Leave us alone, we do not want your help. Let us live our lives : indigenous resistance and ethnogenesis in Nueva Vizcaya (colonial Mexico)
Year: 2017
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis looks at the people of Nueva Vizcaya’s history of resistance to \nincorporation into the state during the colonial age, and how this history is \nconnected to the contemporary context in the Sierra Tarahumara. To do this, I use \nand frame the concepts of community, resistance, violence, ethnogenesis, \nterritory and history as intertwined in such a way that the Sierra Tarahumara and \nits inhabitants cannot be completely disassociated one from another. \nBy looking at the engagements between colonizers and native people of the \ncolonial North of the Nueva España –Tarahumara and other native indigenous \npeople of the Sierra Madre Occidental– in history, and frame the narratives about \nthese historical encounters, drawing colonial accounts, modern narratives and \nother sources, I contest in this work, allows to frame indigenous societies agency \nin history. \nIn addition, this thesis endeavors to engage with the broader discussion about \nethnogenesis, indigenous resistance to colonialism, native community and \necological conflicts in Nueva Vizcaya and in the Sierra Tarahumara. \nFinally, this research wants to make sense of the contemporary conflicts over land \nrights that indigenous communities of the Sierra Tarahumara face today, and \nconnect them with the history of the colonial encounters of the people of the \nNueva Vizcaya. I propose that these encounters, in the colonial time of the \nconquest of the Nueva Vizcaya, and in the national period, are largely a \nconsequence of a colonial process of ethnogenesis that taxonomically indexed \nnative people in categories related to colonial labor needs and control over the \nterritory, which I frame as tarahumarizacíon and raramurización.
Authors: Rivera Acosta, Juan Manuel
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2679056283