Читать книгу A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture - Группа авторов - Страница 42

The advantages of learning European negotiation techniques were quickly perceived by the conquered lords. In pre-conquest times, alliances between city-states were pragmatic means to further economic and political interests; for example, Texcoco and Tlacopan sided with the more powerful Tenochtitlan, forming the so-called “Triple Alliance.” After the conquest, the Indigenous elite developed alliances with the Spaniards to negotiate their place in the new society and to preserve their privileges. In addition, the imposition of Spanish law introduced the natives to the rights of private property, legitimacy, and inheritance, which could be disputed, defended, or appealed (Borah 1982, 272). A corpus of letters offers evidence that even before the Colegio was founded, former tlatoque (dynastic rulers of city-states) and the Indigenous elite were already acquainted with Spanish legal procedures and were using them to their own benefit.

Letters written by native elite and intellectuals after the three Provincial Councils held between 1554 and 1562 suggest they were aware that colonial policy changes were increasingly affecting their social status and political participation. The letters also show that the native elite were in close contact with the friars, since they continued to advocate in favor of Indigenous welfare. A letter signed in 1554 by educated nobles of central Mexico shows that their services to the king had been recognized only by the Franciscans; in another letter written in 1556 the same nobles petitioned the king for Bartolomé de Las Casas to serve as their protector (La nobleza indígena del Centro de México, 2000, 191–194).

Some gramáticos wrote letters that display a sophisticated use of knowledge, the very thing so criticized by many colonizers. Letters by two of the gramáticos, Pablo Nazareo, rector, teacher, and translator, and Antonio Valeriano, also a translator and teacher and later governor of Tenochtitlan, were written in Latin and present clear evidence of the well-versed knowledge of the art of rhetoric. The use of Latin over Spanish or Nahuatl not only allows these subjects to display their great capabilities for commanding the language but also to share a common ground with the European educated elite. As trained rhetoricians, these gramáticos construct persuasive arguments tracing their genealogical and territorial rights to pre-conquest times through the collective memory of their own ethnic groups. The pragmatic use of the collective memory is astutely combined with European discursive practices. These letters also reveal that if the gramáticos had helped the friars, they were also actively using their knowledge to help their communities and themselves.