Caterina Pizzigoni

This book presents a unique set of written records belonging to the De la Cruz family, caciques of Tepemaxalco in the Toluca Valley. Composed in Nahuatl and Spanish and available here both in the original languages and in English translation, this collection of documents opens a window onto the life of a family from colonial Mexico’s indigenous elite and sheds light on the broader indigenous world within the Spanish colonial system. The main text is a record created in 1647 by long-serving governor don Pedro de la Cruz and continued by his heirs through the nineteenth century, along with two wills and several other notable documents. These sources document a community history, illuminating broader issues centering on politics, religion, and economics as well as providing unusual insight into the concerns and values of indigenous leaders. These texts detail the projects financed by the De la Cruz family, how they talked about them, and which belongings they deemed important enough to pass along after their death. Designed for classroom use, this clear and concise primary source includes a wealth of details about indigenous everyday life and preserves and makes accessible a rich and precious heritage. The engaging introduction highlights issues of class relations and the public and performative character of Nahua Christianity. The authors provide the necessary tools to help students understand the colonial context in which these documents were produced.

The Life Within provides a social and cultural history of the indigenous people of a region of central Mexico in the later colonial period—as told through documents in Nahuatl and Spanish. It views the indigenous world from the inside out, focusing first on the household—buildings, lots, household saints—and expanding outward toward the householders and the greater community. The internal focus of this book provides a comprehensive picture of indigenous society, exploring the categories by which people are identified, their interactions, their activities, and the aspects of the local corporations that manifest themselves in household life. Pizzigoni brings indigenous-language social history into the later colonial period, whereas the emphasis until now has fallen heavily on the earlier phase. The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries emerge as a dynamic time that saw, along with cultural persistence, many new adaptations and creations. Covering a period of over a century and a half, this study goes beyond a monolithic treatment of the region to introduce for the first time a systematic analysis of subregional variation in vocabulary and real-life phenomena, showing how, within larger regional trends, each tiniest community of the Toluca Valley retained markers of its individuality.