The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. Vol. 2: Mesoamerica, part 2.

The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. Vol. 2: Mesoamerica, part 2. Edited by RICHARD E. ADAMS and MURDO J. MACLEOD. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Maps. Tables. Index. xv, 455 pp. Cloth, $89.95.

Multivolume compilation reference works by their very nature face two challenges. One is the challenge of timeliness, which I shall discuss later. The other is the challenge of coherence, of covering the history of a large region over a substantial period of time using a wide array of scholars and still achieving some degree of consistency of form and interpretation. With respect to the book under review here, the time and place is postconquest Mesoamerica--this is the second of the three-volume, six-part Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, in which each volume is divided into two discrete parts, one for pre-Columbian times, the other for the colonial and modern periods.

The book is divided into 10 chapters that average over 40 pages in length, each one devoted to the native peoples of one of Mesoamerica's subregions, whose "definitions have been kept deliberately fluid" (p. 1). Indigenous central Mexicans are alone granted two essays, with Sarah Cline writing on the colonial period and Frans Schryer discussing the region "since Independence," and the Maya are judiciously treated in separate chapters on the Lowlands (by Grant Jones) and the Highlands (by George Lovell). The rest of Mesoamerica is carved up into "Northwest Mexico," covered by Susan Deeds; "Northeastern Mexico," assigned to David Frye; "Western Mexico," in Eric Van Young's capable hands; "the Gulf Coast," taken on by Susan Deans-Smith; and "Oaxaca," discussed by María de los Angeles Romero Frizzi.

Although the contributors were given considerable leeway in interpreting their mandates, all but one present essays divided into subheaded themes and concluded with bibliographical essays of 5-13 pages. The exception is Deans-Smith, whose entire 27-page contribution is a historiographical essay that deftly positions most of the works she cites within the evolution of the field. As a result the chapter is drier than the others, while in some ways being the most useful (a graduate student of mine working on colonial Totonacápan has found it absolutely invaluable).

Two examples stand out as contrasts in form and style to Deans-Smith's chapter. One is Schryer's contribution, which opens with a travelogue-style description of a stroll by the author through Mexico City's zócalo in 1990 (pp. 223-24), moves on to draw a clear and lively outline of the modern Nahua experience, and closes with a few lines of poetry translated by him from Nahuatl. The other example is Lovell's chapter on Maya history in colonial and modern Guatemala. Some readers may find it romantic and reductionist, but the essay's passionate edge enables Lovell to embrace everything from the conquest of the Kaqchikel to Rigoberta Menchú and the Zapatistas in a single coherent narrative; the essay is a tour de force. Lovell's contribution is made all the more effective by the other Maya chapter preceding it--Jones' coverage of the lowland Maya (that is, the Yucatan peninsula), which is marred only by an incomplete and error-prone bibliographic essay (for example, on p. 385, there are no fewer than three typos in the name of one Spanish scholar; to be fair, other bibliographic essays have typos too). These two superb chapters, in less than 80 combined pages of text, offer the best concise synthesis currently in print of the last five centuries of Maya demography, political geography, acculturation, and accommodation and resistance to conquest, colonization, and various modern manifestations of invasion and intrusion. I have already found these chapters to be most useful in undergraduate courses.

Scholars and students will likewise find the other essays of varying utility depending...