This paper offers a critical review of Ramón A. Gutiérrez's When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away, a historical study of Spanish colonization in New Mexico and its impact on the Pueblo Indians. The review evaluates Gutiérrez's central thesis — that colonization must be understood through multiple perspectives, including those of the colonized — and assesses the book's strengths, such as its meticulous historical detail and attention to marginalized viewpoints, alongside its weaknesses, including an overly academic tone and an arguably outdated claim to being among the first works to present native perspectives sympathetically.
In When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away, Ramón A. Gutiérrez's central thesis is that the Spanish colonization of New Mexico must be understood through multiple points of view. This thesis also carries a broader application to the European invasion of North America as a whole. By focusing on a single group of natives and a single group of invaders, Gutiérrez argues that the colonizing process was shaped by the interactions of men, women, cultures, and professions in ways that had no precedent before Europeans arrived in America. The book's stated purpose is to present a wide-ranging account of several perspectives, with particular emphasis on that of the Pueblo Indians and their experience of Spanish invasion.
One of the book's foremost strengths is its commitment to multiple perspectives — and especially to perspectives that have been largely ignored in mainstream historical writing. Gutiérrez gives sustained attention to the viewpoint of the oppressed, a stance that has gained increasing legitimacy in contemporary scholarship. He supports this perspective with meticulous historical detail, lending the work a depth and credibility that reinforces its central argument.
This attention to detail is evident from the very introduction, where Gutiérrez traces the pre-historical origins of the Pueblo Indians' settlement in the Americas. He reaches back as far as prehistoric climate change, describing how shifting conditions gave rise to the savannahs characteristic of much of the present-day United States. Changes in animal populations drove changes in human habitation and movement, and it was migration that ultimately produced the Pueblo settlements in New Mexico — the same settlements that the Spanish Conquistadors would later invade. The author provides equally thorough detail about these communities both before and during the period of invasion. The body of the book is organized into parts corresponding to the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, each examined with careful attention to the transformations of that era.
"Overstated novelty claims and dense academic language"
"Overall positive view with reservations about relevance"
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