The Aztecs at independence : Nahua culture makers in Central Mexico, 1799-1832

Author / Creator

Melton-Villanueva, Miriam, author

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Online

Physical

Summary

"This manuscript offers the first internal ethnographic view of central Mexican indigenous communities at the critical time of Independence. Melton-Villanueva uses previously unknown Nahuatl-langua...

"This manuscript offers the first internal ethnographic view of central Mexican indigenous communities at the critical time of Independence. Melton-Villanueva uses previously unknown Nahuatl-language sources--primarily last will and testaments--to provide a more comprehensive understanding of indigenous society during the transition from colonial to post-colonial times. Describing their own world, Nahuatl-speaking women and men left last wills in their own tongue during an era when the written tradition of their language was generally assumed to have ended. In testaments clustered around epidemic cycles, they responded to profound changes in population, land use, and local governance with astonishing vibrancy. At the moment of Independence, after an entire colonial period of legal decrees aimed at eradicating indigenous languages, local notaries began to adopt Spanish as a means of preserving their communities' interests. The careful work of the notaries themselves allows a window into the development of modern Mexican Spanish, its unique character founded in indigenous concepts of space, time, and grammar"--Provided by publisher.

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