Lisa Sousa

Department of History, Occidental College

Memories of iconoclasm and violence in indigenous accounts of the War of Mexico Tenochtitlan

Abstract:

Beginning with the Conquest of Mexico and continuing throughout the sixteenth century, Spanish conquerors, friars, and officials persecuted those who practiced indigenous religion and they destroyed sacred sites and objects. This paper analyzes Nahua alphabetic and pictorial writings to shed light on indigenous perspectives on iconoclasm and violence in colonial Mexico. I focus on the meaning that Nahuas ascribed to ritual objects, elite regalia, and sacred sites and the impact that the destruction of material culture had on indigenous collective memory. This paper reveals that Nahuas associated the destruction of their material culture with violence against native bodies and psychological trauma.

Lisa Sousa is Professor of History at Occidental College, where she teaches courses on colonial Latin American history and classical Nahuatl. She is the author of The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar, and Other Narratives of Native Women in the Archives of Colonial Mexico (Stanford), and is a co-translator and co-editor The Story of Guadalupe: Luis Laso de la Vega’s Huei Tlamahuiçoltica of 1649 (Stanford) and Mesoamerican Voices: Native-Language Writings from Colonial Mexico, Oaxaca, Yucatan, and Guatemala (Cambridge). She has written numerous articles on indigenous women, crime and deviance, and the Conquest of Mexico.