Kategoria BISAC: History >> Latin America - Mexico

Primeros Memoriales, by Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, is a valuable document providing great understanding and knowledge of provincial Mesoamerican civilization.

In 1558 the Spanish Franciscan missionary Fray Bernardino de Sahagun was commissioned by the Catholic Church to conduct a systematic investigation of the indigenous culture, particularly the religious/ritual system, the dominant native language of Central Mexico, Sahagun worked with trilingual (Nahuatl/Spanish/Latin) Indian assistants between 1559 and 1561 to produce what came to be known as the Primeros Memoriales. Although...

Since the publication of the first edition of this work, it has become the standard guide for serious travelers to the great Maya sites of Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. In this expanded and updated edition C. Bruce Hunter offers an introduction to the culture and history of the Maya, taking into account the most recent discoveries and theories about their origins, rise to greatness, and fall. He then takes the reader on a tour through their magnificent cities and ceremonial centers.

Each site is presented in the light of current excavations and restorations and illuminated by stunning...

This book is a skillful synthesis of Mexico's complex and colorful history from pre-Columbian times to the present. Utilizing his many years of research and teaching as well as his personal experience in Mexico, the author incorporates recent archaeological evidence, posits fresh interpretations, and analyzes such current problems as foreign debt, dependency on petroleum exports, and providing education and employment for an expanding population.

Combining political events and social history in a smooth narrative, the book describes events, places, and individuals, the daily life of...

For at least two millennia before the advent of the Spaniards in 1519, there was a flourishing civilization in central Mexico. During that long span of time a cultural evolution took place which saw a high development of the arts and literature, the formulation of complex religious doctrines, systems of education, and diverse political and social organization.

The rich documentation concerning these people, commonly called Aztecs, includes, in addition to a few codices written before the Conquest, thousands of folios in the Nahuatl or Aztec language written by natives after the...

The "Brief and Summary Relation of the Lords of New Spain" is one of the major contemporary accounts of the economic, political, and social impact of the conquest of Aztec Mexico. Written by Alonso de Zorita, a Spanish judge of high integrity and many years' experience in colonial administration, it provides a detailed description of Aztec life before and after the Conquest. Based on Zorita's stay in Mexico from 1556 to 1566, it reflects the anguish felt by a devoted and humane servant of the Crown, who observed the misery inflicted upon the Indians by enslavement and Spanish-imposed...

In exploring the pattern and methods of Aztec expansion, Ross Hassig focuses on political and economic factors. Because they lacked numerical superiority, faced logistical problems presented by the terrain, and competed with agriculture for manpower, the Aztecs relied as much on threats and the image of power as on military might to subdue enemies and hold them in their orbit. Hassig describes the role of war in the everyday life of the capital, Tenochtitlan: the place of the military in Aztec society; the education and training of young warriors; the organization of the army; the use of...

The Tarahumara, "people of the edge," live on the boundaries of civilization, in the mountains and canyonlands of Mexico's Sierra Tarahumara. There, in southwestern Chihuahua, terrain terminates at the edge of canyons; their mountains border the sky. In these pages, words by W. Dirk Raat and images by George R. Janecek, is testimony to the endurance of the Tarahumara people.

Today, roughly fifty thousand Tarahumaras continue living in ways similar to those of their ancestors, retaining many customs from their pre-Columbian past.

This book is the first comprehensive study and reinterpretation of the unique arts of Teotihuacan, including architecture, sculpture, mural painting, and ceramics. Comparing the arts of Teotihuacan - not previously judged "artistic" - with those of other ancient civilizations, Ester Pasztory demonstrates how they created and reflected the community's ideals.

Most people associate the pyramids of central Mexico with the Aztecs, but these colossal constructions antedate the Aztecs by more than a thousand years. The people of Teotihuacan, who built the pyramids as part of a city of...

The Codex Chimalpahin, which consists of more than one thousand pages of Nahuatl and Spanish texts, is a life history of the only Nahua about whom we have much knowledge. It also affords a firsthand indigenous perspective on the Nahua past, present, and future in a changing colonial milieu. Moreover, Chimalpahin s sources, a rich variety of ancient and contemporary records, give voice to a culture long thought to be silent and vanquished.

Volume Two of the Codex Chimalpahin represents heretofore-unknown manuscripts by Chimalpahin. Predominantly annals and dynastic records, it furnishes...

Remains in the Rio Azul area date from 900 B.C. to A.D. 850. The data...

Maya Wars is the first collection of documents devoted entirely to the nineteenth-century Yucatec Mayas. This compilation includes writings by priests, missionaries, Hispanic officials and military officers, foreign travelers and explorers, and the Mayas themselves. It follows the Mayas through the early national republic, the upheavals of the mid-century Caste War (1847-1901), the short-lived period of French Imperialism (1864-1867), and the repressive monoculture of the century's last two decades.

Providing an unparalleled window into the daily lives of the rural Mayas, the...

In this book, Susan Kellogg explains how Spanish law served as an instrument of cultural transformation and adaptation in the lives of Nahuatl-speaking peoples during the years 1500-1700--the first two centuries of colonial rule. She shows that law had an impact on numerous aspects of daily life, especially gender relations, patterns of property ownership and transmission, and family and kinship organization.

Based on a wide array of local-level Spanish and Nahuatl documentation and an intensive analysis of seventy-three lawsuits over property involving Indians residing in colonial...

What role did indigenous peoples play in the Spanish conquest of Mexico? Ross Hassig explores this question in "Mexico and the Spanish Conquest" by incorporating primary accounts from the Indians of Mexico and revisiting the events of the conquest against the backdrop of the Aztec empire, the culture and politics of Mesoamerica, and the military dynamics of both sides. He analyzes the weapons, tactics, and strategies employed by both the Indians and the Spaniards, and concludes that the conquest was less a Spanish victory than it was a victory of Indians over other Indians, which the...