen Elementen zusammengesetzten Komposita (die Humboldt als Tableaux bezeichnet) mit der beschreibenden Erzählung selbst eingehen: In diesen Verhältnissen offenbaren sich nämlich Dimensionen oder Räumlichkeiten, die durch die visuelle Zerteilung des Textes stets weitere, neue Verbindungen, Gespräche und Ideen zu produzieren suchen

Organizers of public commemorations held in early eighteenth-century New Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession characterized Philip V as a defender of the faith and queen consort Maria Luisa Gabriela de Saboya and crown prince Luis I as agents of providence. An examination of a corpus of sermons given between 1707 and 1710 reveals that orators assured novohispanos that the birth of Luis I of Spain would inaugurate a messianic age, marked by fecundity and prosperity. The queen, moreover, put the rebirth of the empire in motion before her death. As various orators suggested, her role in bringing about a sort of «Bourbon millennium» had been foretold in the Book of Revelation. In cities throughout New Spain, orators characterized the queen as the fecund vehicle of God’s providence, or the Woman of the Apocalypse, a figure associated with the Immaculate Conception. As the mother of Spain’s messiah, the queen assured the prosperous future of the empire.

This article illuminates pivotal moments in the lives of eighteen—enslaved and free—African descent peoples listed as mulatto from 1732 to 1803 in New Spain's north frontier. The records consulted reveal that both enslaved and free peoples employed the legal system to petition abuses and request transfers of ownership in places such as San Luis Potosí, Saltillo, Monclova, and San Antonio de Béjar, Texas. Two instances of manumission are detailed below. This article also highlights one escape from a semiliterate enslaved man who voluntarily returned to Saltillo, illuminating emotional ties to friends and family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand the manuscript creation process practiced by Indigenous intellectuals in the Americas this essay examines the work of the Nahua scholars who, along with Bernardino de Sahagún, created the Florentine Codex (1575–1577). Now fundamental to studies of the Codex is an evaluation of its three 'texts': the Nahuatl-language alphabetic text, the Spanish-language annotations including loose translations, and its bountiful images. Two sources served as iterative kinds of drafts for the Codex project: the Primeros memoriales (1558–1561) and the Manuscrito de Tlatelolco (1561–1566). Each of the manuscripts contains its own three texts, thus they are threefold, that enable an examination of nine separate but interrelated source texts. In considering the differences among the cumulative nine texts, this article uncovers new insights into an unstudied process of negotiation between the Nahua scholars, the elders whom they consulted, and their Spanish colleagues. As sites of mediation among colonial actors, the threefold manuscripts manifest on their folios the competing interests and agendas that shaped the production of knowledge in New Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Indigenous communities in colonial Mexico experienced discriminatory sumptuary laws. Following colonization, Indigenous elites sought to assert their status, in part, through material means. Drawing on over 500 legal complaints, this article argues that licenses for Spanish clothes, weapons, and accessories formed an important part of the broader framework used by Indigenous elites to solidify their standing within the colonial regime. While ceremonial items like heraldic arms and genealogies legitimized Indigenous families, garments served to establish such individuals on an everyday basis. Petitioners did not request access to ritualistic pre-Columbian garb, but rather, focused exclusively on European daily attire. At the same time, required legal clauses embedded in the licenses offer important windows into the evolving opinions of officials on garments, identity, and socio-racial standing. Although authorities approved all existing licenses, stipulations sought to increasingly restrict native access to items perceived as European. Sumptuary laws thus created an important zone of contestation where Indigenous individuals fought to assert their nobility amidst shifting socio-political climates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the urban and architectural transformations in the Villa de Guadalupe, the site where the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe originated, in present-day Mexico City, on behalf of Creole architects, urban planners, and clerics. The article argues that members of Mexico City's Creole elite played a critical role in fabricating a fervent cult of a dark-skinned Madonna while orchestrating dramatic changes to the site of the apparitions, which transformed it from a humble Indigenous village into the religious and spiritual heart of New Spain. The essay focuses its attention on the town's urban and architectural changes during the eighteenth century, which is when the village of Guadalupe was transformed into a veritable "villa", a special designation for an urban establishment in the early modern Hispanic world, which vested it with certain legal autonomy. The story of the urban and architectural transformations and innovations at this site is fascinating, given the ambition on behalf of Mexico City's Creoles to appropriate it and its success in promoting it as the source of Mexico City's and New Spain's claims to exceptionality by divine designation. The Virgin Mary's appearances to a humble young Indigenous man in an impoverished Native village near Mexico City, which became the spiritual center of New Spain, became a potent narrative wielded by the Creole elite, as they sought to assert their political claims in the face of staunch opposition from Spanish-born administrators and clergy. At the Villa de Guadalupe, as this essay reveals, Creole elites tested their political, urban planning, and architectural skills, asserting their cultural and political relevance in 18th-century Mexico City. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a historical and contextual investigation of the practice of synods and synodality in the historical moment of the colonial Church of New Spain. Bishops, clergy, and religious orders vied for ecclesial and spiritual power against civil and royal authorities, and often even against themselves. The bishops of New Spain did not use the language of "enlarging the space of one's tent", but they were deeply and genuinely disturbed by the evils present concretely before the eyes of the Church. The Third Mexican Provincial Council of 1585 will be examined as a case study of how the Church has listened to and responded synodally to large-scale abuse of human dignity perpetuated and legitimized by the social order. The paper will then explore how the Council's decrees anticipate modern notions of synodality. The historical perspective of the bishops of New Spain and contemporary documents of the Synod on Synodality will help form the basis for questions about how Christ is made central in synodal gatherings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the process of formation of historical science and social thought in Mexico in the 19th century. The author focuses on the important works of some of the most famous researchers of Mexican history, which laid the foundation for Mexican historiography. The author notes that the origin and formation of Mexican national historiography and social thought was associated with key political events in the country's history: War of Independence 1810-1824, creation of the first liberal constitutions, Mexican-American War 1846-1848. and territorial disputes with the United States, bourgeois reforms, the civil war of 1854–1860, the Anglo-French-Spanish intervention, the liberation war of the Mexican people of 1861–1867. These events occupied an im-portant place in the works of the first Mexican historians, who often personally took part in the process of the political formation of an independent state and became the starting points around which the historical concepts of the Mexican history of the national period were formed. these events primarily attracted the attention of historians and became the starting points around which the historical concepts of the Mexican history.

The origin of the Mayan codex known as Tro-cortesiano has been unknown for more than one hundred and fifty years since its appearance in Spain. Several theories have tried to explain the precise place and time in which this codex was elaborated, or the date and circumstances in which it arrived to the Iberian Peninsula. In this article we will review the data that were known in the 19th century about the origin of the codex, to discover what could have been its true origin, its relationship with the Counts of Cancelada and, from there, to complete the knowledge of this exceptional pre-Hispanic document.

Folding screens were very popular in New Spain beginning in the late 16th century. From the second half of the 17th century on, many Chinese and some European lacquer folding screens circulated in New Spain, inspiring the development of Novohispanic lacquer, imitation lacquer, and Chinese-style folding screens. The decorative technique of these Novohispanic folding screens has not been studied, but evidence suggests that some of them were made with techniques that have pre-Columbian roots, others with European lacquer techniques, and others still with paint and varnish adapted to produce a shiny surface resembling that of Asian lacquer. Thus, 18th-century New Spain was the place where there was the widest variety of lacquer folding screens in the world. Hitherto this variety has remained unnoticed, but studying it is essential to understand to what extent the globalization of the taste for lacquer gave rise to innovative solutions in the Americas.

This technical study of three Mexican lacquer objects, dating from the 16th, 18th and 19th centuries, analyses different lacquer manufacturing processes and their local characteristics through the centuries. The technical analysis of each object highlights their material and technological innovation. In addition, we describe individual stylistic characteristics of Mexican lacquer production centres, Peribán and Olinalá. Finally, we conclude with a few observations about the taste for Asian lacquer in the West, and how this impacted lacquer crafts around the world.

In a short space of time, the city of Tenochtitlan became the capital of an empire and one of the largest cities in the world at the time. This created an urban complexity in which supplies played a key role, especially as it was located in the middle of a lagoon. During the Spanish conquest, it suffered much destruction, but rose from the ruins to become the capital of the new Spanish domains and one of the most important cities of its time. To achieve this, it used most of the pre-existing networks and incorporated the relevant innovations to meet the new demands.

This paper presents a synthesis of the political-territorial structure of the pre-Hispanic culture of the central Mesoamerican area commonly known as Aztecs on the eve of the Spanish conquest, in order to study the early colonial society. The Hispanic culture did not settle in a desert territory nor implanted its dominion destroying the indigenous societies, rather it allowed a wide continuity of the preexisting structures, which, with no doubt, constitutes the deep reason of the success of the colonial society. We present a series of sociopolitical terms typical of the Aztec society (altepetl, calpulli, tlatocayotl), as well as the concepts of hegemonic domination and double mistaken identity, which have allowed a deeper understanding of the indigenous society, before and after the Spanish conquest. Finally, we apply our perspective of analysis to the case of Azcapotzalco during the early colonial period.

The archive has played a crucial role in art historical scholarship in helping to flesh out the identities of colonial artists, scribes, and writers. But the vagaries of history, colonialist violences, and postcolonial regimes mean that the archives undergirding such study are particularly unstable. This essay treats the role of archives (their lacunae as well as their surpluses) in shaping the historical methods and scholarly desires around these actors. Case studies are organized around objects made of ink and paper, the same materials as colonial documentation. These cases span a wide temporal range, a broad geographic frame, and a diverse set of period actors. Set out in reverse chronological order, they capture the longing and lament that colonial archives produce. The essay then turns to archival gaps that have been or might be filled, focalizing a range or methods—from historically sanctioned modes of recovery to patently fraudulent fictions—to explore generative methods of probing archival limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Indias is the property of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Hidalguía is the property of Revista Hidalguia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines several libraries assembled by the Society of Jesus in their college and missions in Northern Mexico (in the present-day Mexican State of Chihuahua), where Jesuits have been a constant presence from the seventeenth century, interrupted only temporarily by the Society's suppression. All their bibliographic collections were transferred, dispersed, or looted after the general expulsion of 1767. Archival materials preserved in repositories such as the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City, however, enable a reconstruction of these libraries. This essay argues that these collections constituted a sort of "cultural oasis" (Michael Mathes). They provided arsenals of knowledge for missionaries in distant places with harsh living conditions and show the strong and lasting bond between Jesuits and print culture even in the most remote and adverse of conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the small mining producers in the alcaldía mayor de Charcas and the aggregate of Sierra de Pinos, in the period prior to the rise of Real de Catorce (1779) and the Mining Ordinances of 1783. It focuses on the need to decentralize the history of mining and from some variables and problems, some practices, and characteristics of small miners in that region are analyzed. This allows us to reflect on its implications in the mining scenario of the district and show some of the conditions that led to the readjustments in the mining codes at the end of the Eighteenth-Century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early eighteenth century, the mining town of Zimapán went through a social and economic crisis, as a result of frequent clashes with nearby Chichimeca groups. Conflicts went aggravated because of the oppression that society practiced against these Indians. When the region was pacified, Spanish miners had to solve how to reactivate the process for extracting silver from ore. In fact, some of them looked up how to reach an hegemonic position, in spite of their production was far from those of main mining centers. The paper focuses on the capacities of these producers, under an adverse situation. From the use of accounting records of Caja Real of Zimapán and several legal disputes, here are shown different ways through which these miners overcome their colleagues and achieve preeminent positions and, on the other side, how can be understood the situation of limited resources miners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on three ancient and unknown mining centers in New Spain during the years 1570-1660. Situated in densely populated Indigenous regions, they did not develop into important towns, their silver production was intermittent, and they have received little attention of the mining historiography. Here, their particular characteristics are analyzed, compared among each other, and the proposal of this article is that they were not only settlements of unknown adventurers, but also mining centers of interest for investors belonging to the oligarchy. Moreover, during some decades, the mining enterprises had important effects on the surrounding Indigenous population that delivered the working force during years of deep demographic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we want to illustrate how the teaching of the Latin language became the symbol of the imperial expansionist energy of Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries, and in its evangelizing propagation to the newly discovered territories of America. Spanish was not so much the "companion of the empire", but rather Latin, with Castilian as a partner language. Latin was taught, fundamentally, through the grammatical work of Elio Antonio de Nebrija, so we intend to make a historiographical and linguistic overview of the editions of the Introductiones Latinae from its origins according to medieval and late-medieval grammar models until the last recasting, which will be made official as the Royal Art, by royal decree of Felipe II in 1598. Its educational and ideological influence will configure the grammars of the Amerindian languages of all the Viceroyalties. We will pay particular attention to those of New Spain, which, due to its linguistic diversity and wealth of resources, became the most important viceroyalty of the Spanish crown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]