Mutilated memory: Reconstruction of the past and the mechanisms of memory among 17th century Otomis

Based on a chronicle written and translated by the Otomi — an indian group living in Querétaro City to the east of the Mexican Bajio, this work intends to describe the way they conceived the Spanish Conquest in the mid‐XVIIth century. By recalling, interpreting and idealizing their past these indians elaborated a version that conveys a complex and hopeless search for autonomy and identity in a context of social decay and crisis. This text is also a rare manifestation of colonial indian literature. Its analysis discovers the way Indians could use writing, oral and written sources to create and express an original way of coping with the past, time and colonial society.