202 UNIT 2 COLONIAL MESOAMERICA
colonial administration, but the ways that they responded—accepting some of these
influences, reshaping others, and rejecting still others—varied considerably across
colonial Mesoamerica.
Our knowledge of indigenous life in colonial Mesoamerica has been greatly ex-
panded over the last few decades, thanks to pioneering studies of original documents
written by Indians in their own languages. These sources include historical annals,
city council records, wills, bills of sale, and court testimony. The largest number of
documents are in Nahuatl, but important records exist in many other languages as
well. (See Chapter 6 for a more extensive discussion of native-language texts).
Historian Nancy Farriss has described Indian life under colonial rule as “the col-
lective enterprise of survival” (Farriss 1984). This phrase is useful because it focuses
our attention on two points. First, for those Indians who remained in the native
towns, life remained very much oriented toward the community as a corporate en-
tity. Most land was held in common by the community as a whole or by its constituent
wards. Government officials were selected by the community and were expected to
use their office for the community’s benefit, not for personal prestige or financial
gain. The most important religious events were community affairs.
Perhaps of most significance, people drew their primary sense of identity from
their membership in a particular community. The concept of community was very
strong; that is, the “idea” of community was highly developed and associated with
powerful emotional ties. This social and territorial unit, which the Nahuas called the
altepetl,the Yucatec Mayas called the cah,and the Mixtecs called the sina yya,had
deep roots in preconquest times. Though often referred to in English as a “city-state,”
the traditional corporate community was often not very large or very urbanized.
What was more important was the idea of a group of people who shared ancestral
rights to a particular piece of land, which they occupied as a settled and permanent
community. They shared an identity based on their association with this particular
place. Most people married within their own community. People thought of them-
selves not as Indians, or Nahuas, or Zapotecs, but as Teposcolulans, or Tlapanecans,
or Pantitecans, depending on whatever their home community happened to be
called.
The second point is that these corporate communities were engaged in a strug-
gle to survive. Spanish colonization had devastating effects not only on population
levels but also on all aspects of native life. The political system was reorganized so that
native people had no power beyond their own communities. The economy was re-
organized in order to siphon wealth away from the native people and into Spanish
hands. A European worldview and Roman Catholic religion made significant inroads,
even though they never completely supplanted native belief systems. In order to sur-
vive, native peoples had to make tremendous changes and adaptations in their
lifestyle and to develop complex strategies of self-defense and mutual support. This
is not to say that life in native communities was always harmonious, with everyone
working together for the good of the community. Conflicts within communities—be-
tween individuals, kinship groups, or political factions—over access to power and re-
sources were common.