Cultural change in colonial Mexico. Generational conflicts and legal pluralism in indigenous communities on the peninsula of Yucatan (16th to 19th century)

• Applicant: Dr. Ute Schüren
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: from 2016 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 280817575

The project investigates the impact of colonial rule on the social and political relations within the indigenous Maya population of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. It starts from the assumption that the establishment of colonial rule provoked important changes in intergenerational relations thus affecting key elements of the power structure in indigenous households and communities. With the development of the colonial order new legal and administrative mechanisms were established for the regulation of the local social and political relations. New cultural techniques (such as Christianity and Hispanization) gained importance particularly among the younger generations. Alternative models for the negotiation of family relations as well as for the organization of local politics became available in the indigenous communities, which had been dominated by groups of elders (principales, ancianos) before. Therefore the project's pivotal question is: How did Spanish legal norms and institutions affect local social relations in the indigenous communities, especially the intergenerational relations and the power structure? The project will transcend current debates that focus on the cultural change induced by external European actors. It will rather concentrate on how indigenous actors responded to and transformed social structures in their interaction with Spanish colonial institutions taking into account forms of social differentiation, local power relations and conflicts within the indigenous communities. It will especially focus on litigations, because they are well documented and, directly or indirectly, provide information on local norms and their violation. So far the project's topic has been investigated only rarely for colonial Latin America. Focusing on the systematic investigation of the relationship between officially recognized norms and indigenous customary law the projects aims at contributing to a deeper understanding of the dynamics of socio-cultural change in the context of colonial rule. Complementing recent studies of legal pluralism in contemporary indigenous societies the project's long-term perspective, extending from the 16th to the 19th century, allows to identify the changes but also the continuities in social institutions and thus to determine key factors of socio-cultural development.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants