# Indigenous Identity, Artistic Agency, and the Heraldic Imagination in Early Colonial Mexico

Heraldry was one of the few spaces in which the indigenous elites of post-Conquest Mexico could express their own worldview and authority claims. As part of their political negotiations with the Spanish Crown, indigenous nobles of the Central Valley of Mexico requested and secured distinctive coats of arms that incorporated Mesoamerican symbols of power and ancestry into European heraldic models. These creations, however, had to conform to prescribed conventions that regulated the level of authority indigenous subjects could claim. Focusing on surviving documents requesting and endorsing indigenous coats of arms, this talk analyzes some of the complex negotiations behind the heraldic production of early colonial Mexico.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2009
- By: Library Of Congress
- Genres: History
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021688254/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2021688254?play=1)