Don Bartolomé de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, a Mexican diocesan priest of Spanish and noble Nahua ancestry, translated three plays from the Spanish baroque in the early 1640s. Due to his multiple positionalities – priest, translator, author – Alva has been understood as “in-between” distinct polarities. This understanding of Alva makes him relevant for examining sources and influences in proto-Latinx writing, including his way of dealing with language. This chapter analyzes Alva’s Nahuatl translation of Antonio Mira de Amescua’s El animal profeta y dichoso patricida, to argue that Alva is not “in-between” polarities, but rather is a cultural mediator that created and managed new contexts. Hence, Alva is a co-creator, not mere translator, who managed to reach two distinct audiences, Jesuit priest and Nahua elite, in one coherent text. He makes use of his positionalities, particularly in his portrayal of free will, strategically and intentionally to exercise his position of power as a priest and noble Nahua. Finally, his role as mediator contributes to the Latinx archive, providing an alternative to Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of “nepantla.” Instead, the process of “malinalli” in Aztec metaphysics becomes another way of conceptualizing a mixing together. This is exemplified in his process of translation.

José Rizal spearheaded an anticolonial literary movement that aimed to deepen the understanding of Filipinos’ emerging identity through critical engagement with colonial archives. Through his writings in Spanish, the Filipino anticolonial leader gathers and constructs his people’s prehistory in order to promote and comprehend the identity-political transformation his writings describe and prescribe, the consolidation of a “Filipino” identity different from the term’s previous definition of “Spaniards born in the Philippines.” Through analysis of his annotations to Antonio Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas and his novel Noli me tangere, I argue that Rizal serves as a useful prototype for Colonial Latinx studies, as both model and cautionary tale. I eventually conclude that Rizal’s literary and historiographical contributions must be understood as on the one hand, a register of colonial maladies – frustrations with powerful Spanish friars and inept and naïve colonized peoples alike – and on the other hand, a rehearsal space for future liberties, including the freedom to define one’s own identity in dialogue with and against colonial expectations and discourses.