The articles in this issue divide equally between Mexico and Chile and explore such diverse issues as religious practice and ethnic identity in the late colonial period, the role of popular music in the construction of national identity, the impact of socialist activism on emerging working-class identity, and the trajectory of youth movements in the changing political landscape of the late twentieth century.
In “Stone, Mortar, and Memory: Church Construction and Communities in Late Colonial Mexico City,” Matt O’Hara examines social responses to Bourbon secularization of Indian doctrinas and the creation of integrated parishes. Both scholarly consensus and Bourbon intent indicate greater fluidity in ethnic identity in the eighteenth century, as class, social networks, and ethnically mixed neighborhoods assumed more importance. O’Hara finds, nevertheless, that Mexico City’s Indian neighborhoods and caste-based cofradías responded to the reforms by reasserting their ethnic identities and sharpening divisions. Indians who did not share a...
