The author of this interesting historiographical study, known for her previous studies of colonial cultural history, sees the central process of Mexican history, and hence the character of Mexican nationality, in the mestizaje, both racial and cultural, of the European and the Indian. “El mestizaje racial nos dió por resultado una nueva raza, la mexicana, como el mestizaje cultural nos ha dado una nueva y propia cultura que participa de las dos que le dieran origen” (p. 9). Her study centers on four historical accounts from successive colonial periods. Fr. Bernardino Sahagún, through whom native informants speak, gives the Indian view of the Conquest. Fernando Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, historian of the end of the sixteenth century, represents the mestizo retrospective view of the clash of the two cultures. Carlos Sigüenza y Góngora, who is taken to speak for the seventeenth century criollo, was also “un apasionado por la cultura indígena” (p. 120). The great Jesuit scholar, Francisco Javier Clavigero, is the culmination of the process in the colonial period, applying modern ideas to produce, in his own words, “una historia de México escrita por un mexicano” (p. 94).
The most significant contribution the author has made is to reveal the conscious mexicanism expressed in the works of these colonial chroniclers and historians. Although the point is not made specifically, she seems to conclude that the essence of the cultural mestizaje was religious. She is clearer in the conclusion that one of the major roots of Mexican nationalism lies in the revindication of Indian culture undertaken by the authors here studied, as well as by other colonial authors she proposes to examine in the future.
