Rambling Thoughts on Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca

         The goal of Terraciano’s monograph is to examine history of the Ñudzahui primarily through the native-language documents written by members of the Ñudzahui nobility and then study the impact of the Spanish and colonialism. Terraciano combines these sources with linguistic, textual, and visual techniques and Spanish colonial sources to analyze change and continuity in the region’s sociopolitical structure, religious practices, gender dynamics, land tenure, and self-ascription as Ñudzahui.

        Like Farriss and Spalding, Terraciano illustrates how colonial control of the Ñudzahui, who were divided into multiple kingdoms united by interdynastic marriages to connect yuhuitayu, came to rely on local patterns of sociopolitical system that gradually changed. The Ñudzahui nobility acted on behalf of their own interests while also representing their communities through reciprocal obligations or religious festivals. Their religious traditions persisted in the veneration of Catholic saints, their images, and All Saints’ Day. In addition to change and continuity in religion, gender roles also shifted from the preconquest patterns of acceptance of women rulers to the colonial practice of privileging males in these interdynastic marriages in cabildos instituted by the colonial state. Systems of land tenure also changed as Ñudzahui elites leased it to Spaniards, increasingly bought and sold land, donated it to religious institutions, or corporate landholding in the form of Catholic confraternities developed.

            While explaining all the aforementioned processes, the significance of and level of detail Terraciano uncovers from Ñudzahui testaments, inventories, letters, and church-related sources provides, as the author asserts, a new lens with view to view the construction of Ñudzahui identity in light of similar studies of the Yucatec Maya or Nahua. Native-language sources as used by the author are by nature limited by their origins with the nobility of the ethnolinguistic group, but it raises important questions on ethnogenesis within colonial Mexican indigenous populations, particularly in ways that may differ from the Nahua and Yucatec Maya examples Terraciano alludes to for comparable examples in Mesoamerica.

            A particularly effective aspect of Terraciano’s history lies in the innovative methods employed to interpret visual sources, particularly codices and lienzos. Admitting that the visual sources examined were not intended to explain the entirety of Ñudzahui cosmology to outsiders, he nonetheless interprets visual evidence through religious symbolism and stylistic patterns to detect social values and the impact of colonialism. For instance, the importance of the reed mat with two seated figures, male and female, with multiple pairs arranged vertically to represent genealogical ties, becomes part of the author’s argument about the role of these earlier pictorial writings in recording origins of dynasties, as well as the importance of women. Gestures of the hand, size and dressing styles of depicted forms, and even the appearance of European-style doors in images of palaces also pertain to social relations.

Styles of dress, like the adoption by men of the Ñudzahui to European clothes instead of the previous loincloth, likewise assist in the monograph’s chronology of Spanish and European influences. By the end of the 16^th century, when writing in the Roman alphabet became the dominant method, pictorial writing motifs recur in church-related documents that probably demonstrate continuity and change in Ñudzahui Christianity. The best example of this is depiction of Christ and the Virgin Mary across from each other in heaven with gestures and gender pairing reminiscent of pictorial drawings of noble married couples as mother or father.

       On the other hand, one potential limitation or conceptual problem arose for the end of the colonial period. Terraciano situates his conclusions in opposition to Farriss’s, arguing that the late colonial period did not assert itself as a “second conquest” for Ñudzahui communities. One cannot help but wonder if non-native language records could have shed light on the ways Bourbon reforms or the increase in Spanish leasing of land and non-native dominance of trade and merchant activity undermined Ñudzahui nobility or economic autonomy in other ways, even if the region did not attract a significant number of Spaniards or obrajes. Was inequality within Ñudzahui communities exacerbated by 18^th century changes of non-native control of trade and the subordinate incorporation of the group into a money economy? Were relations with mestizos or people of African descent similar for both Ñudzahui nobility and commoners by the late colonial period? Native-language sources may not answer these questions or will leave lacunae.