Keeping and Losing One's Head: Composure and Emotional Outbursts as Political Performance in Late-Colonial Mexico - Andrew Fisher, Carleton College March 2, 2012

1210 Heller Hall. A precirculated paper is available at http://www.cemh.umn.edu. Refreshments will be served.

Andrew Fisher is a professor of History at Carleton College. Professor Fisher’s research examines the transformation of Cuitlateca, Tepozteca, Nahua, and Purépecha peasant communities in the mid-Balsas Basin of Guerrero, Mexico under Spanish colonial rule (1521-1821). He traces how Hispanic, African, and indigenous migrants were assimilated into local communities, particularly through Catholic lay brotherhoods that were supported by shared agricultural pursuits and stock raising. Through these cultural practices, migrants were made into Indians, just as Indian collective identity and memory were transformed by these same outsiders. Along with numerous articles and chapters on this topic, he is also the co-editor of Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America (Duke University Press, 2009).

Through a close reading of the trial transcripts relating to a 1791 indigenous riot in the town of Axochitlan, as well as the correspondence of the judge sent to investigate and restore calm, Fisher explores how emotional performances enacted and embodied key values and ideas that informed the colonial enterprise. Priests and magistrates, who had long been instructed to take on the role of stern yet evenhanded patriarchal authorities for their Indian charges, endeavored mightily to project such an image no matter how frightened, uncertain or riled they actually were. Likewise, they cited an inability to maintain emotional control as damning proof of their opponents’ unsuitability for office, and actively sought out opportunities to pique their rivals in the hopes of substantiating their point. On the other hand, indigenous men and women were expected to express their deference to both religious and secular authorities, and to accept without rancor the corrective measures these men meted out. While outbursts of anger were relatively rare occurrences, indigenous people deployed their own battery of emotional displays and rhetoric to support or critique the legitimacy and moral standing of colonial officials.

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