Colonizers Colonized?: The Nahuatlization of Colonial Spain and Modern Philosophy

We often acknowledge the devastating impact of settler-colonialism on the indigenous groups of the Americas. However, as anthropologists have been arguing for several decades, culture contact is at least bi-directional. So how did indigenous peoples influence their colonizers? This talk will focus on the interaction between Spanish missionaries and the Nahua ethnic group (a subset of whom are often called “Aztec”), and argue that, instead of annihilating Nahua culture, the missionaries themselves, and by extension, the Spanish empire, were heavily influenced by Nahua beliefs and practices. We will consider whether this influence may have actually been far more significant and impactful to the development of Early Modern philosophy than is usually acknowledged.