"Krippner-Martínez
is heavily influenced by postmodernist theory and well versed in recent
literature on cultural history. Those familiar with his theoretical
base and the historiography of colonial Michoacán will find
this work stimulating for the methodology it employs and the insights
it provides." —V. H. Cummins, Choice
Combining social history with literary criticism, James Krippner-Martínez
shows how a historiographically sensitive rereading of contemporaneous
documents concerning the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest and evangelization
of Michoacán, and of later writings using them, can challenge
traditional celebratory interpretations of missionary activity in
early colonial Mexico.
The book offers a fresh look at religion, politics, and the writing
of history by employing a poststructuralist method that engages
the exclusions as well as the content of the historical record.
The moments of doubt, contradiction, and ambiguity thereby uncovered
lead to deconstructing a coherent conquest narrative that continues
to resonate in our present age.
Part I, "The Politics of Conquest," deals with primary sources
compiled from 1521 to 1565. Krippner-Martínez here examines
the execution of Cazonci, the indigenous ruler of Michoacán,
as recounted in the trial record produced by his executioners; explores
the missionary-Indian encounter as revealed in the Relación
de Michoacán; and assesses the writings of Michoacán's
first bishop, the legendary Vasco de Quiroga, and their complex
interplay of authoritarian paternalism and reformist hope. Part
II, "Reflections," looks at how the memory of these historical figures
is represented in later eras. A key text for this discussion is
the Crónica de Michoachán, written in the late
eighteenth century by the Franciscan intellectual Pablo de Beaumont.
Krippner-Martínez concludes with a critique of the debate
that initiated his investigation—the controversy between Latin
Americans and Europeans over the colonialist legacy, beginning with
the Latin American Bishops Conference in 1992.
