The Mixtecs of colonial Oaxaca : Nũdzahui history, sixteenth through eighteenth centuries /

This groundbreaking study will be an essential acquisition for any library specializing in colonial Mexico. Terraciano (UCLA) studies Nudzahui (Mixtec) culture in the 16th to 18th centuries, comparing it to other Mesoamerican cultures and assessing the impact of Spanish colonization on the Mixteca. The author bases his study primarily on Mixtec language documents, and uses Nahuatl and Spanish sources to complement them. He is heavily influenced by the work of James Lockhart, especially The Nahuas after the Conquest (CH, Mar'93), adopting Lockhart's "New Philology" approach. The book describes many social, cultural, and political traits generally applicable to Mesoamerican societies before the conquest, but carefully identifies local variations and limitations to these general traits. Terraciano makes the point that the Nudzahui and the Nahuas had much in common and were culturally of roughly the same level of sophistication. In postconquest Mexico, cultural change came later and more unevenly to the Mixteca than to Central Mexico, reflecting the later settlement and much smaller number of Spaniards residing there. Graduate students and faculty. V. H. Cummins Austin College