Lisa Lovallo ’07 Explores the Creation of Native Settlements in Mexico

In order to immerse herself in her EXCEL research this summer, Lisa Lovallo ’07 (Hebron, Conn.) had to transport herself to two foreign countries and back in time more than three centuries. She has done this without ever leaving campus.

Lovallo, a double major in Spanish and economics & business, has been working with Denise Galarza Sepulveda, assistant professor of foreign languages and literature, on transcribing various Mexican and Spanish legal documents that relate to the creation of native settlements in the Sierra Madre region of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (present day-Mexico) during the late 17th century.

In Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, students conduct research with faculty while earning a stipend. The program has helped make Lafayette a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the more than 160 students who participate each year share their work through articles in academic journals and/or conference presentations.

Lovallo explains that at the end of the 17th century, during the Spanish colonization of Mexico, the western-Mexican town of Tonalisco was home to the Nayarit Indians. During this time, a written correspondence was taking place between the Spanish Crown and Francisco de Bracamonte, the named Protector of Indians, regarding the colonization and conversion of the native people of this region to Christianity.

“The document consists of approximately 80 pages, in which the Crown responds to an earlier report from Bracamonte about the native civilization,” Lovallo says. “While the role of the Protector was intended to be one of legal advocacy to the Indians, with heavy reliance on the governing Spanish legal system for New Spain, it was a much more complex position to hold.”

The documents, Lovallo adds, include information regarding Bracamonte’s actual work as Protector and the complex challenges of colonization. She hopes the documents reveal details regarding legal, urban and religious ideologies held by the two distinct, coexisting cultures occupying Tonalisco, and the Sierra Madre region. Lovallo and Galarza Sepulveda, however, have discovered a great deal already.

“What is particularly exciting is that Lisa and I are finding that the supplementary documents undercut Bracamonte’s claim to be the town’s founder and self-fashioning as savior to the Indians,” Galarza Sepulveda notes. “Various letters, decrees and reports offer a very different picture.”

According to Galarza Sepulveda, these accounts show that the town had already existed and it was the native people who requested the reestablishment of the town.

“They did so because their forefathers had been the first to populate the town as a result of previous evangelizing efforts, and they wanted to claim the land that was rightfully theirs,” Galarza Sepulveda notes. “These new findings cast the Protector’s original report in a very different light and they are suggestive of the theoretical and political issues that emerge from the oftentimes uneasy coexistence of legal, urban and religious discourses. At the same time, they reveal the different kinds of rhetorical and legalistic maneuvering being performed by the various parties involved.”

In addition to Lovallo’s transcription work, she researches key topics to gain an understanding of these and other events happening at the same time and connections that may exist to help paint a more complete picture of the situation.

“Once I have read over each applicable article/publication, I assemble an annotated bibliography that includes a summary of the purpose of the article, central points, context of the study, and its contribution to the advancement of our knowledge on this subject,” she explains. “The end of the research process involves uploading each of the annotated bibliographies to RefWorks so that Professor Galarza Sepulveda can access them as well.”

Lovallo appreciates Galarza Sepulveda’s teaching style, saying the professor brings colonial Spanish history to life and intrigues her students by allowing them to explore primary documents during library sessions and classroom assignments.

“Professor Galarza Sepulveda knows just how to engage students by offering many primary source documents and allowing students to make their own discoveries,” Lovallo says. “She has inspired me to discover not only the content of source material, but also its connection to the existing knowledge of the subject area, while consistently encouraging me to ‘fill in the blanks’ by analyzing how our discoveries construct a more complete understanding of this era.”

Galarza-Sepulveda’s area of specialization is colonial Latin American literature. Her research interests include 18th century colonial literature, urban studies, cultural identity formation, and the intersection of historical and literary discourse. She is working on a book-long manuscript entitled Writing the Walls of the City: Immigrant Evils and Proto-Nationalist Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Peru. She has mentored several students in EXCEL and honors thesis research projects. She earned her Ph.D. in Spanish from Emory University and her M.A. from Purdue University.

Lovallo’s EXCEL work will help provide the groundwork for an article-length study about this particular example of Spain’s “civilizing” efforts, the function of the protector, and the relationship between material history and the rhetoric used with regard to the Nayarit Indians. Galarza Sepulveda will recognize Lovallo as a research assistant when she publishes an article on the work.

“Lisa is a true pleasure to work with,” Galarza Sepulveda says. “She is diligent, creative and extremely intelligent. She learned the art of paleography quickly and has already begun transcribing on her own. She’s doing a phenomenal job.”

This assignment is in line with Lovallo’s career aspirations, which involve working in a global corporation that extends to Europe (particularly Spain) and to Central and South America, or in a corporation that works in a Spanish-speaking community within the United States. Her time at Lafayette has provided an outstanding start down this career path, she says.

“Lafayette is an ideal place to double major in Spanish and economics & business, due to the liberal arts environment,” says Lovallo, who also has satisfied enough credits for a music minor in classical piano. “I have been able to gain a firm understanding of the foundations of both majors, while also exploring specific subject areas that interest me most within each department.”

In addition to her EXCEL project, Lovallo is doing an independent study entitled “English as a Second Language Writers,” which has been accepted for presentation at the University of Michigan in November. Lovallo also presented a talk-titled “Gods and Conquest: The Evolution of the Mexican Codices-at the Year of Languages Symposium at Muhlenberg College in Fall 2005.

Among her other pursuits, Lovallo is a writing associate in the Lafayette College Writing Program; a teaching assistant for beginning classical piano classes; a tour guide for the Admissions Office; a tutor for Music Theory I & II; a volunteer tutoring local elementary school English as a Second Language students; and a member of the Lafayette Leadership Institute, the Investment Club, the Concert Band and the intramural soccer program.