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The Passion According to the Wooden Drum: The Christian Appropriation of a Zapotec Ritual Genre in New Spain*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

David Tavárez*
Affiliation:
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Extract

Sometime after the summer of 1703, a strange traveler journeyed to several Zapotec-speaking communities nestled in the rugged geography of Villa Alta—an alcaldía mayor northeast of Oaxaca City in New Spain. He wore a pectoral ornament around his neck—a gift from the Benedictine friar Ángel Maldonado, a newly appointed bishop who had arrived in Oaxaca in July 1702—and was received throughout Villa Alta with “great noise and expressions of joy.” Upon his arrival in each locality, he would gather the townspeople and proclaim an offer of amnesty from the bishop: in exchange for registering a collective confession about traditional ritual practices at the administrative seat of San Ildefonso, and turning in their ritual implements—such as alphabetic ritual texts and wooden cylindrical drums—each Zapotec community would receive a general amnesty from ecclesiastical prosecution for idolatry.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2006

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References

* Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the 2002 American Society for Ethnohistory Meetings and at the 2000 Voz Indígena de Oaxaca conference at UCLA. I have benefited from the encouragement and suggestions of G. Aaron Broadwell, Serge Gruziński, James Lockhart, María de los Ángeles Romero Frizzi, Thomas Smith-Stark, Kevin Terraciano, and Judith Zeitlin. My research was supported by a research leave from Vassar College, and funded by a grant from the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies and a National Endowment for the Humanities grant administered by the John Carter Brown Library.

1 This vivid detail was provided in a report to the Crown written circa 1710 against Maldonado by Antonio de Torres, Procurator General of the Dominican Order in Oaxaca, Archivo General de Indias (AGI) Mexico 880. Although Maldonado wrote a point-by-point rebuttal of this report, he remained suspiciously silent on the subject of this most peculiar emissary.

2 See Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado de Oaxaca (AHAO), Mártires de Cajonos, Exp. S-4, pp. 615-631, and Gillow, Eulogio, Apuntes históricos sobre la idolatría e introducción del cristianismo en Oaxaca (Graz: Akademische Druckund Verlagsanstalt, [1889] 1990), pp. 174181 Google Scholar.

3 For an influential appraisal of the Zapotee calendar and Zapotee religion, see Marcus, Joyce, Mesoamerican Writing Systems (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992 Google Scholar). For a detailed discussion of recent developments in the study of the Zapotee ritual calendar and Pre-Columbian Zapotee writing, see Urcid, Javier, Zapotee Hieroglyphic Writing. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology, Number 34 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001)Google Scholar.

4 See AGI Indiferente, vol. 3000, no. 217; Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico (AGN) Inquisición, vol. 437, part IGoogle Scholar.

5 See AGI México, vol. 881.

6 See Franch, José Alcina, Calendario y religión entre los zapotecos (Mexico: UNAMJ993)Google Scholar; idem, “Mapas y calendarios zapotecos; siglos XVI y XVII,” Historia del Arte en Oaxaca, vol. 2 (Oaxaca: CONCA, Gobierno de Oaxaca, 1998), pp. 173-191; Miller, Arthur, “Transformations of Time and Space: Oaxaca, Mexico, circa 1500-1700,” in ¡mages of Memory. On Remembering and Representation, eds. Küchler, Susanne and Melion, Walter (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), pp. 141175 Google Scholar; idem, “Espacio, tiempo y poder entre los zapotecas de la sierra,” Acervos: Boletín de los Archivos y Bibliotecas de Oaxaca 10:3 (1998), pp. 17-20; Tavárez, David, “Colonial evangelization and native resistance: The interplay of native political autonomy and ritual practices in Villa Alta (New Spain), 1700-1704.” Interpreting Colonialism, eds. Wells, Byron and Stewart, Philip (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 2004), pp. 209230 Google Scholar.

7 This notion is discussed below, and is drawn from Jauss, Hans Robert, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

8 See Arrápalo, Ramón, El ritual del los bacabes (Mexico: UNAM, 1987)Google Scholar; Vásquez, Alfredo Barrera, El libro de ios Cantares de Dzitbalché (Mexico: INAH, 1965)Google Scholar, idem, El libro de los libros de Chilam Balani (Mexico: FCE, 1969); Edmonson, Munro, The ancient future of the Itza: The book of Chilam Balani ofTizimin (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982)Google Scholar; idem, Heaven born Merida and its destiny: the Book of Chilam Balani of Chumayel (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986); Roys, Ralph, Ritual of the Bacabs (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965)Google Scholar; idem, The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967).

9 See Gruzinski, Serge, The Conquest of Mexico (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Terraciano, Kevin and Sousa, Lisa, “The Original Conquest’ of Oaxaca: Nahua and Mixtee Accounts of the Spanish Conquest,” Ethnohistory 50:2 (2003), pp. 349400 Google Scholar, and Wood, Stephanie, Transcending Conquest. Nahua Views of Spanish Colonial Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003 Google Scholar).

10 Burkhart, Louise, “The Amanuenses Have Appropriated the Text: Interpreting a Náhuatl Song of Santiago,” in On the Translation of Native American Literatures, ed. Swann, Brian (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), pp. 339355 Google Scholar.

11 Burkhart, Louise, “The Voyage of Saint Amaro: A Spanish legend in Náhuatl Literature,” Colonial Latin American Review A (1995), pp. 2957 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Austin, Alfredo López, “Un repertorio de los tiempos en idioma náhuatl,” Anales de Antropología 10 (1973) 285296 Google Scholar; Tavárez, David, “La idolatría letrada: Un análisis comparativo de textos clandestinos rituales y devocionales en comunidades nahuas y zapotecas, 1613-1654,” Historia Mexicana 194, 49:2 (1999), pp. 197252 Google Scholar.

13 Andrews, J. Richard and Hassig, Ross, Treatise on the Heathen Institutions that Today Live Among the Indians Native to this New Spain (1629) (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Coe, Michael and Whittaker, R., Aztec Sorcerers in Seventeenth-Century Mexico (Albany: SUNY Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

14 See Cordova, Juan de, Vocabulario en lengua Çapoteca (Mexico: Pedro de Ocharte and Antonio Ricardo, 1578), p. 69v Google Scholar, where the Valley Zapotee expressions tij, ticha tij, and tij tólani are translated as “song.” The element tola is included in the verb tòllaya, which meant both “1 beat on drums” (ibid., 44r), and “I sing” (ibid., 70v). There may be a semantic link between this term and a different item with similar spelling, tola, which in Pre-Columbian times designated pieces of straw that were used to draw blood from one’s tongue as a sacrifice before a Zapotee priest (pigana). Tola was recruited by the Dominicans as the translation for the term “sin” in Valley Zapotee (ibid., 228v).

15 Cordova, Vocabulario, 1578.

16 One of this songs, devoted to God the Father, contains the variant “song and elegant speech” (di libana) as a genre designation (AGI Mexico 882, Booklet 103).

17 AGI Mexico 882, 296v-297r

18 Bierhorst, John, Cantares Mexicanos: Songs of the Aztecs (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), pp. 7274 Google Scholar.

19 Burgoa, Franciscode, Geográfica descripción, vol. I (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, [1674] 1989), p. 371 Google Scholar.

20 See Vázquez, Barrera, Cantares de Dzitbalché, 1965 Google Scholar.

21 Hanks, William F., “Discourse genres in a theory of practice,” American Ethnologist 14:4 (1987), p. 670 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Karttunen, Frances and Lockhart, James, “La estructura de la poesía náhuatl vista por sus variantes,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 14 (1980), pp. 1565 Google Scholar.

23 Bierhorst, Cantares Mexicanos, 1985, p. 42.

24 Rendón, Juan José, Diversification de las lenguas zapotecos (Mexico: CIESAS, 1995), pp. 157199 Google Scholar. Terrence Kaufman’s recent work, cited below, seems to confirm these groupings.

25 For a thorough discussion of the establishment of colonial institutions in Villa Alta, see Chance, John K., The Conquest of the Sierra (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

26 Burgoa, Francisco de, Palestra Historial (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, [1670] 1989), p. 96.Google Scholar

27 AGI Mexico 358, exp. 3 bis.

28 AGI Mexico 336 A, 76v-77r.

29 AGI Mexico 69, ramo 4, no. 47

30 See Alberro, Solange, Inquisición y sociedad en Mexico, 1571-1700 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econòmica, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greenleaf, Richard E., “The Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain: A Study in Jurisdictional Confusion,” The Americas 22:2 (1965), pp. 138166 Google Scholar; idem, The Mexican Inquisition of the Sixteenth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1969); and idem, Inquisición y sociedad en el Mexico colonial (Madrid: J. Porrúa Turanzas, 1985). For a comparative periodization of idolatry extirpation campaigns in the dioceses of Mexico and Oaxaca, see Tavárez, David, “Ciclos punitivos, economías del castigo, y estrategias indígenas ante la extirpación de idolatrías en Oaxaca y México,” in Nuevas perspectivas sobre el castigo de la heterodoxia en la Nueva España. Siglos XVI-XVIII, ed. Zaballa, Ana de (Bilbao: Servicio Editorial Universidad País Vasco, 2005), pp. 3756 Google Scholar.

31 Archivio Segreto Vaticano (ASV), Segreteria di Stato Vescovi e Prelati, no. 62.

32 Villegas y Sandoval Castro presided over three trials: Archivo del Poder Judicial del Estado de Oaxaca (APJO), Villa Alta Criminal 19, APJO, Villa Alta Criminal 22, and APJO, Villa Alta Criminal 23. For an analysis of Criminal 23, see Tavárez, David, “Idolatry as an ontological question: Native conscious ness and juridical proof in colonial Mexico,” Journal of Early Modern History 6:2 (2002), pp. 114139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 APJO, Villa Alta Criminal 25, AGI Mexico 357, Archivio Generale dell’Ordine dei Predicatori (AGOP) XIII, no. 12760, APJO, Villa Alta Criminal 49.

34 Sariñana may have been inspired by inquisitorial precedent. In Mexico City, in the early seventeenth century, the Holy Office erected a prisión perpetua for proselytizing Jews and heretics; see Alberro, , Inquisición, 1988, pp. 203205 Google Scholar. In the Archbishopric of Lima, a prison for idolaters called Casa de Santa Cruz was finished in 1618, and ceased to exist as such before 1639; see Gareis, Iris, “Repression and cultural change: The ‘Extirpation of Idolatry’ in colonial Peru,” in Spiritual Encounters: Interactions Between Christianity and Native Religions in Colonial America, eds. Griffiths, N., and Cervantes, F. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), p. 234 Google Scholar.

35 AGI Mexico 357.

36 AHAO, sección Libros de Cabildo, años 1696-1702.

37 Lachirioag town officials identified Fernando Lopes as one of the three leading “teachers of idolatries” in their community, and Lopes stated he had bought his songbook from Pedro de Bargas of Betaza. According to the testimony of Pedro’s son Fabián de Bargas, his father refused to teach him about divination practices, arguing that he was afraid of being discovered as a practitioner, and decided instead to pass on his ritual knowledge to his oldest son (AGI Mexico 882).

38 The next stage in this translation project will examine the local worship of these deities through the cross-referencing of the Villa Alta song and calendrical corpus with existing ethnohistorical and linguistic sources from the Valley of Oaxaca and the Sola region.

39 AGI 882, 430r.

40 Tavárez, David, “Naming the Trinity: From Ideologies of Translation to Dialectics of Reception in Colonial Nahua Texts, 1547-1771,” Colonial Latin American Review 9:1 (2000), pp. 2147 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Unless indicated otherwise, all translations from the Zapotee are my own. A rather unpolished translation of Booklet 102 appeared in David Tavárez, “De Cantares zapotecos a ‘libros del demonio’: La extirpación de discursos doctrinales híbridos en Villa Alta,” Acervos: Boletín de los Archivos y Bibliotecas de Oaxaca 17 (2000), pp. 1927 Google Scholar, but the present version must be regarded as a vast improvement. In order to produce a translation of Booklets 102 and 103, three major colonial Nexitzo and Cajonos Zapotee sources were employed: the only known colonial Nexitzo doctrinal imprint, Silva, Francisco Pacheco de, Dottrina Christiana (Mexico: Francisco X. Sánchez, 1687)Google Scholar; Reyes’, Gaspar de los Arte de la Lengua Zapoleca Serrana, (Oaxaca: Imprenta del Estado, [1704] 1891)Google Scholar; and Martin’s, Juan Vocabulario de la lengua Castellana y zapotrea nexitza (Newberry Library (NEW), Ayer 1702, ca. 1696)Google Scholar. I also consulted a selection of testaments, letters and petitions drafted between 1610 and 1786 in Cajonos and Nexitzo-speaking towns. The Valley Zapotee sources employed here—besides Juan de Cordova’s monumental Vocabulario en lengua çapoteca and Arte en lengua çapoteca, both from 1578—include Agüero, Cristóbal de, Misceláneo Espiritual en el idioma Zapoteco (Mexico: Francisco Rodríguez Lupercio, 1666)Google Scholar; Pedro de la Cueva, Parábolas y exemplos sacados de las costumbres del campo (Bibliothèque National de France [BNF], Collection Pinart, Fonds Américain 70, ca. 1600); Feria, Pedro de, Doctrina Christiana en lengua castellana y çapoteca (Mexico: Pedro Ocharte, 1567)Google Scholar; Levanto’s, Leonardo Cathecismo de la doctrina Christiana en lengua zapoteca (Mexico: Ediciones Toledo, [1776] 1989)Google Scholar; Martínez, Alonso, Manual breve y compendioso para empesar a aprender lengua çapoteca (John Carter Brown Library [JCBJ Codex Ind. 70, [1633] 1872); Peñafiel, Antonio, ed.. Gramática zapoteca de autor anònimo (Oaxaca: Ediciones Toledo, 1981)Google Scholar; and Torralba’s, Juan Francisco Arte Zapoteco (NEW, Ayer 1699, 1800)Google Scholar. Contemporary sources include some recent works on contemporary Zapotee variants: Butler, Ines, Vocabulario zapoteco de Yatzachi el Bajo (Mexico: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, 1997)Google Scholar; Lillehaugen, Brook, The Categorical Status of Body Part Prepositions in Valley Zapotee Languages (Master’s thesis, Linguistics Department, UCLA, 2003)Google Scholar; Long, Rebecca and Cruz, Sofronio, Diccionario zapoteco de San Bartolomé Zoogocho, Oaxaca (Coyoacán: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, 1999)Google Scholar; López, Filemón, Filemón, , and Newberg, Ronaldo, La conjugación del verbo zapoteco: zapoteco de Yalálag (Mexico: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, 1990)Google Scholar; and Munro, Pamela et al., San Lucas QuiaviníZapotee Dictionary (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Publications, 1999)Google Scholar. My approach to Feria and Cordova was greatly facilitated by George Aaron Broadwell, “The conjunctions of Colonial and Modern Valley Zapotee: Evidence from Feria (1567),” (Paper delivered at the American Society for Ethnohistory Meetings, Quebec City, 2002); Kaufman, Terrence, Proto-Zapotec reconstructions (Manuscript, 1994-2004, 77 pp.)Google Scholar; Thomas Smith-Stark, Sergio Bogard and Ausencia López Cruz, Searchable electronic file of Juan de Cordova’s Vocabvlario en lengva çapoteca (Word Perfect 8, 7.7 MB, 1993); Thomas Smith-Stark, “La ortografía del Vocabulario de fray Juan de Cordova,” (Paper delivered at the III Conferencia de Estudios Oaxaqueños, Oaxaca City, 1998); and idem, “Dioses, sacerdotes, y sacrificio: Una mirada a la religion zapoteca a través del Vocabulario en lengua Çapoteca (1578) de Juan de Cordova,” in Cruz, V. de la and Winter, M., eds., La religion de los bini gula’sa’ (Oaxaca: Fondo Editorial IEEPO, 2001), pp. 89195 Google Scholar.

42 APJO, Villa Alta Civil 25, 28r.

41 Terraciano, Kevin, The Mixtees of Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 298 Google Scholar.

44 See Urcid, Zapotee Hieroglyphic Writing, 2001, for a full discussion of the reconstructed Zapotee 260-day calendar from late Formative to Classic times, and Alcina Franch, “Mapas y calendarios zapote cos,” 1998, for a tentative reconstruction of this calendar’s structure in colonial Villa Alta.

45 Cordova, Vocabulario, 1578. 115v.

46 Each of the 20 thirteen-day periods is linked with a revolving circuit through each of the three levels: Trecena 1 is associated with the House of Earth. Trecena 2 with the House of the Sky, Trecena 3 with the House of Earth, Trecena 4 with the House of the Underworld, Trecena 5 with the House of Earth, and so on until Trecena 20, yielding 10 trecenas associated with Earth, and 5 trecenas each linked to Sky and the Underworld.

47 Ibid., 116r.

48 Alcina Frunch, in his Calendario y religión entre los zapotecos, p. 239, claims that Calendar 11 was turned in by the town officials of Santo Domingo Roayaga. However, since the current order of the calendars and the collective confessions in legajo 882 may have shifted since these materials were compiled in 1705, the only valid criteria for provenance are linguistic data and relevant annotations found in the calendars. The day list of Calendar 11 was written by a speaker of Cajonos Zapotee, and some annota tions regarding auguries for the various days were written by a speaker of Nexitzo (or Bijanos) Zapotee. Since most of the calendars are written in either Cajonos or Nexitzo / Bijanos Zapotee, Calendar 11’s dialectal diversity suggests that it circulated across the Cajonos-non-Cajonos dialect boundary in southern Villa Alta.

49 Alternative translation: “You, the servant of God Himself, generously granted the true light to humankind.

50 APJO, Villa Alta Criminal 117.

51 In this song, the orthographic representation lani is somewhat ambivalent, as it may represent either a locative expression or a coordinating conjunction. The latter option would yield the translation “He is at the palace and [he is] in the sky.” However, the Villa Alta songs seem to employ yahui lani quiebaa as a reified reference to the Christian heaven in syntactic contexts in which a coordinating conjunction would not be expected. A variant of this expression appears in the testament genre; the Yatzona will cited above (APJO, Villa Alta Civil 25, 1689) uses chia yehua yebaa, “she is at the palace of the sky,” and a 1721 will from Coyotepec (cited in Lillehaugen, Categorical Status, 2003, p. 41) has tielilaachij guela nabanij selij lanij guehuij quijebaa, “I believe in the eternal life located in the palace of the upper world.” As Lillehaugen observes, lanij was essentially a body part employed as a locative; thus, Cordova, Vocabulario, 1578, 52r) translates “belly” as láni.

52 Lockhart, James, The Nahuas After the Conquest (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 252 Google Scholar.

53 Terraciano, , Colonial Mixtee, 2001, p. 301 Google Scholar.

54 Burkhart, Louise, Before Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Náhuatl Literature (Albany: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, SUNY-Albany, 2001), p. 11 Google Scholar.

55 Cordova provides an extremely succinct characterization of Late Postclassic Zapotee titles. For a more detailed characterization of the labeling of Zapotee lords as coqui and xoana in a corpus of pictographic depictions with glosses—the lienzos of Petapa and Cuevea—see Oudijk, Michel and Jansen, Maarten, “Changing History in the Lienzos de Guevea and Santo Domingo Petapa,” Ethnohistory 47:2 (1999), pp. 281331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Burkhart, Before Guadalupe, 2001, p. 149.

57 “Palace Garden” is a tentative translation of lleya yahui. Cordova’s Vocabulario glosses léea as “orchard” (222v), “patio” (305v), and in several Villa Alta testaments, leya and lea are glossed as “patio,” with the sense of “enclosure.” Yahui is probably a local Nexitzo Zapotee cognate of the Valley Zapotee term uuéhui or quihui, rendered as “palace, royal house” (34lv), and as “courteous, regal” (80v, 98r, 212r). The 1677 Yatzona will quoted above has the orthographic variant yehua. Cordova (27v-28r) glosses yáhui as “something old or ancient” but the infrequent use of this item in his dictionary may support the proposal that this was an archaic rendering of the aforementioned Valley Zapotee term quéhui.

58 See Winston-Allen, Anne, Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages, (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, which is quoted in Burkhart, Before Guadalupe, 2001, p. 15.

59 Note that Cordova (157v) lists two Valley Zapotee possibilities for the expression “to become pregnant”: one that is used to speak about the Virgin’s pregnancy (làca lào xínia), and four variants used to refer to any other woman’s pregnancy (tiyóo xíni länia, ticáa xínia, tica täoya, ticcàa lào xínia).

60 Viseo, Juan Bautista, Sermonario en Lengua mexicana (Mexico: Diego López Daualos, 1606Google Scholar), transcribed and translated in Burkhart, Before Guadalupe, 2001, p. 16.

61 Bocanegra, Juan Pérez, Ritual formulario e institución de curas para administrar a los naturales de este reyno los santos sacramentos (Lima: Jerónimo de Contreras, 1631), pp. 704706 Google Scholar. This hymn was translated and analyzed as part of an extensive study of colonial Quechua doctrinal genres in Durston, Alan, Pastoral Quechua: The History of Christian Translation in Peru, 1550-1650 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 2004), pp. 494498 Google Scholar.

62 Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, p. 89.

63 Burkhart, Before Guadalupe, 2001, p. 20.

64 Durston, Pastoral Quechua, p. 496. The original Pérez Bocanegra text has Ioseph instead of lesep.

65 Long, , Diccionario zapoteco, 1999, p.299 Google Scholar.

66 Hill, Jane, “The Flower World of Old Uto-Aztecan,” Journal of Anthropological Research 48 (1992), pp. 117144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 See León-Portilla, Miguel, “Cuicatl y Tlahtolli: las formas de expresión en náhuatl,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 16 (1983), pp. 7677 Google Scholar, where he argues that, in Náhuatl poetry, ideas are expressed in a parallel form which is syntactically or semantically parallel, and rhetorical commonplaces are often composed by two terms that refer to a third term in a metaphorical or metonymie fashion—a device that may be termed difrasismo.

68 “They gathered” is a tentative translation of betopa. In doctrinal Zapotee, this verb is clearly associated with the activities that took place as a preamble to the Crucifixion. Thus, Pacheco de Silva (1687) uses it in his versified rendering of Mary’s second sorrowful mystery as “they gathered on a great mountain” (betoppa guiag xene, 132v).

69 Córdova’s Vocabulario, 112r, gives tolijaya, a form that may be etymologically related to this verb, which he translates as “hitting with a stick or a whip.”

70 APJO, Villa Alta Civil 28, Ir.

71 Reyes, A rte, [1704] 1891.

72 Burgoa, Geográfica descripción, [1674] 1989, vol. 2, p. 126.

73 Ibid., vol. I. 267.

74 Peñafiel, , Gramática, 1981, p. xxix Google Scholar.

75 See Burkhart, Louise, The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

76 See Horcasitas, Fernando, El teatro náhuatl (Mexico: UNAM, 1975)Google Scholar; Burkhart, Louise, Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial Mexico (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sell, Barry and Burkhart, Louise, Náhuatl Theater. Volume 1. Death and Life in Colonial Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

77 AGI Mexico 882.

77 Jauss, , Aesthetic ofReception, 1982, pp. 19,23 Google Scholar.

79 See Hanks, William F., Intertexts: Writings on Language, Utterance and Context (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlet’ield, 1999)Google Scholar.

80 AGI Mexico 877.

81 Taylor, William B., Magistrates of the Sacred (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 334, 706Google Scholar.

82 Alternative translation: “You, the servant of God Himself, generously granted the true light to humankind.”

83 AVA Civil 274, Tabaa, 1764, 10r: “niga godie yoho chaga patrio” (a onde estubo la caĮsja que linda con Patricio); AVA Civil 231, Yatzachi el Bajo, 1755, 16r: “niga godie lani bichi xotahua” (en donde bivio con el hermano de mi Abuelo).

84 Cordova, Vocabulario, 297r, “Padecer o passar con pacieĮnJcia […]. Ticiguélalija quitóbi làchia”; 390v: “Sufrirlos con paciencia. […] ticijguèlalija.”

85 Pacheco, Doctrina Christiana, 4r, Goxaccazije laotitza etto gothiogo Xihui Poncio Pilato, “padeció debajo del poder de Poncio Pilato…”; Cueva, Parábolas y exemplos, 16v: coxacazijni