Annals of Native America : how the Nahuas of colonial Mexico kept their history alive /

Historian Townsend (Rutgers) breaks new ground with her masterly anthology of accounts seen through the eyes of underdogs and written in the original Nahuatl. The first chapter, "Old Stories in New Letters (1520-1550s)," analyzes the generation in power at the time of the conquest in Mexico. "Becoming Conquered," centered on the decade of the 1560s, describes the unsuccessful efforts to change how the abuse of outrageous tribute payments impacted Native lives. In "Forging Friendship with Franciscans (1560-1580s)," two Indigenous men, Pedro de San Buenaventura of Cuauhtitlan and Mateo Sánchez de Tecamachalco, confront their Franciscan mentors. By the year 1600, "The Riches of Twilight," the Indigenous intelligentsia were afraid that much of their history was lost. Chimalpahin from Chalco kept his people's history alive in his prolific work. In "Renaissance in the East," Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza helped preserve the purity of his Native language and culture, focused on Tlaxcala. The epilogue, "Postscript from a Golden Age," presents the Annals of Puebla by Miguel Santos, in which the author shows a break with his historical past. All of the annals show the contradictions of endurance and defeat--endurance in the face of disintegration. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. --Roman A. Santillan, Medgar Evers College, CUNY