Publication Date

2025

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Bennardo, Giovanni

Degree Name

M.A. (Master of Arts)

Legacy Department

Department of Anthropology

Abstract

This thesis examines and documents the tradition of Indigenous Custom Marriage (ICM) practiced in a semi-rural community in central Mexico. The arrival of Spaniards to Mesoamerica during the sixteenth century brought new forms of marriage to the region, those of the Christian religion and of the Spanish crown’s laws. While these new forms slowly gained acceptance, the traditional pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican form of getting married has endured over the intervening centuries up through the present. This traditional form of marriage is not monolithic, but shows variation across the diverse ethnic groups, communities, and geographic regions of Mesoamerica. The community studied, Tlanalapa, in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico, shows a variation of this marriage tradition. In addition, this research illustrates how the use of linguistic and cognitive methodology allows one to discover the cultural models of marriage which the members of this community use when they decide to get married by an indigenous ICM. The cultural models that this research proposes are the models of union, formation, reaffirmation, action, bound, and compositional and archetype models. This thesis shows how the members of Tlanalapa generate and use these models in their day life.

Extent

90 pages

Language

en

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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