There has long been a need for a comprehensive and detailed study of the Mixtecs in the English language, and the author has now most competently supplied one. The history of these people in northwestern Oaxaca, Mexico, is presented mainly in the light of events that occurred in the sixteenth century, a crucial period that included the last two pre-Hispanic decades of Mixtec autonomy, the impact of the Spanish Conquest, the consolidation of colonial rule, and the adjustment to it.
The available sources for the period between A.D. 1500 and 1600 are many, and Spores has used them to good advantage. The archaeological record is admittedly meager because of few and scattered excavations, but it is supplemented by native pictorial manuscripts that contain a wealth of historical and geographical information. (He has not analyzed these codices in detail, because other scholars, particularly Alfonso Caso, have been engaged in a longtime study of their cultural content.) Furthermore, Spores has gone to the chronicles of the Spanish Conquest and, in particular, the vast corpus of administrative and judicial documents preserved in Mexican and Spanish archives in print and in manuscript to extract pertinent ethnographic data. Finally he relied upon more recent published materials and on his own field investigations.
He treats Mixtec culture as an integral part of Mesoamerican archaeology and ethnology and also as a part of Spanish colonial history. He has emphasized one subregion, the mountainous Mixteca Alta, with its most populous and best-documented kingdom—the cacicazgo of Yanhuitlán. A major concern was the search for evidence of cultural continuity and change. Native traditions broke down gradually during the sixteenth century, and even in our own days, the Mixtecs have tenaciously adhered to the ancient way of life in the town and still more in remote rural communities. The mechanics of dynastic succession, deeply rooted in early pre-Hispanic history, continued throughout the sixteenth century, and at the end the effects of acculturation were increasingly eroding native independence. Documentary analysis of the cultural continuum, particularly of the rules of succession and the role of the ruler-cacique, shows that the Spaniards availed themselves of previously existing institutions which they modified to their advantage without completely eradicating them. It seems justified, therefore, to assume that many aspects of the social organization known to have existed in the sixteenth century may date back as far as A.D. 1000, a circumstance that probably cannot be validated by archaeological research alone. Nevertheless, we need much spadework in the Mixteca, and the author has outlined his suggestions in detail for future archaeological and documentary investigations (pp. 50-58 and 187-188).
Perhaps it would have been appropriate to give more than passing mention to Wigberto Jiménez Moreno’s important study accompanying his interpretation (with Salvador Mateos) of the Códice de Yanhuitlán (México, 1940). He also examined the sixteenth-century scene and transcribed juristic documents that contain much ethnographic information. A score of apparently ornamental line-drawings from the Codex Nuttall, scattered throughout, but not directly related to the text, deserve more explicit captions. However, for this omission the author is probably not accountable. In summation, this is a valuable contribution for its synthesis of data on Mixtec culture history and its detailed treatment of select aspects.
