secularización y romanización. Si bien parece evidente que la

Book Reviews / Colonial Period
299
secularización y romanización. Si bien parece evidente que la modernidad supuso ineludiblemente un proceso de secularización, a lo cual la Iglesia Católica respondió defensivamente con fuertes presiones disciplinarias a fin de afianzar la autoridad romana, hoy
en día los avances teóricos, metodológicos y sociológicos sugieren que estas afirmaciones
merecen ser relativizadas, dado que toda secularización es relativa a su contexto; en pocas
palabras, suele encontrar limitaciones.
En este sentido, la introducción del libro no presenta los grandes ejes problemáticos
que se despliegan a lo largo de toda la obra, así como tampoco da cuenta de los criterios
metodológicos con los que fueron escogidos los trabajos aquí reunidos. Una introducción
más amplia, incluso más analítica, que diera cuenta del hilo conductor que hilvana los
distintos trabajos entre sí, habría ayudado a que el lector sacara mayor provecho de la lectura de este libro. Además, puesto que se abordan dos escenarios geográficos tan diversos
como son la Italia en proceso de modernización, en puja por su unificación nacional, y un
Chile que emerge de la época colonial bajo dominio hispánico, hubiera sido recomendable ofrecerle al lector en la introducción algunas herramientas comparativas que le permitieran poner en diálogo los estudios aquí reunidos, que tratan sobre variadas épocas,
escenarios geográficos y sociedades.
miranda lida, CONICET, Argentina
doi 10.1215/00182168-2077342
Memories of Conquest: Becoming Mexicano in Colonial Guatemala.
By laura e. matthew. First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Illustrations. Maps. Notes.
Bibliography. Index. xiii, 318 pp. Cloth, $45.00.
To understand the indigenous view of the conquest, Laura Matthew tells us, “requires a
reimagining of the conquest itself” ( p. 2). We have traditionally asked, as she points out
in her introduction, how Cortez, with his handful of companions, could have conquered
Mexico and Central America. The answer, of course, is that they did not, at least not on
their own. The conquest took almost 200 years to complete, and much of it was carried
out by the indigenous allies of Cortez, Alvarado, and the other conquistadores. These
allies sometimes even took the initiative and operated independently of the Spanish.
The main contingent came from Nahuatl-speaking areas of central Mexico, but there
were soldiers from the Mixtec and Zapotec zones of Oaxaca as well. These men considered themselves to be conquistadores as well, and they made this a prominent part of
their colonial identities. The Spanish were the first to acknowledge the invaluable contribution their indigenous allies made to the colonial project and awarded their central
Mexican and Oaxacan soldiers a special status, the most important part of this being
an exemption from personal tribute. When this exemption was first challenged in the
sixteenth century, Spanish veterans of the conquest came to their old comrades’ defense.
Matthew focuses her study on the Mexican allies of the Spanish who, after the
conquest of Guatemala, settled in Ciudad Vieja, a town located in the Guatemalan high-
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HAHR / May
lands. She shows how they continued to speak Nahuatl right through the colonial period
and how, through lengthy lawsuits, they defended their status and maintained a distinctive identity as Spanish-allied conquerors of the Maya well into the nineteenth century.
She uses a great variety of sources, including the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan—of which
she offers a skillful interpretation—and a pictorial manuscript in the indigenous style,
as well as the traditional archival sources. She also spent time in Ciudad Vieja, whose
people, she reports, are keenly aware of their history as Spanish allies and conquerors of
the Maya even though they no longer speak an indigenous language.
On a more general level, Matthew uses the Ciudad Vieja case to explore the
dilemma of a people who play key supporting roles in a colonial project but at the end of
the day are still among the colonized. For the people of Ciudad Vieja there was a constant question about boundaries. Over time, more and more people were able to claim
descent from the original indigenous allies of the Spanish. Yet the value of this status
depended in part on its being the exclusive identity of a relatively small group of people.
If too many people were able to except themselves from tribute payments, the whole
purpose of the colony would be undermined. Thus the descendants of the Mexican allies
time and again faced the prospect of their privileges being watered down or completely
eliminated, in part because so many others were claiming a similar exception and in
part because colonial officials did not recognize their status, either out of ignorance or
because they were actively seeking to end these special rights. This in turn caused the
descendants of the conquistadores’ indigenous allies to draw sharp lines between themselves and other indigenous people, highlighting their cooperation with the Spanish,
their sincere acceptance of Christianity, and later their familiarity with Spanish. So the
descendants of the Mexican allies, who spoke an indigenous language and suffered some
of the same discrimination that indigenous people typically experienced in the colonial
regime, had to distance themselves from others who shared their Mesoamerican heritage, repeatedly memorializing their role as conquerors and their status as being more
“civilized” than the surrounding Maya.
This is a very well-written and informative book that explores an important but,
until relatively recently, neglected topic in Latin American colonial history. One thing
that Matthew should continue to explore is the militias formed by the indigenous
inhabitants of Ciudad Vieja. It is becoming increasingly clear that military service for
indigenous people — through things like the militias Matthew describes, the raising
of detachments in indigenous areas to fight in the wars of independence, the practice
of impressment by national armies during the late nineteenth century, or the early
twentieth-century formation of revolutionary bands in indigenous areas — has been a
very important catalyst for change, helping to define indigenous nationalism and to escalate ethnic conflict in certain periods. In Ciudad Vieja Matthew has perhaps the earliest
example of this phenomenon, and it is hoped that she will have more to say on the topic
in the future.
john d. monaghan, University of Illinois at Chicago
doi 10.1215/00182168-2077351