This book is one of several recent studies of colonial Michoacán focusing on the process of evangelization, and the historiography of that process, using a form of postmodern or poststructuralist critical analysis. It has appeared at a time when a flourishing of more traditional historical studies is taking place at regional institutes of history in Michoacán, especially the Colegio de Michoacán (Zamora) and the Universidad Michoacana (Morelia). While these institutes have promoted archival research in Spain and Mexico to enlarge the corpus of relevant texts and have published new editions of major colonial works, the use of postmodern critical analysis to reanalyze the documents has largely been undertaken by non-Mexican scholars, including the author of this book, James Krippner-Martínez.
In Rereading the Conquest, the author examines the way four texts from colonial Michoacán were constructed and later used by historians to create the myths of early and complete evangelization...
