Danna A. Levin Rojo’s Return to Aztlan: Indians, Spaniards, and the Invention of Nuevo México challenge the traditional interpretations of the relationship between indigenous peoples and Spanish conquerors.
She asserts that the “character of the society resulting from Spanish conquest as well as the dialogic processes shaping them” has been obscured and that, indeed, the resulting society reflected a continuance of indigenous culture as well as Spanish and that this play of cultural exchange worked in both directions.
She reinterprets early colonial documents as well as indigenous sources to arrive at her conclusions. Her work in this book resembles the work of historians Richard White and Colin Calloway regarding North American indigenous peoples and Europeans. Return to Aztlan makes a valuable contribution to a more nuanced, more accurate understanding of forces at play between indigenous peoples, their colonizers and the outcome.
–Patricia A. Blaine, chair of history and philosophy department at South Texas Colle
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