Aztec calendars, Mexican time, and US Imperialism

In the late 1840s, an account of “Mexican time” from 1790s New Spain began circulating in US periodicals thanks to the eminent ethnologist Albert Gallatin. Disconnected from its original colonial context, the so-called... [ view full abstract ]

In the late 1840s, an account of “Mexican time” from 1790s New Spain began circulating in US periodicals thanks to the eminent ethnologist Albert Gallatin. Disconnected from its original colonial context, the so-called “Aztec Calendar” or “Mexican Almanac” was identified as “perpetual,” its supposedly imprecise, antiquated temporal mode marking a strong contrast to the precision of the railroad age. Christen Mucher argues that in the era of the US-Mexico War and continental land struggles, US nationalists’ interest in modes of Indigenous timekeeping, especially those that were demonstrably cyclical or “perpetual,” appeared to lend a providential dimension to US imperialism. Indeed, in the mid-nineteenth century, US nationalists not infrequently looked to Indigenous modes of timekeeping to think through the changing “frontier” of American history, not just its territory. This paper examines this so-called “Mexican almanac” to argue that nationalists’ use of Indigenous timekeeping helped them negotiate the temporal and historiographic dimensions of continental expansion.