Synopses & Reviews
This book is a richly detailed examination of social interaction in the city of Chihuahua, a major silver mining center of colonial Mexico. Founded at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the city attracted people from all over New Spain, all summoned “by the voices of the mines of Chihuahua.” The author shows how abstract relationships of class, political subordination, ethnicity, and gender took concrete form in the daily life of the diverse people of Chihuahua.
Reviews
“Martins well-written social history . . . is modest in length, but it is packed with insights and observations that will be useful both to scholars interested in other Mexican regions and to those who study early modern social relations in other settings. . . . Immensely informative and interesting . . . this rich volume will undoubtedly be influential for years to come.”
—American Historical Review
“Extremely readable and impressively researched . . . this is an ambitious and deeply analytical study. . . . Among the works many virtues are the clarity and unpretentiousness of its style, its insightfulness (without over-theorizing), and its sensitivity to its sources.”
—Latin American Studies
“Martin has given us a fine study of an eighteenth-century Mexican mining town. It is a work of painstaking scholarship, soft-spoken but with hard theoretical edges, written with clarity, economy, and grace.”
—Canadian Journal of History
Review
"Extremely readable and impressively researched . . . this is an ambitious and deeply analytical study. . . . Among the work's many virtues are the clarity and unpretentiousness of its style, its insightfulness (without over-theorizing), and its sensitivity to its sources."Latin American Studies
Review
"Martin has given us a fine study of an eighteenth-century Mexican mining town. It is a work of painstaking sholarship, soft-spoken but with hard theoretical edges, written with clarity, economy, and grace."Canadian Journal of History
Review
This extremely important study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the social history of colonial Mexico. The authors focus on the social, cultural, and political dynamics of Chihuahua provides a superb lens through which to view social interaction on a daily basis among individuals distinguished by their gender, class, race, and occupation. The work also engages several wider issues ranging from the regional history of Mexico, to the social history of a community, to questions of hegemony, power, and governance in a peripheral area.”Susan Deans-Smith, University of Texas at Austin
Review
"Martin's well-written social history . . . is packed with insights and observations that will be useful both to scholars interested in other Mexican regions and to those who study early modern social relations in other settings. . . . Immensely informative and interesting . . . this rich volume will undoubtedly be influential for years to come."American Historical Review
Synopsis
“This extremely important study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the social history of colonial Mexico. The authors focus on the social, cultural, and political dynamics of Chihuahua provides a superb lens through which to view social interaction on a daily basis among individuals distinguished by their gender, class, race, and occupation. The work also engages several wider issues ranging from the regional history of Mexico, to the social history of a community, to questions of hegemony, power, and governance in a peripheral area.”—Susan Deans-Smith, University of Texas at Austin
“Martins well-written social history . . . is packed with insights and observations that will be useful both to scholars interested in other Mexican regions and to those who study early modern social relations in other settings. . . . Immensely informative and interesting . . . this rich volume will undoubtedly be influential for years to come.”—American Historical Review
Synopsis
This book is a richly detailed examination of the social history of the city of Chihuahua, a major silver mining centre in colonial Mexico. The author shows how abstract relationships of class, political subordination, ethnicity, and gender took concrete form in the daily life of the diverse people of Chihuahua. The author examines both the motivations of those who wielded power as local officials, employers, and heads of households and how their subordinates responded to them. She argues that a complex process of give-and-take developed that shaped local society and politics, a process in which working-class people challenged existing power relations both directly and indirectly. The social history of colonial Mexico was everywhere marked by the constant renegotiation of social boundaries, but especially so in Chihuahua, where everyone at first was a newcomer, and 'Mexican' and 'Spaniard' confronted together the task of creating a new community.
Synopsis
This book is a richly detailed examination of social interaction in the city of Chihuahua, a major silver mining center of colonial Mexico. Founded at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the city attracted people from all over New Spain, all summoned "by the voices of the mines of Chihuahua." These included aspiring miners and merchants, mestizo and mulato workers and drifters, Tarahumara Indians indigenous to the area, Yaquis from Sonora, and Apaches from New Mexico. Several hundred Spaniards, principally from Northern Spain, also arrived, hoping to make their fortunes in the New World.
About the Author
Cheryl English Martin is Professor of History at the University of Texas at El Paso.