The Nahua NewsletterWith support from the Department of Anthropology
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
Alan R. Sandstrom, Editor
A Publication of the Indiana University
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
February 1996, Number 21
The Nahua Newsletter
With support from the Department
of Anthropology
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
Alan R.
Sandstrom, Editor
A Publication of the Indiana
University
Center for Latin American
and Caribbean Studies
Welcome to the Nahua Newsletter, now beginning its eleventh year of publication in the interest of scholars and students of Nahua culture, history, and language. In this issue you will find news items, announcements, requests for information, a list of used books available, book reviews, and an update of the subscriber directory. It was the editor's intention to reprint the entire directory in this issue so that readers could have an updated list of subscribers' addresses. However, so many book reviews have been submitted that I am obliged to put off publishing the subscriber list until a future issue.
Interest continues to be strong in the NN and readers from a number of countries have written to express their enthusiasm for the publication. The original intent of the newsletter was to give researchers working in non-Maya areas of Mexico a means to communicate with each other and to create a sense of community and common cause. These researchers sometimes felt isolated with so much professional and media attention being paid to the Maya region. We welcome Mayanists as subscribers, of course, who may want to keep abreast of developments in other areas of Middle America.
The financial status of the NN continues to be precarious. It costs about $700 (U.S.) per year to print and mail out two issues. Over the past ten years the generous donations of readers have made possible the publication of the NN. Your remarkable show of support is very impressive by any standard! In addition, we received a small grant from Indiana University International Programs that helped keep us solvent for a year and a half. The ideal solution to our financial insecurities would be for the NN to be adopted in the budget of a Latin American studies program or a foundation that specializes in Native American or Latin American studies. We will continue to search for an appropriate organization to underwrite our efforts. In the meantime, we are applying for grants to help assure the future of the newsletter. If you find the NN to be of use in your work or simply as a means to keep up to date, please continue to forward donations to the address below. All money is used for printing and mailing - there are absolutely no administrative costs associated with publishing the newsletter.
Several readers have asked what an appropriate donation might be. There is no easy answer because giving money to the NN is strictly voluntary. Donations have ranged from $5.00 to $100.00 (U.S.) with the average being about $20.00. Any amount helps. The editor has set up a special account at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne to receive donations for the newsletter. Checks or money orders should be made out to "Nahua Newsletter."
Please forward news, announcements, requests for assistance, comments, or donations to:
Alan R. Sandstrom Nahua Newsletter Department of Anthropology Indiana-Purdue University Fort Wayne 2101 Coliseum Blvd. East Fort Wayne, Indiana 46805
(1) Received from Hedda Scherres: In the last issue of the NN, Hugo Nutini was asking for examples of what the Nahuas call themselves in the different parts of Mexico. As I am currently conducting field research in the Montaña baja of the state of Guerrero, I will offer readers some observations that I have been able to make. I discussed my findings with Vital Alonso, a Mexican colleague and Nahuatlato of the region.
As in the Tlaxcala region, the term Mexicano is used in the Chilapa region to refer to the Nahuatl language and not to the people who speak it. Nowadays, as education is increasing and the children are taught in their indigenous language, some villagers know the term Nahuatl. If they are familiar with the term, they prefer to use it to name their language. The mestizos of Chilapa call Nahuas of the region Mexicaneros. But there is no term of self-reference in any of the Nahua populations of the region. Identification at the village level is very strong and people will tell you they are Acateco, Atzacualoyero, etc., and then explain how their dialect differs from that spoken in other villages. In former times, the term masehual was common as a term of self-reference as an Indian, but its use has nearly disappeared.
When the Nahuas of the Chilapa region want to distinguish themselves from Indians of other languages, they name these languages and add the word popoloca. They say, for example, Tlapanec Popoloca and one commonly hears the phrase Mixtec Popoloca. In former times, non Indian males were called coyotl and in Acatlan they were also named with the Nahuatl pronunciation of the term Christiano, kixchano. For women, they used the word xinolla throughout the entire region, which I believe is their attempt to pronounce the Spanish word señora. These expressions are still used by older people but others use them to mock foreigners.
Correspondence should be sent (until September 1996) to Hedda Scherres at Lista de Correos, 41100 Chilapa, Guerrero, México. If other NN readers would like to continue this discussion, please mail your remarks to the editor for inclusion in the next issue.
(2) The editor would like to announce a major event in Mesoamerican scholarship that should be of interest to all readers. Guy Stresser-Péan has just published a facsimile and detailed analysis of a 16th-century codex that he and his wife Claude discovered in the Sierra Norte de Puebla in 1991. The couple was engaged in ethnographic research in the Huauchinango Xicotepec region when Nahua villagers informed them of the manuscript's existence. The codex, which is 6.36 meters long and made from parchment, was kept by villagers who believed the document to be a record of land titles. The document, that Stresser-Péan calls the Códice de Xicotepec, was in the style of the Acolhuas whose capital was Texcoco. Events depicted in the Codex cover a period of time from 1431-1533 and the document appears to have been painted between 1564 and 1576.
Stresser-Péan has published his analysis of the manuscript in both a French and Spanish edition. The beautifully done facsimile and the lavish, quarto-sized book containing the analysis were published jointly by the Gobierno de Estado de Puebla, the Centro Francés de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos, and the Fondo de Cultura Económica in 1995. The codex fills an important gap in the historical record and provides invaluable information on relations between the capitals of the Triple Alliance and the provinces. The Stresser-Péans are to be congratulated for this magnificent discovery and for the truly excellent work in analyzing the manuscript. (Yolotl Gonzales of INAH has agreed to write a review of the Códice de Xicotepec for the NN that will appear in an upcoming issue.)
(3) Susan Gillespie writes to announce: Illinois Studies in Anthropology is a monograph series published since 1961 by the University of Illinois Press under the editorial direction of faculty in the Anthropology Department. The series welcomes manuscripts relating to all subfields of anthropology. To date, it is strongest in Latin American and Asian ethnography, but the directors encourage the submission of scholarly work that bridges or goes beyond traditional subfields, including ethnohistory. For more information, contact Dr. Susan Gillespie, Publications Committee Chair, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, 109 Davenport Hall, 607 S. Mathews, Urbana, IL 61801 USA.
(4) Brad Huber writes: Robert Anderson, a physician-anthropologist from Mills College, and I have written an article entitled "Bonesetters and Curers in a Mexican Community: Explanatory Models, Status, and Gender." It will appear in Medical Anthropology 17(1).
In March 1996, I will be interviewing for the second time 10 Nahuat-speaking midwives from the Sierra Norte de Puebla. I am currently developing questions for the interview. If there are some burning issues readers would like me to discuss with these midwives, they should feel free to write me at the College of Charleston. The complete address is Department of Sociology and Anthropology, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC 29424.
(5) John Schwaller writes that the Nahuat-L electronic discussion list has moved. The new list address (where messages you post will be distributed to the whole group) is:
nahuat-l@listserv.umt.edu
To subscribe, send this message:
subscribe nahuat-l John Doe [substitute your name]
to the listserv address:
listproc@listserv.umt.edu
(6) New application deadline for The Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., has been announced: please have materials submitted by September 30, 1996.
The Foundation was formed in 1993 to foster increased understanding of ancient Mesoamerican cultures and aims, by hosting an annual grant competition, to assist and promote scholars who might otherwise be unable to complete their programs of research and synthesis.
The Foundation grants are awarded to the most well-qualified scholars regardless of degree level. However, preference is for non-academic professionals, recent graduates, and degree candidates who are currently involved in fully-developed programs of study and/or research. Other qualifications being equal, preference is given to candidates who have not had extensive prior opportunity for grant-supported research of ancient Mesoamerican cultures, and to candidates whose projects have the most likelihood of achieving new understandings and/or wide institutional and geographic interest.
Send inquiries to: Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., 268 South Suncoast Boulevard, Crystal River, Florida 34429 / Fax: (352) 795-1970 / e-mail: famsifl@aol.com
(7) Paul Proulx writes: In recent months I have been collecting etymologies for kin terms ("my wife," "my woman," etc.). Common etymologies are "old man," "old woman," "man," "woman," as well as descriptive terms. I am looking for underlying rules of kin term innovation and their social causes. I have Merrifield's book on Proto Otomanguean Kinship, but otherwise have little from Mexico. I would welcome communication with anyone with information on particular languages. Send correspondence to: Paul Proulx, Box 111, Heatherton, NS BOH 1RO, CANADA.
(8) Cecelia Klein has sent along the following announcement: On Saturday, March 2, 1996, the UCLA Department of Art History will hold a symposium on "What Rituals Did: Mexico and Peru, 1200-1700." The symposium has been organized by Cecelia Klein of the Department of Art History at UCLA and will be held in 3273 Dickson from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. It will be free and open to the public. The speakers and their paper titles are:
Cecelia Klein, Department of Art History,
UCLA, "Introduction."
Richard C. Trexler, Department of History, State University of
New York at Binghamton, "From Tension to Torpor: Reifying
the Ritual Record."
John Pohl, Fowler Museum of Culture History, UCLA, "The
Social Context of Art and Ritual at Tizatlan and Ocotelolco."
Elizabeth H. Boone, Department of Art, Tulane University, "What
it Takes to Make a Place: Aztec and Mixtec Foundation Rituals."
John Ott, Department of Art History, UCLA, "Courses of Empire"
The Politics of Water Rituals in the 15th-Century Valley of Mexico."
Johanna Broda, Instituto de Investigaciones
Historicas, UNAM, "Rain, Rocks, and Air: An Anthropological
Analysis of Tlaloc Rituals and Political Power Before and After
the Conquest."
Jeanette Facrot Peterson, Department of Art, University of California,
Santa Barbara, "Ritual Warfare: Defining Alterity in Pre-
and Post-Conquest Mexico."
Tom Cummins, Art Department, University of Chicago, "The
Elementary Structures of Religion and Andean Kinship: Pérez
Bocanegro's Ritual formulario."
Carolyn Dean, Porter College, University of California, Canta
Cruz, "Going Wild: Chunchos Dances in Colonial Peru."
(9) Elena Limón of the Universidad de las Américas writes: Ya apareció el volumen 5 de las obras de Robert H. Barlow, editadas por Jesús Monjarás, Elena Limón y María de la Cruz Paillés, INAH-UDLA, México, 1994. Se titula: Fuentes y estudios sobre el México indígena. Primera parte: Generalidades y Centro de México. Contiene una interesante serie de artículos referentes a códices, además de otros trabajos sobre documentos de J.F. Ramírez, la colección Boturini, la Biblioteca Bancroft, etc.
(10) From Mexico an important request from Antonio Gatica Santiago: Hubo una persona quien me comentó que usted podria ayudarme para sacar adelante un trabajo que estoy realizando para un grupo de niños que inician el mundo de las matemáticas en este su primer año de instrucción primaria. La diferencia del hecho educativo estriba en que las matemáticas se empiecen a dar en su propria lengua. Y los que hasta estos momentos me detiende es que nombre asignaste a las siguientes figuras:
cilindro milmiltik
esfera tolontik
cono ?
cubo ?
cuadrado ?
triangulo ?
rectángulo ?
Si tuviera usted material que me permitieran conocer las nombres de estas figuras en lengua náhuatl, se lo agradeceria infinitamente, ya que este me permitiria dar continuidad a lo iniciado en estos rincones del Estado de Guerrero. En espera de poder contar con su ayuda, me despido con la alegria de saber que a distancia hay alguien que se intereza por lo que es mio. Escribir a: Antonio Gatica Santiago, Calle 24 Sur #167, Chilapa, Guerrero 41100 MEXICO / tel. 91 (747) 5-12-86.
(11) The Brooklyn Museum is sponsoring a film festival called "Self Discoveries: A Festival of Latin American Cinema" from March 8 to April 21, 1996. The screening at 7 p.m. on opening night will be a film entitled "In Necuepalizili in Aztlan" ("Return to Aztlan") and it is entirely in Nahuatl with English subtitles. The write up describes the movie as "a sensuous, stunning re-creation of Aztec society, using the music, art, dress, and customs of that remarkable civilization." The guest speaker at the opening will be Juan Mora Catlett who directed the film.
(12) Philip Arnold has published an article entitled, "Paper Ties to the Land: Indigenous and Colonial Material Orientations to the Valley of Mexico." History of Religions (1995):27-60.
(13) The following books are available from Quabbin Books, P.O. Box 14, New Salem, MA 01355. For orders in U.S.A. please include $1.00 shipping charge per book; other countries, $1.50 per book. We cannot accept credit cards. Telephone orders: (508) 544-7141. Recent catalogs will be included in your shipment. All books are in good to excellent condition, unmarked unless noted. Paperback editions designated (pb).
BLANTON, RICHARD E., et al. Ancient Mesoamerica: A Comparison of Change in Three Regions. 2nd ed. Cambridge U. Pr., 1993. 284 pp. 28.00.
BURKHOLDER, MARK, & LYMAN JOHNSON. Colonial Latin America. Oxford U. Pr., 1990. 360 pp. 16.00.
CANCIAN, FRANK. Economics and Prestige in a Maya Community: The Religious Cargo System in Zinacantan. Stanford U. Pr., 1965. 238 pp., photos. 17.00.
BURNS, ALLAN F. Maya in Exile: Guatemalans in Florida. Temple U. Pr., 1993. 208 pp. (pb) 11.00.
CARMACK, ROBERT M. The Quiche Maya of Utatlan: The Evolution of a Highland Guatemala Kingdom. U. of Oklahoma Pr., 1981. 435 pp., numer. illus. & maps. 22.50.
COLBY, BENJAMIN, & PIERRE VAN DEN BERGHE. Ixil Country: A Plural Society in Highland Guatemala. U. of Calif. Pr., 1969. 218 pp. 16.50.
EDMONSON, MUNRO. The Book of the Year: Middle American Calendrical Systems. U. of Utah Pr., 1988. 313 pp. 18.50.
FERGUSON, WILLIAM M., & JOHN Q. ROYCE. Maya Ruins in Central America in Color: Tikal, Copan, and Quirigua. U. of New Mexico Pr., 1984. 387 pp., 236 color illus., 8 b & w illus., 163 figs. 17.50.
GROVE, DAVID C. Ancient Chalcatzingo. U. of Texas Pr., 1987. 571 pp., numer. illus. 27.00.
HANKE, LEWIS. The Spanish Struggle for Justice
in the Conquest of America. U. of Pennsylvania Pr., 1949. 217
pp. 16.50.
HELMS, MARY W. Asang: Adaptations to Culture Contact in a Miskito
Community. U. of Florida Pr., 1971. 268 pp. 22.00.
LATORRE, FELIPE, & DOLORES LATORRE. The Mexican Kickapoo Indians. U. of Texas Pr., 1976. 401 pp. 18.00.
LOPEZ AUSTIN, ALFREDO. The Myths of the Opossum: Pathways of Mesoamerican Mythology. U. of New Mexico Pr., 1993. 448 pp., 16 illus. 18.00.
LOWE, JOHN W.G. The Dynamics of Apocalypse: A Systems Simulation of the Classic Maya Collapse. U. of New Mexico Pr., 1985. 275 pp. 16.50.
MEYERHOFF, BARBARA G. Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians. Cornell U. Pr., 1974, 5th pr. 1985. 285 pp., photos. (pb) 13.00.
NADER, LAURA. Harmony Ideology: Justice and Control in a Zapotec Mountain Village. Stanford U. Pr., 1990. 343 pp., photos. 19.00.
ROMANUCCI-ROSS, LOLA. Conflict, Violence and Morality in a Mexican Village. U. of Chicago Pr., 1973, repr. 1986. 222 pp., numer. illus. 15.50.
SABLOFF, JEREMY A., ed. Archaeology: Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians. U. of Texas Pr., 1981. 463 pp. Papers by Willey, Flannery, M. Coe, et al. 26.00.
SPINDEN, HERBERT J. Ancient Civilizations of Mexico and Central America. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. Handbook Series No. 3, 1917. 1st ed. 238 pp., 44 plates, 81 figs. 17.00.
TAX, SOL, ed. Heritage of Conquest: The Ethnology of Middle America. Cooper Sq., 1963. (Orig. ed. 1952.) 312 pp., map. 17.00.
TAX, SOL. Penny Capitalism: A Guatemalan Indian Economy. U. of Chicago Pr., 1963. (Orig. ed. 1953.) 230 pp. 16.50.
WEST, ROBERT C. Natural Environment and Early Cultures. Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 1. U. of Texas Pr., 1964. 570 pp., 40 figs. Water stained but readily usable. 23.00.
WHITECOTTON, JOSEPH W. The Zapotecs: Princes, Priests, and Peasants. U. of Oklahoma Pr., 1977. 338 pp., 9 maps., numer. illus. 15.50.
WILLEY, GORDON R. Essays in Maya Archaeology. U. of New Mexico Pr., 1987. 245 pp. 16.00.
Bloodsucking Witchcraft rests upon Hugo Nutini's more than 30 years of intensive field work in Tlaxcala and Puebla. Together with his five earlier volumes on the region, this magnificent book confirms Nutini as our contemporary Bernardino de Sahagun.
The "primary aim" of Bloodsucking Witchcraft is "to analyze the social and psychological contexts of witchcraft and to place it within the framework of rural Tlaxcalan culture" (p. 1). Yet, this book "is not a sociological (functional) nor a psychological study of witchcraft" (p. 1). Rather, it is an epistemological study that draws upon two bodies of data. The first specifies the normative system in terms of overall ideology and specific beliefs. The second comprises "observed cases, authenticated events, and circumstantially inferred facts and happenings" that reveal the patterns of the magical system's "social and physical realization... and the consequences of its conditional beliefs" (p. 35). This second data set consists of 47 cases of "sucking" deaths intensively investigated by Nutini, including examination of the corpses, between 1960 and 1966 (Chs. 5-10); seven of these deaths occurred during a bloodsucking witchcraft "epidemic" in 1960, studied firsthand by Nutini with the assistance of the deputy state medical officer (Ch. 5).
Bloodsucking witches, or tlahuelpuchis, "are individuals endowed with supernatural powers to transform themselves into... animals... to suck the blood of infants, and occasionally to attack and harm children and adults" (p. 54). Bloodsucking witches (hereafter, simply "witches") "epitomize everything inherently dreadful, loathsome, abhorrent, and hateful" (p. 54). In contrast to the other three main anthropomorphic supernaturals of rural Tlaxcala -- weathermen (tezitlazques), transforming tricksters (nahuales), and sorcerers (tetlachihuiques) -- the great majority of witches, and all of the more powerful, evil, and bloodthirsty ones, are women.
Witches are born with their powers, which nothing can eradicate or temper; accordingly, they "are not the personification or embodiment of bad or antisocial character traits" (p. 73). Physically, they are generally fat (blood being very nutritious), they limp (from having separated from their human legs so often), and they have squinty eyes, long noses, squeaky voices, and a faint odor of blood. Their condition becomes evident to them at puberty, after which their powers never wane: "they are imprinted for life with an insatiable and uncontrollable desire to drink the blood of human beings, especially of infants" (p. 57), at least once a month, especially during rainy and cold weather. They strongly favor the blood of infants aged three to 10 months. Witches usually operate at night, when they are more or less luminous. They fiercely defend their foraging territories but are otherwise oath-bound to mutual assistance and to avoiding harm to each other's primary kin.
The book's centerpiece (Chs. 5-10) is the analysis of the 47 "sucking" deaths investigated by Nutini between 1960 and 1966. Chapter 6 presents 20 tables summarizing the responses to the questionnaire that Nutini employed in all 47 cases. Each case is identified by number and tabulated separately across these 20 tables, providing a data set that could be further manipulated. The 20 tables show: date of death; distribution by community; victim's age, sex, birth order, and parents' ages; social and physical composition of the victim's household; kin sleeping in victim's room that night; time of day when the body was found; person who found the body; location and position of the body; hours lapsed before Nutini examined the body; physical marks on the victim's body; physical marks on the mother's body; presence of magical protection (if any) against bloodsucking witches; unusual events surrounding the death; physical aftereffects ("psychosomatic ailments") on the parents; previous sucking deaths in the nuclear family; and language (Nahuatl vs. Spanish) and degree of acculturation of the household. Space permits discussion of only a few of these dimensions.
In 39 (83%) of the 47 cases -- and in 38 (88%) of the 43 nighttime sucking deaths -- the corpse showed "bruises, ecchymoses, and purple spots on the chest, back, or neck" (p. 181). These are the signs of asphyxia (31 cases) or suffocation (6 cases). In 16 (34%) of the cases, the mother showed "black-and-blue marks... in the right or... left breast, never in both," and in 12 of these 16 cases "the marks were on the left breast" (p. 182). Not until 1974 did Nutini connect this last pattern with the fact that rural Tlaxcalan mothers typically "put their infants to the breast during the night as they reclined on the left side" (p. 182). "The black and-blue marks on the mothers' breasts are evidently produced by rather strong pressure against the mouth and face of the infant..." (p. 238); in short, "infants die of asphyxia by being smothered at night when they are being breastfed" (p. 237). Sucking deaths occur disproportionately in the coldest months, when "mothers nurse their infants under the protective cover of blankets, fostering carelessness, dozing off, or falling asleep" (p. 237). The 37 cases of asphyxia or suffocation may represent "intentional or unintentional infanticide committed by mothers" (p. 240); the 6 cases of suffocation (by bedding, presumably) among these 37 are the most likely ones of intentional infanticide (p. 247). Suspicion increases when we note that the ratio of female to male victims is 2 to 1 (p. 165).
The five cases of choking from the accidental obstruction of air passages are interesting from another standpoint: they reflect traditional but faulty infant-care practices. Rural Tlaxcalan mothers do not burp their babies after feeding, and infants are "invariably" laid face up in narrow cribs or on mats "propped all around by blankets and clothes" after they are fed (p. 245) -- creating prime conditions for death by choking.
A number of magical protective measures (pp. 68-72) against witches are known, most involving metals, which witches fear to touch. Only 18 (38%) of the 47 "sucked" infants in Nutini's sample were "protected" in any of these ways, however. Nutini and Roberts repeatedly appeal to the "uncertainty" of these protective measures to explain their frequent neglect. That appeal does not explain why onion and garlic -- "universally regarded as foolproof" (p. 275) protection against bloodsucking witches -- were not used in any of these 47 cases, even though less-efficacious protection was employed in 18 cases! The authors hold that these "common substances" (onions and garlic) are "used almost invariably ex post facto, as in the... epidemic" because "non-compliance with this sure-fire method of protection functionally reinforces the efficacy of the tlahuelpuchi [witch] to kill, which is... the ultimate goal of the complex as an explanatory ideological construct" (p. 275).
Let me suggest that the use of protective measures believed to be one-hundred percent effective ("foolproof") would make the inevitable infant deaths hard to rationalize on supernatural grounds, resulting in accusations (directly or in gossip) of human agency. This scenario could be highly disruptive in rural Tlaxcala, where 45 percent of live issue died before age five as recently as 1965 (p. 167). Also, what does it mean -- in a setting where children are highly valued but at great perceived risk of being killed by witches -- when "informants uniformly state that most of the time it was too much trouble to remember nightly protection" (p. 69)? Is it mere coincidence that, when they did "remember," they used the uncertain rather than the "foolproof" measures? Furthermore, the victims' parents invariably felt acute guilt, and 75 percent of parents experienced psychosomatic illnesses afterwards (p. 277). Would normative compliance with preventative measures nevertheless have made the belief system less reassuring when infant death occurred? Would it have constricted parents' options for action and explanation?
The analysis of the 47 sucking deaths is fronted and backed by rich material that contextualizes and theorizes them. Chapter 1 compares bloodsucking witches to rural Tlaxcala's other main anthropomorphic supernaturals (weathermen, sorcerers, nahuales). Chapter 2 covers "the belief system and structural context of bloodsucking witchcraft." Chapter 3, "The Syncretic and Historical Development of Anthropomorphic Supernaturalism in Mesoamerica" is an analytical tour de force. Of the four main anthropomorphic supernaturals, the nahual and the weatherman "do not have Spanish counterparts" (p. 106) and have changed the least, even though the latter has assumed some non-indigenous, syncretic functions (e.g., prayer leader). The sorcerer (tetlachihuic) "has unquestionably undergone the greatest range of changes since the Conquest," absorbing both European and African elements and practices (pp. 109-11). The present-day bloodsucking witch shows a number of traits "definitely of European origin" (e.g., the witch's "insatiable compulsion" to suck human blood at least once a month and "today's totally negative and repellent conception" of her), but the authors "do not detect anything of particularly African origin" here (p. 113). Chapter 4 is an instructive literature review of witchcraft and sorcery in Mesoamerica.
The Introduction and Chapters 11 and 12 provide the book's main theoretical and methodological foundation. They include a wide-ranging commentary on the nature of belief systems (magic, religion, science) and a critique of the classic anthropological works by E.E. Evans-Pritchard and Clyde Kluckhohn. The Conclusion is about change or, more pointedly, "the disintegration of traditional rural Tlaxcalan society" since 1966 (p. 424) and especially between 1972 and 1982, "as the result of the conjoined forces of modernization and secularization" (p. 408). In the 1972-82 period, the bloodsucking witch complex "was drastically transformed: from a central position in the magical life of rural Tlaxcalans... to... a rather rare event" that people try to conceal. "Gone is the openness, visibility, and access to the various aspects of the sucking event" (p. 403). As outside technical and scientific knowledge was internalized, it "made the tlahuelpuchi complex obsolete as an explanation of certain kinds of infant death" (p. 430). More generally, belief has waned in the efficacy of supernatural inputs to produce specific natural outcomes. Interestingly, this book and its immediate predecessor, Nutini's Todos Santos in Rural Tlaxcala (Princeton, 1988), open with the same sentence: "This book is about culture loss and decay" (p. xi).
These modernizing and secularizing changes are explained in terms of the processes of acculturation, syncretism, and diffusion (see pp. 431ff.) triggered by the three "external variables" of "science, technology, and education" broadly conceived (pp. 418ff.). This discussion is informative and stimulating, but I am not fully satisfied by the answers offered to such questions as why bloodsucking witchcraft has been largely destroyed by secularization and modernization, whereas sorcery continues to flourish. I would argue that where modernist naturalist science-as-explanation easily replaces premodernist-supernaturalist witchcraft as-explanation, it does so because science depersonalizes and, thus, socially defuses and psychologically assuages the very events and emotions that witchcraft anthropomorphizes and personalizes.
The "superiority" of naturalistic science is simply that it offers an equally systematized (internally logical) explanation that avoids the guilt and anxiety of the traditional witchcraft system. (In rural Tlaxcala, the adoption of universalistic Catholicism is a compatible concomitant change.) Sorcery, which is pragmatic, "useful," and accessible to all, engenders less guilt and anxiety; thus, it may continue to flourish as a defensive strategy against one's enemies and as a ready answer to "Why me?" questions that cannot be addressed to cosmogonic supernaturals, and that science can answer only in the unsatisfying terms of randomized occurrence. (In rural Tlaxcala, the sorcerer also has taken on the largely benevolent character of the curer [p. 428].)
Secondly, I would emphasize that secularization and modernization have a political subtext that promotes their diffusion and adoption. They are the hegemonic outlooks of nation state culture; thus, they are promoted in government schools and government-controlled media. To villagers, these outlooks are among the skills, concepts, and accoutrements necessary for coping with the dominant national society in its political, economic, and ideological aspects, regardless of whether villagers adopt them through "choice" or necessity.
One final matter remains to be addressed. The input of co-author John M. Roberts, who died while this book was in press, is difficult to discern here. "The consummate collaborator" (p. 476), Roberts was Nutini's close colleague at the University of Pittsburgh for 19 years, and he doubtless influenced Bloodsucking Witches. Nevertheless, his presence becomes evident mainly in Nutini's succeeding volume, the equally monumental The Wages of Conquest (Michigan, 1995), in which "expressive culture" -- a concept pioneered by Roberts in anthropology -- is the organizing theme.
Barry L. Isaac
University of Cincinnati
Synonymous with shelter and suicession the world over, caves have for at least 400 centuries also been the place to depict intimate archaic dreams. Mesoamerica is no exception in this, although the fact is now better recognized than it used to be. In this region, the insides of caves have served for at least 8,000 years as the setting and surface for painted and engraved images. Thanks to the discoveries of recent years, not least the spectacular array of paintings in the Naj Tunich cave in northeastern Peten, it is now becoming possible to establish chronologies and to talk of tendencies and styles.
As a survey of cave art in Mesoamerica, Andrea Stone's new work is comprehensive, well-organized and highly perceptive. From the start, she shows a strong pan-Mesoamerican approach, which is welcome in itself given the balkanizing agenda currently being imposed in certain areas of anthropology and archaeology. Setting out from the early Olmec matrix, she shows what recent excavations at the great metropolis of Teotihuacan tell us about the relationship between the prominent public space of the pyramid and the clandestine, partly restructured cave below. This leads to general thoughts on the 'liminal' nature of the cave, its appeal as another deeper world that has its own time and non-normative environment.
From this impressive base, Stone then proceeds to describe in great detail no less than 25 principal caves in the Maya area, whose geological and physical formation is summed up by George Veni, in an excellent appendix. Providing much original material of her own, she searches out clear reproductions of most of the images painted (though not those engraved) in these caves over the Greater Classic, and in this way she builds up a kind of iconic dictionary that is constantly cross-related to the better known and understood examples of Maya art.
As her title suggests, her main concern is however Naj Tunich, to which the second half of the study is devoted. Here, with even sharper focus, she examines the images that were painted on the walls and other surfaces in this remarkable cave, mainly between the years 692 and 745 AD. With the help of Barbara McLeod she also deciphers the hieroglyphic texts that accompany several of these images, isolating main verbs and raising the intriguing possibility of a local toponymic reference to Mopan.
The Naj Tunich paintings feature a range of human types and other living creatures, who engage in activities and reveal sides of themselves less frequently if ever encountered in the more public art of the upper or outer Maya world. We are alerted to a confounding of social distinction and hierarchy, to a denuding that in turn exposes sexual ambiguity or enigma. These tendencies of the Naj Tunich paintings lead to further thoughts on cave art, on what human urges and needs are brought out in that special atmosphere, which is said to be sequestered, and timeless.
Perhaps the cave is not so much time-less as saturated in time, insofar as its atmosphere makes immediate and present the eons of the past. This dimension of caves might be implied in certain of the 'aberrant' Calendar Round dates at Naj Tunich and it is certainly brought out in a page of Maya literature that curiously enough escaped Stone's attention: the memorable scene in the Madrid Codex (p. 72), which shows a man in a cave, paint-brush in hand, and scroll-tongue emerging from his mouth. The scroll bears the numerals of a date, one of a series in this chapter that begins millions of years in the past in the bent strata of mountains (pp. 57,69), and whose time depth matches that of human activity in caves. Adding this kind of native evidence to the examples that are quoted by Stone, we gain privileged insight into the concept and function of caves in that culture, and in Mesoamerica more widely.
This point is germane as well to her exploration of how codices from other parts of Mesoamerica depict caves as saurian mouths, openings into a biological past in a theriomorphic landscape. Such readings of the Mesoamerican cave-mouth are in fact supported especially well in the very earliest toponymic glyphs to have survived -- those at Monte Alban. There, the cave is inset into a mountain that in turn is capped by the hard-edged platforms of human masonry.
Images from the Underworld is a well-written and superbly illustrated volume, with a generous section of color plates (an actual list of illustrations appears to be missing however). In addition to a wealth of information and reflection, it offers a visual record of a rare world, difficult to access and yet precarious, as the 1989 outburst of vandalism at Naj Tunich itself made clear.
Gordon Brotherston
Indiana University, Bloomington
This volume consists of five essays that address the subject of the art produced, and in some cases, sponsored or co-sponsored, by native Americans during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in areas that were formerly the Aztec and Inca empires. The first two articles deal with central Mexico during the second half of the sixteenth century. The author of the third article discusses examples of art from both Mexico and Peru. The final two articles deal with art sponsored by seventeenth-century native elites in the Viceroyalty of Peru.
The authors seek to chip away at the all too persistent notion of a monolithic Spanish colonial entity in the Americas. The art was far more varied than the conventional art historical perspective so often leads us to believe. Indigenous styles of art were not wiped away with the Conquest; many aspects of native art continued on and, at times, were deliberately used by the Europeans, and certainly by native elites, to their own advantage. Indeed, European and native modes of representation existed side-by-side. Native artists were not entirely passive recipients of European "influences" but existed as co-shapers of colonial culture who made active choices in the manipulation of artistic images. To their credit, the authors have taken into account the audience for whom the art was intended as a factor in the artists' approach to their subject, whether dealing with murals, painted manuscripts, or other arts.
Much of the art of sixteenth-century New Spain was done under the supervision of three mendicant orders -- the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians. Jeanette Favrot Peterson in the first article, "Synthesis and Survival: The Native Presence in Sixteenth-Century Murals of New Spain," investigates the existence of native forms in four mural cycles in the Augustinian monasteries of Ixmiquilpan, Actopan, Santa María Xoxoteco, and Malinalco. In doing so, she notes that the Augustinians were the most liberal in allowing indigenous imagery. Peterson gives an interesting discussion of the native tlacuilo or artisan as well as examples of the juxtaposition of native and European images. An achromatic drawing from a segment of the murals of Ixmiquilpan shows two jaguars with head plumes of feathers and speech scrolls juxtaposed with a Spanish crest.
Peterson finds examples of native images for Christian purposes, at Actopan and Santa María Xoxoteco. In those monastery murals, the Spaniards thought that pre-Hispanic images of death would be useful in depicting "the tortures of hell." They chose, among others, cannibalism and sacrifice upon a scaffold. However, ritual cannibalism held connotations for the natives that the Spaniards did not understand. In Aztec belief, for example, the reward for sacrifice was a positive celestial afterlife. The depiction of Christianity in these murals, all located in public or semi-public areas of the monasteries, must have struck native viewers as very confusing, to say the least.
In the second article "Adaptation and Accommodation: The Transformation of the Pictorial Text in Sahagún's Manuscripts," Ellen T. Baird studies the illustrations of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún's encyclopedic work on the Aztecs. She questions the idea that the change from pre Hispanic to European modes of representation were a gradual progression over time based upon native acculturation and skill. She suggests that recent studies imply a more complex situation and that conscious choice was an important factor. Observing the transition from the more native style of the Primeros Memoriales of 1561 to the more Europeanized Florentine Codex completed between 1578 and 1580, Baird believes that the intended audience was a greater factor in determining portrayals than evolution of style. Sahagún was very aware of the increasing uneasiness of the Spanish court over the depiction of pre-Hispanic images and ideas, and knew that this work would be seen and read almost entirely by Europeans.
Baird gives a synopsis of the two styles. The "conceptual" native style was two dimensional, placing flat figures in their most characteristic views against the blank page. It was more overtly symbolic than the European style. Of prime importance was that the message be clear and unambiguous. In contrast, the European manner of representing images was "perceptual." It is interesting that while the Spaniards brought with them medieval architecture, they imported a visual art that was obviously derived from the Italian Renaissance. It should also be realized that the European mode of representing modelled volumes in an illusionistic space through the use of chiaroscuro and linear perspective was relatively new to the Spaniards. They promoted the European manner with "the zeal of the recently converted." For the Europeans, a systematically derived illusionistic space had religious significance, revealing "the complexity of God's master plan for the universe." This European rationalization forms an extraordinarily weak argument, in my view. The Renaissance manner arose out of and was well suited to express an increasingly materialistic European mind. I think it is clear that Baird is equally unimpressed with the Spanish rationale.
Nevertheless, even the later Florentine Codex is very much a mixture of the two styles. Figures vary from flat to modelled with shading, interior space is often more flat than illusionistic, and true linear perspective is nowhere to be found. However, in the end, it has by far the greater "look" of a European manuscript.
In "The Madonna and the Horse: Becoming Colonial in New Spain and Peru," Tom Cummins examines two native-produced items in which non-traditional images appear in traditional native contexts. The first is the Huejotzingo Codex (actually a tribute list) with an image of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. Nuño de Guzmán had demanded many articles of tribute from the Huejotzingans, including a banner with the image of the Virgin rendered in feathers and gold. No traditional images, of course, existed of such an article. Incidently, this may be the first Nahua illustration of the Madonna and Child. The artist acknowledges its importance by means of its larger size, but renders the image as a native pictograph, a sign standing for an object of tribute, which it was. In doing so, he treats the image in a flat, linear style and coincidently, but not maliciously, divests it of its iconic power.
The other object is a bracelet of gold from the south coast of Peru that contained traditional embossed stylized images of felines and monkeys in groups. It also contains an image of a horse and rider. It is at first a bit of a visual jolt, but Cummins urges us to take a closer look. The goldsmith has given the horse some characteristics of the llama. But the over-all effect is more to the point. We see that the horse and rider are in the process of becoming Andean metaphors. The unity of the piece, although somewhat disrupted, is not wholly destroyed.
It should be noted that none of the authors suggest a lack of ability on the part of the native artists. In the colonial period, native artists repeatedly demonstrated their ability to produce art of a high order, and in many cases, in the new European manner.
Carlos Espinosa in "Colonial Visions: Drama, Art, and Legitimation in Peru and Ecuador" deals with the theme of public celebrations. He wants us to take a new look at the "dances of the Conquest," plays or autos performed in colonial times in the plazas of the administrative centers of the Viceroyalty of Peru. These dramas had a popular base. Native celebrants often conjured up in song, dance, and costume allusions to the past. Scholars in the field have generally considered these dramas of resistance to be critical of colonial rule.
However, Espinosa suggests that such spectacles actually worked in favor of Colonization in the long term. These dramas validated the authority of local leaders, a necessary ingredient in the colonization of the region. The fall of the Aztecs and the Incas, the destruction of temples, and the attacks upon pre-Columbian belief system by the Spaniards were so dramatic that there has arisen a popular notion that they wiped away all aspects of native culture in favor of the European. Obviously, the situation is far more complicated than that. Some aspects of the "Conquest" were more on the order of a compromise. In terms of Mexico and Peru, we are talking about huge areas and millions of people. There was an existing social and political structure with native elites, magistrates, administrators, etc. The Spaniards had little choice but to take advantage of this structure. The alternative would have been chaos and anarchy. The Spanish authorities would logically tolerate such ceremonies, within limits, as the authority of local leaders was essential to furthering their own interests. In most cases, their authority derived from the pre-Hispanic past they re-enacted.
In the last article, "Who's Naughty and Nice: Childish Behavior in the Paintings of Cuzco's Corpus Christi Procession," Carolyn S. Dean discusses a series of sixteen canvases from a parish church painted by anonymous native artists depicting the Corpus Christi Procession in Cuzco. The paintings are organized in three horizontal planes depicting the major social groups: the members of the procession (mostly friars), above are the Andean and European elites, and below the commoners (mostly natives). Dean focuses on the images of children misbehaving. They are equipped with pea shooters and entertain themselves by shooting at each other and at members of the procession. One aims his shooter at a group of friars. In one canvas, a child hitches a ride on an elaborate processional carriage.
In the paintings, upper-class adults behave with decorum, but in some of the canvases, lower-class Andean adults misbehave much like the children. Children behave as children anarchically, but the message was for adults. Natives were often thought of and treated as children by the Europeans. These images had an instructive purpose: childish behavior among adults was not to be tolerated, and the paintings were an admonition, aimed principally at members of the lower classes, to behave appropriately.
I found the writing style of Cummins and Espinosa to be extremely ponderous, to the point of inhibiting understanding. And I think several of the writers departed from their topic. Cummins devotes considerable ink to the trial of Nuño de Guzmán. The Huejotzingo Codex was an exhibit in his trial, but this was after the fact and had nothing to do with its creation, the artist's intention, the anticipated audience, or the inclusion of the image of the Virgin. Espinosa uses the example of Don Alonso Inca and the celebrations surrounding his appointment as corregidor. I wonder if this was a good choice. It seems to me the case of Alonso Inca, who found himself on trial when the Spanish authorities reacted to these ceremonies, contradicts his own premise. Dean, in the last article, gives us a long discussion of childhood in colonial Peru. It is not without interest, but the image of children in the paintings was used symbolically to instruct a mostly adult (native) audience. Her discussion of childhood had nothing to do with aesthetics, nor did it have anything to do directly with the message of the paintings.
Nevertheless, I found the volume generally instructive and it provides some unique perspectives upon topics not frequently discussed regarding native art in Spanish colonial America.
Norman W. Bradley
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
Jorge Suarez's typological survey of Mesoamerican languages was first published in English in 1983. I will be concerned in this review with the treatment of the Uto-Aztecan languages of Mexico, Nahuatl in particular. The book outlines the study of Mesoamerican Indian languages, their historical linguistics and literature in the classical varieties, but the major emphasis is on typology. The book asks the question "What does a typical Mesoamerican Indian language look like?" The other material is background. I will discuss this background information first before turning to typology.
The first language families in the Americas to be studied were Mayan and Uto-Aztecan. Suarez fortunately moderates the popular idea that Latinate grammatical categories were slavishly applied to native languages in Mexico. Indeed, very little description was accomplished during the nineteenth century as compared with the missionary works of the 1500s, 1600s, and early 1700s. Fran Karttunen has stated that Nahuatl is the best documented Native American language; it must be remembered that the bulk of this description was done during the 1500s and 1600s. The twentieth century, another important era for basic research in Mexican and Mesoamerican languages, is barely touched. The historiography of the period has yet to be written.
The small chapter on literature written in the Roman alphabet after the Conquest in "Classic" forms of Nahuatl and Mayan languages touches on most important aspects of this topic, with the most important characteristics and works mentioned. The chapter on linguistic prehistory is longer. It discusses the association of macro-language complexes with regions and even particular archaeological sites, the evidence of loanwords, and the status of Mesoamerica as a linguistic area. A final chapter briefly surveys the history of language policy in Mexico, finding that mestizo revolutions (1810, 1910) were unfavorable for the maintenance of native languages reported for the 1970 Mexican census and the 1950 Guatemalan census.
The majority of the book is a typological profile of Mesoamerican languages, which Suarez takes to be native languages of Mexico whether they are in the Mesoamerican culture area or not. Two chapters are given to phonology, morphology, and syntax. Coverage is selective. For example, the phoneme rosters of Mexican Uto-Aztecan languages are compared to the phoneme array of Cuitlatec, a language isolate of Guerrero. Northern Tepehuan -- which became a tone language during historic times (Shaul 1995) -- is registered as a tone language with a relatively rich morphology.
Suarez uses a Greenbergian (OV vs. VO) approach to syntactic typology, with Yaqui and Nahuatl serving as the Uto-Aztecan examples. The syntactic description of modern dialects vs. Classical Nahuatl is good, and the description of Nahuatl in general is one of the chief assets of the book for those concerned with Nahuatl and Uto-Aztecan languages of Mexico.
The book is well written and Indexed. For the purpose of Nahuatlatos, it is a good introduction. It must be borne in mind, though, that the purpose of the volume is to highlight the typological character of Mesoamerica as a whole. Having considered the typological possibilities, Suarez argues against Mesoamerica as a linguistic area; his historical linguistics is conservative. The "languages of Mexico" make up a larger set than the "languages of Mesoamerica," and this accounts in part for his skeptical view of Mesoamerica as a linguistic area.
Ironically, although the approach of treating all Mexican languages as Mesoamerican languages includes peripheral languages, Suarez fails to incorporate a number of Uto-Aztecan languages of Mexico in his classification and map. One Sonoran subfamily, Opatan (Opata, Eudeve), is omitted entirely (though known in the literature available to Suarez). The Tubar language isolate (within Uto-Aztecan) is omitted (less known, but mentioned). The complex situation of "Lower Pima" is ignored, though this was unavailable in the literature at the time Suarez was writing.
Given the typological focus of this work, the reader must turn elsewhere for other topics: for detailed classification of Mexican and Central American languages, see Campbell (1979); for historical linguistics, consult Kaufman (1973, 1974); for a complete bibliography of descriptive materials and comparative works, see McQuown, ed. (1967); for bibliography after 1967, see the works by Campbell and by Kaufmann, as well the latest bibliography of the Summer Institute of Linguistics; for works published after 1967 in Mexico and Europe, see a specialist librarian; for literature in the classic languages, see Edmunson, ed. (1985) and Leon-Portilla and Lobanov (1969) for survey and bibliography.
Having stressed what Suarez's book is not, it is important to stress what the work is. It is a typological survey that fits into the basic reference literature on Mexican and Mesoamerican languages. Given its size, it covers most things a general reader would want to know about these languages. Its description of Nahuatl varieties is useful, and accessible through the Index. It gives most of the essential bibliography, though the works mentioned above will complement its coverage.
References Cited
Campbell, Lyle. 1979. "Middle American Languages." In The Languages of Native America, edited by L. Campbell and M. Mithun, pp. 901-1000. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Edmunson, Munro S., ed. 1985. "Literatures." Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians 3. Austin: University of Texas Press. Kaufman, Terrence. 1973. "Areal Linguistics and Middle America." In Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. 11, edited by Thomas Sebeok, pp. 459-83. The Hague: Mouton. __________________. 1974. "Middle American Languages." Encyclopedia Britannica. Leon-Portilla, Miguel, and G. Lobanov. 1969. Pre-Columbian Literatures of Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. McQuown, Norman A., ed. 1967. "Linguistics." Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 5. Austin: University of Texas Press.
David Shaul
Tucson, Arizona
Entre el desierto y la sierra: Las naciones o'odham y tegüima de Sonora, 1530-1840. By Cynthia Radding. Historia de los pueblos indígenas de México. México, D.F.: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1995. Pp. 213. ISBN 968-496-264-9.
In their preface to Entre el desierto y la sierra, the general editors of the Historia de los pueblos indígenas de México series, Teresa Rojas Rabiela and Mario Humberto Ruz, point obliquely to the dilemma any historian faces in writing on indigenous peoples of the colonial period of Mexico. In their preface, they say they let the individual authors in the series choose what stress each would place on history versus ethnography in their volume. As with most frontiers, the history of Northwest Mexico has been derivative to the main currents formed in central Mexico, which means that documents for the construction of history as history are relatively few. Likewise, there have been few ethnographic studies of the peoples of the region. Thus, the authors of the two volumes under review were left with a tough choice indeed.
On the one hand, stressing the historical record makes the history of the indigenous peoples mainly an exercise in providing a coherent interpretation of documents. The documents, written almost exclusively by Europeans, relate these peoples to the European state. But the same documents also inevitably mute or even silence any voice the indigenous people might have in their own history. On the other hand, stressing the ethnographic record impoverishes the history of the indigenous peoples of Mexico by replacing the richness of the actual, often dramatic, unfolding of confrontations, misunderstandings, and other events, with the timeless causal and functional generalizations that form the infrastructure of ethnographic description. One way to avoid the dilemma is to weave the historical documents and the ethnographic record into a single fabric of interpretation. The historical documents change from being facts that support the author's interpretation of events to epiphenomenal suggestions of broader and deeper patterns of institutional and cultural change. While the volumes under review are parallel in both form and content, the authors reveal very different perspectives on the ethnohistory of their respective peoples.
The two volumes are remarkably alike in many ways. They are part of a series on the history of ethnic peoples of Mexico. They also overlap in content: both deal with indigenous people during the colonial era in Northwest Mexico (Sonora). They are physically similar. Their content and layout are generally similar: both contain many sidebars, maps, tables, photos, and drawings. Each has an "Apéndice documental." They each also have both endnotes with detailed citations, some of which are not cited in the bibliographies found at the end of each text.
The volume by Evelyn Hu-DeHart runs about 124 total pages while the volume by Cynthia Radding has 213 pages. The number of pages is slightly misleading, however, because the number of pages of actual text is much less. The text devoted to the subject directly (that is, the chapter text) runs only 69 pages in the Hu-DeHart volume and 123 in the Radding volume. Worse still, discounting page space devoted to layout features, the number of pages devoted to the subject is only 31 and 64, respectively. This leaves little room for a real exposition of the reasoning behind the ideas offered by the authors. Although apparently brief, neither volume is a quick read. Both are dense, sometimes elliptical, and always terse in presenting very interesting facts and interpretations.
In spite of their parallels and overlaps in content, the two volumes take different perspectives. One is more clearly centered on documents. The other represents a consciously ethnohistorical view. One of the authors, Radding, is affiliated with a traditional Department of History at the University of Illinois. The other author, Hu-DeHart, is director of the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America at the University of Colorado. One might expect that the difference in perspectives would reflect these larger professional affiliations. But, in fact, the ethnohistorical and, ultimately, anthropological perspective is central to Radding, the historian. Hu-DeHart takes the more traditional, document-centered route. Where Hu-DeHart relates the figures of the historical drama to the documents, Radding constantly relates the peoples' institutional and cultural elements to what we know from the documents.
Both volumes argue that their respective peoples resisted, adapted to, and accommodated the European invaders and their institutions, particularly economic institutions. Both authors treat the situations and struggles of these peoples with dignity and sensitivity. Both authors made thoughtful contributions to my understanding and provoked me to think about the issues of history and ethnohistory. Both authors must deal with some difficult materials. Nonetheless, for me, Radding's is the more fulfilling volume.
For example, Radding sees the anthropological difficulties in defining the subject matter about which she writes. The term pueblo is ambiguous: it may refer to the abstract idea of an ethnic nationality or to the actual concrete town from which one hails. The title of the series in which the two books under review are published imputes a broad, ethnic identity for the subjects of the treatises. The authors, however, must deal with subjects for whom identity beyond the immediate community may have been ephemeral or even nonexistent. The term nación is used in the historical documents of the colonial period to refer to clusters of subjugated communities of people who spoke the same language and occupied a defined territory. But in the case of the peoples of Northwest Mexico, there was little or no political organization beyond the immediate residential group except as a direct response to the Spanish and Mexican presence. Likewise, the language and dialect boundaries between pre-contact Uto-Aztecan speakers, the overwhelmingly dominant language family of the region, are unclear.
Adaptación y resistencia
In Adaptación y resistencia, Hu-DeHart deals with the Cahita speakers of the lower Yaqui River. The text opens with a three-page chapter on precontact Yaqui society ("La sociedad yaqui anterior al contacto con los españoles"). The chapter outlines the geographical situation of the groups under study and mentions some of their ethnographic characteristics such as subsistence mechanisms and religious practices. But this brief summary makes no attempt to relate the Yaquis to the wider archaeological context of the region. Paradoxically for a historical work, they are left situated in the timeless conceptual space of the ethnographic present. The discussion of linguistic affiliations is too brief to indicate anything but the lack of differentiation among the Cahita "languages." Thus, the Uto-Aztecan cultural and linguistic dominance of the region and the linkages of cultures and histories both to the north and south is lost. For the anthropologist this is puzzling; for the general reader, the alleged audience for the series, this is unfortunate.
The history of the Yaqui begins with Chapter 2, "Primeros encuentros entre yaquis y españoles," where Hu-DeHart relates two important early encounters of the Spanish invaders with the Yaquis. The first occurred in 1533 when an expedition headed by Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán fought with some inhabitants of the valley of the Río Yaqui. The second encounter occurred in 1565 when the expedition of Francisco de Ibarra was cordially received. Nonetheless, by the end of the sixteenth century little actual colonizing or domination of the region had occurred.
In Chapter 3, "Los yaquis bajo el gobierno de los jesuitas," Hu-DeHart establishes the role of the Jesuits. The first Jesuits arrived in the Northwest (Sinaloa) in 1591. The Spanish Crown granted them permission to pacify and civilize the frontier through establishment of a series of missions. The Jesuit plan was to establish permanent missions among the Indians. To accomplish this end, the Jesuits concentrated on making economically self-sufficient communities. There was conflict, of course. From time to time, military expeditions were sent to protect the interests of the missions and the Crown. Ultimately, the ethnic identity of the Yaquis derives from this period: the eight mission pueblos, "los Ocho Pueblos," were taken to be synonymous with the Yaquis. The chapter outlines the primarily economic and administrative successes of the Jesuits. They used a surplus of production from the Yaqui missions, for example, to fund activities farther north. Control of the population during the colonial epoch was a major concern of the Jesuits because of the depopulation through death and emigration.
The Yaqui uprising of 1740 is covered in Chapter 4, "La rebelión yaqui de 1740." Hu DeHart suggests three causes of the uprising: (1) the increasing demand for labor, both in agricultural production and in the mines; (2) increasing civil control of secular life; and (3) Yaqui demands for changes in the mission system, although not for their definitive termination.
The fifth and last chapter, "Por su cuenta y riesgo," recounts the relative autonomy given the Yaquis after the Jesuit removal. The Jesuits were expelled from their New World missions, including those in Northwest Mexico, in 1767 as part of the Bourbon reforms. After 150 years of Jesuit influence, interference, and domination, Yaquis took on a much higher degree of self governance. They faced political and economic demands that might have destroyed their communities. Instead, through a system of circulating migration, now between mines and home towns, the Yaqui resisted their complete assimilation.
The last section of Hu-DeHart's book is devoted to republication of ten documents from the Spanish colonial (pre-Mexican) era. In spite of the fact that they are related directly to the Yaqui encounter with the Spanish colonial Church and government, they do not form a coherent set of documents. Document 8, "Carta escrita en yaqui con traducción contemporánea sobre la conducta del misionero jesuita Francisco Ortiz, 1747," provides the only Yaqui text (with translation to Spanish). Some are more difficult to decipher than others but all are interesting in themselves.
Entre el desierto y la sierra
Radding's volume covers a more complex and longer period of the ethnohistory of Northwest Mexico. She concentrates on both the O'odham (which includes peoples historically known as Pima and Pápago) and the Tegüima (who are historically known as Ópata). She brings their history up into the nineteenth century. Her writing is clear. She synthesizes the historical and ethnographic records into a fascinating ethnohistory. This is a very good but, alas, too short book.
In her opening chapter, Radding delineates her usage of community, people, and nation (comunidad, pueblo, nación), recognizing the difficulties each of these concepts presents. The author also points out the difficulty of giving voice to the indigenous people about whom she writes. They are present in the historical record only indirectly through land claims and transcriptions of speeches before Spanish-speaking authorities. Radding presents los sonoras, the peoples of Northwest Mexico, in the context of the cultural traditions of the region (Hohokam, Anasazi, Mogollón). Through this thoughtful and careful introduction, Radding establishes the ethnohistorical approach that will give substance and interpretation to the historical exposition of the following pages.
Chapter 1, "Los sonoras antes de la invasión europea," presents an ethnologically and archaeologically informed account of the indigenous peoples of precontact Northwest Mexico. While recognizing the historical importance of the nomadic Apaches, Jovas, and Seris in shaping the colonial policies of the Spanish and Mexican governments, the book concentrates on the O'odham (Pimas) and Tegüima (Ópata) of the Sierra. Nonetheless, the chapter briefly outlines the complex linguistic and cultural relations among the various peoples of the entire region.
The second chapter, "Las invasiones europeas: peregrinos, exploradores y esclavistas," recounts the sordid first encounters between the Spanish military expeditions and various indigenous communities. The military superiority of the Spanish determined the outcome of the encounters while the fear of the slave-taking Christians shaped the nature of the indigenous reaction: bloody resistance at first and then wholesale fleeing by communities. From first contacts to nearly the end of the sixteenth century, the Spanish success in military domination was not translated into a firm colonial base. Nonetheless, the demographic, economic and cultural impacts of the Spanish contact and European diseases created the basis for the success of the Jesuit missions of the early seventeenth century.
"La misión evangelizadora y la comunidad indígena" briefly summarizes the success of the Jesuits in the slow advance of their reducciones. The missions offered the ambivalent indigenous peoples a refuge within which they could reconstitute, albeit following imposed models, their communities, rescuing their "ethnic space," as Radding phrases it.
The search for gold and silver attracted the Spaniards from the beginning. The discovery of mines in Sonora in the middle of the seventeenth century, well after the establishment of the missions, brought the first real European colonization. Chapter 4, "La segunda invasión: la colonización civil," emphasizes the impact on indigenous communities of land disputes and labor demands. The recourse to legal instruments has left a sad but informative legacy of insight into the relations between missionaries, civil government, and the indigenous leaders and communities.
Over the course of the colonial period, from the early sixteenth through the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, the indigenous family and community survived only through transforming themselves to meet the exigencies of outside forces and demands. The fifth chapter, "La familia y la comunidad sonora durante la colonia," focuses on these transformations. Only the great capacity to adapt made possible the cultural survival of these groups.
The Bourbon reforms of the mid-eighteenth century expelled the Jesuits from Northwest Mexico in 1767. The accompanying labor and land reform policies, mainly the division of the communal mission lands, led to the dislocation of entire indigenous communities and this led to rebellions and hostilities that lasted to the end of the century. The liberation of O'odham and Tegüima labor resulted in their recruitment for expeditions against the Seris and Apaches. Chapter 6, "Las reformas borbónicas y los pueblos sonoras," argues that this military service helped develop and maintain ethnic identity because the colonial government recognized military service by granting both communal and individual privileges.
In Chapter 7, "La respuesta indígena: Adaptación, resistencia y rebelión," Radding suggests that the under the conditions of colonial domination the communities of the O'odham and Tegüima combined both resistance and adaptation in their strategy for survival. They sought intervention in turn from functionaries, missionaries, governors, and commanders when they saw the possibility of gaining specific objectives. They negotiated both with the Church and the military. Resistance generally took the form of migration to other parts of the region. There were also uprisings, usually over material resources.
Chapter 8, "La transición a la Repúblic mexicana," traces the direct causes and methods of "una invasión sin precedentes del territorio étnico." In 1827, Vicente Guerrero decreed the expulsion of Spaniards throughout Mexico. In the Northwest, this dislodged almost all of the missionary frailes, leaving the mission assets and thus much of the economic destiny of the local communities in the hands of civil appointees. Subsequently, the state governments of the Northwest promulgated laws and policies that redefined such basic relations as land tenancy. These changes led to social and political divisions within Indian communities that had profound effects.
One result of the legal changes brought by independence was the devolution of land from communities to individuals. This led to the formation and advance of a landholding oligarchy in the region. It also led to the development of pronounced social stratification within communities. Chapter 9, "La tierra y el poder," recounts how the Ópatas, in particular, used legal-political mechanisms as well as violent uprising (joined often by Yaquis) to defend their life way and communities from the depredations of the new state.
The last chapter, "Los o'odham bajo el gobierno mexicano," details the imposition of the Mexican economy and state apparatus on the pápagos errantes and the Pimería Alta in general up to 1840. Even at the end of this period, however, the open resistance of the indigenous population took the form of violent uprisings, but these, too, were ultimately futile. The indigenous communities were forced to accommodate themselves to the economy imposed by the Mexican state.
The concluding section of Radding's book recapitulates the primary historical facts outlined in the text but puts these in the context of a direct statement of the author's view. She argues that the loss of control of a viable economy and sufficient territory for biological and cultural reproduction led to the assimilation of the indigenous peoples into the general population, "el campesinado sonorense." The volume ends with the publication of six documents taken directly from the archives in which they are found.
While I learned much from both volumes and enjoyed reading them, I cannot unreservedly recommend them. One difficulty is that the books seem targeted at several different audiences. The series is aimed at a general audience, according to the series editors. The inclusion of actual documents is of concern to serious scholars, mainly historians, and will be largely meaningless, or at least very difficult to approach, for most readers. The most interested readers, at least of the Radding volume, are likely to be anthropologists who will like her general approach. But even with this anthropological sensitivity, Radding is not able to give much voice to the people themselves.
The brevity of the volumes is a hindrance to really understanding the authors' interpretations. They both emphasize the adaptation and resistances of their respective peoples in the face of European colonialism. For example, the persistence of Yaqui customs and communities into the modern era is taken as evidence of both adaptation and resistance. Likewise, Yaqui transhumance is argued to have facilitated in certain ways their adaptations. But these claims of adaptation and resistance are based on inferences from modern ethnography and cannot be historically documented, per se.
Gregory F. Truex
California State University, Northridge
Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment among Mexican-American Women. By Jeanette Rodriguez. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Pp. xv+227. $35.00 (cloth). ISBN 0 292-77061-8. $13.95 (paper). ISBN 0-292-77062-6.
Although Mexicanists have often interpreted Our Lady of Guadalupe as a social symbol, they have had less to say about her significance for individuals, particularly women. Jeanette Rodriguez addresses this lacuna. She develops feminist and theological perspectives on Our Lady, and she explores attitudes about her among twenty young married Mexican-American mothers in California. Unfortunately, the result is not as satisfying as it could have been. The author's treatment of subjectivity is rather cursory, and the single-minded way in which she positions herself in terms of a feminist liberation theology prevents more nuanced and imaginative readings of Mexican history and her own data.
Rodriguez argues that historical and cultural conditions have shaped the "assumptive worlds" of Mexican-American women and, therefore, their "psychosocial" orientation and spiritual development. Historical processes and Mexican Catholicism have encouraged women's religious development by promoting communal values and discouraged it by reinforcing female passivity and domesticity. Mexican history is a tale about a fall from an original grace. The pre-Hispanic peoples were communal, spiritual, egalitarian in gender relations, and friendly to the environment whereas the conquering Spaniards were materialistic, individualistic, racist, sexist, and logocentric. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe gained popularity among the subjected masses because it connected the new religion with the old and because it compensated for the social and spiritual devastation brought on by conquest and colonization. Oppression and marginalization account for the religiosity and strong family values in Mexican culture, but also for the secluding of women in the home. The popular image of Our Lady as passive, longsuffering, and maternal represents the traditional role of woman as mother and homemaker.
Rodriguez contends that colonization of northern Mexico by Anglo-Americans reinforced the religious culture of marginalization, although she notes that the literature on the Mexican American family is inconsistent: some studies find a traditional family structure, while others imply that the mother is strong and assertive. In any event, contemporary Mexican-American women are caught between a traditional Chicana culture that confines women to the home and a national culture that promotes women's involvement in the wider society. Rodriguez opines that Mexican-American women must become more "competitive" and "assertive" as they are drawn into the labor market. Thus, they should learn to emphasize the power and assertiveness of the Virgin more, and her maternal characteristics less. Rodriguez discerns resources in the story about the Virgin's appearance to Juan Diego for promoting a more assertive womanhood; the narrative, she suggests, is an allegory about the spiritual growth of the self toward an engaged, activist spirituality and agency. She also sees Our Lady of Guadalupe authorizing a feminized image of God.
Rodriguez anticipated that younger, more acculturated Mexican-Americans would give less importance to the maternal qualities of Our Lady of Guadalupe (pp. 83-84). Yet this expectation was not confirmed. Written essays, an adjective check list, and a brief interview revealed that the women in her study see Our Lady of Guadalupe as nurturing and maternal. As a few simple calculations on the data will show, the homemakers and the working women do not differ in this respect. Rodriguez, though, is not deterred. She supposes that her subjects are ready "for further faith development" (p. 164).
The expectation that women working outside the home will revise their images of the Virgin assumes that family becomes less important as jobs and professions become more demanding or rewarding. Yet, many working women (and men) may value the domestic space more than the workplace, and this may be true even when they have satisfying jobs. The image of the Virgin Mary as nurturing mother, then, may persist as a symbol of family values, ties, and commitments even among people who are motivated to succeed in the world outside the family. Given her associations with motherhood and family, it is hard to picture the Virgin as a symbol of careerism or business enterprise. Missing here is some ethnographic realism about the way in which marketplace, on the one hand, and family and community, on the other, form different and opposing moral spheres.
John M. Ingham
University of Minnesota
John Monaghan's study of the Mixtec town of Nuyoo in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca is a breakthrough in Mesoamerican ethnography. During 33 months in the field, Monaghan learned the Mixtec language, gathered detailed information on community life, and conducted historical research in local and regional archives. The result is an in-depth account of Nuyoo that suggests answers to many of the intractable questions about the nature of community life in Mesoamerica as a whole. Through sensitive and long-term fieldwork, rigorous data collection, and by paying close attention to subtle clues derived from observation and the statements people made to him, Monaghan was able to address a number of the key theoretical and empirical issues faced by Mesoamericanists. Insights from this book will inform ethnohistorians, ethnographers, archaeologists, and linguists, and, in addition, will be of interest to scholars investigating cultures in other world areas.
The work is divided into four parts. The first three present a synchronic description and analysis of Nuyoo social organization, and the fourth focuses on the historical processes and events that led the community to develop in the way that it has. Monaghan begins by pointing out that anthropologists have used the term "community" ambiguously. Depending on who is writing, community can be interpreted as a people, a place, a state of mind, or an administrative unit, among other concepts (p. 3). This ambiguity leads the author to a discussion of the difficulties that anthropologists have faced in characterizing communities in Mesoamerica. Are these communities tribal units, village-tribes surviving in a pre-Hispanic time capsule, homogeneous folk societies, peasant villages, closed corporate communities, or part of a subsystem of international capitalism inhabited by rural proletarians?
The author proposes to address the question by investigating how the people of Nuyoo themselves see and define their community. This focus shifts "from a search for models of finished social groups to a focus on local articulations of how collectivities form and accomplish goals" (p. 13). The author rejects the idea that community is a superorganic entity out of which action flows. He employs instead Simmel's concept of "forms of sociation" in his study of Nuyoo. In this conception, the investigator focuses on human agency, on how and why people act to create and maintain relationships with each other. Monaghan discusses people's interests and goals and shows how individuals act upon them in the context of a specific living community. He rejects world systems' approaches that reduce local beliefs and practices to the status of epiphenomena.
The author's complex analysis of the rich data he provides is not amenable to brief summary. A key element in Nuyoo social organization is the household. Usually composed of a man and a woman with their unmarried children and married sons, the household is the atom of Mixtec society. Groups lying between the household and community are not particularly important (p. 32). According to Nuyootecos, members of a household "live well," not because they are genealogically related but because they have nakara for one another. This Mixtec term can be translated as "love" but a more complete definition is "a willingness to take responsibility for another by providing what is needed for a healthy life" (p. 36). A common means of expressing nakara is by providing or sharing food. Exchange of food, as well as clothing and other items, is not merely symbolic of nakara between people but it is the form and substance of the relation so that "nakara exists only so long as the nurturing flow of food and clothing continues" (p. 37). For Nuyootecos, Monaghan argues, the household emerges out of acts of nakara (p. 42).
Households extend nakara to each other not only through gift giving but also through rites of baptism and marriage. When a child is baptized, ties of godparenthood are created with members of another household. In effect, the child is symbolically given to the other couple who assume responsibility should the parents die. The relationship is realized through continual gift exchanges, especially in the form of food. Marriage is another means by which households create close ties with one another. Monaghan sees marriage as a mechanism by which senior members of a household are replaced by younger members. A family gives a daughter who will replace her mother-in-law in the husband's household. For the Mixtecs of Nuyoo, "the community is a place where people are in constant movement among households" (p. 51).
Another important way that Nuyooteco households extend nakara to each other is through exchanges connected with the civil-religious hierarchy. Sponsorship of a position in the hierarchy is costly and well beyond the means of most households. In response, households enter into complex exchanges of food and other necessary items so that the burden is shared. Strict records are kept of these exchanges and at any given moment members of an individual household find themselves enmeshed in networks of other households, each of which depends on the others for mutual support. One of the key items exchanged are large numbers of tortillas and thus it is food that unites individual households together, just as it is food that unites members of a single household. The tortillas and other important items circulating in this manner are not considered by Nuyootecos to belong to individual households but are thought to be held in trust for the entire community. They are community goods temporarily in the care of individual households participating in the system. This allows the people to express their sense of community by saying "we eat from the same tortilla."
Mapped onto these systems of exchange that characterize baptism, marriage, and the civil-religious hierarchy is a complex pattern of interaction between Nuyootecos and key forces in the cosmos including the saints and an elaborate pantheon of spirits. During mythic times, Jesus and the saints created the context for the people of Nuyoo to grow corn, live in households, and ultimately to emerge from the state of nature where people had lived like animals. These sacred personages also provided the template for the exchanges that mediate among the members of a household, among households themselves, and between human beings and the forces of fertility that sustain them. When the cultured life of Nuyoo was just beginning and the ancestors were emerging from a sacred cave, they entered into a covenant with the Earth and Rain. These two powerful cosmic entities, each with multiple manifestations in Nuyooteco belief, combine to provide sustenance for the people, but at a price. Human beings are obligated to make a continuous round of sacrificial offerings to the Earth and Rain throughout their lives and at death their bodies will be consumed by these same forces of nature.
In one of the most interesting sections of a very interesting book, Monaghan discusses Mixtec kinship in the context of gift exchange. Typically, anthropologists have conceived kinship relations to be based upon the sharing of substance between a man and a woman during sexual intercourse. They and the peoples they report on generally see sexual exchange as the quintessential factor that links kinsmen. For the Mixtecs, sharing substance through sexual contact is also the major way that kinship relations are established, but Monaghan found that kin-like relations can also be extended to others through exchanges of valued items and particularly food. In short, for the Mixtecs, the sexual exchange that lies at the heart of the kinship system is extended to include exchange of other nurturing substances like food that create and maintain nakara, the love that provides for another's well being. Even though they are not technically members of the same family, "Nuyootecos are 'kin' and speak of one another as 'father' and 'daughter' or 'mother' and 'son' because they transmit substance to one another, and care for one another, in a way that is homologous to parents' care and transmission of substance to their children" (p. 212). It is this transmission of substance between people that creates households of kinsmen and that, when extended outward from the household, creates community in Nuyoo.
In his discussion of marriage practices, Monaghan stresses that Nuyoo is largely endogamous and that eligible females are seen by Nuyootecos as a community resource. Households refusing to make their daughters available for marriage are considered to be stingy and antisocial. Thus, the way daughters are made available for marriage is analogous to the way food and other items are circulated during fiestas. For Nuyootecos, marriage practices ensure the continuity of the household through sharing women, just as sacrifice to the Earth and Rain and the circulation of goods in a fiesta are means of creating community through sharing substance. Community, then, is an extension to other people of the key relations and modes of interacting that characterize the individual household. What sacrifice, marriage, and pooling resources for fiestas do "is order relationships among Nuyootecos in 'household-like' ways, and the image of community that emerges from this is not one where Nuyootecos live in a household, but where they form something different, a 'great house' (with, however, the acts that create ties of shared substance, affinity, and corporate identity informed by nakara, just as they are within the household)" (p. 245). Thus for the Nuyootecos, the great house is the organizing principle of their social life and the basis of their sense of community.
Monaghan's success in marshaling evidence to demonstrate the existence and operating principles of the great house in Nuyoo is a major contribution to Mesoamerican research. The important point is that the great house is more than a community of households, it is a community "in which Nuyootecos, as kin, subordinate individual interests to corporate ones" (p. 259). This does not make the community a single cohesive social entity, however. It is rather a focal point where competing interests, differing lives, and individualities play themselves out. His study goes a long way toward explaining why anthropologists have had difficulty in characterizing kinship systems in Mesoamerica. The basic concepts of kinship derived from cultures in other world areas do not fit the data from this region very well. By demonstrating that affinity and commensality, in addition to shared kinship, are key principles in community organization, Monaghan has achieved a breakthrough that will allow research in the region to move forward.
The last part of the book places Nuyoo in historical context and examines important developments in the past that explain the complex present. Here Monaghan locates key processes in the changing material conditions of the community. He shows how earlier community corporate holdings were undermined by population growth, cash cropping, and warfare. He argues that much of the dynamic of the cargo system with its complex networks of exchange and mutual support developed in response to a shift from communal to individual household support of the fiestas celebrating the saints. In the end, much that had been held communally is now in private hands and this fundamental change thrusts individuals and their households into a position of central importance in the community.
For Nuyootecos, social relations are grounded in interaction between humans and the sacred. This interaction often takes the form of miraculous revelations, and Nuyooteco history is replete with examples of sacred interventions in their lives. It is no surprise, therefore, that in 1873, the midst of momentous changes, a saint named Misericordia ("Mercy" or "Compassion") appeared on the steps of the Nuyoo church. Monaghan states that the "appearance of the saint, and its intimate connection with new social forms, shows that innovations become possible through changes in the way people interact with the gods" (p. 312). He also shows how the appearance of the saint and its subsequent veneration is linked to new forms of community identity and the machinations of economic and political elites.
There is much more in this complex book that I have not covered. Monaghan has produced an excellent body of data on the Mixtec that he has interpreted with a sophistication and thoroughness that is rare in the ethnographic record. He gains entry to the culture through the language. In this way his book resembles Bambi Schieffelin's The Give and Take of Everyday Life: Language Socialization of Kaluli Children (Cambridge University Press, 1990) in which the author uses language to derive insights into the socialization of children and complex forms of reciprocity in New Guinea. But Monaghan's work is more comprehensive than Schieffelin's and his theoretical reach much greater. His findings are consonant with what we know about Native Americans in other parts of Mesoamerica and the reader has every confidence in the information he presents. I might add that despite its complexity, the book is very well written and the presentation could not be clearer. The text is enhanced by drawings done by Nuyootecos that illustrate many of the important ethnographic facts that underlie the study.
The book is so thorough in its coverage and is written with such care that most of the routine complaints that are leveled at ethnographies simply do not apply. The author presents such a wealth of data interpreted in a reasonable manner that it is difficult to find fault with the work. The only mildly unsettling aspect of the book from my perspective derives more from the current state of anthropology than from any specific omission by Monaghan. It is no longer fashionable to speak about traditional cultures existing within a nation-state for fear of unwittingly characterizing people as passive or backward. As Monaghan himself points out, it is also not acceptable to see "Indian peasant communities" as the product of capitalist relations for fear of reducing local practices to epiphenomena. What then do we call communities like Nuyoo? To label them non-Western or non-industrialized is to define them by what they are not rather than what they are.
In my own experience people who live in places like Nuyoo are fully aware that life in their community differs qualitatively from life in the city. Yet anthropologists seem increasingly timid to name precisely what it is that is the object of their study. In The Covenants with Earth and Rain, the reader is left unsure just where Nuyoo fits in the larger national and regional picture. We are told that there are few mestizos in the area but we also learn that Nuyootecos were disparaged when they went to neighboring mestizo towns and that in response they abandoned their distinctive dress. Is not a significant part of the definition of community in Nuyoo related to the people's feelings of being an ethnic group that is disadvantaged at the hands of mestizo elites? Is Monaghan saying that their sense of community is based solely upon internal mechanisms or struggles with their Mixtec neighbors?
I would call Nuyoo a traditional community, not because the people mindlessly follow ancient patterns but because they see themselves that way. While many traditions they follow are of Spanish origin and some, like the fiesta of Misericordia, are generated locally, it is clear that a substantial segment of beliefs and practices derive from their Native American heritage. The mix of these traditions taken as a whole separate the Nuyootecos from other Mixtecs, mestizos, and urban elites. Oddly enough, the absence of a clear definition of how Nuyoo as a community is integrated within the national culture gives the impression that the town is set apart from many of the forces that have shaped Mexico. For example, the picture we are given of Nuyooteco religion is not completely clear. Many of the beliefs and practices are reminiscent of standard rural Mexican Catholicism and yet, taken as a whole, the religion appears to be at heart Native American. Monaghan does not clarify the nature of the relationship between Catholicism and Native American religion because he would thereby be forced to delineate the relationship between Nuyoo and the nation, between their different histories and their different cultures. Even though Native Americans themselves know that they and the communities they live in are distinct from urban culture, modern usage in anthropology disparages attempts to view the "Indian peasant community" as an entity with a existence of its own. Calling these communities big houses is not enough. Perhaps what we need is a new operational definition of tradition.
These are quibbles. This work is excellent and should be read by everybody with an interest in Mesoamerica. It has much to say to researchers regardless of background. The book is even physically appealing with fine illustrations and an excellent Index (although a glossary of Mixtec terms would have been helpful to the reader). Oklahoma Press should be congratulated for their production. But more important, Monaghan has succeeded in raising the level of sophistication of the scholarly debates among Mesoamericanists and his work will place Mesoamerican studies in the forefront of anthropological research. Postmodernists and others who espouse antiscientific research programs and disparage the ethnographic enterprise should read this account as a demonstration of the power of ethnography to elucidate social and cultural process. Monaghan has produced a work of such sophistication and depth that it will not be matched for many years to come. The Covenants with Earth and Rain is a major contribution to scholarship that addresses fundamental issues, points to future avenues of research, and makes the reader realize that despite our differences as researchers we are all after the same thing -- a greater understanding of one of the most fascinating areas in the world.
Alan R. Sandstrom
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
Bruce Byland and John Pohl's In the Realm of Eight Deer combines archaeology and cultural anthropology, ethnohistory and art history in a multidisciplinary study of the histories of the Postclassic Mixtec people. The emic history that the Mixtec recorded in their codices is cross-referenced against the archaeological record, and from this combination the authors provide a model of political change in western Oaxaca during and after the Classic to Postclassic transition. This broad scope of settlement patterns and political history is integrated with ethnographic and ethnohistoric data. These range from the Mixtec stories, legends, and topographic information Byland and Pohl recorded in the field to the usually neglected, incredibly rich details on Colonial Mixtec life that were recorded in Spanish ethnohistoric documents. Finally, the book considers Mixtec society and culture today, and demonstrates strong continuities of belief five centuries after the Conquest.
Chapter 1, "Archaeology and Ethnohistory in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico," begins with an introduction to the overall political contexts of Central Mexico after the decline of the Classic hegemonies centered at Teotihuacan and Monte Albán. Until the rather late arrival of the Mexica empire at Tenochtitlan, Postclassic Central Mexican political structure was not made up of empires, but rather hundreds of small-scale polities. Although not united politically, many participated in an elite artistic tradition known as "Mixteca-Puebla." The Mixtec codices are one of the products of this stylistic horizon. As a starting point for their research, Byland and Pohl began to consider what these documents had to say about the collapse of the Classic period's centered hegemonies, a collapse that produced the balkanized political landscape in which the Mixtec codices were created. Revised chronologies of the dates recorded in the codices revealed that the earliest depicted events were taking place around 940 AD, which Byland and Pohl cite as falling within the time period of Mesoamerica's Classic-Postclassic transition. Indeed, with the exception of the religiously oriented Codex Vienna, the majority of the extended narratives in the Mixtec codices are centered around the events that took place during, and immediately after, this transitional phase (pp. 1-9 of the Codex Selden, the Codex Nuttall Reverse (entire), pp. 1 22 of the Codex Nuttall Obverse, the Codex Colombino Becker (entire), pp. 1-10, 29-35 of the Codex Bodley).
Byland and Pohl also noted that these transitional events were centered around a number of specific sites, represented by codical place glyphs. Two of these sites, Tilantongo and Jaltepec, had been identified on the ground, but others (Hill of the Wasp, Red and White Bundle, Hill of Flints) had not. In addition, while Tilantongo and Jaltepec continued to appear in the codices up to the Spanish Conquest, places like Hill of the Wasp all but disappeared from the codical record after the tempestuous events at the beginning of the early Postclassic. One of the primary goals of research during Byland and Pohl's three seasons of fieldwork was to determine the location and period of inhabitation of the major unidentified sites mentioned in the early codical history of the Mixteca. Could art historical resources be used as a basis for guiding archaeological investigations? The chapter concludes by giving an overview of the precedents in archaeological and ethnohistorical research in the Mixteca.
Chapter 2, "Politics in Classic and Postclassic Communities," contextualizes the use of the codices within a factional political system. The codices, Byland and Pohl claim, were not simply genealogies or king lists per se but were instead long-term records of the relationships between individual ruling families and the lands they controlled. Factionalism is often conceived as a temporary, destabilizing force. Byland and Pohl disagree, and argue that the codices recorded a long-term history of stable factional interactions. The study of place signs provides the potential to reveal such patterns of long-term interaction between specific polities. Recognizing the scale of these interactions is especially important. At their most extreme, codical place signs have been interpreted as representing sites of metropolitan size, distanced as far away from the Mixteca as Cholula and the Petén. Byland and Pohl emphasize that Mixtec place signs encompass a much more limited physical and geographic scope. Place signs represent small settlements centered on archaeologically unimpressive noble palaces, and the scale of land their distribution encompasses is small. The region including or surrounding the approximately 140 square kilometers surveyed by Byland and Pohl contained no less than fifteen place signs, generally spaced no father apart than 3 to 4 kilometers.
Chapter 3, "The Archaeological and Ethnological Survey: Results," reports on the findings of three seasons of field survey 1985, 1987, 1989). The chapter is arranged chronologically and maps out the shifts in settlement patterning in the Tilantongo and Jaltepec area from the Preceramic through the Postclassic. At the same time that the survey and ceramic and lithic collection was being carried out in the field, Byland and Pohl interviewed the Mixtecs who lived in the areas being surveyed, who provided fascinating stories and legends about the surrounding countryside as well as the local names for topographic landmarks. Using this information, the authors were able to relate archaeological settlements with their Mixtec names, and, by extension, to the appropriate toponyms recorded in the codices. The results of the survey suggest on-the-ground identifications for the important sites of Red and White Bundle, Hill of the Wasp, and Hill of Flints, as well as several smaller centers.
Chapter 4, "Five Hundred Years of Pre-Columbian Mixtec History," considers the ramifications of the survey findings and identifications. By linking codical place signs with datable archaeological settlements, the spatial and chronological dynamics of Mixtec history recorded in the codices can be tested against a real landscape. The small-scale actions and strategies of historical figures is highlighted against the effect their actions had in terms of site settlement and abandonment. This history, according to the authors, began around 940 AD under the domination of Late Classic centers tied to Monte Albán, most importantly Hill of the Wasp. Conflicting marriage alliances between the centers of Hill of the Wasp, Red and White Bundle, Jaltepec, and Tilantongo led to a period of regional strife known as the "War of Heaven." This war, it is argued, terminated the presence of Monte Albán influence in the area and led to the creation of the small-scale Postclassic Mixtec polities.
Emerging out of this initial period of warfare was the famous Lord 8 Deer, who managed to usurp the throne of Tilantongo through a series of legitimization strategies: alliance with Toltec outsiders, conquest of sites in the Mixteca, consultation with the solar oracle of Achiutla, and marriage alliances. Although his "empire" (and the instabilities of Classic to Postclassic transition) dissolved with his assassination, Tilantongo was established as the most powerful lineage in the Postclassic landscape of the Mixteca. This position was solidified through long term patterns of interaction with the sites of Zaachila and Teozacoalco throughout the Postclassic. The chapter's reconstruction of Mixtec history ends with the (codically ignored) Aztec invasions and the Spanish Conquest.
Finally, Chapter 5, "The Position of the Mixteca Alta in Greater Mexico," considers the Mixtec data as a model for the discussion of the wider anthropological issues of ideology, history, and factionalism. First, the chapter considers the role of a shared ideology in maintaining stability in a fragmentary political landscape. For the Mixtec, this ideological unity was manifested in the system of oracular shrines and ancestor worship. The oracles, not unlike the position of Rome in medieval Europe, were independent arbiters of political disputes to whom the Mixtec nobility could look for advice and legitimacy, just as Lord 8 Deer did when he visited the solar oracle at Achiutla. The oracles presided over burial shrines in which were stored the mummified remains of the Mixtec nobility, the primary sources for the information in codical histories (and akin to the vault of saintly relics stored at the Vatican). The discussion of caves and ancestor worship is brought into the present with the continued presence of cave worship in the Mixteca. The chapter's second part moves from the specifics of Mixtec political organization to consider what the codices can tell us about the origins and maintenance of the "secondary state."
Byland and Pohl's work is important for its contributions to an understanding of Mixtec and Mesoamerican anthropology, but it also provides a case study illustrating a resolution of recent debates in archaeology as a whole. The new and post-processual archaeologies have both provided their own platforms for priorities in research, and, pleasantly, In the Realm of Eight Deer addresses both sides. As Lewis Binford, among others, has argued, archaeology's strength and uniqueness as a discipline is its ability to observe settlement and culture change over long spans of time, as layered in the centuries of accumulated artifactual deposits. Post processualists such as Ian Hodder or Janet Spector tend to stress smaller-scale investigations, of specific locations over shorter periods of time. A major goal of such research is to recover the humanity and agency of individual actors in the past, as well as the ideologies that shaped their lives. As pursued by Byland and Pohl, both of these agendas are addressed.
The Mixtec codices, like the archaeological record, are long-term histories of site interaction and culture change, chronicling five hundred years of Mixtec political interaction as the Mixtec themselves perceived it. At the same time, the codices recreate this long-term history as it is lived by individuals, providing records of their names, parentage, dates of birth and death, and the strategies they pursue for their own aggrandizement. Thus the individual decisions of specific historical figures (Lady 6 Monkey of Jaltepec's doomed marriage alliance to Lord 10 Wind of Red and White Bundle, for example) can be seen as one of the factors leading to Red and White Bundle's abandonment at the end of the Classic period. While survey archaeology cannot hope to uncover the physical remains or personal belongings of historic individuals, it can create a framework on which faces can be added to political and geographical landscapes.
However, returning to the larger picture, the goals and means of these individual actors are enacted within culturally inscribed boundaries. While Lord 8 Deer was certainly a major figure in transitional Mixtec history who directly affected the abandonment and resettlement of specific sites, his actions, as Byland and Pohl argue, delineate general guidelines for Mixtec conceptions of political power. "Our purpose is not to study 8 Deer simply as a historical figure or even as a mythic one. Rather, we endeavor to derive some idea of what forces the Mixtec considered important in developing stability in their political universe following a period of internal strife. The most effective means of doing this is by viewing the 8 Deer story from the perspective of the political dynamics of usurpation" (p. 138). In the Realm of Eight Deer demonstrates the possibility of a dialogue between the broad and the specific, between individual variation and cultural norm.
My criticisms of the book are focused more on the details of interpretations than on the work's overall scope. Incorporations and comparisons of imagery in the Mixtec codices with imagery from the Borgia group of codices are intriguing, but not entirely convincing (pp. 156 62). Formal visual parallels between the two Mixteca-Puebla-styled sources should be expected. I am less confident that symbolic meaning need be isomorphic as well. The solidity of the interpretation of the Red and White Bundle site as corresponding to an archaeological zone currently called Hua Chino also seems weak (pp. 66-73). Unlike the correlation of a site currently called "Hill of the Wasp" with the codical toponym of a hill containing a wasp, the linguistic and visual relations between the painted image of Red and White Bundle and the site that today is called Hua Chino are not very concrete. Although the site is extremely important in codical histories, its on-the-ground identification is the weakest part of Byland and Pohl's correlations of contemporary place name to codical place glyph. However, this disjunction may simply be an example of non-continuity of place names over time.
My strongest critique of In the Realm of Eight Deer would be that it does not address the problems inherent in the codices as works of elite propaganda. Byland and Pohl focus on the history of the Mixtecs as the codices preserve it, and do not discuss the possibility that the historical information recorded may be something other than the truth. Not considering the role of propaganda in the writing of elite history would not have been as essential in a study confined to the painted page. But when the correlation of potentially flawed history with actual archaeological sites is attempted, the possible disjunction between recorded and lived events is very important.
One such disjunction may be found in the Oaxacan chronology proposed by Byland and Pohl. The Classic-Postclassic transition recorded in the codices dates to around 940 AD. The most recent dating for Monte Albán's collapse by the Proyecto Especial Monte Albán is no later than 800 AD. Byland and Pohl are thus attributing Monte Albán influence in the Mixteca 150 years after the probable collapse of that Classic center, a serious blow to their argument. This dating problem may be reduced by considering the possibility of chronological disjunction between actual historical events and the dating of those events as remembered and recorded in the codices. Alternatively, assuming that the dating is accurate, I see little reason why the specter of Monte Albán need be invoked around 940 AD as the reason for political realignment in the Mixteca's Classic-Postclassic political transition. Byland and Pohl's overall interpretation of the history in the codices is just as valid if Classic centers like Red and White Bundle or Hill of the Wasp were local sources of Classic Mixtec political power instead of Monte Albán satellites.
The catalyst for their collapse might have been the political changes taking place throughout Central Mexico, and thus the fall of Monte Albán in 800 AD may have been an indirect factor in the political changes evidenced in the codices and on the ground. Evidence for strong Monte Albán ties is less than convincing (presence of G-35 ceramics, valley floor site location, Zapotec-style two-room temple) and is not crucial for their reconstruction of codical events. The problematic issues of chronology and Monte Albán presence that Byland and Pohl gloss over do have alternatives, and raising these alternatives would have strengthened their central interpretations of the Classic-Postclassic transition.
But these criticisms do not detract from my overall high opinion of the book. Mixtec studies as a whole have tended to be isolated and inwardly-focused, partially due to the misinterpretations in earlier studies that resulted from an uncritical adoption of interpretive and symbolic models from other Mesoamerican cultures. In the Realm of Eight Deer delves into the rich specificity of Mixtec history and clearly demonstrates that the Mixtec codices are relevant to wider concerns of not only Mesoamerican studies but also of basic dilemmas in archaeological debate.
Byron E. Hamann (Thanks to John D. Monaghan
and Arthur A. Joyce
Vanderbilt University for their comments on an earlier draft.)
In Our Lady of Guadalupe, Stafford Poole tackles a very sensitive question in Mexican historiography: Which is the earliest written source to describe or mention the Guadalupe apparition? This book is a thorough examination of the documentary evidence, from the earliest possible sources to the debates at the end of the 18th century. The author is a Roman Catholic priest and colonial historian. Unlike apparitionist and anti-apparitionist scholars, Poole takes no position on whether the Virgin Mary actually appeared. His interest centers on the origins of the apparition narrative and what this tells us about the history of Guadalupan devotion among Spaniards, Indians, and Creoles in colonial Mexico. Poole forewarns the reader: "The story of the development of the Guadalupe tradition is complex and torturous in the extreme" (p. 14). Fortunately, the Introduction and Conclusion give a concise summary of his findings. A separate Chronology section helps the reader keep track of pertinent names, dat