This article considers the roles and experiences of indigenous women in the silver mining town of Zacatecas, Mexico, from the early seventeenth century through the late colonial period (1620–1770). Indigenous women of all ages and civil statuses migrated and settled in Zacatecas through the colonial period. Using Spanish sources, this article highlights the importance of their contributions to the production of silver and to the settlement of the city and its four Indian towns. It argues for a broader understanding of the labor involved in silver production to include activities performed outside the mines by women. Some of this work involved the preparation and distribution of goods and foodstuffs and basic housekeeping at mining haciendas, and women’s engagement with small-scale trade, market activities, and the management of properties in the city. Indian women also contributed to the vitality of the city and its Indian communities, migrating and settling in Zacatecas in large numbers even during periods of mining declines. Within these communities, episodes of high male absenteeism often left Indian women in charge of their households. As primary caretakers, they cared for their children and often used legal measures to protect them from abusive labor practices common to mining towns. Ultimately, this article argues that indigenous women’s roles above ground were as important as those performed by their male, silver-extracting counterparts below ground.

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This article discusses the creation and evolution of indigenous government in the colonial silver-mining town of Zacatecas. Initially, nonnoble native migrants from central and western Mexico constituted the basis of the city's indigenous population. Living in informal settlements on the outskirts of town, indigenous communities possessed no hereditary leaders and few vehicles for redress and governance. Over time, the city's indigenous groups adopted the Spanish cabildo (municipal council) and established four juridically autonomous Indian towns. This article considers how the development of indigenous cabildos in Zacatecas unified the city's disparate ethnic groups, converted Indian settlements into formal sociopolitical entities, created an official leadership class, and contributed to the perpetuation of a corporate indigenous identity within the city through the late colonial period.

This article examines a series of fights, called saçemis, between indigenous peoples and Spanish campaigns to suppress them in the silver-mining town of Zacatecas, Mexico. Between 1587 and 1628 rival groups gathered in indigenous neighborhoods to engage in large-scale, sometimes lethal fights using rocks and other weapons. Colonial officials did not undertake a vigorous campaign to suppress the fights until they affected Spanish spaces and economic interests. This article considers what insights saçemis and shifting Spanish perspectives on and responses to them reveal about Indians, violence, and the nature of colonial hegemony in urban centers. It argues that the proliferation and pervasiveness of this type of indigenous violence in cities—generally considered Spanish administrative and demographic strongholds—underscore the spaces for negotiation, flexibility, and historical agency within colonial rule and illustrate the endemic conflicts that characterized the Pax Colonial.