From Tribute to Communal Sovereignty offers a rich account of the Indigenous populations of central western Mexico, an area that includes the contemporary states of Aguascalientes, Colima, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nayarit, Sinaloa, and Zacatecas. This text is multidisciplinary and binational, incorporating both editors and contributors from Mexico and the United States in the fields of anthropology, archeology, ethnohistory, and ethnography. The editors and contributors describe the Indigenous peoples from this region and their legacies of cultural resilience, resistance, and struggles for political autonomy.
The first two essays in part 1, “Introduction,” offer a synthesis of the political history and cultures of Native peoples in the Mexican center-west. The remainder of the book is divided chronologically: part 2 discusses cultural development before the Spanish conquest; part 3 describes Native organization during the colonial period; and part 4 relates contemporary Indigenous political movements.
These works describe the depth of the region’s...
