Native diversity, territories and frontiers in northwestern New Spain

Abstract

This article is intended to put forward Cecilia Sheridan’s thinking on the native diversity from the viewpoint of the territorial transformation of the space linked to the constitution of new territorialities. This argument is closely linked to the notion of identity and, consequently, to differentiation processes upheld on concrete historical contexts. As a social process, native de-territorializing is an expression of changes and continuities synthesized in identitarian constructions; therefore, she suggests that identity is re-signified in specific socio-historic situations. In this sense, the ethnical is yet another element of those that make up the complex processes that construct identities, and the territorial, therefore, is an expression of the native diversity of the Novo-Hispanic northeast.