Mexico's Indigenous Communities

Their Lands and Histories, 1500-2010

Bibliographic Data

ID2787067
AuthorsJohn F Schwaller (State University of New York at Potsdam, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume92
Issue2
Pages339-340
Publication date2012-05-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182168-1545737
OpenAlexW2323787712
LanguageEN
Citations received5

Ethelia Ruiz Medrano has undertaken a grand project: to trace land possession and the remembered history of that possession in native communities across the last five hundred years in central Mexico. Her work is based on a series of case studies from the conquest up to the present day. She stresses that the native populations were not passive victims of forces acting upon them but rather active participants in framing their own history.The work is divided chronologically into four chapters, corresponding to the four epochs since 1500: the century following the conquest, the two colonial centuries, the two centuries of independence, and the modern era. The work is profusely illustrated, drawing on documentation held by local communities, including pictorial manuscripts that validate local claims to land. The work also relies on modern ethnographic material, including oral histories, which also help to document the perception of land possession and its tortured history in Mexico since the arrival of the Spanish.Ruiz Medrano demonstrates that in the sixteenth century, Spain established legal policies governing the application of the rule of law over landholdings in the colony. The Spanish Crown had begun to authorize the allocation of land to Spanish colonists, beginning with early land grants from the hand of Cortés. Yet these grants inevitably conflicted with native groups’ claims over the same land. The royal courts emerged as the arbiters of these disputes. In adjudicating claims, the Spanish established the bases upon which native communities could pursue their rights, most notably through the use of written documents, with a certain advantage being granted to what were seen as ancient manuscripts, dating from before the arrival of the Spanish. In the later colonial period, responding to the massive mortality among native population due to European diseases, the Spanish embarked on a program to move natives from their ancestral lands to conveniently located population centers. This opened up more vacant lands for Span-ish occupation. Many lands already had been occupied informally, by both Spaniards and natives. The Spanish Crown allowed these lands to be declared legally occupied in return for payment of a fee. Native populations continued to demonstrate their rights to lands in the face of these policies, consolidating landholdings and reasserting their dominance. The Spanish also recognized traditional claims to power by various elites within the native communities. Native communities produced documentation validating their land claims and the rights of their leaders even when they were not involved in lawsuits to defend those rights. These documents, and the oral traditions surrounding them, helped to forge the collective identity of the community.In the two centuries of Mexican independence, native communities have confronted a new set of challenges. The nineteenth century saw tension between the claim of liberties for all citizens and the central government’s efforts to control the native population. Native communities sought to assert their power to self-government, while the central government sought to standardize its rule across the nation. At the same time, the natives continued to assert their own control over community lands and property. In the political arena the native communities might have sided with the liberals, who as federalists asserted the importance of local authority. Yet with regard to land tenure the natives were supported by the conservatives, who favored the maintenance of traditional forms of landholding. Later in the century, the native communities were protected to a certain degree by Maximilian during his short-lived empire, only to be subjected to liberal efforts to reduce their power, authority, and landholdings that culminated under the rule of Porfirio Díaz. Yet in each instance the effect was somewhat haphazard. Not all communities either benefitted or suffered. The creation of the ejidos following the revolution allowed some communities to regain historic lands at the same time that other communities merely reasserted their traditional control.In the end, land is an essential resource for native communities, a resource that reflects much of their collective identity. Through the use of ancient titles, historical memory, and local history, towns and villages were able to negotiate to defend their lands. They achieved success when they mustered these resources in efforts that also played to the nuances of the governing legal system of the moment.Ruiz Medrano brings a wide variety of resources to bear to drive home her point. She has access to primordial titles not only from national archives but from some pueblos themselves. She also incorporates oral histories to help recover the past, at the same time that more traditional materials, such as seemingly endless lawsuits over land, help to provide concrete examples for her conclusions. This is a fascinating study that breaks important new ground through the utilization of a wide variety of documentation. Ruiz Medrano provides us with an important glimpse into a topic that has been central to the development of Mexico since the arrival of the Spanish

Agriculture · Ancient history · Archaeology · Colonialism · CONQUEST · Ethnography · Ethnology · Framing (construction · Genealogy · Geography · Independence (probability theory · Indigenous · Land tenure · Political science · Possession (linguistics · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Latin American history and culture · Law · Politics and Society in Latin America

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