Gender, Migration, and Native Uprisings in New Spain, 1519-1821

FAIN: HB-258191-18

Catherine Komisaruk
University of Texas, San Antonio (San Antonio, TX 78249-1644)

A book that examines native uprisings and political activism in Mexico and Guatemala from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

This book project takes a new approach to the history of native communities in Mexico and Guatemala during the colonial era (ca. 1519-1821). Foregrounding gender, the analysis uncovers previously unrecognized patterns in native labor, migration, and legal and political activism. It shows that colonial demands and changing demographics transformed migration patterns as well as native family structures across the centuries of Spanish rule. Indigenous individuals confronted these changes with strategies that varied by gender. Yet both men and women often sought to preserve families, ethnic affiliations, and forms of native sovereignty. For scholars and college students, the book will deepen knowledge about the survival of native societies in the Americas and in the larger Atlantic World. The project also speaks to broader current concerns, as it demonstrates colonial-era origins of today’s migrations across cultural and national borders.

Associated Products

Familias nucleares indígenas: Evidencia de Guatemala y Chiapas colonial tardía (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Familias nucleares indígenas: Evidencia de Guatemala y Chiapas colonial tardía
Author: Catherine Komisaruk
Abstract: This paper argues that in Guatemala and Chiapas, by the late colonial period marriage and nuclear families were in fact central to native social structures and experiences. The analysis focuses especially on the processes of household formation, tribute, and migration. It shows that households were registered in censuses based on monogamous marriages and nuclear families. Marriage was also a basis of the tribute system; native marriages were embedded both in the laws that regulated tribute and in the tribute amassment and collection practices within native communities. Finally, the paper draws evidence from censuses and judicial cases to depict outmigration from native communities. The evidence suggests that although long-term migrants sometimes left their nuclear families behind, more often they did not. People migrating into the colonial world generally wanted to keep their spouses and children with them.
Date: 09/27/2018
Conference Name: “El siglo XIX en Guatemala y Chiapas. Acercamientos históricos e historiográficos”, CIESAS, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico.

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