Acabando la beca

So I have less than 4 weeks left at the archive. I feel like this is a good time to stop and reflect on what’s gone on here at the AGI this year.

First of all, a small miracle occurred in the archive last week: I actually had the urge to write my dissertation. That is nothing to laugh at. I put the urge to good use and, in the middle of the archive, began outlining chapters of the dissertation. I have no doubt that this rough outline will change drastically over the next year or so, but it’s a good start, I think. I’m pretty excited about it.

The reason that I can actually write an outline now is due, in large part, to the stuff that I’ve found here. Some of it is very good.

There are very showy things, like a painted tribute record from 1543. The tribute is recorded in a preconquest pictorial style with the names of the towns written glyphically down at the bottom (that’s “Place of the Sweat Bath” on the right, by the way). The preconquest indians from central Mexico were way too cool for boring old letters and numbers.

Then, too, there are less showy—but no less interesting—things. Like how the Texcoco royal family tree started to seriously turn back in on itself by the 1590s, or how farms were exploited for profit over the course of the sixteenth century, or how Spaniards dramatically altered the way that indians conceived of land and space. The point is that I think I’m starting to see things.

As an added bonus, I’ve had a couple of ideas for future projects. It may seem a bit premature to be thinking of future projects when I haven’t even finished this one, but I will likely be asked to talk about my future research plans during job interviews, so it’s good to have a few ideas already in mind. Here in Seville, I had two. The first was to do a study of the environmental impact of colonialism in central Mexico. In documents that I look at now, I’m always seeing ways that the Spaniards have changed Mexico with their crops, mills, irrigation ditches, livestock, etc. (And Al Gore has made environmental issues so trendy these days!) The second idea was to do a study of the Salazar family of Mexico City. This family comes up in many of the documents that I’ve found, and they all seem to be very mean, nasty people. Sounds fun to me.

Anyway, that’s how’s it’s winding down. I’ve got a couple more judicial cases (very long cases) that I’m working to finish up, but that’s about all that I feel like I really must see before I leave. I’m feeling good about it.