Copyright by Susan Blue Zakaib 2016 The Dissertation Committee for Susan Blue Zakaib Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Built Upon the Tower of Babel: Language Policy and the Clergy in Bourbon Mexico Committee: Susan Deans-Smith, Supervisor Ann Twinam Matthew Butler Virginia Garrard-Burnett Kelly McDonough Built Upon the Tower of Babel: Language Policy and the Clergy in Bourbon Mexico by Susan Blue Zakaib, BA; MA Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2016 Dedication For Sman and Eogh Acknowledgements Many thanks to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin for providing the funding that made this dissertation possible. I am also grateful to the staff at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, and at multiple archives in Mexico City: the Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado de México, the Biblioteca Nacional at UNAM, and the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia at the anthropology museum. I am especially thankful for the incredibly helpful and patient archivists and security guards at the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City, who made my many months there in 2012 both pleasant and productive. Advice, feedback, and stimulating conversations with a number of scholars and friends were essential to the development of this dissertation. Ann Twinam and Ginny Garrard-Burnett gave me helpful feedback at the very earliest stages of this project, back when it took the form of two less-than-stellar seminar papers. Bill Taylor and David Tavárez patiently answered my persistent questions over email and provided excellent advice regarding sources, which proved crucial to the direction of my dissertation. Matthew Butler provided helpful advice on this project early on, and generously sent me many useful references. At RMCLAS 2013, Kim Morse gave me much-needed perspective on the Spanish Empire’s approach to language policy beyond New Spain, and she has very kindly shared her research-in-progress with me over the past few years. Heather Allen provided helpful comments on an early version of a chapter at NAISA 2015. At the LPP 2015 conference, Reynaldo Macías wisely suggested that scholarship on language regimes might provide a helpful framework for my research (which, indeed, v it did!). Kelly McDonough provided excellent feedback on an earlier version Chapter Five as part of the History Department’s New Work in Progress series, and her advice also helped me frame my Conclusion. Just before embarking on dissertation research, José Barragán gave me the most helpful advice possible (take good notes!); without it, I might still be trying to sort all my documents. Although I unfortunately never used Nahuatl for my dissertation, my experience learning the language at IDIEZ in Zacatecas deeply influenced my thinking about language policy and ideologies; for that, I am grateful to all the program’s wonderful tlamachtianih, especially my ever-patient tutor, Catalina Cruz de la Cruz. Conversations with Juandrea Bates, Lauren Grewe, Saman Jafarian, Eoghan McCloskey, Bianca Premo and Amy Liu were also critical in helping me formulate and develop this dissertation. Numerous individuals have made the process of researching and writing this dissertation both enjoyable and productive, and I am indebted to them for keeping me sane in the process. Research trips to Mexico City and Seville were memorable and fun thanks to the many wonderful people I spent time with there, especially Kenny Moss, Lindsay Sidders and Elianah Slotnick. My writing buddies, Maria José Afanador Llach, Chris Heaney, Lauren Grewe, Christine Wheatley, Danielle Sánchez and Emily Kinney, made dissertation writing far more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise; I am not sure I ever would have finished without their support and accountability. The #WritePeasant writing group on Twitter was also critical in this regard. I am profoundly lucky to have been part of a wonderful graduate cohort, whose encouragement, guidance and companionship have made all the difference. Roommates Juandrea Bates, Lauren Grewe and Robin Monin patiently put up with my academic freak-outs and provided much-needed tacos, wine, bad TV shows, impromptu craft sessions, and last-minute edits. Fellow teaching assistant Chris Babits also deserves a huge thank-you for taking on vi more than his fair share of the grading while I scrambled to finish my dissertation in my final semester of graduate school. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support, and for showing remarkable patience and understanding as I spent half my visits hunched over my laptop. I have benefited enormously from the mentorship of three scholars, without whom this project would not have been possible. I would like to thank Jaymie Heilman for encouraging me to go to graduate school in the first place, and for providing much- needed guidance on how to get there. I am grateful to Ann Twinam for her detailed and timely edits, helpful grant workshops, and dedication to her students. Her research seminars quickly relieved me of my undergraduate writing tendencies and taught me how to write a winning grant proposal. Susan Deans-Smith has been endlessly supportive and helpful over the lengthy course of my graduate study. In addition to her extensive historiographical expertise, she has the rare and valuable gift of knowing precisely when to critique, when to compliment, and when to stand back and let me figure it out on my own. I could not have asked for a better advisor. I dedicate this project to two of my very favorite people, Eoghan McCloskey and Saman Jafarian. Eoghan is an incredible partner, and I will be forever grateful to him for helping me get through the dissertation writing process. Thank you for making the past few years wonderful. Last but not least, I would like to thank Saman, my longtime best friend and best (b)editor. In addition to sending chocolate-filled care packages at just the right time, she also edited every page of this dissertation, in return for nothing more than the promise of nachos. Any grammatical errors are her fault, not mine. vii Built Upon the Tower of Babel: Language Policy and the Clergy in Bourbon Mexico Susan Blue Zakaib, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Supervisor: Susan Deans-Smith This dissertation provides the first in-depth analysis of the “Bourbon language reforms”—a series of royal and ecclesiastical policies aimed at spreading the Spanish language in New Spain (now Mexico), enacted primarily between the 1750s and 1770s under the rule of the Bourbon dynasty. The limited scholarship on these reforms has assumed that a monolithic Bourbon state sought to mold a monolingual, Spanish- speaking empire. It has also suggested that creoles (American-born Spaniards), mendicants (Franciscan, Dominican and Augustinian friars), indigenous peoples, or some combination thereof responded by uniformly opposing the Bourbon state’s oppressive measures. I challenge both of these arguments by analyzing the central Mexican Catholic Church’s “language regime”—not only official policies, but also their historical context, and predominant ideologies about indigenous languages and their speakers—between 1700 and 1821. I demonstrate that indigenous languages were deeply integrated into the inner workings of the Church—not only its religious services, but also its bureaucracy and hierarchy. Native language competency helped to determine clerics’ career paths, forge socioeconomic hierarchies within the Church, and shape political disputes between warring royal and ecclesiastical factions. This key role of native languages in the Church helped induce the Bourbon language reforms. In spite of the reform effort, however, viii native languages continued to play a critical role in ecclesiastical administration through the end of the colonial period. This was due in large part to the fact that the Bourbon state did not seek uniformly to eradicate these languages; indeed, royal and ecclesiastical authorities could not even agree on precisely what their language policy should entail. Few priests (creole or not) felt the need to resist a reform effort that was contradictory, piecemeal, and of limited consequence for the Church. Contrary to many scholars’ assumptions, these findings indicate that modern Mexico’s linguistic inequality is not a persistent vestige of colonial policy. Instead, 18th-century language policy was only an early step in a centuries-long process leading to today’s particular brand of linguistic discrimination. ix Table of Contents List of Tables ....................................................................................................... xiii Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 The Bourbon Language Reforms in Context ..................................................3 The Historiography of Colonial Language Policy ........................................11 Focus .............................................................................................................28 Chapter One: Language Ideologies and the Parish Clergy ....................................38 Priests, Benefices and Vicarios: The Career Paths of Parish Clergymen .....44 Native