Levels of Acculturation in Northeastern New Spain: San Esteban Testaments of the Seventeenth and Eighteeth Centuries

Resumen

The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of works examining the Indian world of central Mexico in the colonial period, examinations based on analysis of Indian-language documents and presenting, for the first time, an unabashedly Indian perspective on the experiences of the indigenous world as it came into contact with, and was penetrated by, the Spanish. Much of the focus has been on the first century of contact, when that contact was most keenly felt by the indigenous community as it underwent challenges to its culfural integrity posed by the hispanic presence and confronted the tremendous demographic impact of European diseases.