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Laura E. Matthew
I am a historian of colonial Guatemala, and associate professor of Latin American history at Marquette University.
My book Memories of Conquest is a history of the thousands of Nahuas and Oaxacans who invaded Guatemala alongside the Spanish in the 1520s. Some remained in Central America as colonists, creating an exalted position for themselves in Guatemala as both “Indians” and “conquistadors.”
As it turned out, other scholars were noticing similar patterns throughout Mesoamerica. Hence the edited volume I did with Michel Oudijk in 2007, Indian Conquistadors.
My current research looks at the circulation of goods and people along the Pacific Coast of Oaxaca, Guatemala, and El Salvador from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries.
In addition to generous support from Marquette, I have received grants from the Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays), the Research Institute for the Study of Man, the American Philosophical Society, and the Newberry Library (Mellon Long Term Fellowship). Most recently, I was awarded an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship for Spring 2013.
Hat tip to Rudy Girón at antiguadailyphoto.com for the picture of the card catalog at the Fundación Cultural Duane Carter Library in Antigua, Guatemala, above. Many of these card catalogs are still in service, including at the Archivo General de Centroamérica. I’m quite fond of them.
