ABSTRACT
Recent literary and historical analysis of the early colonial world has sought to center voices other than those of Spanish or Portuguese, and Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking, male elites. This chapter connects that debate to another current, which searches for indigenous and Black intellectuals, men and women who theorized their own place in a colonized society. Ethnohistorians have used indigenous-language texts and non-textual intellectual production to identify how indigenous actors worked within colonial structures as well as for signs of non-hegemonic world views. These have often emerged from indigenous nobles who could use personal and community resources, because they were recognized as colonized elites within self-governed indigenous communities. In contrast, analysis of Black intellectual production has been slower and has largely centered around the work of Catholic figures, including participants in confraternities, assistants in catechism, and a handful of significant African-descent women religious. Secular Black men and women are harder to document outside of litigation and manumission papers, largely due to their differential treatment under colonial rule, which denied them access to self-governance, titles of nobility, and land.
