Results by title

200 books match the query 'Indians of Mexico' and 7 start with d

cover of Debating Oaxaca Archaeology

Debating Oaxaca Archaeology

Edited by Joyce Marcus

University of Michigan Press, 1990

The essays in this collection examine a variety of topics within Oaxacan archaeology, from settlement and land use to scale and complexity. They are based on papers presented at the 1987 meeting of the Northeast Mesoamericanists Society, held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia.
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cover of Decoding Gender: Law and Practice in Contemporary Mexico

Decoding Gender

Law and Practice in Contemporary Mexico

Baitenmann, Helga

Rutgers University Press, 2007

Gender discrimination pervades nearly all legal institutions and practices in Latin America. The deeper question is how this shapes broader relations of power. By examining the relationship between law and gender as it manifests itself in the Mexican legal system, the thirteen essays in this volume show how law is produced by, but also perpetuates, unequal power relations. At the same time, however, authors show how law is often malleable and can provide spaces for negotiation and redress. The contributors (including political scientists, sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, and economists) explore these issues-not only in courts, police stations, and prisons, but also in rural organizations, indigenous communities, and families.

By bringing new interdisciplinary perspectives to issues such as the quality of citizenship and the rule of law in present-day Mexico, this book raises important issues for research on the relationship between law and gender more widely.

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cover of Defiance and Deference in Mexico's Colonial North: Indians under Spanish Rule in Nueva Vizcaya

Defiance and Deference in Mexico's Colonial North

Indians under Spanish Rule in Nueva Vizcaya

By Susan Deeds

University of Texas Press, 2003

Thomas F. McGann Memorial Prize, Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies, 2004
Southwest Book Award, Border Regional Library Association, 2003

In their efforts to impose colonial rule on Nueva Vizcaya from the sixteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth, Spaniards established missions among the principal Indian groups of present-day eastern Sinaloa, northern Durango, and southern Chihuahua, Mexico—the Xiximes, Acaxees, Conchos, Tepehuanes, and Tarahumaras. Yet, when the colonial era ended two centuries later, only the Tepehuanes and Tarahumaras remained as distinct peoples, the other groups having disappeared or blended into the emerging mestizo culture of the northern frontier. Why were these two indigenous peoples able to maintain their group identity under conditions of conquest, while the others could not?

In this book, Susan Deeds constructs authoritative ethnohistories of the Xiximes, Acaxees, Conchos, Tepehuanes, and Tarahumaras to explain why only two of the five groups successfully resisted Spanish conquest and colonization. Drawing on extensive research in colonial-era archives, Deeds provides a multifaceted analysis of each group's past from the time the Spaniards first attempted to settle them in missions up to the middle of the eighteenth century, when secular pressures had wrought momentous changes. Her masterful explanations of how ethnic identities, subsistence patterns, cultural beliefs, and gender relations were forged and changed over time on Mexico's northern frontier offer important new ways of understanding the struggle between resistance and adaptation in which Mexico's indigenous peoples are still engaged, five centuries after the "Spanish Conquest."

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cover of Delirio—The Fantastic, the Demonic, and the Réel: The Buried History of Nuevo León

Delirio—The Fantastic, the Demonic, and the Réel

The Buried History of Nuevo León

By Marie Theresa Hernández

University of Texas Press, 2002

Striking, inexplicable stories circulate among the people of Nuevo León in northern Mexico. Stories of conversos (converted Jews) who fled the Inquisition in Spain and became fabulously wealthy in Mexico. Stories of women and children buried in walls and under houses. Stories of an entire, secret city hidden under modern-day Monterrey. All these stories have no place or corroboration in the official histories of Nuevo León.

In this pioneering ethnography, Marie Theresa Hernández explores how the folktales of Nuevo León encode aspects of Nuevolenese identity that have been lost, repressed, or fetishized in "legitimate" histories of the region. She focuses particularly on stories regarding three groups: the Sephardic Jews said to be the "original" settlers of the region, the "disappeared" indigenous population, and the supposed "barbaric" society that persists in modern Nuevo León. Hernández's explorations into these stories uncover the region's complicated history, as well as the problematic and often fascinating relationship between history and folklore, between officially accepted "facts" and "fictions" that many Nuevoleneses believe as truth.

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cover of Dietary Reconstruction at Chalcatzingo: A Formative Period Site in Morelos, Mexico

Dietary Reconstruction at Chalcatzingo

A Formative Period Site in Morelos, Mexico

Margaret J. Schoeninger

University of Michigan Press, 2019

In this work, Margaret Schoeninger investigates the use of bone strontium levels in archaeologists’ reconstruction of diet in prehistoric and recent human populations.
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cover of Divided Peoples: Policy, Activism, and Indigenous Identities on the U.S.-Mexico Border

Divided Peoples

Policy, Activism, and Indigenous Identities on the U.S.-Mexico Border

Christina Leza

University of Arizona Press, 2019

The border region of the Sonoran Desert, which spans southern Arizona in the United States and northern Sonora, Mexico, has attracted national and international attention. But what is less discussed in national discourses is the impact of current border policies on the Native peoples of the region. There are twenty-six tribal nations recognized by the U.S. federal government in the southern border region and approximately eight groups of Indigenous peoples in the United States with historical ties to Mexico—the Yaqui, the O’odham, the Cocopah, the Kumeyaay, the Pai, the Apaches, the Tiwa (Tigua), and the Kickapoo.

Divided Peoples addresses the impact border policies have on traditional lands and the peoples who live there—whether environmental degradation, border patrol harassment, or the disruption of traditional ceremonies. Anthropologist Christina Leza shows how such policies affect the traditional cultural survival of Indigenous peoples along the border. The author examines local interpretations and uses of international rights tools by Native activists, counterdiscourse on the U.S.-Mexico border, and challenges faced by Indigenous border activists when communicating their issues to a broader public.

Through ethnographic research with grassroots Indigenous activists in the region, the author reveals several layers of division—the division of Indigenous peoples by the physical U.S.-Mexico border, the divisions that exist between Indigenous perspectives and mainstream U.S. perspectives regarding the border, and the traditionalist/nontraditionalist split among Indigenous nations within the United States. Divided Peoples asks us to consider the possibilities for challenging settler colonialism both in sociopolitical movements and in scholarship about Indigenous peoples and lands.
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cover of Domestic Life in Prehispanic Capitals: A Study of Specialization, Hierarchy, and Ethnicity

Domestic Life in Prehispanic Capitals

A Study of Specialization, Hierarchy, and Ethnicity

Edited by Linda R. Manzanilla and Claude Chapdelaine

University of Michigan Press, 2009

With major differences in size, urban plans, and population density, the capitals of New World states had large heterogeneous societies, sometimes multiethnic and highly specialized, making these cities amazing backdrops for complex interactions.
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