This introductory chapter provides a general introduction to some three centuries of colonial, and about 175 years of national, history. It first highlights the content available in other chapters of the book, which surveys the history of Native American peoples in Mesoamerica since the Spanish invasion. In the national period, the emphasis is on the areas constituting the nation states of Mexico and Guatemala, although other Central American states are mentioned from time to time. What has become ever more apparent during the writing is the extent to which native peoples have been written about by others and how little we have from native peoples about themselves. This situation, fortunately, offers radical and startling prospects for a more equitable history. In general, the leaders of the Mexican Revolution have been benevolently authoritarian and have believed in incorporation of native peoples into the modern state. The revolutionary political movements of the early decades of the twentieth century were the parents of widespread intellectual movements that came to be called indigenismo.

The history of Mexico has been coterminous with the history of its indigenous peoples. The categories native, indigenous, and certainly Indian are themselves artifacts of European colonial rule, present still in the modern public discourse of the Mexican successor state. A brief synoptic look at the history and organizational complexity of the Tarascan culture area can give some idea of the havoc sown by the Spanish Conquest and of the shattered foundations on which colonial society was built. This chapter discusses the history of the Huichol, Cora, and Tarascan peoples to bring the story of the indigenous cultures of the Mexican Center-West into the modern period. In some ways the postcolonial history of the Coras and Huicholes who followed Lozada in substantial numbers illustrates, albeit in an extreme form, the political and economic pressures acting to deethnicize indigenous groups after independence.

This chapter examines the effects of the Spanish invasion on the Aztec and Inca empires during the first stage of colonial rule with particular emphasis on the case of the Andes. It looks at the peripheral areas, north of the central Mexican plateau, south and south-east of the central Andes, in order to present the broadest possible picture of the 'vision of the vanquished'. The Spanish victory was helped by the political and ethnic divisions of the Indian world: the Aztec and Inca empires had themselves been built up by successive conquests. The extension of the mitmaq system, applied within the framework of the ethnic group, constituted one of the most remarkable achievements of the Inca Empire. Under colonial rule, native traditions were confronted by newly introduced European practices. In the religious sphere, the Indians' fidelity to their traditions expressed their rejection of colonial rule, although there were differences.