At least a hundred indigenous Indian languages are known to have been spoken in Mesoamerica, but it is only in the past fifty years that many of them have been adequately described. Professor Suárez draws together this considerable mass of scholarship in a general survey that will provide an invaluable source of reference.

Mesoamerican Voices, first published in 2006, presents a collection of indigenous-language writings from the colonial period, translated into English. The texts were written from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries by Nahuas from central Mexico, Mixtecs from Oaxaca, Maya from Yucatan, and other groups from Mexico and Guatemala. The volume gives college teachers and students access to important new sources for the history of Latin America and Native Americans. It is the first collection to present the translated writings of so many native groups and to address such a variety of topics, including conquest, government, land, household, society, gender, religion, writing, law, crime, and morality.

The first anthology in any language to represent the full trajectory of this remarkable literature.

For too long, the Gulf Coast of Mexico has been dismissed by scholars as peripheral to the Mesoamerican heartland, but researchers now recognize that much can be learned from this regionÕs cultures. Peoples of the Gulf CoastÑparticularly those in Veracruz and TabascoÑshare so many historical experiences and cultural features that they can fruitfully be viewed as a regional unit for research and analysis. Native Peoples of the Gulf Coast of Mexico is the first book to argue that the people of this region constitute a culture area distinct from other parts of Mexico. A pioneering effort by a team of international scholars who summarize hundreds of years of history, this encyclopedic work chronicles the prehistory, ethnohistory, and contemporary issues surrounding the many and varied peoples of the Gulf Coast, bringing together research on cultural groups about which little or only scattered information has been published. The volume includes discussions of the prehispanic period of the Gulf Coast, the ethnohistory of many of the neglected indigenous groups of Veracruz and the Huasteca, the settlement of the American Mediterranean, and the unique geographical and ecological context of the Chontal Maya of Tabasco. It provides descriptions of the Popoluca, Gulf Coast Nahua, Totonac, Tepehua, Sierra „Šh–u (Otom’), and Huastec Maya. Each chapter contains a discussion of each groupÕs language, subsistence and settlement patterns, social organization, belief systems, and history of acculturation, and also examines contemporary challenges to the future of each native people. As these contributions reveal, Gulf Coast peoples share not only major cultural features but also historical experiences, such as domination by Hispanic elites beginning in the sixteenth century and subjection to forces of change in Mexico. Yet as contemporary people have been affected by factors such as economic development, increased emigration, and the spread of Protestantism, traditional cultures have become rallying points for ethnic identity. Native Peoples of the Gulf Coast of Mexico highlights the significance of the Gulf Coast for anyone interested in the great encuentro between the Old and New Worlds and general processes of culture change. By revealing the degree to which these cultures have converged, it represents a major step toward achieving a broader understanding of the peoples of this region and will be an important reference work on these indigenous populations for years to come.

This volume constitutes the first in-depth, systematic study of varieties of headless relative clauses in fifteen languages from five language families, all Mesoamerican languages spoken in Mexico and Guatemala and one Chibchan language spoken in Honduras. Headless relative clauses are clauses that often resemble interrogative clauses or headed relative clauses in their morpho-syntactic shape, but whose meaning brings them close to nominal constructions. For the vastmajority of the languages in this volume, many of which are endangered and all of which are understudied, the work presented here represents the only published material on the subject.

In her book, Patricia Anawalt describes through text and more than 350 illustrations and charts what the Indians of Middle America were wearing when Corts and his conquistadors arrived in the New World in 1519. The costumes reveal a great deal about those who wore them. To the peoples of Middle America, dress was identity; even a god had to don his proper attire. To the Aztecs and their neighbors, for example, the wearing of appropriate clothing was strictly controlled by both custom and law. An individuals attire immediately identified not only culture affiliation but rank and status as well. Since each group dressed in a distinctive and characteristic manner, a great deal of ethnographic and historical information can be gleaned from a study of what those groups wore.

This volume presents a carefully edited and translated collection of Pre-Columbian ancient spiritual texts. It presents relevant examples of those sacred writings of the indigenous peoples of Central America, especially Mexico, that have survived destruction. The majority of texts were conceived in the 950-1521 A.D. period. Their authors were primarily anonymous sages, priests and members of the ancient nobility. Most were written in Nahuath (also known as Aztec or Mexican), in Yucatec and Quiche-Maya languages.