Charles Gibson concluded his seminal ethnohistorical work The Aztecs under Spanish Rule (1964) by describing urban areas as spaces that advanced the deterioration of colonial indigenous societies. In the city, Gibson claimed, indigenous communities decayed into a pueblo bajo characterized by extreme poverty, rampant criminality, and dysfunctional institutions. City Indians in Spain’s American Empire represents an overdue revision of the Gibsonian perspective and shows that native societies not only endured the challenges of city life but also were critical to the development and maintenance of colonial societies as a whole. This excellent volume explores the myriad methods of indigenous agency to show the malleability of indigenous societies within urban spaces across colonial Latin America.
Bringing together multiple generations of ethnohistorians of Mesoamerica and the Andes, this anthology takes up a range of issues directly related to urban indigenous populations in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru, including ethnic identity, migration, property, and...
