The Learned Ones

Nahua Intellectuals in Postconquest Mexico

Kelly S. McDonough

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780816534210, 9780816511365
• eBook ISBN: 9780816598663
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Mexican History
• Index: Literature

They were the healers, teachers, and writers, the "wise ones" of Nahuatl-speaking cultures in Mexico, remembered in painted codices and early colonial manuscripts of Mesoamerica as the guardians of knowledge. Yet they very often seem bound to an unrecoverable past, as stereotypes prevent some from linking the words "indigenous" and "intellectual" together.

Not so, according to author Kelly S. McDonough, at least not for native speakers of Nahuatl, one of the most widely spoken and best-documented indigenous languages of the Americas. This book focuses on how Nahuas have been deeply engaged with the written word ever since the introduction of the Roman alphabet in the early sixteenth century. Dipping into distinct time periods of the past five hundred years, this broad perspective allows McDonough to show the heterogeneity of Nahua knowledge and writing as Nahuas took up the pen as agents of their own discourses and agendas.

McDonough worked collaboratively with contemporary Nahua researchers and students, reconnecting the theorization of a population with the population itself. The Learned Ones describes the experience of reading historic text with native speakers today, some encountering Nahua intellectuals and their writing for the very first time. It intertwines the written word with oral traditions and embodied knowledge, aiming to retie the strand of alphabetic writing to the dynamic trajectory of Nahua intellectual work.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Ixtlamatinih: Nahua Intellectuals Writing Mexican Modernity
• Chapter 1. Describing Nahuatl Language to Others in Early Colonial Mexico: Antonio del Rincón
• Tlen naman 1. The IDIEZ Project
• Chapter 2. Writing Tlaxcalan Memories that Matter: Don Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza
• Tlen naman 2. Nonahuatlahtolnemilitzin (My Life in Nahuatl) by Refugio Nava Nava
• Chapter 3. Defending Indigenous Citizens When "Indians No Longer Existed": Faustino Galicia Chimalpopoca
• Tlen naman 3. Tlapepetlaca (Lightning Strikes Again and Again) by Victoriano de la Cruz Cruz
• Chapter 4. Knowing, Speaking, Teaching, and Writing: Doña Luz Jiménez
• Tlen naman 4. Cihuatequiuh (Women's Work) by Sabina Cruz de la Cruz
• Chapter 5. Performing the Recovery of Indigeneity: Ildefonso Maya Hernández
• Conclusions and Beginnings: Reading and Writing Nahua Space
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index