Current Digital Project

“Indigenous Voices and Visions of the Spanish Conquest: Book XII of the Florentine Codex.”

The Florentine Codex Initiative’s purpose is to digitize, transcribe, translate and analyze the Florentine Codex, a Nahuatl and Spanish-language 16th-century text, beginning with the 12th book on the Conquest of Mexico. Here is the Getty Florentine Codex Initiative website.

Prof. Terraciano is one of the four Principal Investigators, with Kim Richter (Getty), Diana Magaloni (LACMA and UNAM) and Jeanette Peterson (UCSB). the project has been funded partially by the Seaver Foundation and has been done in collaboration with the Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy, which holds the manuscript.

Recent Books

In this video, Prof. Terraciano discusses the Codex Sierra with Felicia Lopez, PhD, of UC Merced:

Forthcoming Publications

La Casa de la Cacica de Teposcolula, Oaxaca. Book manuscript co-authored with Sebastian van Doesburg.

Zapotec-Language Writings from Colonial Oaxaca, Mexico. Book manuscript edited with Pamela Munro et al.

Canons and Values: Ancient to Modern. Book manuscript co-edited with Larry Silver (Univ. of Pennsylvania), under contract with Getty Publications. Includes my chapter: “Canons Seen and Unseen in Colonial Mexico.”

“History: Ethnohistory: Mesoamerica.” Co-edited with Lisa Sousa. Handbook of Latin American Studies, vol. 72. Austin: University of Texas Press.

“Un testamento zapoteco del Valle de Oaxaca, 1614.” Co-authored with Pamela Munro et al. In Tlalocan: Revista de fuentes para el conocimiento de las culturas indígenas de México.

“Una confesión de homicidio en la Mixteca Alta, 1684.” In Tlalocan: Revista de fuentes para el conocimiento de las culturas indígenas de México.

“The Zapotec-Language Testament of Sebastiana de Mendoza, c. 1675.” Co-authored with Pamela Munro et al. In Tlalocan: Revista de fuentes para el conocimiento de las culturas indígenas de México.

Books, Research Articles, Chapters in Edited Books & Book Reviews

“Portrait of a Mixtec Woman Named 6-Crocodile.” In Native Wills from the Colonial Americas, ed. by Mark Christensen and Jonathan Truitt. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016.

“Parallel Nahuatl and Pictorial Texts in the Mixtec Codex Sierra Texupan.” Ethnohistory, 62: 3 (Fall, 2015).

“History: Ethnohistory: Mesoamerica.” Co-edited with Lisa Sousa. Handbook of Latin American Studies, vol. 70. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015.

“Narrativas de Tlatelolco sobre la Conquista de México.” Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, v. 47 (enero-junio), 2014.

Los mixtecos de la Oaxaca colonial: La historia ñudzahui del siglo xvi al xviii. Translation of The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2013.

“History: Ethnohistory: Mesoamerica.” Co-edited with Lisa Sousa. Handbook of Latin American Studies, vol. 68. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013.

“Memorias contrapuestas de la conquista de México.” In Miradas comparadas en los virreinatos de América, ed. by Ilona Katzew. Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia; CONACULTA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2012.

“Connecting Nahua and Mixtec Histories.” In Fanning the Sacred Flames: Mesoamerican Studies in Honor of H. B. Nicholson, ed. by Matthew Boxt and Brian Dillon. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2012.

“Concluding Remarks.”  In City Indians in Spain’s American Empire: Urban Indigenous Society in Colonial Mesoamerica and Andean South America, 1530-1810. Ed. by Dana Velasco Murillo, Mark Lentz, and Margarita R. Ochoa. London: Sussex Academic Press, 2012.

“Competing Memories of the Conquest of Mexico.” In Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World, ed. by Ilona Katzew. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.

“Voices from the Other Side: Native Views from New Spain, Peru, and North America.” In The Atlantic World c.1450-c.1850, ed. by Philip Morgan and Nicholas Canny. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

“History: Ethnohistory: Mesoamerica.” Co-edited with Lisa Sousa. Handbook of Latin American Studies, vol. 66. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.

“Writing to the Rescue: How a Zapotec Community Used Native-Language Documents to Defend its Lands.” In Tradition and Innovation in Mesoamerican Cultural History, ed. by Roberto Cantú and Aaron Sonnenschein. Lincom Studies in Anthropology, 16. Munich: Lincom Europa, 2011.

“A Historiography of New Spain.” Co-authored with Lisa Sousa. In The Historiography of Latin America, ed. by Jose Moya. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

“Three Texts in One: Book XII of the Florentine Codex.” Ethnohistory, vol. 57 (1) 2010.

“La genealogía de la memoria social indígena: Las construcciones estratégicas del pasado en los títulos primordiales del valle de Oaxaca.” Co-authored with Lisa Sousa, in Andrew Roth Seneff (ed.), Caras y máscaras del México étnico. La participación indígena en las formaciones del Estado mexicano, vol. I. Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 2010.

“Three Views of the Conquest of Mexico from the Other Mexica.” In The Conquest of Mexico All Over Again, ed. by Susan Schroeder. London: Sussex Academic Press, 2010.

“Sources and Methods for the Study of Mixtec History.” In Sources and Methods for the Study of Postconquest Mesoamerican Ethnohistory, ed. by James Lockhart, Stephanie Wood, and Lisa Sousa. E-Book version. Eugene, Oregon: Wired Humanities Projects, University of Oregon, 2010. http://whp.uoregon.edu/Lockhart/index.html

Review of Encounter with the Plumed Serpent: Drama and Power in the Heart of Mesoamerica. By Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez. Bulletin of Latin American Research, v. 29, no. 1, January 2010.

Review of Indian Conquistadors: Indigenous Allies in the Conquest of Mesoamerica. Edited by Laura E. Matthew and Michel R. Oudijk. New Mexico Historical Review, vol. 85:4, 2010.

“Los mercaderes en la Mixteca Alta durante la época colonial.” In Bases de la complejidad social en Oaxaca, ed. by Nelly Robles. Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2009.

“La escritura alfabética en lengua mixteca de la época colonial.” In Memorias del coloquio  Francisco Belmar: Conferencias sobre lenguas Otomangues y Oaxaqueñas, ed. by Ausencia López Cruz and Michael Swanton, vol. 2. Oaxaca: Biblioteca Francisco de Burgoa; Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas; Universidad Autónoma de Oaxaca; Colegio Superior para la Educación Integral Intercultural de Oaxaca; Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú, 2008.

“Indigenous Peoples in Colonial Spanish American Society.” In The Blackwell Companion to Latin American History, edited by Thomas H. Holloway. Blackwell Publishers, 2008.

“The People of Two Hearts and the One God from Castile: Ambivalent Responses to Christianity in Early Colonial Oaxaca.” In Religion in New Spain: Varieties of Colonial Religious Experience, edited by Susan Schroeder and Stafford Poole. University of New Mexico Press, 2007.

Mesoamerican Voices: Native-Language Writings from Colonial Mexico, Oaxaca, Yucatan, and Guatemala, edited and translated with Lisa Sousa and Matthew Restall. Cambridge University Press, 2005.

“Reading Women into Mixtec Writings.” In Essays in Honor of Mary Elizabeth Smith, edited by Elizabeth Boone. Tulane University Press, 2005.

“The ‘Original Conquest’ of Oaxaca: Late Colonial Nahuatl and Mixtec Accounts of the Spanish Conquest.” With Lisa Sousa. Ethnohistory, 50:2, Spring 2003.

“Religion and the Church in Early Latin America.” In The Blackwell Companion to the History of the Reformation World, edited by Ronnie Po-chia Hsia. Blackwell Publishers, 2003.

The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca: Ñudzahui History, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries. Stanford University Press, 2001.

“The Colonial Mixtec Community.” Hispanic American Historical Review, 80:1, 2000.

“El Contexto Histórico del Códice Sierra.” In Codices y documentos sobre Mexico: tercer simposio, edited by Constanza Vega Sosa. México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2000.

Review of Native Resistance and the Pax Colonial in New Spain. Edited by Susan Schroeder, Nebraska, 1998. The Historian, 62:4, 2000.

“The Struggle for Justification in the Conquest of America: Tolerance and Intolerance in Writings on Early Spanish America.” In Religious Toleration, edited by John Christian Laursen, St. Martin’s Press, 1999.

“Letting Nahuas Speak.” Colonial Latin American Review, 8:2, 1999.  Review essay of Codex Chimalpahin, Volume 2. Edited and trans. by Arthur J.O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder, Oklahoma, 1997. Primeros memoriales, by fray Bernadino de Sahagún, edited and trans. by Thelma Sullivan et al., Oklahoma, 1997.  Nahuat Myth and Social Structure, by James Taggart, Texas, 1997 (1983).

Review of Codex Chimalpahin, ed. and trans. by Arthur J.O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder, Oklahoma Press, 1997. Ethnohistory, 46:2, 1999.

Review of Postconquest Coyoacan: Nahua-Spanish Relations in Central Mexico, 1519-1650. By Rebecca Horn, Stanford, 1997. The Journal of InterdisciplinaryHistory, XXX: 2, 1999.

Review of El sol y la cruz: los pueblos indios de Oaxaca colonial. By María de los Angeles Romero Frizzi, México, 1996.  Hispanic American Historical Review, 79:1, 1999.

Review of Exporting the Catholic Reformation: Local Religion in Early-Colonial Mexico, by Amos Megged, Brill, 1996.  The Catholic Historical Review, July, 1999.

“Crime and Culture in Colonial Mexico: The Case of the Mixtec Murder Note.”  Ethnohistory, 45:4, Fall 1998.

“Native Expressions of Piety in Mixtec Testaments.” In Dead Giveaways: Indigenous Testaments of Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes, edited by Susan Kellogg and Matthew Restall, Utah University Press, 1998.

Review of The Covenants with Earth and Rain: Exchange, Sacrifice, and Revelation in Mixtec Sociality, by John Monaghan, Oklahoma, 1995. Ethnohistory, volume 45:2, 1998.

“Nahuatl and Mixtec Writing in Sixteenth-Century Oaxaca.” In Chipping Away on Earth: Studies in Prehispanic and Colonial Mexico in Honor of Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, edited by Eloise Quiñones Keber.  Labyrinthos Press, 1994.

“Mesoamerican Writing and Literacy,” with Matthew Restall. In Indigenous Writing in the Spanish Indies, Special Issue of the UCLA Historical Journal, vol. 12, 1992.

“The ‘Original Conquest’ of Oaxaca: Mixtec and Nahua History and Myth,” With Lisa Sousa. In Indigenous Writing in the Spanish Indies, 1992.

“Quachi Ñudzahui: Murder in the Mixteca.”  UCLA Historical Journal, vol. 11, 1991.

“Mixtec and Nahuatl in Colonial Oaxaca.”  UCLA Historical Journal, vol. 10, 1990.

“Nahuatl in the North of Mexico, Nayarit.” UCLA Historical Journal, vol. 9, 1989.

Editorial Positions

• Contributing Editor, Handbook of Latin American Studies, 2009-2018
• Editorial Board, The Americas, 2017-2023
• Editorial Board, Hispanic American Historical Review, 2004-2009
• Editorial Board, Ethnohistory, 2004-2009
• Editor, UCLA Historical Journal, 1992-94
• Assistant Editor, American Indian and Culture Research Journal, 1987-89

Reviewer of Book Manuscripts

• Bedford Books
• Cambridge University Press
• CNWS Publications (Netherlands)
• Duke University Press
• El Fondo de Cultura Económica (Mexico)
• Getty Research Institute Publications
• Hackett Publishing Company
• Oxford University Press
• Stanford University Press
• UCLA Cotsen Institute
• University of California Press
• University of Colorado Press
• University of Oklahoma Press
• University of Texas Press
• Yale University Press

Reviewer of Research Articles

• The Americas
• American Historical Review
• Comparative Studies in Society and History
• Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl
• Ethnohistory
• Hispanic American Historical Review
• Journal of Mexican Studies
• Latin American Research Review
• Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
• Tlalocan