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Dr. Richard Herzog: Matrilineality and Native Female Rulership as Told by Nahua Historians of Early Colonial Mexico

In central Mexico the pre-Hispanic “parallel and complementary gender roles” (Kellogg 2005) of the Nahua lost influence over the duration of the colonial period. This gradual change was due to the long-term development of a colonial cultural system tied to mechanisms of Othering and dominance. A stronger influence of patriarchal European norms, legal and gender hierarchies can be traced from the late 16th century onwards. Female inequality was specifically written into Spanish laws, with rights negotiated within the framework of a patriarchal and patrilineal society. On the other hand, in the 16th century colonial structures were still flexible enough to have some noble indigenous women recognized as local rulers or cacicas. Nahua women, like their male counterparts, could continue to own lands, order their own testaments, and participate in local rituals. They continued to contribute economically via trade and worked with men, but transgressed norms as well by challenging spouses and officials. 
We have very few sources written by Nahua women, and unfortunately must mostly rely on male writers to learn more about them. The major Nahua author Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (2015) wrote chronicles to defend his family's rulership over San Juan Teotihuacan (close to Mexico City) before colonial courts, held by his mother doña Ana de Alva Cortés. After doña Ana's death the rulership would switch from cacicas to male caciques, exemplifying the widespread transition from matrilineal to the Spanish patrilineal transmission of inheritance. 
For another, contrasting perspective we turn to the important indigenous scholar Domingo de Chimalpahin from Chalco. When a judge ruled in favour of a native community's new ruler who traced his lineage through his family's male side, the Nahua chronicler disagreed. He turned to medieval Iberia for legitimation, holding up Queen Isabel of Castile as exemplary - in order to show that descent and rule through the mother's line should not be challenged in Mesoamerica. 
The native scholars attest to the continuing legal and personal powers of Nahua women to transgress social and gender norms that were being drastically transformed through Spanish colonization. This view from Mexico brings into focus the interconnected nature of discrimination based on race, class and gender designations in early modern Spanish America (Lugones 2010). It thus contributes to wider debates on how gender hierarchies were and still are being shaped by specific historical processes, including unprecedented socio-political upheavals.