Meet the author: Yanna Yannakakis

On January 16, the institute will host Yanna Yannakakis to discuss her latest book “Since Time Immemorial. Native Custom and Law in Colonial Mexico."

In this book, Yanna Yannakakis traces the invention of Native custom, a legal category that Indigenous litigants used in disputes over marriage, self-governance, land, and labor in colonial Mexico. She outlines how, in the hands of Native litigants, the European category of custom—social practice that through time takes on the normative power of law—acquired local meaning and changed over time. Yannakakis analyzes sources ranging from missionary and Inquisition records to Native pictorial histories, royal surveys, and Spanish and Native-language court and notarial documents. By encompassing historical actors who have been traditionally marginalized from legal histories and highlighting spaces outside the courts like Native communities, parishes, and missionary schools, she shows how imperial legal orders were not just imposed from above but also built on the ground through translation and implementation of legal concepts and procedures. Yannakakis argues that, ultimately, Indigenous claims to custom, which on the surface aimed to conserve the past, provided a means to contend with historical change and produce new rights for the future.

The book, which has received two prestigious prizes - the 2024 Friedrich Katz Prize in Latin American and Caribbean History, presented by the American Historical Association, and the 2024 Peter Gonville Stein Book Award, presented by the American Society for Legal History - was published in open access and can be downloaded here.

The author:
Yanna Yannakakis is Professor of History and Department chair at Emory University. Her research brings together Mesoamerican ethnohistory and legal history. She received her PhD in Latin American History from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Among her publications are Since Time Immemorial: Native Custom and Law in Colonial Mexico (Duke University Press, 2023), The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca (Duke University Press, 2008), Indigenous Intellectuals: Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Culture in Colonial Mexico and the Andes (co-editor,Duke University Press, 2014), Los indios ante la justicia local: intérpretes, oficiales, y litigantes en Nueva España y Guatemala siglos XVI-XVIII (co-editor, Colegio de Michoacán, 2019), and, “A Court of Sticks and Branches: Indian Jurisdiction in Colonial Mexico and Beyond” The American Historical Review (co-editor) (February 2019).