Imagining Histories of Colonial Latin America: Synoptic Methods and Practices ed. by Karen Melvin and Sylvia Sellers-García (review)
Altman deftly accentuates the fact that Spaniards needed indigenous allies (indios amigos), such as the ruler from central Mexico, Francisco de Sandoval Acacitli, later appointed ruler over the Chichimecas. Indigenous allies were crucial actors in the practice of forced occupation. Cortés’s legacy of conquering natives by dividing them remained the norm for succeeding campaigns in western Mexico. Nevertheless, as Altman argues in Chapter 3, Sandoval was no mere pawn. His alliance with Spaniards “represented an opportunity to revive the warrior traditions that the Spanish overthrow of the Aztec Empire had suppressed” (96). This testifies to the plural forms of indigenous agency within a colonial project that exploited tributary labor in mines, cotton fields, and cacao orchards. Though the book lacks a robust conclusion, it forges a luminous path for specialists and teachers eager to navigate the struggles that defined Nueva Galicia and the New World more broadly.