The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian

Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca

HIS 5306

2/22/2023

By Carter Etgen
 This book review will review The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries,

Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca, by Yanna Yannakakis. Yannakakis is an

associate professor at Emory College of Arts and Sciences, teaching several different history

classes on Latin America. Yannakakis received her bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College,

and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Yannakakis also wrote Since Time

Immemorial: Native Custom and Law in Colonial Mexico, a book that is set to release in May of

2023. Yannakakis argued in the book The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries,

Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca that “Native Intermediaries, through their

participation in overlapping social networks and their deployment of a range of communicative

skills produced a colonial hegemony; a common symbolic framework through which native

peoples and Spanish officials struggled over forms of local rule and the meaning of Indian

identity.”1 Yannakakis proved her thesis through the three parts that The Art of Being In-

Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca is split into,

each covering several decades from 1660-1810 AD, and helps readers understand the role of

intermediaries in colonial Latin America through its clear and concise writing.

The first part of The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity,

and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca covered a forty-year period, from 1660-1700. These forty

years were the period of separation between the Tehuantepec Rebellion in 1660 and the Cajonos

Rebellion in 1700. Part one described how the native intermediaries used their skill in politics

and the court systems to gather together diverse native groups. Once together, these groups

fought against the attempts by the Spanish to reduce native autonomy. These native

intermediaries also protected the economic interests of the native populations within the

1 Yanna Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and
Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), xiv
cochineal trade, which was a trade that remained largely in control of native producers. The first

part of The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in

Colonial Oaxaca also covered the murder of two native church assistants at the center of the

Cajonos Rebellion. The Natives saw these two murders as the result of infighting between two

rival groups, whereas the Spanish saw it as proof that the natives were violent and in need of

more close supervision.

Part two of The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and

Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca picked up right after part one, during the seventy-year period

from 1700-1770. Part two described how the Dominicans were seen as negligent in their duties

by the local bishop. The local bishop increased the amount of secular priests and parishes within

this area in order to reinforce control and keep a closer eye on the natives. While this happened,

State Magistrates also began to cut into the cochineal trade through their exploitation of the

peasantry. The native intermediaries attempted to stop or slow the use of power over their local

autonomy by being presented to the courts as “Good Christians defending their time-honored

costumbre.” Yannakakis described how this technique was ultimately ineffective, native power

was reduced, and the Spanish further reduced native autonomy.

Part three of The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and

Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca focused heavily on the effects of Bourbon reforms in 1760 on the

forty years between 1770-1810. Yannakakis described how the focus on efficient tax collection

by the Bourbons led to even more power being taken away from natives and their leaders.

Native Intermediaries served as recruiters for Spanish miners in order to gain more wealth and

labor instead of being the bridge between the natives and the Spanish. Yannakakis used the

example of the Analco to prove the fact that the Spanish now had no need for intermediaries.
The Analco was a tribe that was allied with the Spanish during their colonization and served as

intermediaries with other native groups throughout Latin America. Yannakakis described that as

the late colonial period arrived, the intermediary attempts of the Analco became less successful,

and not only led to the Analco loss of status, but also their loss of status in native communities.

Book reviews for this book are overwhelmingly positive. One review stated

“Yannakakis’s well-written study offers one of the most engaging and insightful studies of New

Spain’s indigenous intermediaries in recent memory”2 I agree with this analysis that The Art of

Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca is

a very good book that keeps readers engaged and interested in the information provided. I knew

very little about what Yannakakis was going to be talking about before reading the book, but she

did a very good job keeping me engaged and interested in the topic while making it easy to

understand. I believe that The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity,

and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca could even be seen as a necessary book to understand the

colonialization of Latin America by the Spanish.

2 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/368541