Examines the many iterations of a story of child martyrdom in colonial Mexico.

A cornerstone of the evangelization of early New Spain was the conversion of Nahua boys, especially the children of elites. They were to be emissaries between Nahua society and foreign missionaries, hastening the transmission of the gospel. Under the tutelage of Franciscan friars, the boys also learned to act with militant zeal. They sermonized and smashed sacred objects. Some went so far as to kill a Nahua religious leader. For three boys from Tlaxcala, the reprisals were just as deadly.

In Child Martyrs and Militant Evangelization in New Spain, Stephanie Schmidt sheds light on a rare manuscript about Nahua child converts who were killed for acts of zealotry during the late 1520s. This is the Nahuatl version of an account by an early missionary-friar, Toribio de Benavente Motolinía. To this day, Catholics venerate the slain boys as Christian martyrs who suffered for their piety. Yet Franciscan accounts of the boys’ sacrifice were influenced by ulterior motives, as the friars sought to deflect attention from their missteps in New Spain. Illuminating Nahua perspectives on this story and period, Schmidt leaves no doubt as to who drove this violence as she dramatically expands the knowledgebase available to students of colonial Latin America.

Nahua Horizons: Writing, Persuasion, and Futurities in Colonial Mexico investigates how Nahuas conceptualized their futures in the early colonial period. Scholar Ezekiel G. Stear delves deeply into canonical texts such as the Florentine Codex and the Crónica mexicayotl as well as understudied texts such as the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, the Tira de Tepechpan, and the Anales de Juan Bautista. The study does more than describe how Nahuas conceived of their own futures: it also shows their specific plans for moving into the coming years.

The book examines how Nahua writers in Central Mexico and other Mesoamerican voices in colonial Spanish America played an active, decisive role in shaping culture, using writing to persuade their communities to mold their own destinies, even amid colonial upheaval. This work opens up new directions for research and teaching, shifting inquiry from how Nahuas preserved cultural continuity to how they envisioned their roles as pathfinders toward times to come.

Nahua Horizons challenges the notion that the Spanish erased Nahua culture. The book emphasizes the ways people kept sovereignty over the futures they envisioned for themselves and their communities. Stear’s bold new approach follows the paths that Nahuas forged ahead into unknown times.