Wandering Peoples is a chronicle of cultural resiliency, colonial relations, and trespassed frontiers in the borderlands of a changing Spanish empire. Focusing on the native subjects of Sonora in Northwestern Mexico, Cynthia Radding explores the social process of peasant class formation and the cultural persistence of Indian communities during the long transitional period between Spanish colonialism and Mexican national rule. Throughout this anthropological history, Radding presents multilayered meanings of culture, community, and ecology, and discusses both the colonial policies to which peasant communities were subjected and the responses they developed to adapt and resist them.
Radding describes this colonial mission not merely as an instance of Iberian expansion but as a site of cultural and political confrontation. This alternative vision of colonialism emphasizes the economic links between mission communities and Spanish mercantilist policies, the biological consequences of the Spanish policy of forced congregación, and the cultural and ecological displacements set in motion by the practices of discipline and surveillance established by the religious orders. Addressing wider issues pertaining to ethnic identities and to ecological and cultural borders, Radding’s analysis also underscores the parallel production of colonial and subaltern texts during the course of a 150-year struggle for power and survival.
- Contents
- About the Series
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: The Social Ecology of the Sonoran Frontier
- Part One. Los Sonoras and the Iberian Invasion of Northwestern Mexico
- 1. Ethnic Frontiers in the Sonoran Desert
- 2. Amerindian Economy in Sonora
- 3. Native Livelihood and the Colonial Economy
- Part Two. The Intimate Sphere of Ethniclty: Household and Community
- 4. Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Formation in Sonora
- 5. "Gypseys" and Villagers: Shifting Communities and Changing Ethnic Identities in Highland Sonora
- Part Three. Rival Proprietors and Changing Forms of Land Tenure
- 6. Land and the Indian Comtin
- 7. Peasants, Hacendados, and Merchants: The Cultural Differentiation of Sonoran Society
- Part Four. Ethnogenesis and Resistant Adaptation
- 8. Cultural Endurance and Accommodation to Spanish Rule
- 9. Patterns of Mobilization
- Conclusions: Contested Space
- Notes
- Glossary
- Select Bibliography
- Index
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