HIS 334: History of Mexico and Cuba: Mexico : Primary Sources

"This rich anthology provides a glimpse of modern Mexico through the eyes of foreign observers. Some of these selections are by well-known authors (Alexander von Humboldt, John Reed, B. Traven, Evelyn Waugh). Some are unpublished pieces by little-known writers, and six are available here for the first time in English." "The writings fall into four periods: the transitions to independence and Mexico's first decades as a sovereign country (1800-1867), the era of Liberal modernization (1867-1910), the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940), and the post-World War II era. Four major topics show up repeatedly: ethnicity, gender, and race; cultural differences between Mexicans and foreigners; political stability and instability; and the economy and its impact on Mexicans. Although observers expressed a wide range of view-points on these issues, they agreed in finding a stunning degree of ethnic and regional diversity as well as what they saw as stark contrasts between urban and rural, rich and poor, modernity and tradition." "In addition to Anglo-American authors, the anthology includes selections by German, French, Norwegian, and Spanish authors. Just over a third of the pieces are by women, who offer glimpses of private worlds closed to men, such as convent life, relations between women and their servants, and household affairs."--Page 4 of cover.

"The discovery, exploration, and conquest of the New World is here imaginatively treated as a journey from fantasy to reality, from complicity to rejection, from mythification to criticism. Focusing on certain key firsthand narratives of the Spanish conquest, the author views various journals, letters, and other documents not merely as narratives of facts and events but as literary expressions of the dynamics of the writers' experience: recording the transformation of their perceptions of New World realities and showing the gradual development of a critical consciousness that questions their sense of identity and the validity of European cultural models. The author illuminates the conceptual and aesthetic developments that mark the beginnings of a new literature in the making. Gradually, the aesthetic requirements and canons of Europe are left behind as this new literature begins to convey the new realities of colonial Spanish America that shape the complex poetics of Alonso de Ercilla's great epic poem La Araucana. The book begins with analyses of texts by Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortes, showing how the discourse of mythification fictionalizes both the New World itself and the nature and meaning of the conquest. Then, as the conquistadors' expeditions increasingly fail disillusionment engenders ideological crisis, questioning, and demythification, as exemplified in Nunez Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios. The book concludes by synthesizing the various historical and aesthetic elements that led to the awakening in the conquistadors of a new, divided, and contradicting consciousness, whose first literary flowering was La Araucana." - Publisher description.

"Hernán Cortés's Cartas de Relacíon, written over a seven-year period to Charles V of Spain, provide an extraordinary narrative account of the conquest of Mexico from the founding of the coastal town of Veracruz until Cortés's journey to Honduras in 1525. Pagden's English translation has been prepared from a close examination of the earliest surviving manuscript and of the first printed editions, and he also provides a new introduction offering a bold and innovative interpretation of the nature of the conquest and Cortes's involvement in it. J.H. Elliot's introductory essay explains Cortes's conflicts with the Crown and with Diego Velazquez, the governor of Cuba."--Publisher webpage.

"De Soto and his expedition of over 600 men spent four years (1539-43) traveling through what is now Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. He discovered the Mississippi River, died of a fever, and was buried near the river. These documents are the only detailed eyewitness records of the most advanced native civilization in North America - a culture that vanished in the wake of European contact." - Publisher description

"In 1519 Hernan Cortes and a small band of Spanish conquistadors overthrew the mighty Mexican empire of the Aztecs. Using excerpts primarily drawn from Bernal Diaz's 1632 account of the Spanish victory and testimonies - many recently uncovered - of indigenous Nahua survivors, Victors and Vanquished clearly demonstrates how personal interests, class and ethnic biases, and political considerations influenced the interpretation of these momentous events."--Jacket.

"Offers a rich variety of archival documents in translation which bring to life the political and economic workings of Latin American colonies during 300 years of Spanish rule, as well as the day-to-day lives of the colonies' inhabitants." - Publisher description

"On their return to New Mexico from El Paso after the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, the New Mexican settlers were confronted with continuous raids by hostile Indian tribes, disease and an inhospitable landscape. In spite of this, in the early and mid-eighteenth century, the New Mexicans went about their daily lives as best they could, as shown in original documents from the time. The documents show them making deals, traveling around the countryside and to and from El Paso and Mexico City, complaining about and arguing with each other, holding festivals, and making plans for the future of their children. It also shows them interacting with the presidio soldiers, the Franciscan friars and Inquisition officials, El Paso and Chihuahua merchants, the occasional Frenchman, and their Pueblo Indian allies. Because many of the documents include oral testimony, we are able to read what they had to say, sometimes angry, asking for help, or giving excuses for their behavior, as written down by a scribe at the time. This book includes fifty-four original handwritten documents from the early and mid-eighteenth century." - Publisher description

"Women in early 18th century Spanish Colonial New Mexico had rights and privileges under Spanish law that were not enjoyed by other women in North America until the late 19th and early 20th century. Women were considered separate entities under the law and valuable members of Spanish society. As such, they could own property, inherit in their own name, and act as court witnesses. In particular they could make accusations and denunciations to the local alcalde mayor and governor, which they frequently did. The documents in this book show that Spanish Colonial women were aware of their rights and took advantage of them to assert themselves in the struggling communities of the New Mexican frontier. In the documents, the women are shown making complaints of theft, physical and verbal abuse by their husbands or other women, and of non-payment of dowries or other inheritance. Other documents are included showing men accusing women of misrepresenting property ownership and dowry payments and of adultery and slander. pain was a legalistic society and both women and men used the courts to settle even minor matters. Because the court proceedings were written down by a scribe and stored in the archives, many documents still exist. From these, thirty-one have been selected allowing us to hear the words of some outspoken Spanish women and the sometimes angry men, speaking their minds in court about their spouses, lovers of their spouses, children, and relatives, as well as their land, livestock and expected inheritance. The documents transcribed and translated in this book are a small number of the existing documents held in Santa Fe at the Spanish Archives of New Mexico, at the Bancroft Library at University of California, the Archivo General de la Nacion in Mexico City, and elsewhere. A synopsis, editor's notes, maps, and biographical notes are provided. The material can be considered a companion, in part, to Ralph Emerson Twitchell's 1914 two volumes, The Spanish Archives of New Mexico, available in new editions from Sunstone Press." -- back cover.

"Edited and annotated by John F. Chuchiak IV, this collection of previously untranslated and unpublished documents from the Holy Office of the Inquisition in New Spain provides a clear understanding of how the Inquisition originated, evolved, and functioned in the colonial Spanish territories of Mexico and northern Central America. The three sections of documents lay out the laws and regulations of the Inquisition, follow examples of its day-to-day operations and procedures, and detail select trial proceedings. Chuchiak's opening chapter and brief section introductions provide the social, historical, political, and religious background necessary to comprehend the complex and generally misunderstood institutions of the Inquisition and the effect it has had on societal development in modern-day Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Featuring fifty-eight newly translated documents, meticulous annotations, and trenchant contextual analysis, this documentary history is a resource for those seeking to understand the Inquisition in general and its nearly three-hundred-year reign in the New World in particular." - Publisher description

"Transcending Conquest goes beyond the familiar voices recorded by scribes in central colonial Mexico and the Spanish conquerors to include indigenous views from the outlying Mesoamerican provinces and to explore Native historical narratives from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. Wood explores how evolving sentiments in indigenous communities about increasing competition for resources ultimately resulted in an anti-Spanish discourse, a trend largely overlooked by scholars--until now. Transcending Conquest takes us beyond the romantic focus on the deeds of the Spanish conqueror to show how the so-called “conquest” was limited by the ways that Native peoples and their descendants reshaped the historical narrative to better suit their memories, identities, and visions of the future." - Publisher description

Vol I. (click here), Vol II. (click here), Vol III. (click here)

"The Bexar Archives are the official Spanish documents that preserve the political, military, economic, and social life of the Spanish province of Texas and the Mexican state of Coahulia y Texas. Both in their volume and breadth of subject matter, the Bexar Archives are the single most important source for the history of Hispanic Texas up to 1836. [...] The Archives, housed at the University of Texas for more than a century, consist of approximately 300,000 pages of diplomatic, military, religious, and other manuscript and printed records of the Spanish colonial province of Texas from 1717 to 1821 (the area encompassing the present Mexican state of Coahuila, all of Texas, and a portion of Louisiana including the town of Natchitoches) and the Mexican District of Bexar (the area from the Nueces to the Sabine rivers, including the Texas towns of Anahuac, Brazoria, Velasco, Copano, Goliad, Gonzalez, and Nacogdoches) from 1822 to 1836." - website

Librarian note: documents available in original facsimiles and translations.

"Mexican History is a comprehensive and innovative primary source reader in Mexican history from the pre-Columbian past to the neoliberal present. Chronologically organized chapters facilitate the book's assimilation into most course syllabi. Its selection of documents thoughtfully conveys enduring themes of Mexican history--land and labor, indigenous people, religion, and state formation--while also incorporating recent advances in scholarly research on the frontier, urban life, popular culture, race and ethnicity, and gender. Student-friendly pedagogical features include contextual introductions to each chapter and each reading, lists of key terms and related sources, and guides to recommended readings and Web-based resources."--Publisher's website.

"A diverse collection of more than eighty selections, [including] ... poetry, folklore, fiction, polemics, photo essays, songs, political cartoons, memoirs, satire, and scholarly writing"--Page 4 of cover.

"Drawing upon a personal collection of more than 300 letters exchanged between her parents and other family members across the U.S.-Mexico border, Miroslava Chávez-García recreates and gives meaning to the hope, fear, and longing migrants experienced in their everyday lives both "here" and "there" ("aquí y allá"). As private sources of communication hidden from public consumption and historical research, the letters provide a rare glimpse into the deeply emotional, personal, and social lives of ordinary Mexican men and women as recorded in their immediate, firsthand accounts. Chávez-García demonstrates not only how migrants struggled to maintain their sense of humanity in "El Norte" but also how those remaining at home made sense of their changing identities in response to the loss of loved ones who sometimes left for weeks, months, or years at a time, or simply never returned"-- Provided by publisher

"A descendant of both Spanish settlers and Nahua (Aztec) rulers, Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (ca. 1578–1650) was an avid collector of indigenous pictorial and alphabetic texts and a prodigious chronicler of the history of pre-conquest and conquest-era Mexico. His magnum opus, here for the first time in English translation, is one of the liveliest, most accessible, and most influential accounts of the rise and fall of Aztec Mexico derived from indigenous sources and memories and written from a native perspective. [...] Composed in the first half of the seventeenth century, a hundred years after the arrival of the Spanish conquerors in Mexico, the History of the Chichimeca Nation is based on native accounts but written in the medieval chronicle style. It is a gripping tale of adventure, romance, seduction, betrayal, war, heroism, misfortune, and tragedy. Written at a time when colonization and depopulation were devastating indigenous communities, its vivid descriptions of the cultural sophistication, courtly politics, and imperial grandeur of the Nahua world explicitly challenged European portrayals of native Mexico as a place of savagery and ignorance. Unpublished for centuries, it nonetheless became an important source for many of our most beloved and iconic memories of the Nahuas, widely consulted by scholars of Spanish American history, politics, literature, anthropology, and art." - Publisher description

"One of the great documents of colonial Mexico, the Codex Chimalpopoca chronicles the rise of Aztec civilization and preserves the mythology on which it was based - supplying a richness of detail unmatched by any other native-language source. Specifically, its two complementary texts, Annals of Cuauhtitlan and Legend of the Suns, record the pre-Cortesian history of the Valley of Mexico together with first-hand versions of that region's myths. Of particular interest are the stories of the hero-god Quetzalcoatl, for which the Chimalpopoca is the premier source."--BOOK JACKET. "John Bierhorst's work represents the first major scholarship on the Codex Chimalpopoca in more than forty years. His is the first edition in English and the first in any language to include the complete text of the Legend of the Suns."--BOOK JACKET. "The precise, readable translation - fully indexed - will not only contribute to the study of Aztec history and literature but will make the codex an indispensable reference for Aztec cultural topics, including land tenure, statecraft, the role of women, the tribute system, warfare, and human sacrifice."--Jacket.

"Diego Durán (c. 1537 – 1588) was a Dominican friar best known for his authorship of one of the earliest Western books on the history and culture of the Aztecs, The History of the Indies of New Spain, a book that was much criticised in his lifetime for helping the "heathen" maintain their culture. Also known as the Durán Codex, The History of the Indies of New Spain was completed in about 1581. Durán also wrote Book of the Gods and Rites (1574–1576), and Ancient Calendar (c. 1579).[1] He was fluent in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, and was therefore able to consult natives and Aztec codices as well as work done by earlier friars. His empathetic nature allowed him to gain the confidence of many native people who would not share their stories with Europeans, and was able to document many previously unknown folktales and legends that make his work unique. " -- from Wikipedia, "Diego Durán"

"Translation of Commentarios reales, pt. 1 which was originally published in 1609 under title: Primera parte de los Commentarios reales, and pt. 2 of which was originally published in 1617 under title: Historia general del Peru. History of the Incas written in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries by the son of an Incan princess and a Spanish Conquistador."

"Focused on the causes, conduct, and consequences of the revolution which ended General Porfirio Diaz's thirty-five year rule as dictator-president, Mexican Revolution explores the unique combination of alliances of the participants that led to the revolution along with the result -- radical new constitution that demanded education for all children, redistributed land and water resources, and established progressive labor laws." - Publisher description

"This reader collects a rich array of documents that show how Mexicans viewed their history and culture since independence. Offering a wide variety of materials--texts, visuals, videos, and sounds--that can be tailored to the needs of individual instructors, these sources will stimulate critical thinking and give students new insight--Publisher description." - Publisher description