Periodic Reporting for period 2 - UGM (Under the guidance of Mary: “Moriscos” and “Indios” against the expansion of the Spanish Empire and the politics of Marian devotion.)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2025-09-01 al 2026-08-31
Sintesi del contesto e degli obiettivi generali del progetto
This research project enquires into the political implications of Marian devotion in the Early Modern Iberian World and its role in the colonial management of “native” communities of “Moriscos” and “Indios,” subdued since the end of the 15th century by the expansion of the Spanish Empire. This study proposes a “political” reading of the development of Marian devotion in the Iberian Peninsula and its American colonies, exploring its role in local politics, native strategies, and colonial dynamics across the Atlantic. With this aim, the project analyzes how the particular characteristics and evolution of Marian devotion reflected the progressive transformation of the Spanish imperial project and encoded diverse and changing conceptions of the role of these “native” communities in the imperial fabric. Through the comparative study of the representation of “Indios” and “Moriscos” in the collective imagery, imperial documentation and religious literature, my research tries to question the role of the Virgin and her imagined relationship with these communities in the debate over the ability of “native” populations to integrate themselves into the colonial regime as “faithful subjects” and “good Christians”, and the place of their culture and religious sensibility in the configuration of the emerging colonial culture. The project centers not only on the politics of Marian devotion in the Spanish Empire and its relationship with imperial policies towards “Moriscos” and “Indios”, but fundamentally on the “native” response to its transformation. In this way, through the analysis of the intellectual and artistic products commissioned by “Christianized” Morisco and Mesoamerican elites, the project tries to elucidate how “native” communities and especially subaltern elites, facing the progressive erosion of their rights and privileges, used Marian devotion to prove the value of their cultural heritage, lineage and memory and to reclaim their place in the colonial society. In this sense, the research project seeks to understand how “native” communities transformed the Virgin into a “political” symbol, through which they could legitimize their understanding of Christianity and promote an alternative and more “inclusive” conception of the Spanish Empire against the growing acculturating and homogenizing pressure of the Empire and the Reformed Church.
To analyze these questions, the project focuses on studying the parallel stories of two regions with unique political statuses, cultural characteristics, and a prominent native elite and intellectual culture: Granada and Tlaxcala. Through the analysis of the “native” fabrication of the Lead Books of Granada and the apparition of the Virgin of Ocotlan, the project aim to explore the role of Marian devotion across the Atlantic in key phenomena: the configuration of local Christianity and Christian native identities, the development of imperial rhetoric and the debates about “Moriscos” and “Indios” assimilability, the changes in imperial policies toward native communities, the erosion of local autonomy and the articulation of similar native elite strategies to resist imperial control and acculturation. Through the analysis of the “native” fabrication of the Lead Books of Granada and the apparition of the Virgin of Ocotlan, the book will uncover how Granadan Morisco and Tlaxcalan Indigenous elites, facing the loss of their political power, class privileges, and regional autonomy, and even their right to own and remain in their homeland, reinvented local sacred history to channel local concerns and reclaim their place in a Spanish Empire in transformation and lost regional prestige. This study has exposed how these native forgeries rely on a similar narrative of Marian protection and an honorable Christian past that exalted the exceptionality of their land, blessed with unique celestial gifts: a rare Marian acheiropoietic image and the lost scriptures of the Virgin Mary. Across the Atlantic, this narrative formed part of a broader project to reimagine “native” genealogies, exploiting humanist knowledge to create a global antiquity of biblical roots that evidence the apostolic origin of local Christianity, native lineages, and cultural expressions. The research conducted similarly evidence how these “native” forgeries aimed to recover the forgotten honor of these regions as exemplary Christians and Faithful servants of the Spanish Monarchy, which once had centered the imperial map as emblems of the Empire's providential call to expand the Catholic faith, as the last Islamic kingdom of Spain and the main native allies in the fall of Tenochtitlan. Finally, the project explored how, through these inventions, Granadan and Tlaxcalan elites sought to ease rising interethnic and inter-class tensions and to control the troubling effects of “popular” religiosity during a critical moment when their position within the colonial system was being redefined.
To analyze these questions, the project focuses on studying the parallel stories of two regions with unique political statuses, cultural characteristics, and a prominent native elite and intellectual culture: Granada and Tlaxcala. Through the analysis of the “native” fabrication of the Lead Books of Granada and the apparition of the Virgin of Ocotlan, the project aim to explore the role of Marian devotion across the Atlantic in key phenomena: the configuration of local Christianity and Christian native identities, the development of imperial rhetoric and the debates about “Moriscos” and “Indios” assimilability, the changes in imperial policies toward native communities, the erosion of local autonomy and the articulation of similar native elite strategies to resist imperial control and acculturation. Through the analysis of the “native” fabrication of the Lead Books of Granada and the apparition of the Virgin of Ocotlan, the book will uncover how Granadan Morisco and Tlaxcalan Indigenous elites, facing the loss of their political power, class privileges, and regional autonomy, and even their right to own and remain in their homeland, reinvented local sacred history to channel local concerns and reclaim their place in a Spanish Empire in transformation and lost regional prestige. This study has exposed how these native forgeries rely on a similar narrative of Marian protection and an honorable Christian past that exalted the exceptionality of their land, blessed with unique celestial gifts: a rare Marian acheiropoietic image and the lost scriptures of the Virgin Mary. Across the Atlantic, this narrative formed part of a broader project to reimagine “native” genealogies, exploiting humanist knowledge to create a global antiquity of biblical roots that evidence the apostolic origin of local Christianity, native lineages, and cultural expressions. The research conducted similarly evidence how these “native” forgeries aimed to recover the forgotten honor of these regions as exemplary Christians and Faithful servants of the Spanish Monarchy, which once had centered the imperial map as emblems of the Empire's providential call to expand the Catholic faith, as the last Islamic kingdom of Spain and the main native allies in the fall of Tenochtitlan. Finally, the project explored how, through these inventions, Granadan and Tlaxcalan elites sought to ease rising interethnic and inter-class tensions and to control the troubling effects of “popular” religiosity during a critical moment when their position within the colonial system was being redefined.
Lavoro eseguito dall’inizio del progetto fino alla fine del periodo coperto dalla relazione e principali risultati finora ottenuti
To address the primary questions raised by my research regarding the role of native elites in shaping rhetorical strategies centered on the Virgin and the political significance of Marian devotion within the Spanish imperial framework, I have consulted archival documentation produced by imperial bureaucracy and key sources by or for the Tlaxcalan “Christinized” elites. Ranging from devotional literature, like the Codex Indianorum 23, an unpublished early Nahuatl sermonary directed to Tlaxcalan elites hosted in the John Carter Brown Library, historical writings by Tlaxcalan nobles, such as the Historia cronológica de la Noble Ciudad de Tlaxcala, composed by the Tlaxcala cacique Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza (1662-1692) (Mexican Manuscripts 212); and the enormouscabildoand ecclesiastical documentation preserved at Mexican archives, the documentation gathered evidences the struggle of Tlaxcalan municipal authorities to maintain their legal and political autonomy and preserve the religious ceremonies and public celebrations that reflect their unique status as “Indian conquistadors” and exemplar Christian subjects of the Spanish Empire. To meet these scientific objectives, I have conducted extensive archival research during the reporting period in American Libraries with vast collections of documents from the Early Americas, such as the John Carter Brown Library, Harvard University's Library (HU), the Newberry Library (Chicago), and the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C). With this aim, I have also completed two research stays in Mexico, working with key documentation held at the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), the Biblioteca Nacional de México (BNM), the Archivo Histórico del Estado de Tlaxcala (AHET), and the Archivo del Museo Nacional De Arte(MUNAL).
This research work in the United States and Mexico has evidenced how Tlaxcalan elites fostered the creation of a new Marian cult and local Marian mythology to reclaim their class privileges and the unique political status of Tlaxcala as an “Indian Republic”, threatened by the viceregal infiltration in the indigenous cabildo and the establishment of the Intendencias system. This archival research also reveals how the Tlaxcalan inventions tried to deal with key changes in New Spain’s Marian devotional culture associated with the erosion of Indian Republics' political power and autonomy, granting Tlaxcala a unique Marian apparition that signaled the providential election of the land and its people, emulating the Creole invention of the apparition story of the Virgen de Guadalupe or the Virgen de los Remedios. The documentation gathered also suggests that through the inventions, Tlaxcalan elites tried to control popular religiosity and macehualtin revolts, linked to an unorthodox form of Marian devotion, like the religious movements led by indigenous leaders such as Juan Coatl (1665) or Antonio Pérez (1761) or the political insurrection led by the “Marian king”, Don Pedro Vicente Ormigo Durán, who was said to be a Tlaxcalan prince, anointed by Christ and divine providence to rule over New Spain.
Through this intensive archival work, the project has significantly advance in these two years in the study of the political implications of Marian devotion in the Early Modern Spanish Empire, enquiring specially its role in the configuration of imperial identities across the Atlantic and the articulation of “native” strategies to curb the loss of local autonomy and ease the effects of the increasing imperial pressure. Through the study of two unique cases, Granada and Tlaxcala, the project reveals similar efforts by Granadan Morisco and Tlaxcalan Native elites to negotiate their place in a changing colonial regime, through a shared use of a “Marian language”, which exploited imperial and reformed Catholic rhetoric. Through new, unpublished documentation, the project examines how Granadan and Tlaxcalan elites fabricated “miracle or prodigious stories” centered around the Virgin, using forged documents and artifacts to reimagine local memories and native origins. The project reveals how these “Marian” inventions were part of a wide range of native strategies that instrumentalize Marian devotion to reclaim their deteriorating agency, regional autonomy, and political power. This is also evident in contemporary documentation regarding land rights, family privileges and properties, nobiliary applications, and residence permits. The project also enquires how these inventions reflected the native elite's attempts to control unorthodox expressions of “native” religiosity and its connection to forms of social disobedience and popular unrest, promoting new local devotions that channeled “native” religious sensibilities through an expanded religious imagery that could be sanctioned by colonial authorities and the Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Through archival work in Granada’s archives, the Spanish National Archives, and the General Archive of Simancas, among others, the project has gained new insight over the past year into the political and devotional life of Granada and the Morisco Elite families that held prominent positions in the city’s municipal government and were linked to the Lead Books affair. The research has revealed the central role of Marian devotion and selected religious festivities, such as the anniversaries of the Catholic Monarchs’ deaths, sponsored and promoted by Granada’s municipal council, in the articulation of Granada’s new “Christianised” civic identity and the consolidation of local powers. Through unedited documents, such as the municipal institution for the anniversary of the Catholic Queen in 1504, the research shows how these festivities served the city’s government in legitimizing its institutional authority and jurisdiction, especially against competing civic and ecclesiastical institutions, such as the Chancellery, the Royal Chapel, and the Cathedral chapter. The research has also revealed how the political tensions manifested in these celebrations, evidencing the evolution of the Crown’s policies towards Granada and the city’s political balance. This is patent, for example, in the 1563 conflict between the local authorities, the
General Captain, Luis Hurtado de Mendoza, and a series of veinticuatros, or cabildo members, with the royal representatives, the Chancellery, caused by the seating arrangement during the Catholic Monarchs' anniversaries. The dispute ended not only with the imposition of the Chancellery’s power over the city’s authorities, but also influenced a change in the Crown’s view of Granada and the Morisco population, leading to the Pragmatica of 1567, the Alpujarra’s War, and finally the 1573 royal order to relocate the royal bodies to a new Royal Pantheon in El Escorial, which put an end to Granada’s prestigious role as a royal city, as the burial place of the new monarchs. Simultaneously, this archival research has shed new light on the configuration of Granadan “Christianized” morisco elites and their devotional life, as evidenced, for example, by the chaplaincy instituted by the Granada Venegas at Granada’s main church. Finally, through the work on residence permits preserved at Simancas, the research has explored how Morisco nobiliary and bourgeois elites and
lower-class individuals articulated strategies to claim their family and class privileges, regain their right to reside in Granada after 1570, and recover their territorial possessions and confiscated properties.
The research work conducted during the final year reveals how Granada’s civic identity was configured around its status as a “royal city”, privileged by the patronage of the Catholic Monarchs and their successors, and distinguished as the burial place of the Spanish monarchs, with the construction of a Royal Pantheon, fostered by Isabel and Fernando. Municipal authorities actively promoted Granada’s unique status through celebrations of the anniversaries of the Catholic Monarchs and the conquest and conversion of the city, which annually revive the memory of their royal sponsors and of Granada's integration into the Empire. The documentation studied also reveals how the project failed as a result of political tensions within Granada and the Crown’s change of attitude towards the city and the “Morisco Problem”, by the 1560s, manifested in the designation of a new capital, Madrid, in 1561, and the planning of a new Royal Pantheon at the Escorial since 1562. Through this unedited documents, we have reframe the invention of the Lead Books of Granada in the context of Granada’s devotional culture and changing local politics, revealing how its fabrication by Morisco intellectual and political elites was intended not only to create a mythology that contested the rhetoric of the apologist of Morisco expulsion, reopened the debate about the semitic origins of the Iberian identity and questioned the supremacy of Christianity (Garcia-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, 2013, Drayson 2016, Wiegers and Van Koningsveld, 2023), but also try to restore the symbolical and political relevance of Granada in the imperial map and the forgotten honour of the Morisco aristocratic families that have facilitated the kingdom’s military conquest, religious assimilation and political submission. The research suggests that Granadan elites, facing the loss of key elements that define post-conquest regional identity and prestige, constructed around the role of Granada as royal pantheon and imperial city, after the Alpujarras War (1569-1571) and the designation of the Escorial complex as the new pantheon for the Austrias dynasty in 1574, tried to recentre Granada in the history of the Iberian nation, transforming it into the birthplace of Iberian Christianity and the origin place of lost Christian revelations.
This research work in the United States and Mexico has evidenced how Tlaxcalan elites fostered the creation of a new Marian cult and local Marian mythology to reclaim their class privileges and the unique political status of Tlaxcala as an “Indian Republic”, threatened by the viceregal infiltration in the indigenous cabildo and the establishment of the Intendencias system. This archival research also reveals how the Tlaxcalan inventions tried to deal with key changes in New Spain’s Marian devotional culture associated with the erosion of Indian Republics' political power and autonomy, granting Tlaxcala a unique Marian apparition that signaled the providential election of the land and its people, emulating the Creole invention of the apparition story of the Virgen de Guadalupe or the Virgen de los Remedios. The documentation gathered also suggests that through the inventions, Tlaxcalan elites tried to control popular religiosity and macehualtin revolts, linked to an unorthodox form of Marian devotion, like the religious movements led by indigenous leaders such as Juan Coatl (1665) or Antonio Pérez (1761) or the political insurrection led by the “Marian king”, Don Pedro Vicente Ormigo Durán, who was said to be a Tlaxcalan prince, anointed by Christ and divine providence to rule over New Spain.
Through this intensive archival work, the project has significantly advance in these two years in the study of the political implications of Marian devotion in the Early Modern Spanish Empire, enquiring specially its role in the configuration of imperial identities across the Atlantic and the articulation of “native” strategies to curb the loss of local autonomy and ease the effects of the increasing imperial pressure. Through the study of two unique cases, Granada and Tlaxcala, the project reveals similar efforts by Granadan Morisco and Tlaxcalan Native elites to negotiate their place in a changing colonial regime, through a shared use of a “Marian language”, which exploited imperial and reformed Catholic rhetoric. Through new, unpublished documentation, the project examines how Granadan and Tlaxcalan elites fabricated “miracle or prodigious stories” centered around the Virgin, using forged documents and artifacts to reimagine local memories and native origins. The project reveals how these “Marian” inventions were part of a wide range of native strategies that instrumentalize Marian devotion to reclaim their deteriorating agency, regional autonomy, and political power. This is also evident in contemporary documentation regarding land rights, family privileges and properties, nobiliary applications, and residence permits. The project also enquires how these inventions reflected the native elite's attempts to control unorthodox expressions of “native” religiosity and its connection to forms of social disobedience and popular unrest, promoting new local devotions that channeled “native” religious sensibilities through an expanded religious imagery that could be sanctioned by colonial authorities and the Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Through archival work in Granada’s archives, the Spanish National Archives, and the General Archive of Simancas, among others, the project has gained new insight over the past year into the political and devotional life of Granada and the Morisco Elite families that held prominent positions in the city’s municipal government and were linked to the Lead Books affair. The research has revealed the central role of Marian devotion and selected religious festivities, such as the anniversaries of the Catholic Monarchs’ deaths, sponsored and promoted by Granada’s municipal council, in the articulation of Granada’s new “Christianised” civic identity and the consolidation of local powers. Through unedited documents, such as the municipal institution for the anniversary of the Catholic Queen in 1504, the research shows how these festivities served the city’s government in legitimizing its institutional authority and jurisdiction, especially against competing civic and ecclesiastical institutions, such as the Chancellery, the Royal Chapel, and the Cathedral chapter. The research has also revealed how the political tensions manifested in these celebrations, evidencing the evolution of the Crown’s policies towards Granada and the city’s political balance. This is patent, for example, in the 1563 conflict between the local authorities, the
General Captain, Luis Hurtado de Mendoza, and a series of veinticuatros, or cabildo members, with the royal representatives, the Chancellery, caused by the seating arrangement during the Catholic Monarchs' anniversaries. The dispute ended not only with the imposition of the Chancellery’s power over the city’s authorities, but also influenced a change in the Crown’s view of Granada and the Morisco population, leading to the Pragmatica of 1567, the Alpujarra’s War, and finally the 1573 royal order to relocate the royal bodies to a new Royal Pantheon in El Escorial, which put an end to Granada’s prestigious role as a royal city, as the burial place of the new monarchs. Simultaneously, this archival research has shed new light on the configuration of Granadan “Christianized” morisco elites and their devotional life, as evidenced, for example, by the chaplaincy instituted by the Granada Venegas at Granada’s main church. Finally, through the work on residence permits preserved at Simancas, the research has explored how Morisco nobiliary and bourgeois elites and
lower-class individuals articulated strategies to claim their family and class privileges, regain their right to reside in Granada after 1570, and recover their territorial possessions and confiscated properties.
The research work conducted during the final year reveals how Granada’s civic identity was configured around its status as a “royal city”, privileged by the patronage of the Catholic Monarchs and their successors, and distinguished as the burial place of the Spanish monarchs, with the construction of a Royal Pantheon, fostered by Isabel and Fernando. Municipal authorities actively promoted Granada’s unique status through celebrations of the anniversaries of the Catholic Monarchs and the conquest and conversion of the city, which annually revive the memory of their royal sponsors and of Granada's integration into the Empire. The documentation studied also reveals how the project failed as a result of political tensions within Granada and the Crown’s change of attitude towards the city and the “Morisco Problem”, by the 1560s, manifested in the designation of a new capital, Madrid, in 1561, and the planning of a new Royal Pantheon at the Escorial since 1562. Through this unedited documents, we have reframe the invention of the Lead Books of Granada in the context of Granada’s devotional culture and changing local politics, revealing how its fabrication by Morisco intellectual and political elites was intended not only to create a mythology that contested the rhetoric of the apologist of Morisco expulsion, reopened the debate about the semitic origins of the Iberian identity and questioned the supremacy of Christianity (Garcia-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, 2013, Drayson 2016, Wiegers and Van Koningsveld, 2023), but also try to restore the symbolical and political relevance of Granada in the imperial map and the forgotten honour of the Morisco aristocratic families that have facilitated the kingdom’s military conquest, religious assimilation and political submission. The research suggests that Granadan elites, facing the loss of key elements that define post-conquest regional identity and prestige, constructed around the role of Granada as royal pantheon and imperial city, after the Alpujarras War (1569-1571) and the designation of the Escorial complex as the new pantheon for the Austrias dynasty in 1574, tried to recentre Granada in the history of the Iberian nation, transforming it into the birthplace of Iberian Christianity and the origin place of lost Christian revelations.
Progressi oltre lo stato dell’arte e potenziale impatto previsto (incluso l’impatto socioeconomico e le implicazioni sociali più ampie del progetto fino ad ora)
Through the comparative study of the Granadan and Tlaxcalan contexts, the project has unveiled numerous documentary evidence of the parallel evolution of Marian devotion and imperial policies towards “native” populations in the Iberian Peninsula and its American colonies. The research carried out evidence how, across the Spanish Empire, this process was marked by a similar search for cultural, linguistic, and religious homogeneity, the emergence of a shared “imperial Marian rhetoric”, and the construction of a global post-Reformation Catholicism that questioned local devotions, cultural particularities, and native political autonomy as interconnected phenomena. My research reveals how the post-Tridentine control of local religiosity, was intimately interconnected on both sides of the Atlantic, with the parallel deterioration of native elites' political power, intermingling in some aspects, such as the native authorities' control over local religious celebrations, native confraternities, and the communal lands used to sustain them, or the loss by native elites of privileges and public rituals that marked their distinguish position among the local population: such as their enjoyment of selected seats in church, the performance of specific rituals by ecclesiastical authorities to receive them during religious celebrations or their possession of burial places in exclusive locations like the main cathedral or monastery. Similarly, the project has unveiled key archival documentation about the similar use by “Indios” and “Moriscos” of Marian devotion as a “political” tool in their struggle for power and influence in the Spanish Empire, revealing especially how this use of Marian devotion was intrinsically linked to other shared native strategies, such us the fabrication of documents and artefacts, the appropriation of antiquarian technical language, the rewriting of local history, the invention of local miracle stories and apostolic mythologies, that were meant to fostered a global conception of imperial memory and Catholic identity.
In this way, my ongoing research has evidence the similarities in the imperial policy in both contexts, in line with previous works about the parallel “racialization” of “Moriscos” and “Indios” (Martínez, 2008, Cook, 2021, Philip Quintanilla, 2018), the ecclesiastical and imperial policies against the persistence of pre-Hispanic religions and Islam (Duviols,1971) and the construction of the “unassimilability” of “Moriscos” and specific indigenous communities (Cardaillac, 2012, Cook, 2013, 2021). More importantly, the project has added new evidence that illustrates the articulation of similar native strategies against the hardening of the colonial regimen and the progressive acculturating pressure of the Spanish Empire, as explored in previous studies (Adorno, 1989; Suñe Blanco, 1994; Palomo Infante, 1994; Cardaillac, 2012). In this sense, in line with recent studies by José Cardenas Bunsen (2018), Karoline Cook (2020), and Max Deardorff (2023), the project evidences the emergence across the Atlantic of interconnected native rhetorical strategies and the role of “native” elites in the construction of an “inclusive” imperial history and Catholic imagery, that openly challenged and intended to shape imperial policies and local realities. Through the study of a wide range of sources produced by Tlaxcalan indigenous and Granadan Moriscos, my research evidences also how the elite use of Marian devotion as a legitimizing factor, apparent in the Sacromonte inventions, the Ocotlan legend, the historical writings commissioned by Granada's aristocratic Nasrid families and Tlaxcalan cabildo authorities and the artistic commissions of local nobiliary families and ecclesiastical authorities, was part of broader phenomenon, that permeated all colonial society. This is evident in land rights disputes from the Tlaxcala-Puebla valley, as well as in the residence permits that Moriscos from different socioeconomic levels submitted to the "Junta de Población" after 1570. Finally, in line with previous studies about the Indigenous and Morisco use and subversion of Spanish Imperial legal system, historical writing and scholarship, family history and genealogy, antiquarianism and forged artefacts my research evidences how this use of Marian devotion was part of a wide range of "native" strategies, thought to define what it meant to be "Indio" (Jackson,1999, Villella, 2016, Díaz,2017) or "Morisco" (Soria Mesa,1995, 2003, García-Arenal, 2013) and to claim their rights and privileges in the Spanish Empire (Van Deusen, 2015, De la Puente Luna, 2018, García-Arenal, 2006, 2013).
My research examines the gender dimensions of various forms of native resistance, negotiation, and adaptation to colonial norms. By exploring the role of male “native” elites in the fabrication of Granadan and Tlaxcala forged religious stories, my study question the historiographical assumptions based in colonial sources (inquisitorial records, edicts of faith, synodal and conciliar acts, "idolatry" reports and refutation works again Islam and indigenous “Idolatry”)that identified “Indias” and “Moriscas” as principal agents in the reproduction of crypto-Islamism and “idolatry” (Birriel Salcedo, 1997, Perry,2006, Martínez, 2008) and the preservation of Indigenous and Morisco culture (Perry,2006, Díez Jorge 2017, Ochoa and Guengerich,2021). In this sense, by tracking the efforts of the native members of the Tlaxcalan cabildo and Morisco aristocratic families and intellectual elites to ensure the education of their descendants in Nahuatl and Arabic and the preservation of these “native” languages, to continue local historical traditions, record local memories and keep family histories and linages relations, my research evidences the central role of male elites in the same activities long attributed to their female counterparts. Nonetheless, my research also analyzes the role of women in these native strategies, which linked local memory, religious history, and “patriotic” proclamations, exploring the meaning of specific signs of female participation. This is the case of the custody of the Codex Indianorum 23, a 16th-century Nahuatl sermonary directed to Tlaxcala elites, by Francisca de Mendoza, a 17th-century indigenous noble woman from the altepetl of Tepeticpac, who descended from the cabecera’s governor since 1530, Gonzalo Tepanécatl, and his son, Francisco de Mendoza I, who has governed this region since 1545. This is highly meaningful, as in consonance with the work of her male relatives in the Tepeticpac municipal government as keepers of local historical memory and protectors of regional political autonomy, Francisca's ownership of this sermonary served as a local relic, as an essential reminder of Tlaxcala’s early conversion to Christianity, the distinguished role of local noble elites in the process and the exemplar Christian character of the Tlaxcalan people, all crucial factors in the indigenous case for preserving Tlaxcalan unique political status. Nonetheless, my work also intends to explore how the colonial “feminization” of impurity, evident in the inquisitorial and Idolatry visitas system marking, vigilance and punishment of “native” women and their projection as sources of social contamination (Perry,2006, Martínez, 2008), was meant to hinder “native” struggle for economic and political agency and regional autonomy. This is apparent in increasing colonial interest in questioning female-owned cacicazgos and their transmission, in reducing the number of people labeled as “indio” and revising the “indio” status and the conditions to claim this juridic label (Martínez, 2008; Ochoa and Guengerich, 2021). This is similarly evident in the colonial authorities' efforts to control the reproduction of Indigenous people and Moriscos, and the persistence of their pre-conquest cultural practices through the “othering”, persecution, and stigmatization of native women (López de la Plaza, 1993; Perry, 1996; Birriel Salcedo, 2019).
The project aims to explore the gender dimension of colonial and native uses of the maternal figure of Mary, and its potential for fostering collective identities and an imagined kinship between the Virgin and native communities. In this way, my ongoing research enquires how the development of a “Marian language” used by colonial authorities, Morisco and Indigenous elites, and native communities at large, conditioned the centrality of Mary in the emergence of shared ideas about the reproduction of religious beliefs and the origin of native lineages and their spiritual inherence. Finally, the project aims to explore the gender implications of the protagonism of Morisco and Native American women in the emergence of heterodox religious movements centered around the Virgin Mary, characterized by recurring ideas related to reproduction and kinship. This is clear in the emergence of the Alpujarras legend recorded in the inquisitorial cases of several Granadan Morisco women who affirmed that the Virgin was the Moriscos’ grandmother, as she had given birth to the Prophet, and so “Muhammad was the son of Mary and the Moors her grandchildren.” (AHN, Leg.1953 Caja 1, Exp.10 and 11). Similarly, the religious movement promoted by Tlaxcalan indigenous spiritual leaders such as Juan Coatl (1665) or Antonio Pérez (1761) vindicated the Virgin’s role as a mother goddess and were centered around Marian “icons” that took the form of indigenous women, like the “their Virgin, Soapile,” a baroque painting of Mary with native features or “Our Lady of the Lily”, an “idol,” that was supposed to appear at the volcano Popocatepetl as an Indigenous woman, Maria de los Dolores, who was supposed to engender again the Son of God, initiating a new cosmic cycle (Gruzinski, 1991).
These discoveries will be cemented through the upcoming publication of a monographic study, under the title “Moriscos and Indios Before the Empire: Marian Strategies and Civic Identities Between Granada and Tlaxcala”, that will be published as part of the specialized series “The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World” by De Gruyter Brill. By tracing the origins and motivation of the Tlaxcalan and Granadan inventions, my monograph aims to contribute to the comparative study of “Moriscos” and “Indios” under Spanish rule, exploring
how the imperial management of these communities was shaped by the parallel evolution of the ecclesiastical and colonial policies, and marked by similar processes of “racialization”, religious and cultural repression, and social “differentiation”. Following the recent studies of Karen Graubart and Max Deardorff, my monograph understands these similarities in imperial policies as the product of a shared political and legal model to manage “ethnoreligious minorities”, based on social assimilation, differentiation, and subordination, which had to be imposed and negotiated locally, and whose parameters could be modified from the Metropolis, as well as by cross-Atlantic actors and processes. Through a transatlantic reading of Granadan Morisco and Tlaxcalan Indigenous cultural productions, my research seeks to contribute to a theoretical discussion of intercolonial relations beyond the center-periphery dichotomy, exploring how “native” elites construct common strategies and ideological networks against imperial oppression that transcend cultural differences
and geographical distance. In line with recent studies by José Cardenas Bunsen (2018),Karoline Cook (2020), and Max Deardorff (2023),15 which evidence the shared agenda and the encounter of Amerindian and Morisco elites at the Habsburg Court in Madrid, my monograph explores the parallel emergence of similar native rhetorical strategies and political tactics against imperial pressure, as a response both to changes in local politics and to the Spanish Empire's global dynamics. In this sense, my study complements the recent work of Max Deardorff and José Cárdenas Bunsen, who, by studying the shared discursive strategies of Morisco elites and indigenous elites from New Granada and the Viceroyalty of Peru, have evidenced the transformations across the Atlantic of the legal rhetoric that defined “citizenship” and subjecthood in the Spanish Empire (Deardorff 2015) and the epistemological bases of historical writing and antiquarianism in the Iberian World (Cárdenas Bunsen, 2018). In this line, my research understood Tlaxcalan and Granadan elites as “global actors” and “imperial agents”,whose rhetorical and political strategies were marked by their transatlantic mobility, their access to royal and colonial authorities, their role as “colonial intermediaries” and their intellectual interaction with the realities from other regions of the Empire. My work analyzes how local elites developed similar strategies to deal with the global effects of Spanish expansion, exploring how their reality was shaped not only by imperial policies but also by their ability to adapt to the changing colonial regime and to intervene in imperial discourse. Finally, following a cis-Atlantic approach, this study explores the role of local elites in the creation of forged local mythologies, as “connected” and “comparative microhistories”18 that reflected changes in local politics and the evolution of imperial dynamics, as well as the desire of local actors to influence the broader imperial imagery. In this sense, my monograph enquires how, through these interconnected native strategies, “native” elites intended to promote an “inclusive” imperial history and Catholic imagery that openly challenged and intended to shape imperial policies and local realities.
In contrast to previous comparative studies, my book focuses on the analysis of Moriscos and native elites from New Spain. Unprecedentedly, my monograph reveals that Mesoamerican and Morisco elites shared the use of sacred history, devotional rhetoric, and the Catholic supernatural to reshape contemporary ideas of biblical mythology and divine providence. In this way, the forgeries redefined transatlantic notions of imperial enfranchisement and Christian identity, which defy and subvert the exclusionist rhetoric of “purity of blood” ideology and imperial acculturation, recovering a forgotten history of a “diverse” and multilingual primitive biblical Christianity that expanded beyond the boundaries of the Iberian Christian nation and predated its formation. By looking comparatively to
the history of the “Catholic Atlantic”, this study seeks to rethink the “cultural geography of Catholic expansion”, through the approach of “Imperium Studies”, evidencing the agency of local communities in shaping a transatlantic Catholic culture, and the link between the religious dynamics developed in the European metropolis context and those set in the American colonies. In line with recent studies on the political meaning of Indigenous and Morisco religious patronage, my analysis of the Granadan and Tlaxcalan forgeries aims as well to reconstruct the role of subaltern elites in the construction of local Catholicisms, as a way not only to channel local conceptions of Christian beliefs but also to influence local and imperial politics. In this way, my analysis of the inventions explores how Granadan and Tlaxcalan elites appropriated the discourse of “Christian citizenship”, which identified imperial belonging through the shared practice of orthodox Catholicism, exploiting miracle narratives and devotional rhetoric as forms of ‘corrosive globalization’, which aim simultaneously to subscribe to imperial ideology and destabilize its foundations, fostering regional, class, and even family interests.
Beyond the comparative outlook, the book aim
s to rethink the study of the fabrication of the Lead Books and the apparitionist legend of the Virgin of Ocotlan, reframing these native inventions in the context of Granada and Tlaxcala’s devotional culture and changing local politics, revealing how its fabrication was not only intended to infiltrate contemporary debates about the Morisco Problem or the Indigenous Question, to question the cultural origins of the Peninsula and the Americas, and to reclaim local religious sensibilities, but more importantly, try to restore the symbolic and political relevance of these regions in the imperial geography and the past honor of their aristocratic families, who had facilitated their military conquest, religious assimilation, and political subordination to the Spanish Monarchy.
In this way, my ongoing research has evidence the similarities in the imperial policy in both contexts, in line with previous works about the parallel “racialization” of “Moriscos” and “Indios” (Martínez, 2008, Cook, 2021, Philip Quintanilla, 2018), the ecclesiastical and imperial policies against the persistence of pre-Hispanic religions and Islam (Duviols,1971) and the construction of the “unassimilability” of “Moriscos” and specific indigenous communities (Cardaillac, 2012, Cook, 2013, 2021). More importantly, the project has added new evidence that illustrates the articulation of similar native strategies against the hardening of the colonial regimen and the progressive acculturating pressure of the Spanish Empire, as explored in previous studies (Adorno, 1989; Suñe Blanco, 1994; Palomo Infante, 1994; Cardaillac, 2012). In this sense, in line with recent studies by José Cardenas Bunsen (2018), Karoline Cook (2020), and Max Deardorff (2023), the project evidences the emergence across the Atlantic of interconnected native rhetorical strategies and the role of “native” elites in the construction of an “inclusive” imperial history and Catholic imagery, that openly challenged and intended to shape imperial policies and local realities. Through the study of a wide range of sources produced by Tlaxcalan indigenous and Granadan Moriscos, my research evidences also how the elite use of Marian devotion as a legitimizing factor, apparent in the Sacromonte inventions, the Ocotlan legend, the historical writings commissioned by Granada's aristocratic Nasrid families and Tlaxcalan cabildo authorities and the artistic commissions of local nobiliary families and ecclesiastical authorities, was part of broader phenomenon, that permeated all colonial society. This is evident in land rights disputes from the Tlaxcala-Puebla valley, as well as in the residence permits that Moriscos from different socioeconomic levels submitted to the "Junta de Población" after 1570. Finally, in line with previous studies about the Indigenous and Morisco use and subversion of Spanish Imperial legal system, historical writing and scholarship, family history and genealogy, antiquarianism and forged artefacts my research evidences how this use of Marian devotion was part of a wide range of "native" strategies, thought to define what it meant to be "Indio" (Jackson,1999, Villella, 2016, Díaz,2017) or "Morisco" (Soria Mesa,1995, 2003, García-Arenal, 2013) and to claim their rights and privileges in the Spanish Empire (Van Deusen, 2015, De la Puente Luna, 2018, García-Arenal, 2006, 2013).
My research examines the gender dimensions of various forms of native resistance, negotiation, and adaptation to colonial norms. By exploring the role of male “native” elites in the fabrication of Granadan and Tlaxcala forged religious stories, my study question the historiographical assumptions based in colonial sources (inquisitorial records, edicts of faith, synodal and conciliar acts, "idolatry" reports and refutation works again Islam and indigenous “Idolatry”)that identified “Indias” and “Moriscas” as principal agents in the reproduction of crypto-Islamism and “idolatry” (Birriel Salcedo, 1997, Perry,2006, Martínez, 2008) and the preservation of Indigenous and Morisco culture (Perry,2006, Díez Jorge 2017, Ochoa and Guengerich,2021). In this sense, by tracking the efforts of the native members of the Tlaxcalan cabildo and Morisco aristocratic families and intellectual elites to ensure the education of their descendants in Nahuatl and Arabic and the preservation of these “native” languages, to continue local historical traditions, record local memories and keep family histories and linages relations, my research evidences the central role of male elites in the same activities long attributed to their female counterparts. Nonetheless, my research also analyzes the role of women in these native strategies, which linked local memory, religious history, and “patriotic” proclamations, exploring the meaning of specific signs of female participation. This is the case of the custody of the Codex Indianorum 23, a 16th-century Nahuatl sermonary directed to Tlaxcala elites, by Francisca de Mendoza, a 17th-century indigenous noble woman from the altepetl of Tepeticpac, who descended from the cabecera’s governor since 1530, Gonzalo Tepanécatl, and his son, Francisco de Mendoza I, who has governed this region since 1545. This is highly meaningful, as in consonance with the work of her male relatives in the Tepeticpac municipal government as keepers of local historical memory and protectors of regional political autonomy, Francisca's ownership of this sermonary served as a local relic, as an essential reminder of Tlaxcala’s early conversion to Christianity, the distinguished role of local noble elites in the process and the exemplar Christian character of the Tlaxcalan people, all crucial factors in the indigenous case for preserving Tlaxcalan unique political status. Nonetheless, my work also intends to explore how the colonial “feminization” of impurity, evident in the inquisitorial and Idolatry visitas system marking, vigilance and punishment of “native” women and their projection as sources of social contamination (Perry,2006, Martínez, 2008), was meant to hinder “native” struggle for economic and political agency and regional autonomy. This is apparent in increasing colonial interest in questioning female-owned cacicazgos and their transmission, in reducing the number of people labeled as “indio” and revising the “indio” status and the conditions to claim this juridic label (Martínez, 2008; Ochoa and Guengerich, 2021). This is similarly evident in the colonial authorities' efforts to control the reproduction of Indigenous people and Moriscos, and the persistence of their pre-conquest cultural practices through the “othering”, persecution, and stigmatization of native women (López de la Plaza, 1993; Perry, 1996; Birriel Salcedo, 2019).
The project aims to explore the gender dimension of colonial and native uses of the maternal figure of Mary, and its potential for fostering collective identities and an imagined kinship between the Virgin and native communities. In this way, my ongoing research enquires how the development of a “Marian language” used by colonial authorities, Morisco and Indigenous elites, and native communities at large, conditioned the centrality of Mary in the emergence of shared ideas about the reproduction of religious beliefs and the origin of native lineages and their spiritual inherence. Finally, the project aims to explore the gender implications of the protagonism of Morisco and Native American women in the emergence of heterodox religious movements centered around the Virgin Mary, characterized by recurring ideas related to reproduction and kinship. This is clear in the emergence of the Alpujarras legend recorded in the inquisitorial cases of several Granadan Morisco women who affirmed that the Virgin was the Moriscos’ grandmother, as she had given birth to the Prophet, and so “Muhammad was the son of Mary and the Moors her grandchildren.” (AHN, Leg.1953 Caja 1, Exp.10 and 11). Similarly, the religious movement promoted by Tlaxcalan indigenous spiritual leaders such as Juan Coatl (1665) or Antonio Pérez (1761) vindicated the Virgin’s role as a mother goddess and were centered around Marian “icons” that took the form of indigenous women, like the “their Virgin, Soapile,” a baroque painting of Mary with native features or “Our Lady of the Lily”, an “idol,” that was supposed to appear at the volcano Popocatepetl as an Indigenous woman, Maria de los Dolores, who was supposed to engender again the Son of God, initiating a new cosmic cycle (Gruzinski, 1991).
These discoveries will be cemented through the upcoming publication of a monographic study, under the title “Moriscos and Indios Before the Empire: Marian Strategies and Civic Identities Between Granada and Tlaxcala”, that will be published as part of the specialized series “The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World” by De Gruyter Brill. By tracing the origins and motivation of the Tlaxcalan and Granadan inventions, my monograph aims to contribute to the comparative study of “Moriscos” and “Indios” under Spanish rule, exploring
how the imperial management of these communities was shaped by the parallel evolution of the ecclesiastical and colonial policies, and marked by similar processes of “racialization”, religious and cultural repression, and social “differentiation”. Following the recent studies of Karen Graubart and Max Deardorff, my monograph understands these similarities in imperial policies as the product of a shared political and legal model to manage “ethnoreligious minorities”, based on social assimilation, differentiation, and subordination, which had to be imposed and negotiated locally, and whose parameters could be modified from the Metropolis, as well as by cross-Atlantic actors and processes. Through a transatlantic reading of Granadan Morisco and Tlaxcalan Indigenous cultural productions, my research seeks to contribute to a theoretical discussion of intercolonial relations beyond the center-periphery dichotomy, exploring how “native” elites construct common strategies and ideological networks against imperial oppression that transcend cultural differences
and geographical distance. In line with recent studies by José Cardenas Bunsen (2018),Karoline Cook (2020), and Max Deardorff (2023),15 which evidence the shared agenda and the encounter of Amerindian and Morisco elites at the Habsburg Court in Madrid, my monograph explores the parallel emergence of similar native rhetorical strategies and political tactics against imperial pressure, as a response both to changes in local politics and to the Spanish Empire's global dynamics. In this sense, my study complements the recent work of Max Deardorff and José Cárdenas Bunsen, who, by studying the shared discursive strategies of Morisco elites and indigenous elites from New Granada and the Viceroyalty of Peru, have evidenced the transformations across the Atlantic of the legal rhetoric that defined “citizenship” and subjecthood in the Spanish Empire (Deardorff 2015) and the epistemological bases of historical writing and antiquarianism in the Iberian World (Cárdenas Bunsen, 2018). In this line, my research understood Tlaxcalan and Granadan elites as “global actors” and “imperial agents”,whose rhetorical and political strategies were marked by their transatlantic mobility, their access to royal and colonial authorities, their role as “colonial intermediaries” and their intellectual interaction with the realities from other regions of the Empire. My work analyzes how local elites developed similar strategies to deal with the global effects of Spanish expansion, exploring how their reality was shaped not only by imperial policies but also by their ability to adapt to the changing colonial regime and to intervene in imperial discourse. Finally, following a cis-Atlantic approach, this study explores the role of local elites in the creation of forged local mythologies, as “connected” and “comparative microhistories”18 that reflected changes in local politics and the evolution of imperial dynamics, as well as the desire of local actors to influence the broader imperial imagery. In this sense, my monograph enquires how, through these interconnected native strategies, “native” elites intended to promote an “inclusive” imperial history and Catholic imagery that openly challenged and intended to shape imperial policies and local realities.
In contrast to previous comparative studies, my book focuses on the analysis of Moriscos and native elites from New Spain. Unprecedentedly, my monograph reveals that Mesoamerican and Morisco elites shared the use of sacred history, devotional rhetoric, and the Catholic supernatural to reshape contemporary ideas of biblical mythology and divine providence. In this way, the forgeries redefined transatlantic notions of imperial enfranchisement and Christian identity, which defy and subvert the exclusionist rhetoric of “purity of blood” ideology and imperial acculturation, recovering a forgotten history of a “diverse” and multilingual primitive biblical Christianity that expanded beyond the boundaries of the Iberian Christian nation and predated its formation. By looking comparatively to
the history of the “Catholic Atlantic”, this study seeks to rethink the “cultural geography of Catholic expansion”, through the approach of “Imperium Studies”, evidencing the agency of local communities in shaping a transatlantic Catholic culture, and the link between the religious dynamics developed in the European metropolis context and those set in the American colonies. In line with recent studies on the political meaning of Indigenous and Morisco religious patronage, my analysis of the Granadan and Tlaxcalan forgeries aims as well to reconstruct the role of subaltern elites in the construction of local Catholicisms, as a way not only to channel local conceptions of Christian beliefs but also to influence local and imperial politics. In this way, my analysis of the inventions explores how Granadan and Tlaxcalan elites appropriated the discourse of “Christian citizenship”, which identified imperial belonging through the shared practice of orthodox Catholicism, exploiting miracle narratives and devotional rhetoric as forms of ‘corrosive globalization’, which aim simultaneously to subscribe to imperial ideology and destabilize its foundations, fostering regional, class, and even family interests.
Beyond the comparative outlook, the book aim
s to rethink the study of the fabrication of the Lead Books and the apparitionist legend of the Virgin of Ocotlan, reframing these native inventions in the context of Granada and Tlaxcala’s devotional culture and changing local politics, revealing how its fabrication was not only intended to infiltrate contemporary debates about the Morisco Problem or the Indigenous Question, to question the cultural origins of the Peninsula and the Americas, and to reclaim local religious sensibilities, but more importantly, try to restore the symbolic and political relevance of these regions in the imperial geography and the past honor of their aristocratic families, who had facilitated their military conquest, religious assimilation, and political subordination to the Spanish Monarchy.