¹ Archivo Histórico del Ayuntamiento de Pátzcuaro (AHAP), CAJA 30, EXPEDIENTE 1, FOJAS 139–148, “Criminal que de oficio de la real justicia sigue contra Augustín Calvillo, Matias Serrillo, coyote, Joseph Ruíz Alvarez, español y Juan Santos, mulato, vecinos de la ciudad por la muerte executada en Santiago Valerio, indio del barrio del senor San Francisco de esta ciudad.”

² In order to conduct meaningful discussion, the term “literacy” must be clarified, since alternate forms of literacy existed in the colonial setting. For this study, the ability to read and/or write European alphabetic texts denotes alphabetic literacy. Most of what we know about literacy in the colonial setting covers the transition of oral indigenous languages to languages recorded with roman alphabetic symbols. Much of what has been studied in this capacity pertains to indigenous village or town council records. James Lockhart pioneered this approach, literally rewriting what historians know about native village life after the military conquest of the sixteenth century. This so-called new philological approach, spurred by Lockhart and his students at UCLA, yielded regional characterizations of native society that revealed both significant continuity between pre- and post-conquest political and social structures in some areas and profound adaptation and change in others. For different regions of Mexico, see chapters seven and eight of Lockhart, , The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992);Google Scholar chapter six in Horn, Rebecca, Postconquest Coyoacan: Nahua-Spanish Relations in Central Mexico, 1519–1650 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997);Google Scholar chapters eighteen through twenty-two of Restall, Matthew, The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550–1800 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar and Restall, , “Heirs To The Hieroglyphs: Indigenous Writing in Colonial Mesoamerica,” The Americas 54:2 (October 1997), pp. 239–267;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and chapters two and three, Terraciano, Kevin, The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca: Nudmhui History, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

³ Reaching back to Steve Stern's seminal work on the Ayacucho region of Andean Peru, research over the intervening decades has illustrated in different ways “the tragedy of success” — indigenous peoples' ability to utilize colonial institutions such as the court system in order to defend community and individual interests. In this case, the “tragedy” represents the cost (recognition of European institutional dominion) associated with maintaining control over, among other things, native communal lands. In particular, Stern's path breaking work illustrates how cognizance of elite ideologies helped native Andeans craft their arguments in court proceedings, and how this ultimately led to genuine, if limited, success in civil suits. See Stern, , Peru's Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2nd edition, 1994).Google Scholar Recent work focusing specifically on literacy seeks to apply subaltern analysis to court cases, attempting to unearth multifaceted, hidden, and, at times, (apparently) irretrievable subaltern voices from the recorded, dominant ideology written by court officials and notaries. An example of this work can be found in Chaves, María Eugenia, “Literate Culture, Subalternity and Resistance: The Case of Slave Women in Colonial Courts,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 7:1 (2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Finally, an expanding corpus of work on people of African descent in ecclesiastical court hearings rivals Stern's insofar as it reflects the complex array of considerations Afro-Mexicans faced and understood when promoting self-interests before colonial tribunals. Two of the best examples of this tack are Bennett, , Africans in Colonial Mexico, and Villa-Flores, “To Lose One's Soul.”Google Scholar

⁴ For example, Spanish King Philip II decreed “that in every case, two Indians or three women presented as witnesses are worth one Spanish man.” Cited in Pagden, Anthony, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 44.Google Scholar

⁵ In some sense, this approach echoes that of Carrera, Magali M., who suggests that “in New Spain, colonial identity never comes singularly from a Spaniard's or a casta's viewpoint, but must necessarily be a heterogeneous, conflicted amalgam.” Carrera, , Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Painting (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2003), p. 18.Google Scholar

⁶ The well-known caste versus class argument need not be reiterated here. Rather, an excellent summary exists in the introduction to Jackson, Robert, Race, Caste, and Status: Indians in Colonial Spanish America (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1999).Google Scholar

⁷ Recent research on the caste system bears (in varying degrees) the stamp of subaltern analysis, and concentrates on re-characterizing the power dynamics of colonial society through study of factors such as the body and sorcery. Garofalo, Leo J. and O'Toole, Rachel Sarah provide an accessible synopsis of subaltern approaches to the caste question in “Introduction: Constructing Difference in Colonial Latin America,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 7:1 (Spring 2006), pp. 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Among the most influential of this line of analysis are Carrera, , Imagining Identity in New Spain; liona Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005);Google Scholar Lewis, Laura A., Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and O'Toole, Rachel S., “Danger in the Convent: Colonial Demons, Idolatrous Indias, and Bewitching Negras in Santa Clara (Trujillo del Peru),” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 7:1 (Spring 2006).Google Scholar Less overtly theoretical discussion of caste in eighteenth century Mexico is found in Castleman, Bruce A., “Social Climbers in a Colonial Mexican City: Individual Mobility within the Sistema de Castas in Orizaba, 1777–1791,” Colonial Latin American Review 10:2 (December 2001), pp. 229–249;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Deans-Smith, Susan, “Creating the Colonial Subject: Casta Paintings, Collectors, and Critics in Eighteenth-Century Mexico and Spain,” Colonial Latin American Review 14:2 (December 2005), pp. 169–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ An insightful and current summary of the state of research is found in Vinson, Ben III, “Introduction: African (Black) Diaspora History, Latin American History,” The Americas 63:1 (July 2006), pp. 118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Numerous case studies examining various Latin American regions have appeared, although Vinson's leadership in the field has contributed to a particularly rich recent series of works on Mexico. For example, see more from Vinson, in Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001),Google Scholar and “Articulating Space: The Free-colored Military Establishment in Colonial Mexico from Conquest to Independence,” Callaloo 27:1 (Winter 2004), pp. 150–171. For research from other scholars, see Bennett, Herman L., Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570–1640 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003);Google Scholar Bristol, Joan C., “From Curing to Witchcraft: Afro-Mexicans and the Mediation of Authority,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 7:1 (Spring 2006);Google Scholar Fisher, Andrew B. “Creating and Contesting Community: Indians and Afromestizos in the Late-Colonial Tierra Caliente of Guerrero, Mexico,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 7:1 (Spring 2006);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Frank, “Trey” Proctor, III, “Afro-Mexican Slave Labor in the Obrajes de Panos of New Spain, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” The Americas 60:1 (July 2003), pp. 33–58, and “Gender and the Manumission of Slaves in New Spain,” Hispanic American Historical Review 86:2 (May 2006), pp. 309–336Google Scholar; and Villa-Flores, Javier, “‘To Lose One's Soul’: Blasphemy and Slavery in New Spain, 1596–1669,” Hispanic American Historical Review 82:3 (2002), pp. 435–468.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ McGovern-Bowen, Carolyn, “Colonial Pátzcuaro, Michoacán: A Population Study,” Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1986.Google Scholar

¹⁰ In an earlier article, I address how caste self-identification could be contested by criminal officials, and how this terminological conflict exposed points of social stress and negotiation between elite and non-elite. See Althouse, , “Contested Mestizos, Alleged Mulattos: Racial Identity and Caste Hierarchy in Eighteenth Century Pátzcuaro, Mexico,” The Americas 62:2 (October 2005), pp. 151–175.Google Scholar

¹¹ The notion of honor in colonial Spanish America has received significant treatment in the past few years. Honor represented a combination of factors such as occupation, lineage, caste, social network, and behavior, and the best treatment of the issue can be found in Johnson, Lyman L. and Lipsett-Rivera, Sonya, eds., The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).Google Scholar

¹² Although debate regarding the character of Mexican independence remains unsettled, attention to regional insurgency (with Michoacán as a key zone of conflict) has represented a key component of the scholarship for the past few decades. Certainly, now classic works like Tutino's, John From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750–1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986),Google Scholar and Brading's, David A. Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajío: León, 1700–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978),Google Scholar examine issues such as the material conditions of the peasantry and land tenure patterns, in the process explaining why collective violence broke out in rural Michoacán (as well as Guanajuato) soon after the advent of the nineteenth century. However, few, if any, scholars have employed these classic studies as springboards into more intimate aspects of michoacano agrarian life, even though Michoacán is considered one of the “original base areas” of the so-called Hidalgo rebellion. Quote from Hamnett, Brian R. “Royalist Counterinsurgency and the Continuity of Rebellion: Guanajuato and Michoacán, 1813–20,” Hispanic American Historical Review 62:1 (February 1982), p. 20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For more on regional studies of agrarian violence and its relationship to Mexican independence, see Hamnett, , Roots of Insurgency: Mexican Regions, 1750–1824 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Katz, Friedrich, ed., Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution: Rural Social Conflict in Mexico (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988);CrossRefGoogle Scholar the conclusion of Taylor, William B., Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972),Google Scholar and Taylor, , Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987;Google Scholar and Van Young, Eric, “Millenium on the Northern Marches: The Mad Messiah of Durango and Popular Rebellion in Mexico, 1800–1815,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 28:3 (July 1986), pp. 385–413,CrossRefGoogle Scholar “Agrarian Rebellion and Defense of Community: Meaning and Collective Violence in Late Colonial and Independence-Era Mexico,” Journal of Social History 27:2 (Winter 1993), pp. 245–269, and The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810–1821 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001).

¹³ Spain's unique neo-scholastic intellectual environment and the classical underpinnings of Spanish encounters with the Americas depended upon concepts of societal differentiation and design that were, at least in part, based on writing and alphabetic literacy. A highly detailed and still meaningful account of European intellectual views of the New World can be found in Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man.

¹⁴ Elizabeth Hill Boone states “We are all aware of the commonly held belief among those scholars and particularly linguists who focus on Europe and Asia that pre-Columbian cultures did not develop “true writing.” We have heard terms such as illiterate, non-literate, and preliterate applied to these peoples. Clearly the term “illiterate,” with its meaning of “uneducated,” is simply a pejorative misuse of the word.” Boone, “Introduction: Writing and Recording Knowledge,” in Boone and Mignolo, Walter D. eds., Writing Without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), p. 4.Google Scholar Even when confronted with alternative forms of literacy present in native texts, Spaniards did not necessarily credit these American inventions as equals of European style books, particularly when native texts lacked alphabetic scripts. Mignolo explains that sixteenth century Spanish humanist Alejo Venegas, the first professor of rhetoric at Mexico's royal university, defined the book in essentially Eurocentric terms that “erased previous material means of writing or denied coeval ones that were not alphabetically based.” Mignolo, , “Signs and Their Transmission: The Question of the Book in the New World,” in Writing Without Words, p. 227.Google Scholar For more on alternative literacy in Spanish America, see the work of Tom Cummins and Joanne Rappaport in Writing Without Words, as well as Brokaw, Galen, “Khipu Numeracy and Alphabetic Literacy in the Andes: Felipe Guarnan Poma de Ayala's Nueva corónica y buen gobierno,” Colonial Latín American Review 11:2 (December 2002), pp. 275–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Finally, we should use care in assuming that simply because literacy mattered to Europeans, all Europeans in the Americas commanded alphabetic literacy skills that Indians lacked. Matthew Restall explodes this and other myths regarding European occupation of the Americas, arguing that “Despite the myth that literacy gave Spaniards an advantage over Native Americans, members of conquistador companies could probably read and write no better than the most literate native societies, such as the Mayas.” Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 37.

¹⁵ Credit for this necessary point goes to the anonymous reader for The Americas, who reminded me that “the meaning of literacy is far more tangled a matter” than I had revealed through neglect to raise such issues.

¹⁶ In fact, the spread of alphabetic writing was one of the most profound changes in the post conquest landscape of the Americas. Kevin Terraciano explains that while believing that introducing alphabetic writing represented part of their civilizing mission, Spaniards in the Americas had success in this endeavor specifically because native forms of non-alphabetic literacy existed prior to contact. He states that “the success of the alphabetic writing system throughout Mesoamerica stemmed from a highly developed pre-conquest system of pictorial writing. Spanish introductions generally took root when there existed a close indigenous equivalent or precedent.” Terraciano, , “Crime and Culture in Colonial Mexico: The Case of the Mixtec Murder Note,” Ethnohistory 45:4 (Autumn 1998), p. 715.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ Specifically, the case of don Juan Tomás de Olmos, cited in Althouse, , “Contested Mestizos, Alleged Mulattos: Racial Identity and Caste Hierarchy in Eighteenth Century Pátzcuaro,” The Americas 62:2 (October 2005), pp. 172–175.Google Scholar

¹⁸ For additional information on pre-contact purépecha society, see Gorenstein, Shirley and Pollard, Helen P., The Tarascan Civilization: A Late Prehispanic Cultural System (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Publications in Anthropology, Number 28, 1983),Google Scholar and Pollard, , Taríacuri's Legacy: The Prehispanic Tarascan State (Norman, OK: Oklahoma University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

¹⁹ The classic study on early colonial Michoacán is Benedict Warren, J., The Conquest of Michoacán: The Spanish Domination of the Tarascan Kingdom in western Mexico, 1521–1530 (Norman, OK: Oklahoma University Press, 1985).Google Scholar For more recent interpretations, see Krippner-Martinez, James, Rereading the Conquest: Power, Politics, and the History of Early Colonial Michoacán, Mexico, 1521–1565 (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2001).Google Scholar Specifically regarding the evangelization campaigns in Michoacán, including the work of Vasco de Quiroga, see Verástique, Bernardino, Michoacán and Eden: Vasco de Quiroga and the Evangelization of Western Mexico (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2003).Google Scholar On the historical significance of Quiroga in Mexico, see Krippner-Martinez, , “Invoking ‘Tato Vasco’: Vasco de Quiroga, Eighteenth-Twentieth Centuries,” The Americas 56:3 (January 2000), pp. 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ Precise census material is hard to come by for Michoacán prior to the mid eighteenth century, and even then, less than satisfactory numbers are available. However, by examining the available material, it is possible to make solid assumptions about the (limited) urban nature of Cocupao and Tzintzuntzan. The most explicit figures are included in the 1822 statistical survey of the Michoacán region, which though conducted nearly three quarters of a century after the period covering this study, still provides a general baseline for demographic assessment. This inspection tabulated the population of Cocupao at 2752, Tzintzuntzan at 2254, and Pátzcuaro at 5129. Lejarza, Juan José Martínez de, Análisis Estadístico de la Provincia de Michoacán en 1822 (Morelia: Fimax Publicistas, 1974), pp. 115–122.Google Scholar Further evidence multiplies available householder (vecino) counts by five to arrive at a population of 1250 for Tzintzuntzan in 1748. See McEnulty, Catherine Rose Ettinger “La traza urbana en la cuenca lacustre de Pátzcuaro: dos ejemplos contrastantes,” in Martínez, Carlos Paredes, ed., Arquitectura y espacio social en poblaciones purépechas de la época colonial (Morelia, 1998: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás Hidalgo), p. 137.Google Scholar

²¹ Again, I reference the new philological school, as the bulk of native language alphabetic texts used by such scholars to literally redefine colonial native studies were created by native elites. Consequently, titled native elites and officeholders would be assumed to have higher literacy rates than Indian commoners.

²² The overwhelming majority of indio witnesses (and plaintiffs and defendants) gave their statements through interpreters—largely indigenous—who recorded statements made in purépecha, the primary native language of Michoacán. Many of these individuals likely spoke some Spanish, but still chose to testify through institutionalized channels represented by officially recognized interpreters. On the other hand, those people labeled indios ladinos were often mentioned as exclusively Spanish speakers, with no knowledge of purépecha language. Hence, they stood in contrast to Indians who spoke some Spanish, but nonetheless decided to present their statements in purépecha. My supposition that knowledge of Spanish was related to alphabetic literacy does not ignore the convincing evidence cited by the new philologists, who unquestionably demonstrate the existence of native scribes who mastered alphabetic literacy in native languages. Rather, I seek to explore the relationship between Spanish only speakers and alphabetic literacy.

²³ As noted, women's literacy is little understood and it is safe to say that the general assumption is that few women, save perhaps Spanish women in places like Mexico City, were literate. Alphabetic literacy among indigenous women was certainly rare, if at all present, anywhere in Mexico, leading one historian to offer the regional observation that there “is no evidence to date that any colonial Indian woman in central Mexico was literate, even to the extent of signing her own name.” Sarah Cline, “Fray Alonso de Molina's Model Testament and Antecedents to Indigenous Wills in Spanish America,” in Kellogg, Susan and Restall, Matthew eds., Dead Giveaways: Indigenous Testaments of Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes (Salt Lake City, UT: The University of Utah Press, 1998), p. 31.Google Scholar Frances Kartunnen, a noted scholar of native writing, suggests that if women did write at all, it was only to sign their names, not actually compose texts. Kartunnen, , “Indigenous Writing as a Vehicle of Postconquest Continuity and Change in Mesoamerica,” in Hill Boone, Elizabeth and Cummins, Tom, eds., Native Traditions in the Postconquest World (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998), p. 435.Google Scholar

²⁴ This state of affairs exists because, at least in the AHAP causes, urban cases contain fewer witnesses than rural cases, likely due to two factors. First, urban crimes occurred in a climate of closer supervision by criminal officials, and these officials needed to depend less on a stream of witnesses to verify crime-related events. Second, reporting rural crimes—except violent crimes—generally involved a series of informal investigations by the plaintiff, especially so for those complaints involving stolen cattle. Consequently, rural plaintiffs often referred officials to sometimes lengthy lists of witnesses willing to corroborate the plaintiff's accusations by admitting that they had seen a certain animal in the custody of the purported thief.

²⁵ Individuals of African descent were prohibited from graduating from Spanish American universities. A detailed example of such a case can be found in Twinam, Ann “Pedro de Ayarza: The Purchase of Whiteness,” in Andrien, Kenneth J., The Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002), pp. 194–210.Google Scholar

²⁶ Again, see Pagden, , The Fall of Natural Man, p. 44.Google Scholar

²⁷ It could be argued that lack of signature might be interpreted as an attempt to avoid full accountability for activity documented in affidavits. However, were this the case, then a related assumption would be that Spaniards were, on the whole, more “truthful” than other castes because they were willing to sign their words with more regularity than people from other caste distinctions. Furthermore, many of the people studied were not accused of a crime, which suggests that they would have less reason to attempt to sidestep legal accountability by essentially refusing to sign their statements.

²⁸ Even though the criminal justice system had officers who administered rural regions, crimes committed in such areas could at times be days or weeks old before formal investigation began.

²⁹ Van Young, Eric “Islands in the Storm: Quiet Cities and Violent Countrysides in the Mexican Independence Era,” Past and Present 118:1 (February 1988), pp. 130–155;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Van Young, , The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810–1821 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

³⁰ Lockhart, , “Three Experiences of Culture Contact: Nahua, Maya, and Quechua,” in Boone and Cummins, Native Traditions in the Postconquest World, p. 34.Google Scholar

³¹ Burkhart, , “Pious Performances: Christian Pageantry and Native Identity in Early Colonial Mexico,” in Boone and Cummins, Native Traditions in the Postconquest World, p. 362.Google Scholar

³² This is not to overlook extensive use of complex calendar systems in the Americas before contact with Europeans. Rather, it is to say that age consciousness expressed in the aforementioned way was a clearly European mode of expression. In some areas, elements of both indigenous and European calendars were in simultaneous use by the eighteenth century. See, for example, Piatt, Tristan “Ethnic Calendars and Market Interventions among the Ayllus of Lipes during the Nineteenth Century,” in Larson, Brooke and Harris, Olivia eds., with Enrique Tandeter, Ethnicity, Markets, and Migration in the Andes: At the Crossroads of History and Anthropology (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), p. 261.Google Scholar

³³ This is surprising in the sense that provincial Mexico in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as viewed through Pátzcuaro and its region, appears to have been more age conscious than North America, where the available sources “show an unconcern with, or omission of references to, age.” Chudacoff, Howard P., How Old Are You? Age Consciousness in American Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 27.Google Scholar

³⁴ AHAP, C. 26, E. 2, F. 390–400, is the case against Andrés de Silva from near Chucándiro in northern Michoacán.

³⁵ AHAP, C. 16, E. 4, F. 696–703, and C. 17, E. 1, F. 139–151.