Indigenous education and memory in New Spain in the sixteenth century

Abstract

If there are two elements of indigenous world in New Spain of the sixteenth century that cannot be dissociated, they are undoubtedly education and memory. Indeed, the first presupposed the second, but at the same time demanded it, conformed it and “redrew” it, creating new social subjects for the Hispanic monarchy. Education was the ideal occasion to sanction the established order, as well as to establish a series of moral teachings around the indigenous in that world of first contact. The “functioning” of both factors will go hand in hand with a whole series of additional elements (mechanical and liberal arts in education, the role of art of memory, places of education, the people and the means involved in it), that we’ll study in this text.