This excellent collection of articles by prominent scholars in the field concerns the coats of arms granted by the Spanish Crown to indigenous towns and nobles in colonial and independent Mexico. It spans the period from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries and ranges across diverse regions of Mexico while also touching on early sixteenth-century Spain. The collection represents a major contribution to the scholarship on the Mesoamerican tradition of heraldry, which to date had not yet received the scholarly attention it merits. More broadly, it contributes to our understanding of indigenous efforts to solicit and preserve individual or corporate rights and privileges under Spanish rule. Overall, indigenous coats of arms reflect the corporate strength and vitality of local communities in the colonial period and beyond.
Indigenous coats of arms in Mexico drew on both the Spanish tradition of heraldry that had its roots in medieval warfare and tournaments and...
