Mary’s Grandsons: Marian Legitimacy and the Reinvention of Native Pasts Against Spanish Imperial Pressure
Amanda Valdés Sánchez, Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, Brown University
Through the analysis of diverse sources produced by Granada’s Morisco aristocracy and several native productions of the Tlaxcala-Puebla valley, this paper evidence how native elites exploited the symbolic power of Mary, reinventing local past to resist to the growing imperial pressure. My work shows how on both sides of the Atlantic, native elites facing the deterioration of their rights, economic power, and status, constructed a similar narrative of Marian protection, to legitimize their linages and territorial autonomy, portraying the Virgin as the guarantor of the inherent Christianity of the native population and proponent of local culture, language and religious identities.
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The Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar explores topics in religion and culture including social history, biography, cultural studies, visual and material culture, urban studies, and the history of ideas. We are interested in how religious belief has affected society, rather than creedal or theological focused studies. The Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar is co-sponsored by the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, the McGreal Center at Dominican University, the History Department at Loyola University, the University of Chicago Divinity School, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Wheaton College.