Leave us alone, we do not want your help. Let us live our lives : indigenous resistance and ethnogenesis in Nueva Vizcaya (colonial Mexico)
Abstract
This thesis looks at the people of Nueva Vizcaya’s history of resistance to
incorporation into the state during the colonial age, and how this history is
connected to the contemporary context in the Sierra Tarahumara. To do this, I use
and frame the concepts of community, resistance, violence, ethnogenesis,
territory and history as intertwined in such a way that the Sierra Tarahumara and
its inhabitants cannot be completely disassociated one from another.
By looking at the engagements between colonizers and native people of the
colonial North of the Nueva España –Tarahumara and other native indigenous
people of the Sierra Madre Occidental– in history, and frame the narratives about
these historical encounters, drawing colonial accounts, modern narratives and
other sources, I contest in this work, allows to frame indigenous societies agency
in history.
In addition, this thesis endeavors to engage with the broader discussion about
ethnogenesis, indigenous resistance to colonialism, native community and
ecological conflicts in Nueva Vizcaya and in the Sierra Tarahumara.
Finally, this research wants to make sense of the contemporary conflicts over land
rights that indigenous communities of the Sierra Tarahumara face today, and
connect them with the history of the colonial encounters of the people of the
Nueva Vizcaya. I propose that these encounters, in the colonial time of the
conquest of the Nueva Vizcaya, and in the national period, are largely a
consequence of a colonial process of ethnogenesis that taxonomically indexed
native people in categories related to colonial labor needs and control over the
territory, which I frame as tarahumarizacíon and raramurización.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.