Under the guidance of Mary: “Moriscos” and “Indios” against the expansion of the Spanish Empire and the politics of Marian devotion.

The focus of my research project is the political implications of Marian devotion in the Early Modern Iberian World and its role in the colonial management of native communities of Moriscos and Indios, subdued since the end of the 15th century by the expansion of the Spanish Empire.

In this sense, my study proposes a political reading of the development of Marian devotion in the Iberian Peninsula and its American colonies, analysing how its particular characteristics and evolution reflected the progressive transformation of the Spanish imperial project and encoded diverse and changing conceptions of the role of these native communities in the imperial fabric.

Through the comparative study of the representation of Indios and Moriscos in the collective imagery, official documentation and religious literature, my research tries to question the role of the Virgin and her imagined relationship with these communities in the debate over the ability of native populations to integrate themselves into the colonial regime as faithful subjects and good Christians, and the place of their culture and religious sensibility in the configuration of the emerging colonial culture.

Through the analysis of the intellectual and artistic products commissioned by Christianized Morisco and Mesoamerican elites, my project tries to elucidate how native communities and especially subaltern elites, facing the progressive erosion of their rights and privileges, used Marian devotion to prove the value of their cultural heritage, lineage and memory and to reclaim their place in the colonial society.

Similarly, my research seeks to understand how native communities transformed the Virgin into a political symbol, through which they could legitimise their understanding of Christianity and o promote an alternative and more inclusive conception of the Spanish Empire against the growing acculturating and homogenising pressure of the Empire and the Reformed Church.