Northern New Spain

This paper presented new research on Jesuit visual culture in New Spain, situating Santa María de las Parras (founded 1598) as an important site winemaking and art production on the northeastern borderlands of colonial Mexico. The Jesuits fostered alliances with Spanish and Tlaxcaltecan Indians to serve their religious and temporal interests, as these patrons donated funds to decorate chapels in the Jesuit church of San Ignacio. The evidence presented in this paper sheds new light on the Jesuits’ involvement in patronage relationships with both Spanish and Indian benefactors that served to link northern New Spain with art centers in the viceregal capital and Italy.

Este  ensayo  trata  del  sistema  de  abastecimiento  de  las  misiones de la Compañía de Jesús en el noroeste de la Nueva España. Sostiene que los jesuitas participaron en la cultura material y de consumo en vías de globalización, lo que desencadenó un considerable y constante flujo de mercancías de todo el mundo del centro del virreinato de la Nueva España a la frontera. Esta situación se ilustra con los pedidos que los misioneros enviaron en 1712 a la Procuraduría de la orden. El suministro se pagó con la ayuda de la Corona y con la plata que las misiones ganaron mediante la venta de sus excedentes agropecuarios a los reales de minas de la región. De esta manera, se puede demostrar que las misiones estaban insertadas en un sistema comercial que movía bienes entre las diferentes partes del globo, pero también se apoyó en procesos de sustitución de importaciones que caracterizaron la globalización temprana

This essay explores the ways in which Jesuit martyrdom images circulated from the northern missions of New Spain to Europe via Mexico City. These portraits directly inspired the creation of new artworks in early seventeenth-century Rome, transforming how Roman audiences understood colonial Mexico. In 1617, the Jesuits sent eight drawings of martyrs from New Spain to Rome at the request of the Father General, who ordered paintings to be made after these portraits. Examining surviving textual accounts, this essay reveals the possible locations where audiences could have viewed these portraits in Rome. They provided a new visibility to the Mexican cult of martyrs and affirmed the Society’s growing international missionary identity.

The polychaetous annelid Diopatra biscayensis Fauchald et al., 2012 was recently described from the Atlantic coast of France. It has been the subject of a plethora of publications dealing with its importance in the field of ecology: from its role as an ecosystem engineer, being an indicative species of climate change in western Europe to questions of whether it was native or introduced to the old continent, spawning theories about its hypothetical routes of introduction and spreading. We have redescribed D. biscayensis, traced its biogeographical history in the Bay of Biscay through examination of old museum holdings and studied its ecology and reproductive biology throughout a one year period from a northern Spain estuary, showing for the first time that the species is a protandric simultaneous hermaphrodite. The annual spawning season is from early August to late September, when large numbers of oocytes of 260 mm diameter were deposited in gelatinous egg masses attached to the parental tubes. Early trochophores developed in the jelly mass by 4e6 h, 3-chaetiger metatrochophores after 48 h, and the jelly mass had totally disintegrated by 72 h, releasing the lecithotrophic larvae. Our studies have clarified the morphology and reproductive pattern of D. biscayensis, documented that the species has inhabited the European waters for more than a century and we hope that these findings will serve as a basis to robust ecological studies and hypotheses concerning this and the related species.

The subterranean realm of the Cantabrian-Pyrenean region of northern Spain harbours a rich diversity of Zospeum. Due to their tiny size and the difficulty of finding them alive, scarce animal material has been available for scientific investigation. Recent investigations of Zospeum shells have provided valuable, but limited insights towards our understanding of the evolutionary processes occurring within this taxon in northern Spain. In an integrative study, we investigate 57 populations of Zospeum from northern Spanish caves using two mitochondrial (COI and 16S) and two nuclear markers (H3 and 5.8 S rRNA + ITS2). Revealed is a separate radiation of the northern Spanish species for which the new genus, Iberozospeum, is proposed. The independent radiation of Dinaric Zospeum from that of northern Spain justifies the designation of Iberozospeum n. gen. Morphological evidence is provided via histological analysis of Iberozospeum vasconicum and SEM analyses of radulae of eastern Alpine, Dinaric and Iberian species. Important differences in morphological structure and character states are presented, including the first view of the sexually mature female and the presence of the giant albumen gland in an individual of the subterranean, troglobitic Carychiidae. Significant differences are revealed in superficial crystallographic structure of the columellar lamellae, the morphology of the columellar muscle and in the radula. Radular ribbon length, ribbon broadness, straightness of the ribbon base and cusp configuration are distinctive in the Iberian species. One new species is described corroborated by genetic and morphological characters.

"THE Spanish conquest of America would have been impossible without the willful collabo­ ration of Indian allies, massively recruited from an early stage as warriors, guides, scouts, and interpreters." This chapter is centered on Otomí allies  in northern New Spain and provides an overview of twentieth century historiography on Indian allies in this viceroyalty. It also discusses specific instances of  Nahuas and Purépechas who took part in conquest campaigns and performed as border colonists. It argues that besides the privileges and material benefits they obtained, or the threats of Spanish authorities and encomenderos, the Indians'  motivations to get involved in conquest and colonizing campaigns alongside Spanish individuals were  also determined by local and regional articulations of native politics that predated the arrival of Europeans.

This essay examines the unique nature of evangelization history on the viceregal frontier in northern New Spain, where missionaries defended the limits of the Spanish empire and  also moved frequently between urban and mission spaces. As the Franciscans established their own historical memory of evangelization in the north with paintings and devotional treatises, Franciscan spirituality and the order’s missions were linked spatially and temporally to the Valley of Mexico.

This study extends previous arachnological work carried out in the former Montaña de Covadonga National Park. We studied the diversity of Araneae in two kinds of scrubland -dominated by Erica and Ulex or by Genista- and in rocky areas, by means of pitfall traps. We captured 595 individuals, from which 54 species and 15 families have been identified. The families with the most species were Linyphiidae and Lycosidae. The family with the highest number of individuals was Lycosidae. The most abundant species was Pardosa pullata (Clerck, 1757). We report Metopobactrus falcifrons (Simon, 1884) for the first time from the Iberian Peninsula, as well as 27 new records from Asturias. Erica-Ulex and Genista scrublands had a similar number of species, 33 and 39 respectively, which was higher than the species richness of the rocky areas (3). The arachnofauna in both scrublands was very similar, with a dominance of Pardosa pullata, and very different from the arachnofauna of the rocky areas, dominated by Al- lopecosa osellai (Lugetti & Bongiorgi, 1969). A nonparametric ordination analysis, NMDS, including beech, gall oak, alder and mixed forests together with the three habitats explored in the present study, separated in different quadrants the beech forests, the mixed forests, scrublands plus rocky areas and alder forests plus gall oak forests. The number of species shared among habitats was very low, pointing to the importance of environmental mosaics to preserve a high richness of spiders.

En algún momento de la historia, el territorio de Alaska fue la frontera norte de la Nueva España,  y con esto la expansión territorial de la Colonia alcanzaría todo el continente. La mitad del Continente Americano, desde Alaska hasta Centroamérica se gobernaba desde la Ciudad de México

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this article parts from the analysis of a Jesuit text published in the 18th century, Ignaz Pfefferkorn’s Description of the province of Sonora. Written within the formal scheme of a natural history, the text serves as a reference for the investigation of descriptions and categorizations of the body and, in a next step, embodied or performative musical practices among indigenous habitants of Northwestern New Spain. As shown, Pfefferkorn’s, generally benevolent, observations of indigenous bodies must be seen in close reference to 18th-century discourses on the body as a changeable category influenced by humoral and hygienic thinking, thus somehow preceding racial classification emerging during the 18th and early 19th century. In a final step, referring to Foucault, the contribution focuses on the specific role of music and related performative practices, closely associated with the body, in disciplining bodies, thus pointing out music’s specific place within the codified system of cultural contact in the mission.

The manuscript that is here transcribed, analyzed and translated bears a fundamental importance for the history the American Southwest. It contains the report or “Autos Tocantes al alsamiento de/ los yndios de la provinçia de la/ Nueba Mexico” (Documents related to the uprising of the Indians of the province of New Mexico) that Antonio de Otermín, Governor of New Mexico, ordered prepared in 1680 regarding the attack on and destruction of Santa Fe and its surrounding towns by Indians who had united for this purpose.
The original document is conserved in the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City, and until now had remained unedited, with the exception of Herbert Eugene Bolton’s typed transcription (see Hackett 1911:94, note 3) and the English translation by Charmion Clair Shelby in Hackett (1942), which, up to now, has been the main source for historians to consult.
This is the first time the entire document has been published in Spanish; a new translation corrects numerous errors in existing translations; the edition is fully annotated with critical apparatus and onomastic indices.

This article presents new research on Jesuit visual culture in northern New Spain, situating Santa María de las Parras (founded 1598) as an important site where the Jesuits and secular landowners became involved in the lucrative business of winemaking. Viticulture in Parras helped transform this mission settlement into a thriving center of consumption. The Jesuits fostered alliances with Spanish and Tlaxcalan Indians to serve their religious and temporal interests, as these patrons donated funds to deco- rate chapels in the Jesuit church of San Ignacio. This financial support allowed the Society to purchase paintings by prominent artists in Mexico City and import them to Parras. The Jesuits arranged their chapels in a carefully ordered sequencing of images that promoted Ignatian spirituality and echoed iconographic decoration programs in Mexico City and Rome.
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Le principal intérêt de cet ouvrage réside dans l'approche microhistorique de groupes sociaux aux trajectoires individuelles inattendues. Il renouvelle en partie le regard que l'on porte sur les populations indifférenciées des centres miniers du nord du Mexique colonial. L'enquête, basée sur les archives mexicaines, permet de mieux prendre la mesure des dynamismes, de la fluidité et de la grande instabilité qui affectait ces sociétés. Il en résulte un texte foisonnant d'études de cas, certains étudiés suivant divers angles d'attaque : spatiaux, sociaux, religieux, judiciaires, culturels... Ce livre se propose donc de compléter les travaux sur Zacatecas et l'étude des sociétés minières du Centre-Nord de la Nouvelle-Espagne grâce à une démarche qui apporte un peu de « chair » à une littérature traditionnellement plus encline à considérer l'histoire économique, celle de la construction régionale ou la trajectoire exemplaire des élites.