Indigenous Interpreters: Intellectuals and Cultural Creators in Colonial Oaxaca

This paper will examine the work of indigenous interpreters as intellectuals in the district of Villa Alta, Oaxaca during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Due to the linguistic diversity of the region – unusual for the size of the district – and the dearth of Spaniards to fill the role, indigenous people served the district's colonial judicial system from the level of Interpreter General to that of commissioned interpreter despite Spanish prejudices against indigenous functionaries. The district archive of Villa Alta thus provides rich evidence concerning indigenous interpreters as intellectuals. Indigenous interpreters fit the characterization of “intellectual” based on their social function as “cultural creators.” As Gramsci has argued, all people engage in intellectual activity, therefore what distinguishes intellectuals as a group is their social function rather than the nature of their productive work. As bridges between local forms of social organization and a colonial bureaucracy, indigenous interpreters inhabited a unique intermediary position from which they could shape local social relations as well as the broader colonial system. The work of translation required them to 1) fit indigenous paradigms and concepts into colonial frameworks and vice versa, and 2) simultaneously objectify and violate concepts of cultural difference. In the context of civil and criminal cases, they helped to shape colonial discourses concerning “property rights,” “adultery,” and “idolatry,” among others. This paper will investigate how the work of interpreters shaped the dynamic period of the 1670's-1730's, during which time a population boom, religious conflict, and economic expansion produced considerable conflict among Villa Alta's pueblos de indios and the Spanish civil and ecclesiastical administration. Through a proliferation of legal disputes, interpreters as intellectuals helped to connect the “local” particularities of the district's five ethnolinguistic zones to the wider colonial processes of which they were a part.