Suchergebnisse

Marriage alliances among governing families were an important instrument of political integration in Postclassic Mesoamerica, especially in the Mixteca. Alliances among Mixtec nobles persisted during the colonial period, although after the sixteenth century the caciques lost much of their political power to the gobernadores and the Cabildos. In this essay I investigate the significance of alliances among Mixtec caciques through the marriages of eight generations of the Villagómez family of Acatlan and Petlalcingo, from 1669 until the mid-nineteenth century. I argue that only the first of these marriages was politically strategic. ; Las alianzas matrimoniales entre familias gobernantes fueron un instrumento importante de integración política en la Mesoamérica Posclásica, especialmente en la Mixteca. Estas alianzas entre los nobles mixtecos persistieron a través de la época colonial, aunque después del siglo XVI los caciques perdieron mucho de su poder político ante los gobernadores y los Cabildos. En este ensayo investigo el significado de las alianzas entre caciques mixtecos por medio de los casamientos de ocho generaciones de la familia Villagómez de Acatlan y Petlalcingo, desde 1669 hasta mediados del siglo XIX. Sostengo que sólo el primero de estos enlaces matrimoniales fue políticamente estratégico.

Claude Lévi‐Strauss's concept of the 'house" has proven to be a viable alternative to traditional lineage theory in the study of many societies, and this paper applies the house concept to a Mesoamencan case. The teccalli, or noble house, was an important aspect of Nahua (Aztec) sociopolitical organization in prchispanic and early colonial central Mexico, particularly in the Puebla‐Tlaxcala Valley. It is often characterized as a lineage with rights in land and commoner labor, yet the nature of descent, succession, and inheritance are little understood. Late colonial wills and lawsuits from the (formerly) Nahua community of Santiago Tecali in the Puebla‐Tlaxcala Valley provide valuable insights into these matters that can also help us to understand earlier periods. It is argued that the Nahua noble house can be better understood as a house than as a lineage, [house, kinship, inheritance, Nahuas, Mesoamerica]

One of the most pronounced trends in colonial Mexican studies in recent years has been the shift away from broadly based research on large political units toward intensive work on specific cities and regions. This article introduces eight books doing so with a renewed emphasis on social and economic themes. The authors share a common focus on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

No one with even a passing acquaintance with the literature on Mexican society, not to mention the rest of Spanish America, can fail to be impressed by the frequent use of the term mestizo. Despite its ubiquity in the writings of social scientists, however, the concept of the mestizo is customarily employed in a vague fashion and usually left undefined. This is especially evident in the work of anthropologists, who for many years have been preoccupied with defining the Mexican Indian but have rarely focused their analytical powers on the mestizo. The term itself has been used rather loosely to refer to a certain group of people who presumably comprise a majority of the Mexican population, a cultural pattern shared by these people and other Latin Americans, and even a personality type.