Celso Mendoza, PhD
2023 B2F Scholar
History
Pronouns: He/Him
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About
Celso Armando Mendoza y Barajas is a historian studying the Aztecs or Nahuas of Mexico using documents written in Nahuatl, their language. He grew up in San Diego, California, where his immigrant family, which traces their origins to Michoacán and Oaxaca, Mexico, maintains Mexican taco shops. The rich Indigenous influences of Southern California Chicano culture that surrounded him in his youth piqued his interest in Mesoamerica and the roots of Mexican identity. He began ardently studying Nahuatl after encountering the language on a trip to visit relatives in Mexico. After realizing that nothing interested him as much as Aztec history, he decided to major in history at UC Davis and then earned an MA in Latin American studies at UCLA in 2017. While at UCLA, he studied Nahuatl for a summer at Yale with Indigenous native speakers and some of the foremost experts in the language. He subsequently received his PhD in history from Rutgers in 2023, advised by Camilla Townsend, a leading authority on Indigenous Mexican history.
His research focuses on the earliest Nahua reactions and responses to Spanish colonialism in the sixteenth century, uncovering their resistance and discontent. His dissertation, “Painting Colonialism with Words: The Aztecs a Generation After Conquest” centers on the set of Nahuatl annals known as Anales de Juan Bautista from early colonial Mexico City. He is preparing a full English translation and edition of the Anales, a first-hand account of Aztec resistance in the 1560s to the Spanish crown's brutal imposition of a universal tribute in silver. Through his work he aims to make more widely known their historically important struggles of Mexico’s Native peoples against the onerous demands of their Spanish colonizers. He also has written encyclopedia articles and book chapters on Mexican and North American history and has done consulting for periodicals and entertainment (including comic books) involving the Aztecs and Nahuatl. He is the recipient of several fellowships and awards, including the SSRC’s International Dissertation Research Fellowship.