Alva was one of the youngest children born to indigenous Doña Ana Cortés Ixtlixochitl and her husband, a Spaniard, Juan Pérez de Peralta.
Bartolomé's brother Fernando occupied positions of authority within New Spain's colonial government that had previously been reserved only for indigenous elites, not Spaniards or mestizos, including serving as the governing judge (juez gobernador) of Texcoco and Chalco and as the cacique of Teotihuacan alongside the oldest Alva Ixtlixochitl brother after the death of their mother, Doña Ana Cortés, in 1640.
[3] After his ordination, Alva participated in the exams that the Church required to determine the placement of priests in clerical positions.
The Confessionario is written as a parallel conversation in both Spanish and Nahuatl within which Alva condenses teachings of the Catholic Church into the lines of the priest, and the sins of the Native person into the scripted responses of the Nahua participant.
[9] Alva's work contributed to Horacio Carochi's grammar of Nahuatl, Arte de la lengua mexicana, published in 1645.
In his approval Alva writes that "the author, by dint of study, has attained the ability to explain masterfully in the Mexican [i.e. Nahuatl] and Otomi languages what the very natives, although they reach an understanding of it, hardly manage to express.
[6] Alva's translation of "The Animal Prophet and the Fortunate Patricide," the Florentine Codex and the Bancroft Dialogues are the three most-cited known sources of examples of Nahuatl that Carochi highlights.