El Es Dios!

This article outlines a brief historical sketch of the Danza Azteca-Chichimeca, or danza for short, which is becoming ubiquitous in areas of the United States with a significant Mexican American population. It looks at its origins during the early colonial period of Mexico, especially its mythological beginnings, to help elucidate the deep foundation of the dance tradition. This sketch also addresses the evolution of danza after it spread from its place of origin in the Bajío into major urban areas like Mexico City, where, once there, it changed due to ideological and political trends that circulated in the post-revolution period. The article also looks at danza’s pseudo-militaristic undertones to suggest that it might have contributed to the growing discontent among peasants and indigenous people, leading to Mexican independence. Some scholars have suggested that it, as a revitalizationist tradition, belongs in the “crisis cult” category. This analysis became evident when danza encountered neo-Aztec philosophies that promoted nationalistic and restorationist ideologies. In sum, the article touches on the popularity of danza in the United States despite the current climate of xenophobia and anti-migration, and nods at its growing international and global appeal.

Old World Methods, New World Pots. The Introduction of the Potter’s Wheel to the Spanish Colonies of Concepción de la Vega and Cotuí (Dominican Republic 1495–1562)

Wheel-made ceramics from early colonial Caribbean sites (1492–1562) have traditionally been labelled as European imports. This paper challenges that assumption, as the intercultural interactions within colonies in the New World have led to the creation of new social identities and changing material culture repertoires. Macro-trace ceramic analysis from the sites of Concepción de la Vega and Cotuí (Hispaniola, present-day Dominican Republic) show that the potter’s wheel was in fact introduced to the Spanish colonies at an early stage. The evidence of RKE (rotative kinetic energy) on sherds and the discovery of parts of a potter’s wheel are the earliest traces of the potter’s wheel found in the Americas. Here we aim to present how the potter’s wheel was introduced within the context of transcultural pottery forming. This paper will show that traditional coiling techniques were supplemented with finishing techniques on the wheel. The transformation processes within ceramic repertoires are assessed through theories of colonialism and learning processes, combined with archaeological and ethnoarchaeological assessment of the ceramic chaîne opératoire. Evidence from ceramic analysis is combined with historical sources to understand social processes surrounding the technological changes behind the introduction of the potter’s wheel to the New World colonies.

The Art and life of Alàgbà Fálétí – A Pic torial, Art and Artifacts Exhibition in Honor of Alàgbà Adébáyọ̀ Fálétí (1921- 2017) curated by Akinsola Adejuwon and Seyi Ogunjobi

Alàgbà Adébáyọ Fálétí to generations both in “town and gown” is a Yorùbá ̀ iconic cultural statement. His life was a window to different historical epochs in Nigeria. A life that spanned and recorded historical trajectories of early colonial, decolonisation, independent movement, First and Second World Wars, and Nigerian Civil War, Military and Civilian Rules experiences of Nigeria, is worth studying. The Institute of Cultural Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University Ile Ife in recognition of the deep engraving of the footprints of Fálétí in the sands of Yorùbá, indeed African times, called for befitting academic and cultural activities. Among these are this art and artifacts exhibition, a Colloquium, a Playlet and Documentary Film Show. Fálétí’s intense dedication to the promotion of the Yorùbá ọmọlúàbí cultural ethos and his deployment of his God-given talents and acquired capabilities in the promotion of Yorùbá literary and visual arts, history, poetry, orature, cinema and indeed 1 This is a review of the 2-week pictorial, art and artifacts exhibition in Honor of Alagba Adebayo Faleti in 2017 at the Institute of Cultural Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, curated by Akinsola Adejuwon and Seyi Ogunjobi. Reviews 192 Akinsola Adejuwon African arts in general, is not lost on all Fálétí enthusiasts. Furthermore, his remarkable service as Senior Art Fellow at the Institute of Cultural Studies OAU completes the Institute’s resolution to capture the worthy legacy in the appropriate location even with the inauguration of an Alàgbà Adébáyọ Fálétí ̀ Library, Institute of Cultural Studies. Within a lifetime of close to one century, Fálétí delivers perhaps unique classical Yorùbá messages in words matched with action, first to Africa and then the world. This review looks at the pictorial and art exhibition covering the world of Alàgbà Adébáyọ̀ Akande Fálétí. It is an assessment of a thematic display of selected pictures and objects which probably placed the observer within the environment and with people Fálétí related with. The images, pictures, artworks and objects in the display were segmented into five major parts. These focused mainly on Alàgbà Fálétí’s parentage, early childhood, education within pristine Yorùbá-driven legacies of the Ọyọ̀ -́ Yorùbá type, Family life over-written from data flowing from core Yorùbá ethical and artistic ‘motherboard.’ Represented also are years of adolescence and expressions of early youthful forays under various tutelary influences, variegated working periods, writing and acting plus public service careers. Alàgbà Fálétí’s childhood coincided with the period when the British Colonial Government had taken over administration of entire geographical space known as Nigeria. In spite of introduction of foreign culture and customs into Nigeria by the Europeans, Yorùbá culture remained resilient. Hence, we could imagine that the childhood of Alàgbà Fálétí was not radically different from Samuel Johnson’s description of features of Yorùbá childhood as characterised by ‘freedom’ (Johnson: 2009, pp.98-100). These facets of life are arranged in a flow of one hundred and thirty-two frames of pictures and images appropriately hanged on the gallery wall boards, awards, artworks and objects displayed on individual stands. The montage produced by the flow of images on exhibition probably rallied to install both the titular and tutelar toga of ‘Alàgbà’ on Fálétí. Perhaps this also developed from a character evincing deep and cultured qualities over the last century. Qualities projectable only from such roundly home-grown dignitary. An all-round Yorùbá man from the core to the marked skin on his face.

Inquisitor as Physician: Friars, Inquisitors, Women, and Medical Knowledge in Early Colonial New Spain (1530–1650)

New Spain was the site not only of one of the largest-scale missionary enterprises in Christian history, but also of a prolonged encounter among diverse medical traditions of Mesoamerican, African, and European origin in which male missionaries were central. Given the paucity of licensed physicians in the colony, religious involvement in medical practice remained significant throughout the colonial period. This paper considers the confluence of religion and medicine in the encounters that friars and inquisitors had with women, arguing that in these encounters, missionaries and inquisitors participated in the translation, circulation, and creation of medical knowledge and positioned themselves as both theological and medical authorities, as proponents and translators of Galenic medical theory, and as “confessor-physicians” rather than “confessor-judges.” Women thus played a crucial interlocutory role in the articulation of a colonial religio-medical regime whose primary framers were not physicians, but clergymen.

THEOLOGY AND ECONOMY IN THE POPOL WUJ AND THEOLOGIA INDORUM

Drawing on modern ethnography, scholars often characterize ancient Maya religion as “covenants” involving human beings generating merit through ritual activity in order to repay a primordial debt to the gods. However, models based on modern ethnography alone would not allow us to recognize the impact on Maya religions of those Christian discourses of debt and merit that accompanied sixteenth-century colonization. This article attempts to historicize our understanding of indigenous Mesoamerican theologies by examining how early Colonial indigenous language texts describe moral and ritual obligations to the gods in terms of their societies’ economies. The specific case study here compares two contemporaneous sixteenth-century K'iche' Maya texts: the Popol Wuj by traditionalist K'iche' elites and the Theologia Indorum by the Dominican friar Domingo de Vico. Comparison of these texts’ use of exchange-related lexicon illustrates that the traditionalist theological discourse of the Popol Wuj, which emphasizes reciprocal obligations between different beings within an ontological hierarchy, came to exist alongside Christian K'iche' discourses with a more mercantile religious language of spiritual debt payment. It is argued that these results have potential implications for our assessment of ethnohistorical sources on indigenous theology from elsewhere throughout Mesoamerica as well.

The Hokianga Dog Tax Uprising

Why was a seemingly mundane 19th-century fiscal measure—a tax levied on dog owners—met by Māori with widespread repudiation and an armed uprising? The significance of what is known as the ‘Hokianga Dog Tax Rebellion’ is often framed in terms of its apparent quashing by colonial forces in 1898, taken to signal the moment at which Crown sovereignty was finally imposed upon northern Māori. This paper questions the mainstream historical narrative, taking seriously the political stakes of taxation and locating the ‘dog tax’ within a disciplinary colonial regime that sought to interpellate Māori as financially and morally liable subjects. The dog tax was aimed at the protection of sheep, a central pillar of the early colonial economy, but was also viewed as a means of transforming Māori into citizen-subjects of the colonial regime. The doggedness with which colonial officials sought to enforce payment, and the steadfastness of Māori opposition to the tax, illuminate the highly politicised character of taxation in the colonial context. This article is an excerpt from Catherine Cumming’s The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa, to be published by Economic and Social Research Aotearoa in late 2021.

Sovereignty, Territoriality, and Law

This chapter seeks to analyze the changing meaning of ‘peace’ under an early colonial regime which was perpetually at war. ‘Peace’ in early colonial South Asia no longer meant the absence of conflict, but rather a period when problems of war assumed an urgent significance. From paying soldier’s arrears incurred during military conflicts to disciplining them in times when the Company state was not formally at war—‘peace’ was no longer the opposite of war. Rather it was the fleeting opportunity to re-tool the apparatus of colonial war-making. Conquest did not occur in a legal vacuum. This chapter analyses debates about military law and its significance for the early colonial regime’s claims to sovereign authority. Jurisdictional jockeying between competing sources of law went well beyond the need to maintain military discipline. Examining these debates opens up an unexplored world in which we can understand important questions relating to the territoriality of early colonial rule, the legal personality of the Company state and efforts to compare Britain’s garrisoning of Ireland with the organization of coercive force in South Asia.

Organizing Warfare and Diplomacy in Western India, 1778–83

This chapter examines the origins of a distinctive system of organizing military conquest in the final quarter of the eighteenth century. It seeks to de-centre the study of politics and military contestation by looking at the war against the Marathas (1778–82) from the vantage point of the region most directly affected by it—the western peninsular territory of the Bombay presidency. The advantage in shifting the focus away from the politically dominant Bengal presidency allows identification of a critical component in the political economy of conquest—the transfer of political authority from a civilian council to the commander of a military force. This shift in political power was essential to the success of the EIC regime of conquest even as it became a perennial source of conflict within the governing structures of the Company state. The debate and dissension that accompanied the deployment of military force both enabled the success of the machine of war and characterized the creation of a distinctive early colonial ideology of rule that subverted civilian control of the military.