Program > By author > Resendez Andres

Abstract: In the spring of 1680, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico devised an audacious plan of liberation. They would rise up on the same day and kill all its friars and civil authorities, burn down its churches, destroy its Christian images and rosaries, and unmake all Christian baptisms and marriages. In one decisive coup, these Natives would erase most traces of the Spanish presence in the region. Although many scholars regard the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 as unique and extraordinary, it actually belongs in a large canvas of indigenous insurrections that rocked Mexico and the American Southwest in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This presentation will examine how the semi-agricultural and hunter-gathering inhabitants of this large region initially pledged allegiance to the Spanish Crown and, at least nominally, became a part of the empire. But with the passage of time, they came to reject the colonial regime and its coercive labor practices and ended up resorting to all-out rebellion to survive.