Evangelization as Performance: Making Music, Telling Stories

In the 1970s two important trends in Latin American history came into conjunction. The older of these was the study of the evangelization of the natives of the New World. The evangelization largely occurred at the hands of the regular clergy: Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians. Nevertheless, there were significant numbers of secular priests who also engaged in the mission, but they did not leave the editorial legacy of the religious. The second trend which emerged was the study of the native peoples, but with a very important new consideration. While earlier historians had been contented to write basing their histories on the Spanish language documentation, in the 1970s a new generation of scholars versed in Nahuati, Maya, and other native languages, began to look at themes utilizing native language documentation. The confluence of these two trends was the use of native language documentation to study the evangelization.