University of Texas at El Paso ScholarWorks@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2019-01-01 Indigenous Masculinities and the Tarascan Borderlands in Sixteenth-Century Michoacán Daniel Santana University of Texas at El Paso Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, and the Latin American History Commons Recommended Citation Santana, Daniel, "Indigenous Masculinities and the Tarascan Borderlands in Sixteenth-Century Michoacán" (2019). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 2899. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/2899 This is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INDIGENOUS MASCULINITIES AND THE TARASCAN BORDERLANDS IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY MICHOACÁN DANIEL SANTANA Doctoral Program in Borderlands History APPROVED: Ignacio Martínez, Ph.D., Chair Yolanda Chávez-Leyva, Ph.D. Jeffrey P. Shepherd, Ph.D. Guillermina Gina Núñez-Mchiri, Ph.D. Stephen L. Crites, Jr., Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School Copyright © by Daniel Santana 2019 Dedication Para mi madre, Felipa, que siempre me ha apoyado INDIGENOUS MASCULINITIES AND THE TARASCAN BORDERLANDS IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY MICHOACÁN by DANIEL SANTANA, M.A., B.A. DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO December 2019 Acknowledgements I would like to first acknowledge those in my immediate family who provided me with the mental strength and motivation to complete my Ph.D. Primeramente, gracias a mi madre Felipa por sus consejos, llamadas por teléfono y bendiciones que me han dado mucha fueza durante este largo viaje. My sister Antonia and brothers David, and Damien provided me with unconditional love and moral support. My partner, Nathan Gutiérrez, also served as my coach as he pushed me to continue even when I already felt I was at my wits end. My close friends from Los Angeles, El Paso and Ciudad Juárez were also honorary family members who helped me on this journey: Jose, Alberto, Xitlalic, Liz, Gabby, Omar, Blanca, Ale, Danech, Allan, Christine, Maria, David, Ian, and Belinda. I am indebted to the Mellon Foundation for awarding me with a fellowship to study Spanish paleography at the Newberry Library during the summer of 2017. As I began my first years of archival research, I continued to hear Dr. Carla Rahn Phillips’ voice guiding me through each colonial document I consulted. I would especially like to thank the Department of History at UTEP for providing me with the Harper and Porter Dissertation Research Awards that allowed for my numerous archival research trips. I am also grateful to the Graduate School at UTEP who awarded me with a Dodson Dissertation Research Award for my archival studies. The College of Liberal Arts also supplied me with much needed funds for my last archival research trip as a Ph.D. student. The archivists I met over the years have been very courteous and resourceful, especially Rosa Lilia Retana Ramos and her colleagues at the Archivo Histórico de la Ciudad de Pátzcuaro. I offer my sincere gratitude to my dissertation committee members for their feedback and suggestions on the various chapters of this dissertation. Dr. Ignacio Martínez, Dr. Leyva, Dr. v Núñez, and Dr. Shepherd each encouraged me to think about the ramifications of my project as it relates to contemporary issues. I thank the chair of my dissertation for his patience with me during the first years that I began to conceptualize the project. Various professors in the UTEP History Department also inspired my work. I particularly would like to thank Dr. Michelle Armstrong-Partida who motivated and inspired me to pursue the study of masculinities in a colonial borderlands setting. Dr. Cheryl Martin guided me in my initial archival investigations at the UTEP Special Collections. Dr. Selfa A. Chew, Dr. Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens, and Dr. Brenda Risch offered critical feedback on terminology and analytical approaches. I received feedback from various colleagues I met outside of my campus who provided me with important suggestions. I thank my mentors who are also studying the Indigenous peoples of Michoacán for their companionship, resourcefulness, and critiques, especially Dr. Mintzi Martínez-Rivera, Dr. Carlos Paredes Martínez, and Dr. Angélica Jimena Afanador-Pujol. I would like to thank the members of the Southwest Seminar Consortium on Colonial Latin America, especially Dr. Dana Velasco Murillo, Dr. Zeb Tortorici, Dr. Kevin Terraciano, Dr. Erick Van Young, Dr. Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez, and Dr. Ananda Cohen-Aponte for your comments on a very rough sketch of the project. Notably, I would like to credit Dr. John Paul Nuño for inspiring me to think about “Indigenous borderlands.” I apologize in advance for forgetting to mention others who gave me critical feedback that informed this work. Given the wide extent of feedback I received, I should point out that errors and shortcomings of the work are my own. The friends I have made in the Borderlands History Ph.D. program made this journey all the more bearable. I would especially like to thank Maria Vallejo, David Robles, and Freddy Jaimes for their companionship since the first year that I started this program. Thank you to Dr. Ian Lee and Belinda Lee for your friendship and encouragement over the years. The friends I vi made as part of the Association of Applied Border History and the Sin Fronteras Border Farmworker Center kept me engaged and informed on local issues while pursuing my Ph.D.: Rosa Gomez, Cynthia Renteria, Angelina Martinez, Blanca Garcia-Barron, RaeAnn Swanson- Evans, Jenny Urban, Gene Morales, Jacobo Villegas, Pamela J. Angeles, Chantra Potts, Kathryn Guerra, Gabriel Solis, and Jose Miguel Leyva. I would like to thank my non-historian roommates who were experts in the fields of computer science, physics, and pharmacology for helping me to articulate my ideas to a wider audience: Reynaldo Martínez, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, Valentín Becerra, and Adrian Chávez. Their friendship and curiosity regarding what exactly was I doing helped me to get a better grasp of my research questions and to answer the “so what” aspects of my research. Conversations with my colleagues in the Center for Metrics-Based Planning, Dr. Roy Mathew, Dr. Elsa Bonilla-Martin, and Erick Gonzalez, challenged me to communicate my theoretical ideas clearly and in a less jargon-laden fashion. The friends and people I met in El Paso also helped me to preserve my sanity. Thank you to Dr. Susie E. Aquilina, a fellow Borderlands History Ph.D., for introducing me to Danza Azteca Omecoatl and Danza Azteca Tlaneztica who kept me grounded spiritually and culturally as I pursued my studies. A very special thank you to Gisela Sarellano for keeping the fire in the group going. The many work of many talented musicians and artists who became friends and acquaintances that I met in the borderlands and whose art inspired the writing of this dissertation: Jose Montoya, Dustin, Raul, Bryan, Victor, Ricky and Sydney. I apologize for anyone I left out but there is not enough space to mention the others who supported me along the way. vii Abstract This dissertation studies the hypermasculine narratives related to the expansion of the Tarascan state and its borderlands in early colonial Michoacán. Colonial texts such as the Relación de Michoacán and the relaciones geográficas depict the ascendance of the powerful Uacúsecha dynasty whose solar deity and male rulers oversaw the conquest of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin and succeeded in holding back the Mexica (Aztecs) from penetrating their territories. The dissertation pays particular attention to how contemporary political events, namely the Spanish conquest of Michoacán, endemic warfare in center-west Mexico, and political rivalries amongst Indigenous elites, influenced these accounts. Consequently, these narratives elaborated in colonial texts such as the Relación de Michoacán and relaciones geográficas seemed to portray a “patriarchal,” male-centered history of the Tarascan peoples that often overlooked the roles of Indigenous women. I problematize these androcentric narratives by analyzing them as a hypermasculine performance of Tarascan elites. I argue that during the sixteenth century, the Tarascan borderlands were sites where Indigenous hypermasculinities were constructed, reimagined, and performed in ways that were often superficial and reflected the contemporary political moments in which they were produced. viii Table of Contents Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................................................v Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ viii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... ix List of Tables ..............................................................................................................................