The Conquest All Over Again: Nahuas and Zapotecs Thinking, Writing, and Painting Spanish Colonialism

by Susan Schroeder (editor)

The Spaniards typically portrayed the conquest and fall of Mexico Tenochtitlan as Armageddon, while native peoples in colonial Mesoamerica continued to write and paint their histories and lives often without any mention of the foreigners in their midst. Their accounts took the form of annals, chronicles, religious treatises, tribute accounts, theatre pieces, and wills. Thousand of documents were produced, almost all of which served to preserve indigenous ways of doing things. But what provoked record keeping on such a grand scale? At what point did pre-contact sacred writing become utilitarian and quotidian? Were their texts documentaries, a form of boosterism, even ingenious intellectualism, or were they ultimately a literature of ruin? This volume seeks to address key aspects of indigenous perspectives of the conquest and Spanish colonialism by examining what they themselves recorded and why they did so.

Genres: History, Art

273 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2010

Reviews

[AskHistorians]

Just as Leon-Portilla's Broken Spears offered to its audience a deeper insight into the perspectives of indigenous peoples during the Conquest of the Aztec Empire, so too does Schroeder's novel work The Conquest All Over Again refocus Mesoamerican history away from a Eurocentric perspective. Reviewing many of the major historical works produced by indigenous peoples during Stage II colonial history, Schroeder et al. shed light on the social forces that faced indigenous peoples after the fall of the Aztec Empire and how they perceived their world following the end of Mexica supremacy. For those seeking to understand the course of later Mexican history and its relationship to the region's pre-Columbian past, this text serves as a nearly unrivalled bridge between both eras.