Hacienda de Santa Barbara (Tlaxcala, Mexico) records, 1553-1802

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Consists of a collection of approximately 200 notarial and other documents, in Spanish and Nahuatl, regarding the formation of the Hacienda de Santa Barbara (Tlaxcala, Mexico) estate. Among the early written documents is a 16th-century "map" of land that an Indian proposes to sell. This collection documents the Spanish exploitation of the laws and the native population and the resistance that the Tlaxcalans mustered agains the dominant social group. Because the Tlaxcalans had been the major ally of Cortes, they received special treatment under the law in the post-Conquest era, including the declaration of the entire province as off-limits to Spanish settlement. The ban was not effective as these documents attest, but they also demonstrate the active role that the Tlaxcalan indigenous government (cabildo) played in the 16th and 17th centuries in assuring that all sales of Indian lands were "by the book": the seller doing so in Nahuatl before an Indian or mestizo notary, proper town crying of the proposed sale, etc. The documents were originally housed in a contemporary limp sheep leather pouch, which has been kept with the collection.

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