Memories of Conquest tells the story of thousands of Nahuas and Oaxacans who invaded Guatemala alongside the Spanish in the 1520s. Some remained in Central America as colonists, creating a new ethnic identity for themselves as “Mexicanos.” It was published in Spanish as Memorias de conquista: De indígenas conquistadores a mexicanos en la Guatemala colonial (copia bibliotecaria aquí). I was honored to receive the 2013 Howard F. Cline Memorial Prize and the 2013 Murdo MacLeod Prize for this work.
Other scholars were noticing similar patterns throughout the region. Hence the volume I co-edited with Michel Oudijk in 2007, Indian Conquistadors.
My current research examines interregional commerce and migration at the end of the disastrous sixteenth century, across one of the most important trade corridors of the Mesoamerican world: the southern Pacific coast from modern-day Oaxaca to El Salvador.
I am grateful for generous support over the years from Marquette University and from Dumbarton Oaks (Pre-Columbian Fellow ’25); the U.S. State Department (Fulbright ’23); the Newberry Library (Evelyn Dunbar and Ruth Dunbar Davee ’21-22 and Mellon ’05-06 Long Term Fellowships); the American Council of Learned Societies (Fellow ’12) ; the American Philosophical Society; the Amerind Institute; the U.S. Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays) and the Research Institute for the Study of Man (Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund).
SELECTED ARTICLES/ESSAYS
- “Two Bigamists in Tehuantepec: Global(ized) Itineraries in Southern Mesoamerica, c. 1600,” Hispanic American Historical Review 103:2 (2023), pp. 251-282.
- “The Spanish Conquest?” in Robert Holden, ed., Oxford Handbook of Central American History (Oxford. 2022), pp. 141-166.
- “The Form of the Content: The Digital Archive Nahuatl/Nawat in Central America” Digital Humanities Quarterly 14:4 (2020)
- “A Tense Convivencia: Place Making, Pluralism, and Violence in Early Spanish Central America,” with William Fowler, in Christine Beaule and John Douglass, eds., The Global Spanish Empire: Five Hundred Years of Place Making and Pluralism (Arizona, 2020), pp. 130-149.
- “Huipiles y huino: El comercio mercantíl en la región de los Izalcos, 1524-1574,” Anales de la Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala XCIV (2019), pp. 177-204.
- “De ciudad capital a altepetl colonial: El urbanismo mesoamericano en Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala,” in Pedro Antonio Escalante Arce and Gustavo Herodier, eds., Génesis y desarrollo del a ciudad iberoamericana: Actas del IV Seminario RII-UC, Editorial Universitaria de la Universidad de San Salvador, pp. 95-108.
Laura E Matthew 