
The Art of Being In-between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca
Yanna Yannakakis
Through interpretation of a wide array of historical sources—including descriptions of public rituals, accounts of indigenous rebellions, idolatry trials, legal petitions, court cases, land disputes, and indigenous pictorial histories—Yannakakis weaves together an elegant narrative that illuminates political and cultural struggles over the terms of local rule. As cultural brokers, native intermediaries at times reconciled conflicting interests, and at other times positioned themselves in opposing camps over the outcome of municipal elections, the provision of goods and labor, landholding, community ritual, the meaning of indigenous “custom” in relation to Spanish law, and representations of the past. In the process, they shaped an emergent “Indian” identity in tension with other forms of indigenous identity and a political order characterized by a persistent conflict between local autonomy and colonial control. This innovative study provides fresh insight into colonialism’s disparate cultures and the making of race, ethnicity, and the colonial state and legal system in Spanish America.
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About Yanna Yannakakis
Reviews for The Art of Being In-between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca
B. R. Larkin
Choice
“As an original work of scholarship, based on archival sources in Oaxaca, Mexico City and Seville, this monograph will be of interest to all colonial Latin Americanist historians. Its coherent structure, clear writing style and compelling thesis also make it an ideal book to assign in graduate seminars.”
Matthew Restall
Social History
“Beautifully written, Yannakakis’s book provides valuable insight into the relationships between the governors and the governed in the Indies, and intermediaries’ efforts in keeping them balanced.”
Claudia Guarisco
American Historical Review
“Yannakakis’ detailed analysis of a variety of sources—land disputes, legal petitions, idolatry trials, indigenous pictorial histories—is a worthy addition to the recent boom in sociocultural history that seeks to contextualize the use of language in the past.”
Paul Charney
Colonial Latin American Historical Review
“Yannakakis’s well-written study offers one of the most engaging and insightful studies of New Spain’s indigenous intermediaries in recent memory.”
Andrew B. Fisher
Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History
“Yannakakis’s work is well researched and engagingly written, and her arguments serve to deepen current exchanges about conquest: indigenous agency, negotiations, and strategies; the conflicted and multifaceted nature of colonial rule; and the need for document-centered historical works that pay close attention to voices traditionally marginalized. This is an important contribution to the fields of social, cultural, and legal history, as well as ethnohistory. Although this work is most valuable to specialists in these fields, its clear and engaging prose will make it of interest also to nonspecialist readers.”
SilverMoon
Latin American Politics and Society