The Nahua Newsletter A Publication of the Indiana University Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Alan R. Sandstrom, Editor
With support from the Department of Anthropology
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
February 2003, Number 35
The Nahua Newsletter
A Publication of the Indiana
University
Center for Latin American
and Caribbean Studies
Alan R.
Sandstrom, Editor
With support from the Department
of Anthropology
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
Welcome to the 35th issue of the Nahua Newsletter. The Nahua Newsletter is published in the fall and spring each year to help readers keep abreast of developments in the study of indigenous Mesoamerican peoples. In the pages that follow, you will find news items, book reviews, directory updates, and a personal commentary by Esther Pasztory on Aztec art and the lure of Aztec violence for modern scholars. The Nahua Newsletter is dedicated to professionals, students, and anyone with an interest in indigenous Mesoamerica with particular emphasis on the culture, history, and language of Nahuatl-speaking peoples. Our only mission is to be of service to our readers by acting as a communications link among people scattered all over the world who have similar research agendas and concerns.
Interest in the Nahua Newsletter continues to grow. With this issue we have reached the milestone of 400 subscribers in 15 different countries. The NN is sent to individuals but also, as an added service, to some of the great research libraries in the world. It is also posted and made accessible via the Web at http://www.ipfw.edu/soca/nahua.htm, and who knows how many people may actually be consulting the Nahua Newsletter? Our project of mounting all past issues on the Web continues. We are in the process of editing the scanned older issues and with luck you may consult the earliest published issues within a month or so.
As most of you already know, the Nahua Newsletter is self-sustaining in that over the past 17 and a half years, with the exception of a few small grants received, subscriber donations have fully covered the costs of printing and mailing. If you wish to join the list of generous benefactors who support our publication, please send checks made out to Nahua Newsletter to the address printed below. Any donation is welcome and all money is used to cover costs of printing and mailing. There are absolutely no administrative costs. Speaking of contributions to the success of the Nahua Newsletter, we would like to take this opportunity to thank Donna Rhodes, secretary of the Department of Anthropology at IPFW, for her help in preparing the newsletter for mailing.
If you have any news or wish to communicate with people of similar interests, please send items to the address below. If the text is more than a line or two, please send it on a diskette saved in either WordPerfect or some standard word processing software. You can also send it via e-mail to sandstro@ipfw.edu. Sending your communication in electronic format saves work and insures the accuracy of your message. Feel free to ask questions of other readers, advertise your own work or interests, make announcements to readers, offer critiques of publications or the comments of others, express your concerns, give us your opinions, or make a general nuisance of yourself. It is all grist for the Nahua Newsletter.
Here, for example, is a challenge to ethnohistorians and others concerned with the history of Mesoamerica. Several recent publications with a postmodern slant have asserted that the work of the 16th-century cleric Bernardino de Sahagún presents a thoroughly distorted or completely false picture of Aztec social life and customs (see book review below). Some authors speak of the "violence" that Sahagún has done to his subjects in his monumental General History of the Things of New Spain. The basic idea is that Sahagún and his fellow chroniclers were absolutely unable to extricate themselves from their own 16th-century cultural understandings and the imperialist project of which they were a part, and thus their writings are about Spain and Europe and not at all about the Aztecs and other indigenous groups at the time. Any opinions on this topic? Did Sahagún commit violence against the Aztecs? Please forward your views and I will be glad to print them in the next issue. Please send your thoughts on this issue, financial support, or other news items and announcements to:
Alan R. Sandstrom
Editor, Nahua Newsletter
Department of Anthropology
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
2101 Coliseum Blvd. East
Fort Wayne, Indiana 46805 U.S.A.
1. Keiko Yoneda, of the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) Golfo, writes to let readers know of three recent Spanish publications that will be of interest. They all appear in the Journal of Intercultural Studies, a publication of Kansai University of Foreign Studies in Japan. The first is "Reflexiones sobre la cultura chichimeca = Reflections on Chichimeca Culture." Journal of Intercultural Studies 26(1999):225-239.
Abstract: "The object of the research is to analyze the pre-Hispanic Chichimecas' cosmovision as revealed in the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan no. 2 (MC2), a pictorial document produced in Cuauhtinchan, Puebla, in the 16th century. To recognize the Chichimecas' cultural elements painted on MC2, I examined the archaeological research about the culture of the groups who lived in north Mexico as well as the relevant ethnohistorical documents and compared this information to the picture writing appearing on the ancient map. In this article I concentrate on the use of fire among the Chichimecs both as a form of technology necessary for survival and as an element of cosmovision."
Second, is the article entitled, "Reflexiones sobre la organización socio-política y a religión de los chichimecas (siglo XII) = Reflections on the Socio-Political and Religious Organization of the Chichimecas (12th Century)." Journal of Intercultural Studies 27(2000):184-193.
Abstract: "The research is on indigenous Chichimec cosmovision based on the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan no. 2 (MC2), a pictographic document produced in Cuauhtinchan, Puebla in the 16th century. The map documents the Chichimec migration from Chicomoztoc (Seven Caves) and their settlement near the Amozoc-Tepeaca mountains. During this period many ethnic groups were in contact and there was an exchange of cultural elements such as subsistence technology and religion. In this article, I focus on the socio-political organization and religion of the Chichimecs during the period of migration in the 12th century."
The third article appears in the same journal and is entitled "La migración chichimeca y su cosmovisión (siglo XII): Un estudio acerca de ehecatl, el dios del viento = The Chichimeca Migration and their Cosmovision in the 12th Century: A Study of Ehecatl, the God of Wind." Journal of Intercultural Studies 28 (2001 ):68-79).
Abstract: "The object of this research is to analyze pre-Hispanic Chichimec cosmovision as found in the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan no. 2 (MC2), a 16th-century pictorial document of Cuauhtinchan, Puebla. The history covered is from the 12th to the 15th century. Recent information from ethnography allows for the analysis of Ehecatl, the God of Wind, found in MC2. The Chichimec migration from Chicomoztoc (Seven Caves) to Cholollan (present-day Cholula) is described as well as the Chichimec defeat of an ethnic group called Xochimilca Ayapanca in the 12th century."
2. María Teresa Rodríguez López writes to make readers aware of a book that she and Andrés Hasler Hangert have published entitled Los Nahuas de Zongolica. México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 2000. ISBN 970-18-5780-1.
From the back cover: "En este volumen, María Teresa Rodríguez y Andrés Hasler presentan una síntesis etnográfica basada en su experiencia de investigacion entre nahuas de la Sierra de Zongolica, cubriendo los siguientes aspectos: ciclo de vida, salud y enfermedad, demografía, organización social, migración, historia y lenguaje."
3. The University of Utah Press has forwarded a copy of a new book that will be of interest to readers. It is entitled The Postclassic Mesoamerican World. Michael E. Smith and Frances F. Berdan, eds. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2003. ISBN 0-87480-734-4. Following is the table of Index
Part 1: An Ancient World System
1. "Postclassic Mesoamerica," by
Michael E. Smith and Frances F. Berdan.
2. "Conceptualizing Macroregional Interaction: World-Systems
Theory and the Archaeological Record," by Susan Kepecs and
Philip Kohl.
3. "Spatial Structure of the Mesoamerican World System,"
by Michael E. Smith and Frances F. Berdan.
Part 2: Polities
4. "Small Polities in Postclassic Mesoamerica,"
by Michael E. Smith.
5. "Political Organization in Yucatan and Belize,"
by Susan Kepecs and Marilyn A. Masson.
6. "Highland Maya Polities," by Geoffrey E. Braswell.
7. "The Polities of Xoconochco," by Janine Gasco.
8. "West Mexico beyond the Tarascan Frontier," by Helen
Perlstein Pollard.
9. "Aztec City-States in the Basin of Mexico and Morelos,"
by Michael E. Smith.
10. "Creation Stories, Hero Cults, and Alliance Building:
Confederacies of Central and Southern Mexico," by John M.
D. Pohl.
11. "The Aztec Empire," by Frances F. Berdan and Michael
E. Smith.
12. "Borders in the Eastern Aztec Empire," by Frances
F. Berdan.
13. "The Tarascan Empire," by Helen Perlstein Pollard.
14. "The Aztec/Tarascan Border," by Helen Perlstein
Pollard and Michael E. Smith.
Part 3: Economic Networks
15. "The Economy of Postclassic Mesoamerica,"
by Frances F. Berdan.
16. "An International Economy," by Frances E Berdan,
Marilyn A. Masson, Janine Gasco, and Michael E. Smith.
17. "International Trade Centers," by Janine Gasco
and Frances F. Berdan.
18. "Key Commodities," by Michael E. Smith.
19. "Salt Sources and Production," by Susan Kepecs.
20. "Obsidian Exchange Spheres," by Geoffrey E. Braswell.
21. "Metal Production," by Dorothy Hosler.
22. "Ritual Ideology and Commerce in the Southern Mexican
Highlands," by John M. D. Pohl.
Part 4: Information Networks
23. "Information Networks in Postclassic
Mesoamerica," by Michael E. Smith.
24. "Postclassic International Styles and Symbol Sets,"
by Elizabeth H. Boone and Michael E. Smith.
25. "The Late Postclassic Symbol Set in the Maya Area,"
by Marilyn A. Masson.
26. "Ritual and Iconographic Variability in Mixteca-Puebla
Polychrome Pottery," by John M. D. Pohl.
27. "A Web of Understanding: Pictorial Codices and the Shared
Intellectual Culture of Late Postclassic Mesoamerica," by
Elizabeth H. Boone.
Part 5: Regional Case Studies
28. "Themes in World-System Regions,"
by Frances E Berdan.
29. "Development of a Tarascan Core: The Lake Patzcuaro
Basin," by Helen Perlstein Pollard.
30. "The Evolution of a Core Zone: The Basin of Mexico,"
by Frances F. Berdan and Michael E. Smith.
31. "Royal Marriage and Confederacy Building among the Eastern
Nahuas, Mixtecs, and Zapotecs," by John M. D. Pohl.
32. "Economic Change in Morelos Households," by Michael
E. Smith.
33. "Chikinchel," by Susan M. Kepecs.
34. "Economic Patterns in Northern Belize," by Marilyn
A. Masson.
35. "Soconusco," by Janine Gasco.
36. "K'iche'an Origins, Symbolic Emulation, and Ethnogenesis
in the Maya Highlands, A.D. 1450-1524," by Geoffrey E. Braswell.
Part 6: Synthesis and Comparisons
37. "Different Hemispheres, Different
Worlds," by Philip L. Kohl and Evgenij N. Chernykh.
38. "A Perspective on Late Postclassic Mesoamerica,"
by Frances F. Berdan, Susan Kepecs, and Michael E. Smith.
4. The NN received following message from Mexico: "Estimados (as) colegas y amigos. Por este medio nos permitimos informarles de la aparición de el Boletín del Archivo Histórico del Agua núm. 20 (año 7, enero-abril, 2002), el cual contó con el apoyo de la Comisión Nacional del Agua, Archivo Histórico del Agua. Colegio Mexiquense, Colegio de Michoacán, y CIESAS, y que fue coordinado por el Dr. Luis Aboites.
Indice.
Presentación.
"Entre el Porfiriato y un gobierno posrevolucionario: La
fábrica de Metepec (Puebla) frente al gobierno federal,
1900-1919," por Rocío Castañeda González.
"Reconstrucción histórica de los sistemas
hidráulicos de Texcoco, siglo XIX," por Diana Birrichaga
Gardida.
"Conflictos por el agua entre la hacienda Nogueras y las
comunidades indígenas de Comala, Colima, 1912-1940,"
por Pablo Serrano Álvarez.
"Fin de un sueño: Notas sobre la extinción
de la Secretaría de Recursos Hidráulicos,"
por Luis Aboites Aguilar.
"San Miguel Xaltocan: La hacienda durante el periodo revolucionario,"
por Ivett Verónica García Arenas.
"El Archivo de Aguas Nacionales: Memoria de la transferencia
de un acervo documental," por Víctor Hugo Escalante
Razo.
Notas del pasado: El agua en la prensa.
Noticias del agua..
"Mayores informes en torno al Boletín y al Archivo Histórico del Agua, comunicarse al teléfono 55217362 o al correo electrónico: aha@juarez.ciesas.edu.mx. Si usted ha recibido regularmente el Boletín pronto lo tendrá en sus manos, sino le solicitaríamos no los comunicara, así como su posible interés en recibir este y los siguientes números."
5. Here is another message from Mexico that will be of interest to readers: "Estimadas (os) colegas. Por este medio nos permitimos comunicarles la reciente aparición del Boletín del Archivo Histórico del Agua, núm. 21 (año 7, mayo-agosto 2002), el cual fue coeditado por la Comisión Nacional del Agua , AHA, El Colegio Mexiquense, El Colegio de Michoacán, y CIESAS. En esta ocasión esta publicación cuenta con los siguientes trabajos y secciones.
Presentación.
"El agua y la producción en el espacio social caraqueño,
siglos XVI-XVIII," por Mario Sanoja Obediente r Iraida Vargas-Arenas.
"Cambios históricos en el aprovechamiento del agua
en la Ciénega de Chapala," por Brigitte Boehm Schoendube.
"Empoderamiento, agua y saneamiento rural en el Perú:
La contratación por la comunidad," por Oscar Castillo.
"Protección del agua y seguridad: El Instituto Nacional
de Seguridad Hidrológica," por José Arturo
Yañez Romero.
Reseña: Jacinta Palerm Viqueira en torno al libro de Sonya
Lipsett-Rivera, To Defend our Water with the Blood of our Veins:
The Struggle for Resources in Colonial Puebla.
En torno al AHA: Sistema de consulta del Archivo Histórico
del Agua (SIDECO-AHA), por Nora Duana Calette.
Notas del pasado: El agua en la prensa.
Noticias del agua.
Nuevas adquisiciones de la Biblioteca del AHA.
"Si a usted le interesa recibir este Boletín, y no ha recibido los anteriores, puede solicitarlo por este medio al Archivo Histórico del Agua; aha@juarez.ciesas.edu.mx."
6. And here is another communication from Mexico about a new publication: Los ejes de la disputa: Movimientos sociales y actores colectivos en América Latina, siglo XIX. Antonio Escobar Ohmstede y Romana Falcón, eds. Madrid: AHILA; Iberoamericana; Vervuert, 2002. 270 pp.
"Este libro constituye un esfuerzo colectivo por analizar las variadas formas en que los grupos desheredados y mayoritarios de las ciudades y campo de América Latina incidieron en el devenir histórico de estos países. Estudia su impacto en las movilizaciones populares y en los procesos que fueron dando forma a los Estados nacionales modernos desde el Río Bravo a la Patagonia. La obra retoma parte de la reflexión que ha surgido en las últimas décadas en la historia, la antropología y sociología latinoamericanistas que atañe a las variadas acciones de los actores sociales y que van desde las resistencias hasta las insurgencias populares."
Indice
"Los ejes de la disputa. Introducción," por
Antonio Escobar Ohmstede y Romana Falcón.
"La otra rebelión: un perfil social de la insurgencia
popular en México, 1810-1815," por Eric van Young.
"Montoneras, la comuna de Chalaco y la revolución
de Piérola: la sierra piurana entre el clientelismo y
la sociedad civil, 1868-1895," por Nils Jacobsen y Alejandro
Díez Hurtado.
"La esclavitud, el movimiento obrero y el colonialismo en
Cuba, 1850-1890," por Joan Casanovas Codina.
"Luchas por la autonomía. La resistencia campesina
al capitalismo en la República Dominicana, 1870-1924,"
por Michiel Baud.
"El oro y la guerra en el desierto de Sonora: los enfrentamientos
o'odham-mexicano de 1840," por Cynthia Radding.
"Patrones de dominio: Estado contra itinerantes en la frontera
norte de México, 1864-1876," por Romana Falcón.
"Mapuche, colonos nacionales y colonos extranjeros en la
Araucanía: Conflictos y movilizaciones en el siglo XIX,"
por Jorge Pinto Rodríguez.
Contacto: info@iberoamericanalibros.com, http://www.ibero-americana.net
7. Here is a final announcement from Mexico regarding another recent publication: "Recientemente la Colección Agraria, coordinada por la Dra. Teresa Rojas Rabiela, ha publicado un nuevo texto: Memoria agraria mexicana en imágenes: cuatro ensayos. I. Gutiérrez, M. R. Gudiño, J. I. Romero, y S.Luis Contreras, eds. México, D.F.: CIESAS; RAN, 2002.
"A raíz de los trabajos efectuados por el CIESAS en el Archivo General Agrario, gracias al convenio celebrado con el Registro Agrario Nacional de 1997 hasta 2001, encaminados a catalogar la documentación, publicar índices y catálogos de sus fondos e investigar en los mismos, se conoció la existencia de un filón de información desconocido, constituido por miles de fotografías integradas en diversos expedientes agrarios de restitución, dotación y ampliación de ejidos.
"La propuesta de plasmar una muestra de esas miles de fotos que componen el acervo del AGA, se plasma ahora en este libro. En los capítulos que lo componen se recogen las reflexiones y análisis hechos por sus cuatro autores sobre la fotografía en general y sobre algunas fotografías de ese acervo en particular." Contacto: difusion@juarez.ciesas.edu.mx.
8. María Rodríguez-Shadow sends notice of the following conference:
III Mesa de Estudios de Género, Primera
Reunion Internacional
"La Condición de las Mujeres y las Relaciones de
Género en Mesoamérica Prehispánica,"
Abril 28-30, 2003 (entrada libre)
Sede: Auditorio del Centro Cultural Isidro Fabela, Plaza de San Jacinto # 5, Col. San Ángel, Delegación Coyoacán, 01000, México, D. F. / tel. 01(55) 5616-2058 / 01(55) 5616-0797.
Lunes 28 de abril
10:00 a.m., Declaración de inauguración, Mtra. Gloria Artís, Coordinadora Nacional de Investigación INAH.
10:20 10:40, María Rodríguez-Shadow, DEAS, INAH. "Las pesquisas en torno al género en Mesoamérica."
10:40 11:00, Dra. Elizabeth Brumfiel, Albion College. "El papel de la arqueología en los estudios feministas y de género."
Area maya / Moderadora: Mtra. María Elena Lopes
11:20 11:40, Dra. Amelia Trevelyan, Principia College. "Architecture of the Feminine: Uxmal, Yucatan."
11:40 12:00, Dr. Antonio Benavides, INAH, Campeche. "Relevancia de la mujer maya precolombina."
12:00 13:00, Presentacion Del Libro. Ancient Maya Gender Identity and Relations. Lowell Gustafson y Amelia Trevelyan, eds. Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey, 2002. Comentaristas: Mtra. Carmen Lechuga, DEA, INAH, Dr. Antonio Benavides, INAH, Campeche, Dra. Rosemary A. Joyce, University of California Berkeley.
16:00-16:20, Dra. Sara Beatriz Guardia, CEMHAL, Perú. "La mujer en las culturas del antiguo Perú."
16:20 16:40, Mtra. Marina Anguiano, DEAS, INAH. "Peinados y tocados femeninos: Epocas prehispánica y actual."
16:40 17:00, Dra. María Elena Bernal, UAE Morelos. "El ordenamiento del espacio terrestre: tarea fundamental de la Diosa Madre de Palenque."
17:00 17:20, Dr. Ernesto González, ENAH. "Estado y sociedad: estudio de género en el Valle de Oaxaca."
17:20 17:40, Dr. Lowell Gustafson, Villanova University. "Gender, Lineage, and Legitimacy."
Martes 29 de abril: Area nahua
10:00 10:20, Dra. Silvia Garza, INAH, Morelos. "Señora 3 Mono."
10:20 10:40, Lic. Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown, University of Calgary. "Urning Ones Gender: An Engendered Approach to Zapotec Funerary Urns."
10:40 11:00, Dr. Geoffrey y Sharisse McCafferty, Calgary University. "El genero como proceso: Evidencias en los restos mortuarios postclásicos de Cholula."
11:20 11:40, Dra. Walburga Wiesheu, ENAH. "Jerarquía de género y organización de la producción en los estados prehispánicos."
11:40 12:00, Mtra. Noemí Castillo, DEA, INAH. "Presencia femenina en las exploraciones de la zona arqueológica de Tehuacan, Puebla."
12:00 12:20, Dra. Beatriz Barba, DEAS, INAH. "Figuras femeninas del inframundo."
12:20 12:40, Mtra. Vladimira Palma, CIESAS, Mtro. Miguel Guevara, ENAH. "El papel de la mujer en el pago de tributo en la triple alianza."
12:40 13:00, Dra. Sharisse y Geoffrey McCafferty Calgary University. "Guerreras: El papel de las mujeres en la guerra prehispánica."
16:00 16:20, Dra. Cecelia Klein, UCLA. "A New Interpretation of the Coatlicue Statue."
16:20 17:20, Presentacion del libro, Gender in Pre-Hispanic America. Cecelia F. Klein and Jeffrey Quilter, eds. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 2001. Comentaristas: Dra. Antonella Fagetti, ICSI, BUAP; Mtra. Sara Molinari, DEAS, INAH.
17:20 17:40, Dr. Nicolas Balutet, Université Lorraine. "¿Eran los nahuas misóginos?"
Miercoles 30 de abril / Moderadora: Mtra. Sara Molinari
10:00 10:20, Dra. Antonella Fagetti, ICSyH, BUAP. "El peine y la muerte: Rituales funerarios en un pueblo nahua."
10:20 10:40, Mtro. José Manuel Chavez, UNAM. "Las dos últimas lunas de El Chorro, Belice: Mujeres mayas descendientes de desplazados por la Guerra de Castas de Yucatán."
10:40 11:00, Kerry Hull, Texas University. "Así hablan los ángeles: La estructura poética en el lenguaje de los curanderos ch'orti."
11:30 12:00, Mtro. Eduardo Merlo, INAH, Puebla. "Las diosas prehispánicas y las santas católicas en el siglo XVI."
Informes: María J. Rodríguez-Shadow,
davecita@hotmail.com
Georgina Gilbón, ggilbon@hotmail.com
Tel. y fax: 01(222) 229 2814
Bernardino de Sahagún, First Anthropologist. By Miguel León-Portilla. Translation by Mauricio J. Mixco. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. Pp. 324. $29.95 (cloth). ISBN 0806133643. (Originally published as Bernardino de Sahagún: Pionero de la Antropología. México, D.F.: UNAM; Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1999.)
Sahagún and the Transition to Modernity. By Walden Browne. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. Pp. 260. $34.95 (cloth). ISBN 0806132337.
The Franciscan missionary effort in 16th-century Mexico produced not only converts but also a generation of talented friar-scholars. Their accounts of Nahua language and culture continue to interest researchers today. One of the most gifted in the cohort, and certainly the most prolific, was Bernardino de Sahagún (1499-1590). His numerous works include the 12-volume, bilingual (Nahuatl/Spanish), illustrated Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España (or General History of the Things of New Spain), also known as the Florentine Codex (hereinafter referred to as HG).
Two recent books address the complex question of where Sahagún "fits" in the intellectual history of anthropology. The authors approach the issue from markedly different perspectives. Not surprisingly, the answers they reach are poles apart.
Probably no one today is better versed in the Sahagún canon and secondary literature than Miguel León-Portilla, author of First Anthropologist. As he states in the Introduction, "...for more than forty years, I have dedicated much time to his works. Among other things, I have translated into Spanish some of the texts he collected in Nahuatl" (p. 24). Leon-Portilla's early career is closely associated with Fr. Angel María Garibay Kintana (1892-1967). Garibay prepared the 1956 Editorial Porrúa edition of the HG while supervising Leon-Portilla's doctoral thesis on late pre-Conquest Nahua philosophy ("La filosofía náhuatl estudiada en sus fuentes," UNAM, 1956). Together the two co-founded the journal Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl in 1959.
In First Anthropologist León-Portilla brings us close to the life and times of his subject. The chapters follow Sahagún chronologically through the major stages of his career: Chapter 1 (1499-1529), from his birth in the Kingdom of León, Spain, through university studies at Salamanca and ordination into the priesthood; Chapter 2 (1529-1540), initial service as a missionary in Mexico and teacher at the College of Santa Cruz, Tlatelolco, Valley of Mexico; Chapter 3 (1540-1558), missionary work in Huejotzingo, Puebla (1540-1545), and research in Tlatelolco on Nahuatl rhetoric and Nahua accounts of the Spanish Conquest; Chapter 4 (1558-1561), systematic collection of Nahua testimonies in Tepulco, Hidalgo, concerning "divine," "human," and "natural things," conducted with the help of trilingual Nahuas conversant in Spanish and Latin; Chapter 5 (1561-1575), return to the College of Santa Cruz, intensive work on various writing projects, and a five-year hiatus (1570-1575) while the Franciscan Provincial Superior withheld his manuscripts and funding; Chapter 6 (1575-1580), completion of the HG and surrender of an earlier, Nahuatl-only version to civil authorities by royal order; and Chapter 7 (1580-1590), submission of the HG to the Franciscan Commissioner General, Sahagún's role in a political dispute within the order, and his death on February 5, 1590.
Leon-Portilla offers more than a comprehensive biography. Interspersed with the narrative are the author's detailed responses to "modern critiques" of Sahagún as a scholar (p. 25). At issue is whether the HG and other key works, e.g., the "Coloquios" ("Colloquies") and "Arte Adivinatorio" ("Art of Divination"), are accurate reports of Nahua beliefs and experiences. In short, did Sahagún's methods, attitude and output meet "modern" standards for objective research?
Leon-Portilla's answer is a firm "yes." Throughout the first seven chapters he underscores Sahagún's data gathering methods: exclusive use of Nahuatl in the research; recruiting the eldest, most knowledgeable community members to serve as a panel of experts; interviewing the panel using a formal questionnaire; incorporating indigenous methods of transmitting knowledge, i.e., dialogues with, and speeches delivered by, the elders; letting the panelists interject comments or discuss unrelated topics; using trilingual scribes to write down the panelists' responses; and reviewing the interview transcripts with the original panelists and other well-informed elders (e.g., pp. 3-4, 142-145, 162, 259-262). As evidence that Sahagún overcame his cultural prejudices when studying the Nahuas, Leon-Portilla periodically quotes passages where the friar expresses his admiration for pre-Conquest Nahua governance, child rearing, rhetoric, and so on (e.g., pp. 24, 97, 118, 263-264). Moreover, in his writings Sahagún took care to indicate when he was speaking for himself (e.g., his "Prologues") and when he was reporting indigenous testimonies (p. 21). On whether Sahagún fabricated or misinterpreted data, Leon-Portilla quotes the friar directly:
"In this book it shall be seen very clearly that what has been affirmed by some skeptics, that all of what is written down in these books, before the present one and after it, are fictions and lies: they speak driven by passion and mendacity because what is written in this book, no one is capable of inventing, nor could any living man fabricate the language it contains. And all the knowledgeable Indians, if asked, would affirm that the language is their ancestors' own and works that they composed" (p. 117, excerpted from HG, I, 305-306).
Apparently León-Portilla was the first to call Sahagún the "Father of Anthropology in the New World," beginning in 1962 (per a source cited in Browne, p. 57). In the book's conclusion (Chapter 8), the author presents three reasons why this title is appropriate: (1) Sahagún's rigorous research methodology (pp. 259-262), which earlier León-Portilla calls the "precursor of modern anthropological field technique" (p. 3); (2) Sahagún's sustained interest in studying the Náhuatl language, which led others to follow his example (pp. 262-263); and (3) Sahagún's "'indigenist' (pro-native)" stance, apparent in his positive remarks about Nahua culture and his negative remarks about the consequences of Spanish rule (pp. 263-265). Note that in 1966 the University of Salamanca debuted a commemorative plaque identifying Sahagún as the "Father of Anthropology in the New World," among other honorific titles (see seventh photo following p. 49). In that same year an organization associated with the university published a book by Leon-Portilla entitled: Significado de la obra de fray Bernardino de Sahagún. Alumno de Salamanca, padre de la antropología en el Nuevo Mundo (Significance of the Work of Friar Bernardino de Sahagún. Alumnus of Salamanca, Father of Anthropology in the New World) (p. 307).
The author of Transition, Walden Browne, is a relative newcomer to Sahagún studies. His training is in Spanish and comparative literature, the field in which he earned a Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1995. He conducted the research for the book in 1992-1993 during a year-long Fulbright fellowship in Madrid. Transition is a revised version of his doctoral dissertation, but it incorporates material from three papers he published before and after the thesis (1994 and 1996; see p. xii). Browne is a polymath. He holds an M.D. from the University of Arizona College of Medicine (2002), and previously served as a volunteer health care worker in Ecuador (1983), the Dominican Republic (1984), and Panama (1985). At present he is a Second-Year Resident in pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
Browne covers some of the same territory as León-Portilla, but for a different purpose. Part One (Chapters 1-2) explores what other writers would call the myths surrounding Sahagún's life and work. Chapter 1 offers alternative interpretations of the friar's career to "force critics to reconsider their views on Sahagún" (p. 8). For example, virtually nothing is known about the Sahagún prior to his arrival in Mexico other than his birthplace, the university he attended and the monastery he joined. Biographers have endeavored to fill the gaps via speculation (p. 26). There is no authenticated portrait of Sahagún produced during his lifetime. The oft-seen painting of him is a posthumous work owned by the Museo Nacional de Historia in Mexico City (pp. 20, but see p. 216, f.3). The idea that Sahagún was a persecuted but undaunted rescuer of Mexico's cultural heritage dates to the 19th century. Creole nationalists, eager to demonstrate that Mexicans had always opposed Spanish oppression, sought to cast the friar as an early patriot (pp. 36-52). Meanwhile, the 1577 order from Philip II mandating the confiscation of the HG may not have aimed at harassing Sahagún or suppressing his findings. Another possible explanation is that the Crown wanted all policy-related research under the control of the royal bureaucracy (pp. 26-36). There is even room for doubt on how accurately Sahagún's contemporaries reported his final illness and death. The sequence of events and the friar's remarks to his companions bear a suspicious resemblance to folk tales about the death of St. Francis of Assisi, the order's founder (p. 4-6).
Chapter 2 asks whether Sahagún qualifies as an anthropologist, a humanist, or a medievalist. Browne is adamant that Sahagún has no connections to modern anthropology: "...the stubborn idea that Sahagún was an anthropologist obstructs an understanding of the ways in which he was a man of his own time and could not have been the inventor of an academic discipline that emerged in the nineteenth century in a context quite alien from his world" (p. 8; see also p. 71). Or more simply, "...Sahagún is not like modern-day individuals because his (socially constructed) knowledge of the reality [sic?] belonged to a different time and place" (p. 6).
Sahagún is often called a "Renaissance humanist." The author says there is scholarly confusion over how to define this term, first used in the 19th century (pp. 74-80). All too often it is mistaken for being humane, that is, compassionate toward others; but "humanism" is not associated with "any single, discernible system of ethics or philosophy" (p. 76). A more defensible definition, historically, is an admiration for, and imitation of, models drawn from Classical (European) antiquity (p. 76). Browne believes Sahagún qualifies as a Renaissance humanist only when he draws on Classical exemplars for guidance. The author cites the case of the "Coloquios," a reconstruction of the 1524 meeting between Nahua dignitaries and the newly-arrived, original twelve Franciscan missionaries. Sahagún organizes the "Coloquios" as a Classical dialogue, to be read aloud or performed, in which the Nahuas ultimately convince themselves to convert to Christianity (p. 81-90).
The author sees the greatest potential for understanding Sahagún in the worldview of the Middle Ages. Per a 1966 article by Donald Robertson, the division of the HG into chapters on divine, human, and natural things, duplicates the organization of specific medieval encyclopedias (see pp. 91-92). Browne further examines the issue of medieval influences later in the book.
Part Two (Chapters 3-5) analyzes Sahagún's encounter with the "entirely alien" worldview of the Nahuas, an experience that compelled the friar "to reexamine the universality of his own worldview" (p. 9). Chapter 3 identifies the problems Sahagún had in reconciling his expectations of the Nahuas with his actual experiences, the effect this had on his plans for the HG, and how both matters relate to medieval modes of thought. In the worldview of the Middle Ages, all knowledge derived from God and reached humanity only through divine revelation (p. 9). There were three "ways of knowing". In descending order of confidence these were authority, reason, and experience (p. 133). Authoritative sources, such as Scripture or writings by Doctors of the Church, had not anticipated the existence of the Americas. Sahagún was at a loss to explain, through reason, why God had kept this knowledge hidden from Christians for so long (p. 132). The HG would have to report all the "things" of New Spain in a systematic manner (pp. 120-121), using experience - the interview data - to clarify "the place of the Nahuas in the cosmological and historical order" (p. 138). In the 16th century such a treatise was known as a "universal history" (p. 121). Sahagún chose this very title for the work, Historia Universal de las Cosas de la Nueva España, according to the only complete title page extant, the cover of a draft chapter (p. 121). An 1829 edition mistakenly called it the "Historia General," the label by which the work is commonly known today (p. 120).
Chapter 4 discusses Sahagún's growing disillusionment with the outcome of the missionary effort. In the last decades of his life he became increasingly convinced that the Nahuas were only pretending to be Christians (p. 177). Browne believes this concern strengthened Sahagún's desire to master the subtleties of Nahuatl. It also encouraged him to develop multiple examples to illustrate any given Christian doctrine, a strategy the friar employed in his "Psalmodía Christiana" (pp. 180-184).
Chapter 5, the final portion of the book, considers the issue of modernity. Earlier, Browne proposes that "Sahagún was caught in an epistemological tug-of-war between medieval and early-modern modes of thought and structures of knowledge..." (p. 8). In the modern worldview, all knowledge derives from the human mind observing the (external) world (p. 9). Sahagún's firsthand observations of the Nahuas, particularly the "weakness" of their Christian faith, did not seem to harmonize with the medieval notion of an orderly cosmos operating according to God's plan. He found the solution in the writings of Saint Augustine (354-430 A.D.), an early Doctor of the Church (p. 206). Augustine had faced a similar dilemma, namely how to explain the achievements of the ancient, pagan Greeks and Romans in the context of a Christian cosmos. The answer for Augustine was Satan, whose existence was revealed in Scripture. Sahagún now understood that the "evil" aspects of Nahua civilization were the product of Satan's influence; the Nahua deities in fact were "devils." The good aspects of Nahua civilization - all the traits of which he spoke with such admiration - were proof of God's grace and benevolence.
Browne states that Sahagún appears "modern" in many respects, but his worldview is fundamentally medieval. His use of a questionnaire format has precedent in confessional manuals (per Klor de Alva, cited on p. 59). The need to identify Satan's influence on Nahua life motivated Sahagún's data-gathering, not intellectual curiosity. Europeans had a negative view of curiosity until the Enlightenment (p. 211). He sought information from indigenous informants because, unlike the Greeks and Romans, there were no authoritative indigenous texts (by European standards) from which to demonstrate that the Nahuas were indeed a civilization (p. 206). The HG would be a substitute for such texts, but only if the data were organized in a structure that made sense to Europeans (p. 212). Browne concludes that Sahagún arrived at an imperfect comprise between medieval and modern approaches to knowledge.
Both books are worthwhile additions to one's personal library, with the following caveats. It would have been very helpful if either author had provided a brief time line listing the major events in Sahagún's life and career, as a ready reference. As I read each work I ended up jotting down my own time line to keep track of significant or disputed dates. The English translation in Leon-Portilla's is occasionally too literal, making the prose sound clumsy (e.g., commemorative "stone" instead of "tablet"). The dust jacket insists on calling the Nahuas "Aztecs," which seems inappropriate. The original title of the book in Spanish was Bernardino de Sahagún, pionero de la antropología. It is unclear why the title was changed. Walden Browne sometimes couches his arguments in almost impenetrable postmodernist jargon, using terms such as "mimesis," "alterity," and so forth. Some of the digressions into postmodernist theory seem irrelevant or downright silly, for example, the statement that "Inadequacy is a paradigm not a stigma" (p. 13); and calling Sahagún an "object of scholarly desire" (p. 17).
These particulars aside, I learned a great deal from the two studies: the details of Sahagún's life and projects from León-Portilla; and the probable workings of Sahagún's mind from Browne. The authors are aware of each other's work. Transition is Browne's book-length critique of the assumptions that underlie León-Portilla's Sahagún studies. First Anthropologist includes a short response directed to Browne, about 450 words (pp. 9-11), but León-Portilla goes on to say: "...I believe that my book challenges the claims Walden Browne makes in his book" (p. 11). Actually, both scholars are talking past each other, and neither is likely to concede a point to the opposition. This is because the real disagreement is about intellectual paradigms - the nature of human knowledge, the rules of evidence, and the goals of scholarly inquiry.
Eileen M. Mulhare (de la Torre)
Research Associate in Anthropology, Colgate University
Julia Tuñón's goal for the book Women in Mexico: A Past Unveiled seems to be two-fold. Her first goal is to carry out a reflexive analysis of herself as a Mexican woman and academic and her role and position within Mexican society as a whole. In this sense she is using an ethnohistorical approach to write the book, since she acknowledges that her own views play a great part in shaping the questions she asks and the final outcome of the book. She states that the book is "to a large extent an inquiry into myself as a member of a social group" (p. ix). She adds, "my need to understand myself as a person was continually distorted by an occupational hazard: being a historian leads one to question oneself untiringly, to delve into processes, antecedents, interrelations... and to do so conscious of being a woman... and aware that one is part of a system" (p. ix).
Tuñón's second goal for the book is for it to "serve as a guide, provide information on the circumstances that have shaped Mexican women, awaken interests, and lead to inquiries" (p. x). The information found in the book will be of interest to any scholar of Mexico since it covers the history of women from pre-Columbian until the present times. She includes interesting information on the acculturation processes that have taken place throughout this period and how women have been a factor in some of these processes.
In Chapter 1, "Women in the Mexican World," Tuñón describes the way of life of the indigenous groups of pre-Columbian Mexico, concentrating primarily on the Mexica. She asserts that the status of women in the indigenous pantheon was very different to the status of actual women in the patriarchal society. Women had symbolic power in terms of the female lineage, but in daily life this power was non-existent. Women tended to function within a domestic and private domain and were dependent on and subservient to men in all aspects of life, such as education, daily duties and rights, and sexuality.
In Chapter 2, "Women in New Spain," the author summarizes the events and processes taking place after the arrival of the Spaniards wherein acculturation and ethnogenesis created mestizo culture. She discusses the lives of three women, Marina (also known as Mallinalitzin or Malinche), the Virgin of Guadalupe, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and shows that they are symbols for treachery, purity, and oppression, respectively. Although women had some participation in production at the end of the Colonial period, they were not yet emancipated from the rules of the men.
In Chapter 3, "Mexican Women in the Nineteenth Century," we find a contrast between the lives of most women, who are primarily within a domestic domain, and the lives of a few exceptions whom Tuñón refers to as "heroines." These women emerged during this tumultuous period and were active in politics. Here we find Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez, Leona Vicario, Josefina Guelberdi, Ignacia Rieschl, among others. The author also goes on to describe the improvements in the legal status of women over time, for example the obtaining of a divorce under the conditions of gender oppression and reducing the legal age of women to twenty one. She also discusses issues of femininity among the different social classes; these issues include sexuality and licentiousness as well as leisure and clothing. She concludes the chapter by a description of the new regulations that allowed women to be educated in order to better prepare them for society.
Chapter 4, "Peace in Porfirian Times," discusses the role and status of women during the rule of Porfirio Díaz. Women during this time were relegated to the role of wives and mothers, a role they were used to, but which was now couched in "scientific" terms that focused on women's biology. Many contradictions arose about the way women were supposed to act and the way they actually acted in their daily lives. In some ways this led to women becoming marginalized. However, many women worked outside of the home, which eventually led to them participating in social organizations and movements. Some of these movements were concerned with gender issues and feminism and may have served as catalysts for the Revolution that eventually ousted the Porfiriato.
In Chapter 5, "From Revolution to Stability," Tuñón covers a long period in history from the Revolution to the end of Lázaro Cárdenas' presidency. She explains the role of women during the war (as soldaderas and adelitas) wherein, although they were fighting alongside men, they often maintained their traditional role of caretakers. Tuñón places an emphasis on women's organizations and their efforts to gain equality within the social and political arenas. Although many changes occurred in women's legal equality, suffrage was not attained until 1953.
Chapter 6, "From 'Development' to Crisis," analyzes the issues surrounding Mexican women from the 1940s to the present (such as suffrage, abortion, work conditions, migration, among others). In particular, Tuñón looks at the broad-based women's movements that have had effects on policy. An important point she makes is that although there have been changes in policy, these have not necessarily been realized, since much of the oppression of women is found outside of the legal sphere and there is still a strong gender hierarchy and asymmetry.
Finally, Tuñón concludes her book by a summary of her most important points as well as by stating that by using history, women can overcome their traditional silence and eventually change the course of gender relations in Mexico.
The book will be of interest to anthropologists, historians, political economists, ethnohistorians, and scholars of gender studies. Although it is an academic book, it is written in an engaging style that can also be understood and enjoyed by non-academics. Women of Mexico is also a short book, with just over 100 pages making up the main text, hence making it light reading for people interested in a good overview of the events involving women that have transpired since before the Conquest until the present time. But, since it does not delve deeply into any one aspect it lends the book a certain amount of superficiality. Tuñón leaves the reader with many doubts and questions, few of which are answered in the book. Nevertheless, this encourages further reading into any section that is of interest and the author provides a good reference list that aids in this purpose.
Tuñón discusses at length the issues of women's resistance during the twentieth century, especially in their joining organizations and political parties to obtain equality (p. 97). However, she does not mention resistance in the early chapters of the book, namely the chapters on the pre Columbian and early colonial periods. She states that women had to follow the social norms (p. 6) but does not add whether there was any resistance on the part of women within the home. This begs the question, Did women actually follow the norms as much as it has been supposed? Tuñón's book leads one to conclude that women were relatively passive during the early colonial period and had no method of resisting societal norms. It would have been useful for Tuñón to consider whether there were any oblique methods of resistance that would not have necessarily been broad-based but rather mostly confined to domestic spheres. This would provide a more rounded picture of what the status and role of women during this period actually was like. Apart from documentary sources, there are archaeological projects that have started to explore ideas of resistance (e.g., the work of Elizabeth Brumfiel) that Tuñón could have incorporated so that the indigenous voice and not just the Spanish chroniclers could be heard.
In the final chapters, where Tuñón discusses the women of modern Mexico, she fails to fully discuss the world of the mujeres indígenas. Although she speaks of women of different social classes she does not talk about how the women in indigenous groups interact within their social spheres or with the larger Mexican culture. It would have provided a more realistic portrait of Mexican women to have included indigenous voices.
An interesting approach for the book would have been a historiography of the lives of the women themselves and the ways that they negotiated the norms of society. This would have added depth to the book and would have placed the women at center stage, as the title suggests, instead of focusing on the events that happened around them.
However, I find much more in Women in Mexico to praise than to criticize and the points mentioned above are minor compared to the strength of the rest of the book. This book was very well-researched and provides a fascinating read into some of history's forgotten players. All anthropologists who study Mexico will find information in this book that is relevant to their research, in particular information on aspects of history that have often been overlooked in favor of the more colorful (male) characters found inside any book on Mexican history.
Vania Smith
University of Illinois, Chicago
Field Museum of Natural History
El pueblo de México se caracteriza por su profunda religiosidad representada por las innumerables fiestas dedicadas a santos, vírgenes, imágenes, e infinidad de centros de peregrinación católica. La religiosidad popular late en las venas del pueblo mexicano que se encuentra y se ve representado por un amplio espectro de intermediarios, que son los santos que interceden ante Dios o antes las fuerzas sagradas para pedir favores individuales y /o colectivos. Los favores se piden directamente a los santos, cristos o vírgenes a través de la oración, la manda, la ofrenda y la peregrinación.
El territorio mexicano tiene a lo largo y ancho de su territorio un sinfín de lugares de peregrinaje, de los mas reconocido tenemos la Villa de Guadalupe, en la C.d de México, el señor del Sacromonte, en Amecameca, el de los Remedios en Tláxcala, el Señor de Tila, en Chiapas, el del Ñiño Doctor en Tepeaca, Puebla, San Juan de Los Lagos en el estado de Jalisco, el señor de Chalma, en el estado de México.
Este es quizá el mas conocido por el imaginario colectivo de los mexicanos, es este un punto de referencia obligada para los católicos de cepa, por lo menos una ves en la vida todo católico que se precie de serlo tiene que ir a "bailar a Chalma", esto ultimo para pedir algún favor en especial al cristo negro que ahí se venera. Este santuario de peregrinaje se ha hecho famoso y ha cruzado las fronteras, hace poco tiempo empezaron a llegar extraordinariamente peregrinos franceses en busca del milagro que cure la enfermedad o el maleficio personal, que no ha podido ser aliviado con otros procedimientos.
El santuario Chalma es un lugar extraordinario, ya que ahí confluye todo el fervor y la fe del pueblo mexicano, de todo llega ahí el ruletero chilango que va a pedir que le vaya bien para poder pagar sus deudas; el campesino humilde que viene a orar para que sus animales no se enfermen; la ama de casa que llega de rodillas para pedir por alguno de sus hijos; el enfermo en silla de ruedas que es trasladado para rogar por el milagro que la ciencia no le ha podido conseguir; el burócrata agobiado por la deudas hipotecarias; entre otros mas. Y el "Señor de Chalma" cumple, al menos eso es lo que dicen los múltiples milagros y agradecimientos que ahí se pueden apreciar, por eso Chalma es el destino obligado del fervor religioso popular, es una de las mecas del catolicismo mexicano de ayer y de hoy.
Todo esto nos sirve de contexto, para elaborar una breve presentación del libro de la doctora en antropología María Rodríguez-Shadow y del antropólogo Robert D. Shadow, que lleva como titulo El pueblo del Señor: Las fiestas y peregrinaciones de Chalma (2002), que a bien tuvo reeditar la Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México(UAEM) en su colección de textos sobre Ciencias Sociales. Lo que quiero destacar de este libro es su importancia dentro de los estudios que sobre Chalma se han hecho con anterioridad.
Este libro destaca por que ha sido escrito con el rigor que exige la antropología, pero tan bien con la amenidad de un literato; además es un libro que destaca por recoger las voces de los peregrinos, voces claridosas y llenas de fe que están plasmadas en los milagros de los favorecidos. Otra cosa que me gusta de este libro, es que puede ser leído por cualquier persona, y no solo por los especialistas acostumbrados a farragosos comentarios e innumerables citas de pie de pagina.
Una cosa importante a destacar de este libro, es que su contexto histórico esta bien fundamentado, esto nos permite observar la evolución histórica de la región y del santuario de Chalma desde la época prehispánica hasta nuestros días. El libro de Maria J. Rodríguez - Shadow y Robert D. Shadow es un texto clave para entender los símbolos y significados de la fe y de la religiosidad popular mexicana, la información que aquí se presenta, nos presenta uno de los tantos rostros del México profundo. Además esta investigación se conforma como un referente para los estudios regionales, que aun faltan por realizarse sobre el Estado de México, en suma es texto valioso, que mucho servirá a los especialistas de la antropología, la historia, la cultura popular, entre otros.
Por ultimo quiero destacar la atinada decisión de reeditar este libro por parte de la Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, esto lo digo porque para fortuna del los autores y de la misma universidad, el texto que hoy se presenta tiene ya su segunda edición. También me permito felicitar a la doctora María Rodríguez-Shadow y al Robert D. Shadow por haber hecho una importante contribución a la memoria histórica y de la identidad del ser mexicano.
El santuario de Chalma es muchas cosas, es un lugar de peregrinación, de curación, de fe, de fiesta, de identidad, de comunión; de danza , es también uno de los espacios simbólicos en donde se puede entrever la esencia de lo mexicano a través de la Fe.
Rodrigo Marcial Jiménez
"Aztec Poetry" by Esther Pasztory (Columbia University)
"What is a nice girl like you studying Aztec art?" asked a number of Precolumbian specialists encountered at conferences and conventions. The questioner was usually older, male, and curious. As if such an interest betrayed a streak of perversity in my seemingly normal character so that it had to be explained. I usually stammered something about the art being beautiful and the poetry profound. In my book on the Aztecs I tried to bring out their noble or at least human character. For the cover I would have chosen the lovely very human mask from Castillo de Teayo in the American Museum of Natural History. The publishers, probably knowing the taste of their audience better, wanted something wilder and more "primitive" and chose a turquoise mosaic mask with a lot of big teeth from the British Museum. Publishers know that you sell books by appealing to the popular idea of the Aztecs, which is that they were bloodthirsty barbarians. I went through this argument on a more recent book where the publishers insisted on a cover showing Maya bloodletting as the high point of Pre-Columbian art. While we may recoil in horror from Mesoamerican civilization with its sacrifices, we also revel in their transgression of ordinary norms and appreciate the horror. The bottom line is: You can't sell the Aztecs without blood.
The image of the Aztecs was set in stone by the 16th-century conquerors and missionaries and apparently can't be changed. Their obsessive focus on "sacrifice" and "idolatry" color everything we say today because that is where our information comes from in general. More than just the texts, the much-published illustrations of sacrifice in Sahagún or codices like the Magliabecchiano make sacrifice cinematically vivid. Actually the Aztecs did not usually show scenes of sacrifice in their representations. The recent Templo Mayor excavations did not reveal hundreds of buried victims. If it were not for the 16th-century texts, Aztec culture would seem no more obsessed by sacrifice than any other culture of Mesoamerica, say, Teotihuacan with its hearts impaled on knives in paintings or El Tajin with its scene of decapitation. The staggering number of victims the Aztecs are supposed to have killed on certain occasions is also unreliable: their number was likely exaggerated by the Aztecs to prove their prowess and by the Spanish to prove the extent of Aztec brutality and hence justify the conquest. These numbers mean very little. The 16th-century texts detail with agonizing minutiae the techniques of the various sacrifices which fascinate generations of scholars anew. But is this the Aztec mind or the European mind at work?
What do we need the Aztecs for? Claude Lévi-Strauss once explained that totemic animals were not so much good to eat, as the previous century assumed, but good to think. Animals provide systems of classification for "primitive" man. For us "modern primitives," cultures are classificatory in a similar way. The Aztecs have become for us the bloody culture par excellence, the very nadir of human cruelty, as the Scythians once were for Herodotus and the ancient world. Until the discovery of America and the Aztecs the Scythians were thought to be the most violently primitive. They have now been eclipsed by the Aztecs. Other cultures are similarly typecast as extremes: we think of Hindu-Indian culture as quintessentially erotic, or associate China and Japan with excessive refinement. It does no good for scholars to put Aztec sacrifice in context and point out that at one time or another most cultures around the world practiced some form of human sacrifice. I have concluded that we need the Aztecs to be the most horrible because some culture needs to take on that role and the Aztecs were cast in it since the 16th century and perform wonderfully well for us.
Comments on the Aztecs are gratuitously advanced even when they are not relevant, and the tone is suddenly no longer impersonal and scholarly but personal. For example, Kiernan writing about the European 18th-century view of the North American Indian suddenly comments tangentially on the Aztecs: "...the Aztec had nightmarish qualities, an obsession with mass human sacrifices, that suggest a civilization going mad - as ours is perhaps doing today" (Kiernan 1990:87). No such comment of insanity is suggested for any other Indians, even those whose cruelty he details. I haven't kept a record of such comments, but 20th-century scholarship is studded with similar statements on the Aztecs that put them beyond the pale of all civilizations.
In all the years since the 16th century, the Aztecs received a positive evaluation only during the Enlightenment when they were admired for their political institutions - the election of kings and the meritocracy of some of their officials and warriors. In the sea of self-important chiefs and despots and in the complications of status and privilege that the age of exploration revealed in the world, there were few antecedents or parallels to democracy. The Aztecs were one of them and thus noticed with some admiration.
Moreover, the 18th century was not squeamish about cruelty - having tossed aside the Bible as an explanation of and guide to human behavior, there was a search to find out what human nature was in the state of nature. Bizarre behavior was of interest if it indicated the limits of human behavior. Therefore the licentious behavior of the Tahitians and the cruelty of the Aztecs were sources of information rather than occasions for admonition. The cannibal had been domesticated by Montaigne, although that could be considered French literary sophistry. But, the marquis de Sade was all too real and not just tolerated but quite famous as much for his libertine life as for his writings in a century that had a very unsentimental romanticism. The marquis the Sade explained the Aztecs for Europeans.
Such an acceptance of the macabre would not happen again in Europe until a fringe group of Surrealist artists advocated the virtues of violence. Georges Bataille, uniting violence and eros actually planned to perform a sacrifice in Paris in the 1930s and even had a willing victim. To Bataille and his group, sacrifice was the ultimate access to the spiritual in contrast to the utilitarian industrial society they lived in. Bataille's first published statement was, in fact, on the Aztecs, written on the occasion of a Paris exhibit of pre-Columbian objects. He tells us that in its classical beauty Maya art is boring but it is Aztec art and civilization that is the most exciting. The essay begins thus: "The life of the civilized peoples of America before Christopher Columbus is not just prodigious for us because of the fact of their discovery and of their immediate disappearance, but also because undoubtedly never was such bloody eccentricity conceived by the human mind: continual crimes committed in full daylight only for the satisfaction of deified nightmares, terrifying phantoms! The cannibal meals of the priests, the ceremonies with corpses and rivers of blood, more than one historical adventure evokes the blinding debaucheries described by the illustrious marquis de Sade" (Bataille 1928:5).
Nevertheless the Aztecs were superior to any other pre-Columbian civilization. The Maya tropical luxuriance was stifling and the statism of the Inca was an existence "without air." Therefore, "if one wants air and violence, poetry and humor one will find it only among the people of Central Mexico" (Bataille 1929:8).
The most surprising revelation about the Aztecs to me was how practical they were: the hydraulic works of Tenochtitlan with dikes, aqueducts and bridges, and the extensive irrigation canals and terracing in the countryside. The population density was higher under the Aztecs than in the Colonial era; only about 1900 did population levels reach the old Aztec ones. For a preindustrial culture, Aztec economy was flourishing. How was one to square that with the mass murders in the temples? Most Aztec scholars deal with sacrifice tangentially or not at all if it does not relate to their immediate subject. How did the Aztecs deal with it? In one migration codex, the Codex Boturini, the Aztecs learn how to perform human sacrifices after they have left their nomadic homeland. Human sacrifices are rituals of the advanced settled civilizations. (This is in fact true. Human sacrifices are more common in ranked archaic states and chiefdoms than in relatively egalitarian bands and tribes.)
While it may be that the Aztecs tried to outdo the past in this as in everything else, the most likely situation is that Aztec sacrifices were on a par with those of earlier civilizations and there was nothing all that exceptional about them. This is a way of spreading the onus of sacrifice on other Mesoamerican cultures - which has been done very effectively by the Mayanists who have recently claimed rivers of bloodletting for the Maya enough to have satisfied Bataille's most bizarre fantasies. This has not tarnished the image of the Maya in the view of the West. Given the Maya writing system and its process of decipherment, the classical-looking lordly profiles of the Maya rulers now given names, and our own attitude of primitivism derived from the Surrealists, the Maya could only be enhanced, rather than denigrated by such reinterpretations. The Maya thus became classical and exotically kinky at once. The finding of blood everywhere makes all of Mesoamerica "Aztec," and to a large extent that is correct, but it only aggravates the issue.
The role of the Aztecs remains as the extreme top, or in fact over the top. The root of the problem is the 16th-century texts. We know that headhunting was practiced in New Guinea until recently, but we do not have hundreds of pages of documents devoted to shocked and disapproving description. In fact, Tobias Schneebaum chronicled his stay in New Guinea recently, including a discussion of headhunting in the most idyllic terms. Suppose the Aztecs had been discovered in the 18th-century by Captain Cook, or Bougainville after a few weeks of sex in Tahiti, or were visited by Tobias Schneebaum in the 20th century? I am quite sure that we would have different narratives of sacrifice. Or, to look at it the other way, imagine Sahagún or Diego Durán writing about Maori tattoos bringing out their barbaric features, while a few centuries later for the philosopher Immanuel Kant the Maori tattoo is a source of fascination in his rumination on beauty and the aesthetic sense as English aristocrats are actually sporting tattoos. As George Kubler pointed out brilliantly, "entrance" is everything and the timing of the Aztec "entrance" from the point of view of the sensibility and mind of the West was unfortunate. The Spaniards saw the devil everywhere and we are all too happy to continue the satanic vision - pro or con.
Mexican scholars have had a vested and romantic interest in rehabilitating the Aztecs as the ancestors of modern Mexicans. More than anyone Miguel León-Portilla focused on the noble aspects of the Aztecs in their philosophy, literature, and poetry. He was interested in the individual artist in works such as "Trece Poetas del Mundo Azteca." These works and others by a circle of Mexican aztequistas initiated a small vogue of learning the Aztec language Nahuatl in its old or "Classic" form, and translating Aztec poems. These scholars either did not talk about sacrifice or had the primitivist attitude derived from the Surrealists of sacrifice being a grand cosmic vision. However, important these studies were for Mexico, they had little effect on foreigners, like Inga Clendinnen, who made names for themselves by retelling the sensational sacrifices from 16th-century sources. Four centuries have not dulled the impact of those narratives.
The bottom line is that we need the Aztecs to be the most brutal people of antiquity, so we can line them up with all the other extremes: the most promiscuous, the most self-controlled, the most backward, the most clever. Peoples have been caricatured in the same way children's stories and folk tales assign a particular character to animals: chickens are stupid, foxes clever. We need these classifications because they help to organize the universe and we have a vested interest in keeping the status quo as writers and movie directors continually reinforce them for us. Such a place in the limelight of excess is not necessarily eternal. The Aztecs very likely took on the role of the Scythians in the ancient world, and have now become, to some extent, overshadowed by the Nazis in the popular imagination. Other horrific peoples may upstage all of them in the current world of terror.
I have followed the interpretations of the Aztecs for several decades. One moment that stands out is the first major Aztec sculpture exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington in 1984. The objects were the most dramatic and exquisite stone carvings from Mexico, Europe, and the U.S. Beautifully polished curving masses punctuated by detailed symbols and dates indicated a sophisticated art style and by extension a sophisticated people. The newspaper reviews of the exhibition were, however, all equally shrill in focusing on and illustrating only the horrible sacrifices of the Aztecs and said nothing about the art. Their illustrations came from 16th-century texts and they basically used them to rail against the mere idea of exhibiting Aztec "art." You can't fight the power of the 16th-century texts on the Aztecs.
Currently, the British Museum is planning a major Aztec exhibition and I suspect not much will be different in the interpretations. The voice may be neutrally scholarly but I suspect that the issue of sacrifice will be prominent. After all, anyone going to see an Aztec show wants to know about the sacrifices and would be disappointed without them. When the organizers asked for my suggestion I recommended that they put in some Aztec poetry.
"There, where the darts are dyed,
where the shields are painted,
are the perfumed white flowers,
flowers of the heart.
The flowers of the Giver of Life
open their blossoms.
Their perfume is sought by the lords:
This is Tenochtitlan."
- Cantares Mexicanos (León-Portilla 1963:166)
Of course, all Aztec poetry we know is from early Colonial texts.
References cited
Kiernan, V. G. 1990. "Noble and Ignoble Savages." In Exoticism in The Enlightenment. G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter, eds., pp. 86-116. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Bataille, Georges. 1928. "Vanished America." In L'art précolombien: L'Amérique avant Christophe Colomb, pp. 5-14. Cahiers de la République des lettres et des sciences et des artes, XI. Paris: Les Beaux-Arts.
León-Portilla, Miguel. 1963. Aztec Thought and Culture. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
The illustrations appearing in this issue are from The Postclassic Mesoamerican World. Michael E. Smith and Frances F. Berdan, eds. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2003. ISBN 0 87480-734-4.
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Last updated: 11/29/07