University of California, Irvine
Post-Doc, History
University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow
Thesis Title: Urban Indians in a Colonial Silver City: Zacatecas, Mexico, 1546-1806
Kevin Terraciano
Steven Topik
Rachel O'Toole
About
Research Interests:
I received my PhD in History from the University of California, Los Angeles in June of 2009 under the guidance of Kevin Terraciano, a noted scholar of indigenous peoples of colonial Mexico. My dissertation, "Urban Indians in a Colonial Silver City, Zacatecas, Mexico, 1546-1806," examines the survival of several native communities and a corporate indigenous identity in the Spanish silver-mining town of Zacatecas, Mexico. This work was based on a wide array of Spanish sources and original data from national, local, and parochial archives in Mexico and Spain. Throughout the colonial period, a large native and migrant indigenous population lived and worked in Zacatecas. My dissertation argues that the city's indigenous population adopted colonial institutions, particularly Spanish-style municipal councils and lay confraternities, to create a broad corporate identity that incorporated distinct ethnic groups and formal socio-political entities. The construction of a corporate "Indian" identity in the city allowed native peoples to develop spaces and organizations, which allowed for the expression of indigenous identity and practices in a colonial multi-cultural urban setting. During my tenure as a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Irvine, I will work with Steven Topik and Rachel O’Toole as I revise my manuscript for publication
An article based on my research, “The Creation of Indigenous Leadership in a Spanish Town: Zacatecas, Mexico, 1609-1752,” was published this fall (Ethnohistory 56:4, 2009). The article considers how the development of indigenous Spanish-style town councils unified the city’s disparate ethnic groups, converted native settlements into formal sociopolitical entities, created an official leadership class, and contributed to the perpetuation of a corporate indigenous identity within the city through the late colonial period. In addition, I have presented my work on Zacatecas at several conferences including the annual meetings of the American Society for Ethnohistory, the American Historical Association, and the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies. This year, I organized a conference on women in northern New Spain for the annual meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory (New Orleans, LA) and I also am presenting a paper at the 2010 meeting of the American Historical Association (San Diego, CA).
I remain interested in issues of ethnicity and identity in the non-Spanish population, particularly among indigenous peoples, and individuals of mixed racial descent in New Spain’s silver-mining district. Currently, I am a working with Rachel O'Toole on a project on Afro-indigenous relations in Zacatecas. My study will examine how the shared bond of being migrants, laborers, and subjects of the Spanish crown forged social and kinship networks between natives and individuals of African descent. I am also working on three other research projects: a study of the roles of native women in northern New Spain's silver-mining district, an article on the relationship between violence (rock fights) and community formation in seventeenth-century Zacatecas, and a collection on urban indigenous peoples in New Spain and the Andes.
Contact Information
History Department
University of California, Irvine
333 Murray Krieger Hall
Irvine, CA 92697-3275
1-949-824-6521
