Written in the Land: Cartographies of Long-Term Colonialism in Southern Mexico

The European conquest of the Americas is still conceived in the academic and popular imagination as the most pivotal turning point in the history of the so-called ‘New World’ civilizations. It was, however, only one of many—and one of the last—of such dramatic cycles of domination and colonialism in southern Mexico, involving Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Aztecs, Pochutecs, and Chontales, among others. The millennial documentary genre of ‘territorial-narratives’ and other colonial cartographies along the Pacific Coast can offer us a unique window into these long-term transformations, and further interrogate such restrictive paradigms as the ‘European-colonizer’ vs. the ‘Indigenous-colonized’ and the ‘Prehispanic’↔‘Historical’ false dichotomy.

Danny Zborover, University of California, San Diego, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow.