Visions of Paradise: Primordial Titles and Mesoamerican History in Cuernavaca (review)

The Catholic conversion of the native peoples of Mexico remains one of the most fascinating stories in the cultural and religious history of the early Americas. Traditionally, historians have told the story of (what has been called) the "spiritual conquest" of Mexico from the perspective of the friars—their methods, accomplishments, and sacrifices—based on letters, reports, and church histories written by the friars themselves. In recent decades, scholars have utilized other sources to seek out the experiences and perspectives of the indigenous peoples who were the objects of the friars' activities, including the wealth of documentation from early Mexico written in indigenous languages. These sources include ecclesiastical literature such as catechisms, model sermons, and confessional guides; mundane legal records such as testaments and acts of donation; and the complex "primordial titles" (títulos primordiales) that form the documentary basis of the study under review here.

Visions of Paradise is based on a substantial corpus of primordial titles originating in Cuernavaca, a region located just south of the Valley of Mexico, and written in Nahuatl—the major language of central Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest. Primordial titles are alphabetic texts (with pictorial elements) composed by (male) town leaders in the late seventeenth century in the context of escalating land conflicts. (Many primordial titles have been found among the court records of land disputes.) They narrate detailed descriptions of a community's territorial boundaries (replete with such sacred markers as churches, crosses, and chapels) and the "foundational events" of the colonial-era community, both secular and religious. They recount how Spanish officials arrived to initiate tribute payment, mark off community lands, and resettle local populations into compact communities. Catholic clergy came to introduce the faith and were eagerly received by the locals who constructed the first churches, erected crosses, staged festivities in honor of the patron saints, and witnessed miraculous apparitions. Heroic cultural leaders actively participated in these founding acts, all telescoped into one moment in time, when the primordial community was formed. Primordial titles thus do not conform to Western notions of "history" but draw on oral history and older pictorial and alphabetic texts to present a kind of collective cultural memory that speaks to the timeless sovereignty and autonomy of the local community and the legitimacy of its rulers. In doing so, they shed light on indigenous views of the history of Spanish colonialism, including the introduction, reception, and practice of Christianity, hardly found in other types of documentation and virtually unavailable for other parts of the Americas.

Visions of Paradise constitutes a major scholarly contribution. It represents the first monograph to study a substantial corpus of primordial titles; it will become the classic to which all later work will refer. With its sophisticated engagement with the theoretical literature on history, myth, and cultural memory, it also sets the debate in terms of interpretive approach. It argues that primordial titles represent "true history," indeed, true history in Mesoamerican terms; thus, it extends and deepens the argument that Mesoamerican traditions influenced colonial ones that increasingly characterizes the field based on indigenous-language documents. The research is extensive and first-rate, especially evident in the three central chapters on boundary descriptions, foundational acts and figures, and religious acts and practices. Throughout, Robert Haskett demonstrates his deep knowledge of Mesoamerican ethnohistory as well as colonial Cuernavaca and the cultural world of its indigenous inhabitants. And he demonstrates his excellent command of colonial Nahuatl, especially crucial for a project on primordial titles, arguably the most linguistically difficult and idiosyncratic of Nahuatl documentary genres.

With its fine scholarship, engaging prose, and concern with cultural memory and colonialism, Visions of Paradise will find a broad and diverse audience, including the indigenous communities and local historians of Cuernavaca, Mesoamerican ethnohistorians, postmodern and postcolonial theorists and, of special concern here, scholars of Catholicism and Christianity.