Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain: Nahua Sacred Journeys in Mexico's Huasteca Veracruzana 1646423291, 9781646423293

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Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain

Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain Nahua Sacred Journeys in Mexico’s Huasteca Veracruzana Alan R. Sandstrom and Pamela Effrein Sandstrom Illustrated by Michael K. Aakhus  ◆ Ana Laura Ávila-­Myers  ◆ Michael A. Sandstrom

University Press of Colorado   ◆  Denver

This book was supported, in part, by the Fundación Stresser-Péan.

© 2022 by University Press of Colorado Published by University Press of Colorado 1624 Market Street, Suite 226 PMB 39883 Denver, Colorado 80202-1559 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

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The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Colorado, University of Denver, University of Northern Colorado, University of Wyoming, Utah State University, and Western Colorado University. ∞ This paper meets the requirements of the ANSI/NISO Z39.48-­1992 (Permanence of Paper).

ISBN: 978-­1-­64642-­329-­3 (hardcover) ISBN: 978-­1-­64642-­350-­7 (paperback) ISBN: 978-­1-­64642-­330-­9 (ebook) https://​doi​.org​/​10​.5876​/​9781646423309 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sandstrom, Alan R., author. | Sandstrom, Pamela Effrein, 1954– author. Title: Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain : Nahua sacred journeys in Mexico’s Huasteca Veracruzana / Alan R. Sandstrom and Pamela Effrein Sandstrom ; illustrated by Michael Aakhus, Ana Laura ÁvilaMyers, Michael A. Sandstrom. Description: Denver : University Press of Colorado, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022038156 (print) | LCCN 2022038157 (ebook) | ISBN 9781646423293 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781646423507 (paperback) | ISBN 9781646423309 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Nahuas—Religion. | Nahuas—Rites and ceremonies. | Nahua cosmology. | Indians of Mexico—Religion. | Pilgrims and pilgrimages—Mexico—Huasteca Region. | Veracruz (VeracruzLlave, Mexico)—Religious life and customs. Classification: LCC F1221.N3 S263 2022 (print) | LCC F1221.N3 (ebook) | DDC 299.7/8452—dc23/eng/20220817 LC record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov​/​2022038156 LC ebook record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov​/​2022038157

To the memory of Nahua ritual specialist Encarnación Téllez Hernández of Amatlán, Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz, Mexico. Called Cirilo by all who knew him, he was a tlamatiquetl—­a person of knowledge—­who recognized that everything in this world is interconnected and deserving of respect. He committed his life to ensuring that his culture and its wisdom would survive and never be forgotten.

Ritual specialist Encarnación (Cirilo) Téllez Hernández poses with his wife, Ana Martínez Hernández, December 2006.

Contents List of Illustrations  viii   |  List of Tables ix  |  Preface xi  |  Acknowledgments xv

1 Preparations for the Journey  3 Introduction to the Problem of Keeping to the Path  3

Preparations for the Undertaking  82

Pilgrimage in the Huasteca Region  9 The Nahua People  11

The Altar Offering to the Seeds, Earth, and Water at Amatlán  100

The Village of Amatlán  12

Offerings to the Fire, Spring, and Outside Cross  108

Problems of Translation  16

Myth of the Nahua Fire Spirit Tlixihuantzin  129

Becoming a Ritual Specialist  18 Conducting Research on Nahua Pilgrimage  21 Analyzing Nahua Myths and Oral Narratives  23 Myth of the Nahua Maize Spirit Chicomexochitl (Seven Flower)  25

2 The Nahua Sacred Cosmos  48 Myth of the Time before the Current Era  48 Nahua Belief and Ritual Practice  51 The Sacred Landscape  55 The Human Body  56 Empirical Observations, Colors, and Numbers  56 Conceptions of Divinity  59 Considering Alternatives to Pantheism  64 Pantheism and Judeo-­Christian Conceptions of Good and Evil  70

vi : 

3 The Postectli Pilgrimage Begins  82 The Preliminary Cleansing and Ritual Chanting  94

4 Trek to the Sacred Mountain Summit  135 Along the Pilgrims’ Path  135 The Altar Offering to the Seeds and Hills at Ichcacuatitla  140 The Altar Offering to the Earth and Clouds Beneath the Precipice  146 The Altar Offering and Cave Offerings to Water Dweller and Lightning and Thunder at the Middle of Postectli  156 The Altar Offering to Water Owner, Cross, Moon, and Sun at the Summit  167 Myth of the Nahua Water Dweller Apanchaneh (La Sirena)  174

5 Nahua Ritual Foundations  181 Elements of the Approach  181

Challenges to Nahua Costumbre Religion and World View  71

Sacred Music  182

A Reflection on Changes in the Village  72

Paper Figures and the Mezah in Nahua Ritual  195

Myth of the Nahua Water Owner Zahhuan (San Juan Bautista)  73

Reading the Paper Figures  199

Altars, Adornments, and the Paper Figures  183

6 Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  207

8 Pilgrimage in Perspective  309

What the Paper Figures Convey  207

Foundational Definitions and Case Examples  309

Cleansing the Way  207

Pre-­Hispanic Nahua Pilgrimage to Tlalocan  316

Making the Journey  225

Pilgrimages in Mexico Today  319

Paper Figures for the Mezah in Amatlán  233

Points of Comparison among the Selected Cases  322

Paper Figures for the Mezah at Ichcacuatitla  246 Paper Figures for the Mezah at Tepexitzintlan, Beneath the Precipice  252

9 Conclusions about Mesoamerican Pilgrimage  326

Paper Figures for the Mezah at Tlahcopoztectli, the Middle of Postectli  257 Paper Figures for the Mezah at Tzonteconpoztectli, the Summit  263 Paper Figures That Remain on the Mountain or Return Home  274 Summary and High Points of the Postectli Pilgrimage  278

7 Keys to Nahua Ritual Strategies  285 Ritual Objects as Subjects  285 Specificity and Locality  287 Ritual Economy, Exchange, and Reciprocity  287 Bargaining with the Spirits  291

Appendix A. Pilgrimage to Palaxtepetl   337 Appendix B. Pilgrimage to Tres Pozitos   365 Appendix C. Pilgrimage to Xomulco   385 Appendix D. Huastecan Nahua Spirit Entities, A–­Z   393

A Coda on Monism, Pantheism, and the Infinity of Images  405 Comparative Paper Figures  405 The Elements Conjoined  409 Nahuatl Glossary and Terminology   417

Anthropomorphism’s Appeal  291

Note on Translation and Orthography  417

Religion as a Social Act  294

Sources for Glosses of Nahuatl Words  418

Ritual as Costly Signaling  296

Nahuatl Terms Used in the Pilgrimage Study  418

Altar Design and the Principle of Modularity  297 Order and Disorder  299 Allure of the Periphery  301 Scaling Up and Down  302

References  423 Index  445 About the Authors   459

Summary of Nahua Ritual Strategies  305

 : vii

Illustrations

Figures

Plates

1.1. Schematic map of pilgrimage destinations in the sacred landscape  7

1.1. The tzitzimitl, an old hag, hides her daughter inside a clay pot  27

1.2. Map of Mexico showing the Huasteca Veracruzana region  9

1.2. Seven Flower and his twin sister, Five Flower, are born  28

5.1. Various paper figures embodying the sacred earth  189

1.3. Seven Flower is ground up and fed to the fish  29

5.2. Core anthropomorphic form of the paper figures  190 5.3. Template for the animated cosmos  192 6.1. Two petate designs for the cleansings  220 6.2. Customary layout of a cleansing array  221 6.3. A typical petate design for the altar offerings  234 6.4. The foundational altar-­cross-­earth module  245 7.1. Totiotzin made manifest in Cirilo’s paper figures  305

1.4. The turtle carries Seven Flower on its back  30 1.5. The tzitzimitl removes her scalp  32 1.6. The amaranth seed and sweatbath trials are put to Seven Flower  33 1.7. The toad carries the ashes of the tzitzimitl to the sea  34 1.8. The sacred twins are aided in the search for mazatl, their deer father  35 1.9. Water owner Zahhuan breaks off the top of Postectli mountain  37 1.10. Maize returns to the people who observe el costumbre rituals  38

viii : 

Tables

5.1. Altar Locations, Ritual Episodes, and Focus of the Pilgrimage Offerings  197 6.1. Spirit Entities Featured in the Cleansings  209 6.2. Spirit Entities Featured in the Pilgrimage Offerings  227 6.3. Altar Sets 01 and 06  235 6.4. Altar Sets 04 and 05  247

6.5. Altar Sets 07 and 08  253 6.6. Altar Sets 09, 10, 02, and 03  259 6.7. Altar Sets 11, 12, and 13  267 6.8. Altar Set 17, the Dressed Paper Figures  275 7.1. Provisions for the Pilgrimage  289 X.1. Comparative Paper Figures  406 X.2. The Elements Conjoined  409

 : ix

Preface

What do you do when there are coyotes in your village? For the Nahua people of northern Veracruz, Mexico, the word coyotl (from which English borrows “coyote”) designates the small, wild dog, but it also signifies any non-­ Indigenous person. We were the coyotes: Alan, Pamela, and our then fifteen-­ year-­ old son Michael. That year of 1997–­98 we had come from Indiana to Amatlán, a remote Nahua village of about 600 people, to continue our long-­term study of social life and customs in a single community. So at least we were familiar coyotes.1 Alan had been visiting and living in Amatlán since 1970, Pamela since a few years later, and Michael for most of his life. People smiled broadly and even giggled when we arrived, undoubtedly recalling our minor humiliations over the years as we adjusted to the unfamiliar patterns in Amatlán. In early 1998 we returned to the community after a brief trip to the capital city, and our friend and colleague Cirilo had an alarming glint in his eye as we approached him. He was, like all adult men in the village, a maize farmer adept in the slash-­and-­burn techniques of intensive horticulture. He was also a renowned ritual specialist and an accomplished diviner. By casting maize kernels and reading the resulting pattern, he could foretell events. As we sat down in the shrine that occupied a major portion of his house, he made an effort to suppress a smile, and said in a low voice, “We are going on a journey to make offerings to the antihuiti, the ancient ones. Why don’t you come with us?” We asked him where he and his followers were going and he replied, “Postectli.” We had seen this imposing mountain many times. It seemed far away but was actually just under 35 kilometers (roughly 20 miles) taking the least circuitous route from Amatlán and

https://​doi​.org​/​10​.5876​/​9781646423309​.c000

so we said to ourselves, “A trek to Postectli can’t be all that difficult, can it?” We eagerly accepted Cirilo’s invitation but wondered why he chuckled to himself as we walked away. What do you do with coyotes in the community? Send them on a pilgrimage. Over the next nine years we participated in five pilgrimages: two treks to Postectli and three others to sacred hills of lesser stature in the Nahua pantheon. These were experiences we shall never forget. Our aim in writing this account is to share those experiences, to document the remarkable events that transpired, and contribute to anthropological theory on religion and pilgrimage. We present color photos arranged chronologically to illustrate the steps in these sacred journeys, as well as drawings of the sacred cut-­paper figures at the center of ritual activity, illuminating the details of their iconography. The exquisite cuttings are the focus of elaborate offerings on altars involving chanting and blood sacrifice. We provide background information on this Indigenous religion and world view along with statements from ritual participants so that those unfamiliar with Mesoamerica might gain an understanding of why Nahua people engage in such physically demanding and elaborate ritual practices. To place the ethnographic information into wider cultural context we also translate a sample of core myths and heartfelt chants delivered by the ritual specialists on the sacred journeys. We discuss religious treks among other groups in Mesoamerica and relate them, along with the Nahua examples, to worldwide practices of pilgrimage. Writing about religious pilgrimage is itself a kind of journey with its own set of challenges. It is our hope to present the phenomenon as both an experience and an intellectual

 : xi

puzzle. We took our guide Cirilo’s parting chuckle as an invitation and a challenge to stay the course on these two very different sorts of journeys. In all of our years in Amatlán, we constantly asked ourselves how such cultural richness could possibly have survived 500 years of incomparably devastating and disruptive history. The Nahua, like virtually all Indigenous people, have been colonized and oppressed by alien groups. Today many live in a world where they are marginalized if not brutally oppressed by racism and ethnocentrism. Through it all, the Nahua have survived and even thrived at the edges of Mexican society, often in remote areas far removed from urban influences. The Huasteca of eastern Mexico where our study is situated is such a place. Indigenous people like the residents of Amatlán make up at least 50  percent of the population of the vast Huasteca region. There they have innovated and adopted strategies that allow them to be relatively self-­ sufficient and minimally dependent on Hispanic society; in short, they survive because they have learned to accommodate and work around local elites who covet their land and resources. Nahuas and their neighbors have been able to overcome threats and even prosper by following religious practices that create a strong sense of identity, dignity, and solidarity in the face of adversity. These rituals are a powerful attraction for those who wish to pursue their lives and celebrate being Nahua in a world dominated by Hispanics. Prior to the profound socioeconomic changes of the past half century, participating in these ritual events was the defining proof of Indigenous identity. Local Hispanic elites attend orthodox Catholic services and often look askance at Native American beliefs and rituals that are founded upon an enduring philosophy that celebrates life, defines the place of human beings in the natural world, and provides guidelines for how to conduct oneself on this earth. Relatively few people from outside the Huasteca know about this rich and living tradition of religious observances. This book focuses on the most complex and inclusive expression of Nahua religion: pilgrimage to the summits of sacred mountains. We have been studying this remarkable Indigenous group for five decades, both in the field and through reports written by a diverse range of explorers and scholars. Nothing in our experience comes as close to revealing the essence of Nahua culture, religion, and world view as does going on pilgrimage. It is on the arduous trail and before complex altars where people are most free to express themselves as the possessors of valued traditions that, while not unchanging, trace to the ancient origins of Mesoamerica.

xii : Preface

Like people all over the world, the Nahua marshal their cultural resources to create a space for themselves, to defend their autonomy, and to assert their humanity in the face of adverse conditions. The usual enemies of such traditions are at work in modern Mexico: rapid technological change, new roads and communication networks; a national and international economic system that militates against the small family farmer; and the dispersal of members of extended families that amplifies the dysfunction of small communities. The Nahua are aware of the potential culture loss, and leaders in Amatlán asked us to do what we could to document their ritual observances while those practices are still actively followed. This work is our attempt to comply with that request. We have no reason to believe that Nahua religion will fully disappear anytime soon, but people clearly feel pressured by these external forces and by the departure of the younger generation to distant cities in Mexico and abroad. Our purpose is to show ancient Nahua ritual practices in detail and what they reveal about Nahua culture as it is lived today. The pilgrimages are the public face of Nahua religion. They reveal what the people themselves wish others to see, and it was our good fortune to be invited as witnesses to such devotion. In our experience, Nahua pilgrimages to sacred mountains, whether elaborate or modest, are structurally very similar. The ritual sequences and the paper figures employed in each instance were virtually identical, and participating in five pilgrimages led by the same cohort of ritual specialists enabled us to fill in gaps in the earlier documentation. The overall goal of the project is to provide a reasonable interpretation of a little-­ reported cultural practice grounded in carefully curated ethnographic materials. We hope our effort will ensure that members of Indigenous communities and Nahua scholars of the future will have access to an irreplaceable cultural-­historical record. But there is yet another goal we pursue in undertaking this description and analysis, and maybe it is the most important of all. Nahua religion can teach people a great deal about the world and their place in it. Once one becomes accustomed to beliefs and practices that at first may appear strange and unfamiliar, it is possible to glimpse a profound philosophy that posits the existence of a very different kind of universe from the one most Euro-­Americans think they inhabit. It is a universe suffused with the divine, where balance and equilibrium are valued above all else and where people play an important role in its maintenance and preservation. Human beings are precious components of this kind of universe. They

are “sprouts of God,” in the words of the Nahua, but at the same time a part of something much bigger that involves all of the forces and elements of a living cosmos. We invite readers into a reality where water, earth, seeds, and sun interact with people on a daily basis to produce food and sustain life. It is a “radiant mirror-­world,” as the Nahua put it. Many people recognize that we live in a time of crisis that is profoundly lacking in leadership and a global vision of sustainability, and dependent on extractive industries and productive practices that destroy the earth. People in the wealthiest countries are estranged from those very environmental processes that support their lives and livelihoods—­the forces most deserving of reverence and respect. Fully recognizing our own limitations as cross-­cultural emissaries, we present another perspective on ways in which humans can learn to coexist with one another and the natural forces that sustain them. The Nahua perspective does not require belief in deities or supernatural beings of any kind, despite how ritual specialists and lay people have chosen to explain their religion to outsiders like us. They may use words like “spirit(s),” “lord(s),” or “god(s),” whether or not they mean the Christian God or the Catholic saints, but their concepts do not translate easily into Eurocentric systems of thought and belief. Nahua religion is a celebration of the power of life, but it is the kind of life that is found in each and every being and thing in the cosmos. Understanding Nahua rituals can help each of us to recognize this omnipresent power and, in so doing, perhaps mitigate the growing sense of alienation felt by so many inhabitants of this diminishing planet. It is our intent to demonstrate the greatest respect in writing about Nahua religion and world view and to adhere to the highest ethical standards of anthropological scholarship. We use the phrase “Native American” to refer collectively to the Indigenous peoples who inhabit the lands stretching from the Arctic to the tip of South America. In our usage the adjective includes Nahuas who live in modern-­day Mexico. In Spanish, the Nahua and their neighbors belonging to different ethnic groups are

called pueblos originarios, the original inhabitants or First Peoples of the Mesoamerican culture area. To be clear at the outset, our focus is on Nahua pilgrimage and the practices of the religion known as el costumbre as they exist today; we do not systematically address questions about the antiquity of such practices or their linkages to ancient civilizations. Whenever possible, we use the words of the people themselves to capture the deeper meanings of belief and practice as part of a living religion followed by significant numbers of people throughout Mexico, particularly the Huasteca region. Our decisions about how to represent concepts of Nahua and neighboring groups in English translation hone close to current but evolving practices. As acknowledged throughout the book, we take guidance from the standards of writing style and presentation adopted by Indigenous anthropologists and writers whenever possible.2 We generally put Nahuatl and other non-­English words in lower-­ case italics throughout the text (not merely at the first mention) in order to draw attention to the specialized vocabulary of el costumbre religion. The name of the most sacred Totiotzin, however, we capitalize and set in regular roman font because of its universal nature encompassing everything in the cosmos. We also capitalize the names of specific spirit entities that Nahua ritual specialists and storytellers temporarily extract from the reality of Totiotzin and incorporate into ritual chanting and traditional stories—­the body of Nahua Oral Tradition. Our practice both reflects and respects the deference accorded them by Indigenous speakers. Because Nahua spirit entities are closely associated with what Euro-­Americans call processes of nature, in our discussions of them we put their names in italics, not capitalized, in order to underscore that they are aspects of a much larger, singular reality. Any departure from these rules (e.g., occasional orthographic changes in the Nahuatl transcription and English translation of chants) we explain in notes. In sum, the names of Nahua spirit entities and Nahuatl terms may be written in various ways, depending on the context.

Preface : xiii

Acknowledgments

Many years in the making, this account of Huastecan Nahua pilgrimage has come into being through the efforts and goodwill of many people. It is our pleasure to acknowledge these individuals and their contributions. First and foremost, we owe everything to the residents of Amatlán who, proud of their Nahua heritage, welcomed strangers into their community with generosity and good cheer. Of particular note, our compadres Cirilo (Valente) Hernández Antonia and Francisca Hernández Morales along with Bartolo Hernández Hernández and Angelina Téllez Martínez helped to make our stay in the community not only possible but enjoyable as well. During the pilgrimages we were treated graciously by people in the Nahua communities of Cacahuatengo, Ichcacuatitla, and Mirador, as well as by the Ñähñu (Otomí) visitors from Cruz Blanca. There is no way we can adequately repay the hospitality and patience of so many. We especially want to thank the ritual specialists—­the remarkable people of knowledge, the tlamatinimeh, who serve as spiritual leaders and guides on these sacred journeys. Encarnación (Cirilo) Téllez Hernández, to whom we dedicate this book, was the lead organizer of the five pilgrimages we participated in and document in these pages. His colleagues in Amatlán—­master practitioners in their own right—­were Silveria Hernández Hernández and María Dolores Hernández. Nahua ritual specialists from neighboring communities, many of whom were Cirilo’s students, included the following participants: Catarina, Raymundo, and Timoteo (whom we knew only by their first names), along with Catalina Hernández Martínez, Teófilo Jiménez Hernández, and Juan Antonio Lino Hernández. Present during the first pilgrimage to Postectli was Cirilo’s teacher and mentor, the master

Otomí ritual specialist Evaristo de la Cruz, and his daughter Eugenia San Agustín Hernández. Sofía (whose full name we also never learned) is another Otomí ritual specialist who accompanied us on all but the first pilgrimage to Postectli; an acolyte of Cirilo’s, Sofía possessed the gift of being able to make direct contact with the water spirit. In addition, we acknowledge the contributions of the other Otomí ritual specialists who played various roles in the pilgrimage rituals. Our son, Michael A. Sandstrom, joined us on both pilgrimages to Postectli. Along with our daughter-­in-­law, Elizabeth S. Davis, he has offered steadfast support during our ethnographic endeavors. Michael not only brought joy and enthusiasm to the many years we spent together in the field during his childhood and youth, but in later years he contributed his considerable talents to the ongoing initiative, driving miles off road under sometimes hazardous conditions, creating maps and diagrams to enhance the text, and helping to document the sacred journeys through photography. All of the photographs that appear in the study were taken by Alan, Pamela, or Michael (save for a few images extracted from video, as noted). We were also greatly aided in our research by Nahua anthropologist Arturo Gómez Martínez of the Museo Nacional de  Antropología e Historia in Mexico City, who accompanied us on both pilgrimages to the summit of Postectli. Readers will note how often we cite his excellent and authoritative publications or commentary on Huastecan Nahua religion and ritual. Special recognition must go to the many Nahua men and women who graciously allowed us over the years to record their traditional narratives, all of whom we acknowledge in notes throughout the book. Román Güemes Jiménez

 : xv

of the Instituto de  Antropología of the Universidad Veracruzana accompanied us to the field on several occasions in 1986 and provided an invaluable service by transcribing the spoken Nahuatl and translating the narratives into Spanish. We also acknowledge Cándido Hernández Agustina, a bilingual former schoolmaster in Amatlán, who transcribed and translated many of the storytellers’ narratives in 1990. The Nahuatl chants and statements recorded in 1998 that we present in the book were transcribed and translated into Spanish in 2018 by our esteemed Nahua colleagues Abelardo de  la  Cruz de  la  Cruz, Alberta (Bety) Martínez Cruz, and Eduardo de  la  Cruz Cruz, who formed part of the Zacatlan Macehualtlallamiccan team of Indigenous scholars working in the Instituto de  Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de  Zacatecas (IDIEZ) at the University of Zacatecas. In 2021, Brisa Sánchez Zavala provided invaluable assistance in checking over our colloquial English translations of the Nahuatl. These talented researchers not only generously shared their linguistic skills to help us present accurate translations (and retain some sense of the poetry as expressed in Nahuatl) but also provided an insider’s perspective that helped to validate many of our ethnographic observations. Their painstaking work and attention to detail is plainly evident even if not explicitly acknowledged in every instance. We cannot thank them enough for their contributions. Our thanks also go to Hugo García Valencia, Sofía Larios León, Isabel Romero, and Benjamín Marín López, who, along with Arturo Gómez Martínez, came to Amatlán to join us on the first pilgrimage to Postectli. Our intrepid friend and filmmaker Jeff Kaufman visited us on two occasions in Amatlán and participated in the pilgrimage to Xomulco. We are especially grateful to our longtime colleague Jesús Ruvalcaba Mercado of the Centro de  Investigaciones e Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS). He has been a stalwart and selfless supporter of not only our research efforts but those of an entire generation of scholars working in the Huasteca region of Mexico. People who commented on earlier drafts of the manuscript helped a great deal to clarify the presentation and logical flow of our arguments. These readers included trusted advisers Frances Berdan, John A. Mead, Jerome Offner, John Sandstrom, Susan Sandstrom, and James Taggart. We thank them all for helping us turn an unruly body of ethnographic information into a form that we hope is accessible to readers. In particular, we thank our trustworthy and insightful friend James Maffie for reading early drafts and opening up whole new horizons in Mesoamerican research

xvi : Acknowledgments

through the publication of his monumental book Aztec Philosophy, which refined the theoretical framework for our ethnographic study of Nahua pilgrimage. Jim’s mastery of the Nahuatl language and the enormous body of Mesoamerican ethnohistorical and ethnographic literature is remarkable, and we are pleased to follow in his footsteps on what has truly been a journey of discovery. Ana Laura Ávila-­Myers painstakingly created the fine vector drawings of the tlatecmeh, the ritual paper figures that illustrate this work. Ana’s ancestors from Apan in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico, may well have been Nahuatl speakers. We met Ana over a decade ago when she was studying graphic arts at Indiana University–­ Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW), now Purdue University Fort Wayne (PFW), and we have enlisted her graphic skills in several publishing projects. Ana’s talents and commitment to seeing the work through will help readers appreciate the artistry entailed in these evanescent embodiments of Totiotzin, the sacred cosmos itself. We would like to express our sincere gratitude for the extraordinary contribution of ten copperplate color etchings illustrating the Nahua myth of Seven Flower created by our friend Michael K. Aakhus, formerly a professor of art and dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Southern Indiana (USI). We acknowledge Colaricci Sauls for providing digital reproductions of this original artwork, held in the archives at USI’s Lawrence Library. We want to thank R. Joe Campbell for introducing us to the study of Nahuatl and for his help in translating some of the difficult passages in the chants. Joel Palka sent an early draft of his book Maya Pilgrimage to Ritual Landscapes to help us get started. Agnieszka Brylak provided us with early drafts of her work on the wrathful spirit entity tlahueliloc. Edward M. Abse generously sent us chapters of an ethnography he is writing on the Mazatec of Oaxaca showing a possible link between this group and the paper-­figure complex. We owe a great debt of gratitude to IPFW’s Learning Resource Center (LRC) and the untold contributions of its director, Kenneth Balthaser, and his wife, Linda Balthaser, too, who provided film supplies and support in developing our photographs. LRC also offered the graphic services of Jim Whitcraft, who drew many of the paper figures we collected in earlier years, some of which appear in this book. Critical support in obtaining the bulk of the sometimes obscure research publications was provided by Graham Fredrick of PFW Helmke Library’s Document Delivery Services and by the interlibrary loan department of the Berkshire Atheneum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Additional assistance was provided by others as well, particularly our dear friend Cristina Boilès, and her late husband Carlos, who were instrumental in introducing us to the Huasteca region many years ago. Thanks also goes to our longtime anthropological colleague and fellow huastecólogo, the late Paul Jean Provost. Our friends Julio de Keijzer and Ana Mariscal de Keijzer provided support for our work and a much-­appreciated welcome when we visited Xalapa, Veracruz. We are grateful for the work of Tadeáš (Tada) Ryvola-­Marez, aided by Rebecca Ryvola-­ Marez, who skillfully brought out the details hidden in the book’s color photographs digitized from 35 mm slides. Tada’s superior graphics-­editing talents served to restore the quality of the digitized film images destined for Yale University’s Human Relations Area Files to form part of the Nahua collection within the eHRAF World Cultures database. We also deeply appreciate the work of Gail Kieler, former secretary of the PFW Department of Anthropology, who scanned the thousands of color slides taken over many years of fieldwork. Kudos also to our ever-­reliable colleague Amy Harrison at PFW’s Helmke Library, who helped prepare the final manuscript for submission to the University Press of Colorado. During the writing of the book we were fortunate to enjoy the camaraderie of friends Brian Ladd and Louise Burkhart in nearby Albany, New York, and C. J. Bolster and Helen Eisler, who divide their time between the UK and Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Our circle of friends (too many to name individually) in Fort Wayne, Indiana, or Atlanta, Georgia, and places farther afield have aided in the work far more than they realize by providing timely feedback and much-­appreciated diversion. During the writing of the book, the arrival of five treasured cilconemeh added to the excitement: our grandsons Henry and Benjamin were born to Lizzy and Michael, while our Nahua compadres Abe and Bety welcomed their daughter Nubia and son Mateo, and Eduardo and Brisa their son José Eduardo. Funding for the fieldwork portions of this research was provided by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI), the Fulbright Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program, and the Organization of American States Regular Training Program. Sabbatical leaves, travel expenses, and translation services were underwritten in part by the following Indiana University programs: IU International

Projects and Activities, IU Research and the University Graduate School, IU President’s Council on International Programs, and IU President’s Council for the Social Sciences. Grants from PFW’s Office of Research and External Support provided funding for portions of the work by the graphic artists. We are especially grateful for the support by the Funda­ ción Stresser-­Péan in Mexico, which generously provided subvention funding to underwrite the added expense of including the great number of color images in the book. Guy and Claude Stresser-­Péan often extended their gracious hospitality to us (even visiting us once in the field in 1986), and their dedication to ethnological inquiry remains our guiding model. And our special thanks go to bibliophile Michael Laird, whose long-­standing interest in the ritual paper figures motivated him to reach out to us and lend his support to the present study. We were invited in 2011 to deposit our sizeable collection of Nahuatl audio recordings of Nahua storytellers and ritual specialists in the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) repository at the Uni­ ver­sity of Texas at Austin. These primary research materials are publicly accessible at https://​ailla​​.utexas​.org/ thanks to the generous funding received by AILLA from federal agencies supporting scholarship in the humanities and sciences. We also owe thanks to Ellen Sieber, chief curator of collections at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures (now part of the Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) for providing a secure home for the original collection of ritual paper figures that form the basis of this study. We also want to express our gratitude to Charlotte Steinhardt, former editor at the University Press of Colorado (UPC), who offered encouragement and advice in editing our preliminary draft, and to UPC director Darrin Pratt, the new anthropology editor, Allegra Martschenko, production manager Daniel Pratt, and managing editor Laura Furney, who ushered our pilgrimage project along to completion. Two reviewers deserve our sincere thanks for their close reading of the final draft: historian Caterina Pizzigoni, who specializes in the colonial-­era history of Latin America, and Adam Coon, whose field of study is contemporary Indigenous literature, language, and Nahua cultural production. And we are grateful beyond words to Alison Tartt for her meticulous copyediting of the manuscript and to Tina Kachele for her masterful design of the book.

Acknowledgments : xvii

Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain

1 Preparations for the Journey Introduction to the Problem of Keeping to the Path Upon presenting us with the collection of cut-­paper figures that he and his fellow ritual specialists had created for the typical pilgrimage to a sacred mountain, our friend and colleague Cirilo emphasized that he wanted everyone to know about the beauty of his religion. He spoke in Spanish with eloquent words of caution and advice: These rituals are not a game, they are our life. I am giving you my sons and daughters, my devotion. I spent my life dedicating offerings to them, and they provide us with maize. God watches over us when we dig and plant maize, and we have to give something back. People no longer respect the things of this world. I am sorry that I am poor and must accept aid to make my offerings. But it is okay, I accept it with the best of intentions. Set up an altar. Follow the correct path.3

Cirilo’s admonition poses a number of intellectual and practical problems. To follow a straight, true, or correct path (“camino derecho”)—­through life or on the pilgrimage trek—­can seem difficult and frustrating. Sometimes the trail deviates or becomes treacherous, leading travelers in the wrong direction and causing them to slip off to one side or the other, or exacerbating errors of judgment and intemperate behavior that can result in disaster. Just as with any religious practice, there is no possibility of success without concentrated focus on a clear goal. Each individual faces the difficult task of recognizing the path and, once becoming aware of it, expending an enormous amount of disciplined effort required to follow it. Pilgrimage is the journey through life writ small. As a practice it provides both the path and the way forward for people willing to listen and learn. It is a significant social phenomenon that traces deep into prehistory and is found in cultures throughout the world. Going on a sacred journey changes people by putting them into direct contact with venerated places. A visit to such a center can alter the position of individuals in their home communities. Countless generations of pilgrims have come to recognize the profound value of this practice for their personal lives. While pilgrimage varies widely among different cultures, it speaks to our common humanity. In this work we present ethnographic information on how one group in Mesoamerica approaches the practice of pilgrimage and addresses the problem of keeping to the path. We describe and analyze religious pilgrimages undertaken by Nahua peoples who live today in the tropical forests of northern Veracruz, Mexico. Nahuas speak the Nahuatl language, and they are heirs to the early civilizations of Mesoamerica, including the Toltec,

https://​doi​.org​/​10​.5876​/​9781646423309​.c001

 : 3

Aztec, and Maya. We focus on the performance of pilgrimage because it not only provides a lens by which to see Nahua religion and world view in a new light but also illustrates incisively the flexibility and persistence of Indigenous beliefs and ritual practices in the face of a half millennium of domination by Hispanic and other European and North American colonizers. We have had the privilege of participating with our Nahua hosts and friends in five arduous pilgrimages, spanning two decades, to the peaks of venerated mountains. In the following chapters we describe these remarkable journeys and present a detailed analysis of the associated rituals. In our effort to understand and convey something of the remarkable power of these proceedings, we have assembled an extensive photographic record of people’s activities; we provide further context for the events by presenting a sample of ritual chanting and five core myths within the Nahua Oral Tradition, along with illustrations that record the iconography of a portion of the vast number of sacred paper figures that form the heart, body, and soul of Nahua religion. At the conclusion of the work we discuss a core feature of religious pilgrimage—­namely, the way that completion of the journey enables pilgrims to redefine their place in the social group—­that has surprisingly little to do with its actual meaning. Beyond our aim to document these Nahua sacred journeys, we hope to contribute a deeper awareness of the place of pilgrimage in cultures around the world. Summing it all up, we lay out some of the principles that underlie Mesoamerican iconography and cosmovision. In the pages that follow, we make the case that Nahua religion is pantheistic and thus fundamentally different from theistic belief systems exemplified by Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. In theism, there is a deity who creates all living beings and all things, rules the cosmos, and intervenes in human affairs. For pantheists, however, the creator and the creation are one and the same: the cosmos itself is the sacred entity. Nahua pantheists have a monistic philosophy based on the belief that there is a single, seamless totality that is in itself indivisible but that has multiple and diverse manifestations, or aspects. People approach and address these diverse spirit entities during ritual offerings, engaging them through a complex system of social exchange, or reciprocity. Like the aforementioned world religions, Nahua religion is a form of monotheism and not polytheism, but its conception of divine oneness or sacredness is based on entirely different principles. Because they exemplify ontological monism, which asserts that there is only one kind of substance

4  :  Preparations for the Journey

or reality, the Nahua approach the artistic portrayal of sacred entities in a profoundly different way from the conventional Western understanding. While most Euro-­ Americans are dualists in that they assume a fundamental divide between signifier and signified, we will show for the Nahua that the signifier and the signified are indeed one and the same. We write that the paper images cut by practitioners (sometimes in the tens of thousands for a single ritual) are pictographs embodying within themselves aspects of the divine totality that are part of the strategy by which people gain the attention and cooperation of essential spirit entities. We show that the design of the images reveals core principles of Nahua religion and philosophy. Finally, we explain how this case study of the Nahua sacred journeys corrects and extends social-­ scientific theories formulated to explain the phenomenon of religious pilgrimage. Pilgrimage takes people away from the security of home and community to a distant place known to have the power to transform or renew. Pilgrims must complete the sacred journey by returning to their place of origin. This type of journey has a remarkable grip on humanity as a whole. We have records of peregrinations dating from the earliest writings on earth, and archaeologists have shown that pilgrimages were a cultural feature of people who lived throughout prehistory. Pilgrimage is found in virtually every culture in the world at all levels of social complexity.4 A New York Times op-­ed piece reports on a UN study revealing that one out of every three travelers worldwide during a given year—­an astonishing 330 million people—­is on a pilgrimage.5 In Mexico alone, 20  million people visit the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac during a year’s time. In Europe there are at least 6,380 Catholic shrines that attract between 70  million and 100  million people each year.6 Even Protestants, who generally disavow pilgrimage because they regard it as a Catholic practice, are gradually developing their own traditions of sacred journeys.7 Pilgrimage across the globe is increasing in popularity, even as a recent thirty-­nine-­country survey found a significant decline in the number of people who define themselves as religious.8 In fact, pilgrimage exists in a great variety of forms, some of which merge with tourism. Although the Nahua sacred journeys described here are religious in nature, pilgrimages are not necessarily organized around standard religious beliefs. In Culiacán, Mexico, for example, drug traffickers make pilgrimages to the shrine of Jesús Malverde, a bandit who was hanged in 1909. The pilgrims wear Malverde scapulars and ask him for bountiful harvests of marijuana and coca, and to bless

their drug shipments destined for the US.9 Clearly, pilgrimage transcends any specific set of beliefs or practices. During the week of June 1–5, 1998, and again during the five-­day period of June 13–­­17, 2001, we were invited to participate in two major religious pilgrimages organized by ritual specialists in a small Nahua village in the municipio of Ixhuatlán de Madero, northern Veracruz, Mexico. This area is centered on the Gulf Coast foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental, to the northeast of Mexico City, which forms a core part of the larger Huasteca region (see figure 1.1, below, and discussion in the next section). On both pilgrimages we were accompanied by our son, Michael Sandstrom, who helped us in the work to document these mobile, highly complex sacred events. Our point of departure was the pseudonymous village that we call Amatlán in order to protect the privacy of the inhabitants—­a place where we have conducted ethnographic research since 1970. Our destination for both journeys was the peak of a remarkable sacred mountain called Postectli (sometimes Postectitla, spelled Poztectli or Poztectitlan in Nahuatl), located some 20 miles by trail from Amatlán in the neighboring municipio of Chicontepec, Veracruz. The basalt rock mountain is an ancient volcanic core that juts vertically out of the surrounding plain to an elevation of 745 meters (2,444 feet) above sea level (see photos 1.1–­1.3).10 Some Nahua use political offices to name and rank many of the important mountains in their sacred geography (as we discuss in chapter 2), calling Postectli “the governor” to indicate its prominence among the numerous peaks of the Chicontepec region. Chicontepec itself is the local pronunciation of a Nahuatl word meaning “seven hills.” As we recount below, Postectli and its companion hills were formed during a series of cataclysmic events recorded in Nahua myth.11 Postectli means “something broken” in Nahuatl, derived from the verb poztequi, “to

Left to Right Photo 1.1. A distant view of the sacred mountain Postectli (Postectitla) on a misty morning. At the base of this volcanic remnant is the Nahua town of Ichcacuatitla, Chicontepec, Veracruz. The top of the mountain is a popular destination for pilgrimages for the Nahua and other Indigenous peoples of the region. Photo 1.2. Postectli is one of the most sacred mountains for Nahua and other Indigenous groups of the southern Huasteca. The Nahua town of Ichcacuatitla is just barely visible at the foot of the mountain. Photo 1.3. View of Postectli from the village of Amatlán, Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz. To the right are newly planted orange orchards. Some milpas have been converted to cattle pastures in this 2007 photograph.

split, to break lengthwise.”12 Indeed, from certain angles Broken Mountain looks like its top has been broken off abruptly. Just how this gigantic rock came to be fractured is integral to Nahua ideas about the origins of maize and explanations for the beginning of the current age and the very possibility of human existence. Undertaking arduous pilgrimages to this spectacular place, where pilgrims can both absorb sacred power and interact with the divine, represents the most profound expression of Nahua

Preparations for the Journey  :  5

respect and devotion. As we will demonstrate, Postectli lies at the heart of Nahua religious belief, myth, and ritual. In 2007 we joined our Nahua and Otomí friends in undertaking three additional pilgrimages to lesser sacred hills in the region. On March 9–­­10 we trekked to Palaxtepetl (a name that can be translated as Male Turkey Mountain), many miles away from Amatlán but within sight of the village. Shortly after that pilgrimage, we traveled on March  15–­­17 to the range of hills called by their Spanish appellation Tres Pozitos (Three Little Wells). And on April  14–­­16 we visited Xomulco, another sacred hill whose name refers to a rock formation that resembles the hollowed-­out gourd used to serve warm tortillas. None of these prominences is as imposing or as important in Nahua religion and myth as Postectli, but local people associate every one of them with the forces of rain and crop fertility.13 Analysis of our field notes and digital photographs recording the chronology of events associated with these smaller-­scale pilgrimages to Palaxtepetl, Tres Pozitos, and Xomulco sacred mountains confirm that they were structurally very similar to events recorded for the journeys to Postectli.14 Figure 1.1 situates the four sacred mountains that are the focus of this book within the panoramic view of the Amatlán cognized environment. In our description, we propose to combine the two journeys to Postectli to create a template for Nahua pilgrimage. We include additional ethnographic information from the 2007 pilgrimages to supplement the description. Although the organizers intended for the proceedings to unfold in essentially similar ways, Nahua ritual observances can vary in important details. A specific episode may sometimes be emphasized in a given ritual, but in subsequent performances of the same ritual it barely makes an appearance or is omitted altogether. By incorporating information from all five pilgrimages, we intend to provide as complete an account as possible of this fascinating aspect of Nahua religion and culture. Our personal reason for participating in these religious events was first and foremost to join our companions as they journeyed to the most meaningful places in their sacred landscape. These consecrated locations are where spirit entities live, miraculous events unfold, and the divine cosmos reveals itself to those open to the experience. As the holy of holies, the places have profound significance for the Indigenous people of the region. We had heard about pilgrimages during our years of residence in Amatlán, but before 1998 we had never been invited to join in. As outsiders, we felt honored to be included in these events, and we came away with a whole new level

6  :  Preparations for the Journey

of respect for the sophistication and universal appeal of Nahua beliefs and practices. As ethnographers the invitation allowed us to provide a detailed, firsthand account of contemporary Indigenous pilgrimages in a region of Mexico that has been neglected until recent years. Our primary goal is to explore what these sacred journeys reveal about the more esoteric aspects of Huastecan Nahua ritual practice in particular and, perhaps by extension, Mesoamerican religion as a whole. For us, the journeys to the different sacred mountains constituted personal pilgrimages, the culmination of decades of anthropological research among the Nahua, and the ultimate demonstration of our hosts’ generosity and willingness to share—­an openness that has characterized our experience among them from the beginning. We were greatly aided in this project by our Nahua colleagues, many of whom took an active interest in our work and were eager to help us. Local religious leaders and many lay participants, while sometimes not entirely clear about what we were trying to do, facilitated in documenting these sacred journeys. We owe a special debt of gratitude to the most powerful ritual specialist in Amatlán and the lead organizer of all five of the pilgrimages, Encarnación Téllez Hernández. Known widely by the nickname Cirilo, this village leader worried about the loss of Nahua culture in the face of outside influences. Like many communities in Mexico, as throughout the world, Amatlán is undergoing rapid, disorienting change as national and international economic and political forces penetrate the most remote parts of the country. During this period of rising turmoil and uncertainty, Cirilo witnessed his neighbors beginning to neglect the traditional rituals. Along with many older people, he expressed to us the fear that the upcoming generations would lose their way and soon become unaware of their own heritage. Everyone who participated in the pilgrimages could observe that few young people were in attendance. Cirilo’s way of thinking about these changes was to assert that things were better in the past and that people from that time lived longer, richer, and healthier lives.15 From his perspective, the earth was getting exhausted from the abuse heaped on it by people who did not demonstrate proper respect. The poor condition of many human beings today is a result of the failure to understand what they owe to the earth in compensation for all the benefits it yields. Cirilo wanted people in the future to know about his work and to appreciate the efforts of his colleagues to achieve a balance between the human community and cemanahuac tlaltentli (“everything in the world”), meaning the

Figure 1.1. Schematic map of pilgrimage destinations in the sacred landscape. Map drawn by Michael A. Sandstrom.

forces of the sacred cosmos. As he declared, “I want people to see how beautiful our religion is.” At the time of our first trek to Postectli in 1998, Cirilo was a man in his early sixties. He had devoted his life to being a tlamatiquetl or “person of knowledge” in order to cure sickness and serve his community. He combined tremendous charisma with an excellent sense of humor, and he welcomed us into his household on many occasions, taking it upon himself to teach us about his religion. We were invited to scores of rituals that he organized or was

party to, and he allowed us to ask questions and take all the photographs that we wanted. In typical Nahua fashion, his answers to our questions were spare and often cryptic: one learned by participating in rituals, not by talking about them. In addition, he generously provided us with ritual paper cuttings for us to take back to the US so we could demonstrate to North Americans how profound and sensible Nahua religion is. Cirilo was one of the most remarkable individuals we have ever met. He was a man who not only worked for his village but also exhibited

Preparations for the Journey  :  7

a level of openness and generosity rarely seen anywhere. His ritual offerings were masterpieces of beauty and coordination. When he constructed an altar, it was breathtaking, and his heartfelt chants caused people to pause and listen to the poetic words. Above and beyond these exemplary traits he was also the finest paper cutter in the whole region, replete as it is with talented paper cutters. The cut-­paper figures he created to embody the spirit universe are works of art that exhibit unparalleled mastery. Readers will recognize Cirilo in many of the photographs that record the pilgrimages as well as in images that illustrate our earlier publications. In 1998 we were delighted to learn that the Otomí master ritual specialist—­Evaristo de la Cruz, to whom Cirilo was apprenticed—­had accepted, along with his daughter Eugenia San Agustín Hernández, Cirilo’s invitation to join the pilgrimage to Postectli. We were recruited to chauffeur them in our four-­ wheel-­ drive vehicle from their village of Cruz Blanca, several hours away. Evaristo was aged and quite infirm at the time, no longer able to walk the distance to Amatlán. His daughter was also an accomplished ritual specialist, and both of them were eager to join in the activities in Amatlán. All throughout the preparations and during the first major ritual offering Evaristo was seated prominently in the middle of the shrine, cutting thousands of paper figures and directing the people around him. He would sometimes abruptly cry out in Spanish, “We need two more cuttings of—­” and name a particular spirit entity. It is a remarkable fact that he cut the figures and helped to coordinate the ritual even though he was completely blind; sadly, the Otomí master died about a year after the 1998 pilgrimage.16 In conversations with Cirilo and other villagers, we became aware that followers of the older religious traditions in Amatlán are facing a crisis. The form of their religion is largely Indigenous with an admixture of Spanish Catholicism, but these elements of European origin have been thoroughly fitted into the Nahua world view and blended with autochthonous ideas to form a local expression of Catholicism that is heavily weighted in favor of Native American beliefs and practices. As it exists today, the local religion is the result of forces unleashed since the early days of Spanish colonialism. Clearly, however, the twenty-­first-­century world has altered people’s religious identity dramatically. In response to the rapid and dizzying changes that threaten to overtake them, nearly half of the families living in Amatlán had converted by the end of the millennium to one or another denomination of fundamentalist Protestantism. Unfortunately, these new

8  :  Preparations for the Journey

religions are intolerant of the local Catholic practices, setting the stage for intracommunity conflict.17 Dismissive Protestants are not the only problem, how­ever, as the older traditions are further threatened by reevangelization efforts within official Catholicism. This movement, created by church leaders to counteract the Protestants’ successes in Mexico, has sought to “purify” local religion by eliminating all non-­Catholic (i.e., Indigenous) elements from people’s beliefs and ritual practices. Followers of the Native American traditions call these reformed Catholics aleluyas (“alleluias”), presumably mimicking their singing and preaching styles. In a revealing exchange, a visiting Catholic priest accosted a friend of ours from a neighboring Nahua village and chastised him, proclaiming, “Your rituals are from the Devil.” Our friend replied, “You have rituals for God, and we have them for the Earth.” The combined threats from Protestants and Catholic evangelists had the people we know ever more eager to document their pilgrimage practices before they are overwhelmed by these repressive forces. Cirilo saw in us an opportunity to have the rituals “written down” (in his words) for future generations, and it was largely this anxiety coupled with his generous nature that led him to invite us to join in these extraordinary religious events and record them in such detail. There are also more benign reasons why our presence as coyotes was tolerated during the pilgrimages by the more conservative elders of the village. Because of our extended periods of residence in the community, we have known many of the participants since they were children. We are also linked to many individuals through ties of ritual kinship, and the people from Amatlán knew from experience that we would cause them no harm. Pilgrimage participants came from multiple communities, and based on the gestures of surprise when they first spotted us, some seemed genuinely puzzled by our presence. The ritual specialists from Amatlán explained who we were, and aside from a single incident that we relate in chapter 3, no further mention was made about our participation in any of the events. As a final note regarding our impact on events, because pilgrimages are not only expensive and time-­consuming and the numbers of motivated participants in a given locale are diminishing, our contribution of labor and money was clearly appreciated by the organizers. We want to emphasize how much of ethnographic work is truly a collaborative local effort. In turn, we feel it is our obligation to report accurately and illustrate completely what we witnessed. As part of our obligation and to show our appreciation to participants, we have made all

Figure 1.2. Map of Mexico showing the Huasteca Veracruzana region. Map drawn by Michael A. Sandstrom.

of our accumulated ethnographic photographs, recordings, and published works available to the people we know in Amatlán and surrounding villages. We are committed to fostering an accessible, open approach to anthropological inquiry and data preservation that serves not only the community but especially students of Nahua culture.

Pilgrimage in the Huasteca Region The village of Amatlán and the four sacred mountains we climbed during the pilgrimages lie in the remote southern

portion of the vast Huasteca region (figure 1.2). The exact boundaries of this cultural-­geographic area are disputed by scholars and local inhabitants alike, but there is general agreement that it is composed of portions of six Mexican states: Veracruz, San Luis Potosí, Tamaulipas, Hidalgo, Querétaro, and Puebla.18 The Huasteca derives its name from a group of people who spoke a Maya language and occupied much of the region in the sixteenth century—­ the people called “Cuextec” by the Aztecs, a term based on their legendary leader Cuextecatl.19 Members of this Huastec Maya group who call themselves

Preparations for the Journey  :  9

Teenek are today largely confined to the northern zone of the Huasteca.20 The Huasteca has earned a reputation throughout Mexico for being a rugged place of vast cattle ranches replete with armed cowboys. It is also home to a large Indigenous population, estimated to be 50 percent of the 2.5 million people inhabiting the region.21 Scholars have generally relegated the Huasteca to a marginal position in the development of the great highland and lowland civilizations of Mesoamerica, notably the Toltec, Aztec, and Maya empires. Over the years, however, this view has gradually changed, and the Huasteca is increasingly regarded as an important region that has contributed much to cultural developments in Mesoamerica. The volume edited by Katherine Faust and Kim Richter (Richter and Faust 2015) shows how much “the Huasteca was deeply integrated with the rest of Mesoamerica.”22 We, too, want to point out that in the years since we first entered Amatlán in 1970, rapid infrastructural changes now visible in many parts of the Huasteca (e.g., paved roads, electrification, installation of water delivery and septic systems, telephone service, and widespread construction using modern materials) make it no longer such an isolated and marginalized region. The southern Huasteca is dotted with sacred landforms that are the destinations of pilgrimages organized by people living in the innumerable small villages where Indigenous customs persist.23 As a premier pilgrimage destination, Postectli is an unusual and conspicuous geological monolith that shares its prominence of place in the religions of neighboring Tepehua (Hamasipiní) and Otomí people in addition to the Nahua.24 Groups journeying to Postectli often include people from different ethnic groups mixed together, even though they speak unrelated languages; the sacredness of this very special place is such that it overrides such barriers.25 The site qualifies as a “supernatural resource” for people of the region, although as we will argue, Nahuas themselves do not acknowledge this natural-­supernatural dualism.26 At the peak of Postectli is an enormous concrete cross erected by the Catholic Church to symbolize in a not-­so-­subtle way the conquest of Christianity over the Native American religion. However, as we explain further, many Nahua have reinterpreted the cross to be a manifestation of tonatiuh, the sacred sun that animates the cosmos by means of its life-­giving light and heat.27 Nahua people of this region have borrowed freely from Spanish Catholicism, but they have done so largely on their own terms. When we first became acquainted with the southern Huasteca, we assumed that centuries of oppression, disease, and

10  :  Preparations for the Journey

missionary pressure had destroyed all but scattered fragments of the old culture. Instead, the people of Amatlán introduced us to a vibrant world that we could not have imagined existed. Little is known of the history of pilgrimage in the Huasteca region. Jerome Offner (2012) has noted references to pre-­Hispanic pilgrimages made by members of Totonac communities to sacred sites in the highlands near Xicotepec de Juárez, Puebla, just to the south of where the sacred mountain Postectli is situated. These peregrinations may be related to current Nahua practices, but additional ethnohistorical research in this region is needed for confirmation. In the Relaciones geográficas, written in the 1580s (in the section titled “Relación de  Uexutla,” or Huejutla, Hidalgo, a place not far from Chicontepec, Veracruz), Francisco del  Paso y Troncoso mentions a probable pilgrimage involving human sacrifice: . . . and when they lacked rain, they went to a hill and sacrificed a boy by cutting his throat and later threw his body into a hole they had dug, covering it with a stone. And they beseeched their idol to favor them by providing water and any other necessity they may have had. And the one who cut the head of the boy had fasted for a day before, without eating a bite. . . .28

The statement describes a trek that could be historically related to the ones we observed in Amatlán, although the idea of sacrificing a person in this way is abhorrent by today’s standards. The topics of human sacrifice and cannibalism have come to dominate many people’s understanding of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican religious traditions, and we would never attempt to rationalize such behavior. However, because it is the responsibility of anthropologists to explain such phenomena rather than issue facile condemnations, we believe it helps to put such practices in context. Despite attempts by well-­meaning scholars to downplay human sacrifice, it must be stated that people (including children) were ritually killed by the Aztecs and other Mesoamericans. Such grievous acts are recorded throughout the world, in fact. Cannibalism may also have been customary, although evidence is sketchy and some documents show that the Aztecs themselves found the practice “shocking, even abhorrent.”29 Because most information on human sacrifice in Mesoamerica was recorded by the conquering Spaniards, we cannot be certain of its scale. Reports by some chroniclers clearly exaggerate the numbers of victims, but the preponderance of sacrifices probably grew with the expansion of the Aztec imperial

state.30 It must also be remembered that around the time of the conquest, large numbers of people were executed throughout Europe for religious reasons, including accusations of witchcraft and false conversion to Christianity, crimes adjudicated by the Spanish Inquisition. With their superior weaponry, Spanish and Portuguese conquerors of the time perpetrated the widespread slaughter of Native men, women, and children across Africa and the Indian subcontinent.31 We mention these issues because today’s audiences may well be put off by the Nahua practice of killing chickens or turkeys and sprinkling blood on paper cuttings laid on altars. We can only say that with rare exceptions, the fowl were killed not merely for their blood but were prepared and consumed as part of the rituals, and their food value was not wasted. Very few outsiders have witnessed a major peregrination from this region, and fewer have been permitted to observe the entire pilgrimage process from beginning to end. We are unsure if pilgrimages originating from different communities vary in significant ways from the ones from Amatlán. Because people who participate in the sacred journey come together from distant communities and may even speak separate languages, it seems likely that pilgrimage practices throughout the culture area exhibit considerable uniformity. The setup of permanent altars at strategic locations also suggests that the sequence of ritual observances is commonly shared. One of the most detailed descriptions of a pilgrimage to the top of Postectli was recorded by Nahua anthropologist Rafael Martínez de la Cruz for a licenciatura thesis.32 His descriptions match closely our own, and we note in our account his firsthand observations of many similar ritual offerings. Arturo Gómez Martínez, another Nahua anthropologist from the municipality of Chicontepec, Veracruz, accompanied us on both pilgrimages to Postectli, and he was very helpful in expanding our understanding of the events. He and anthropologist Anuschka van ’t Hooft participated in another climb to the sacred summit in 2012 and published a brief description of the event that, with a few minor differences, closely matches ours.33

The Nahua People Few who live in the US have heard of the Nahua, and fewer still are able to link them to the great civilizations of Mesoamerica. There are, however, useful summaries available for those interested in discovering more about this important Native American group.34 The Nahuatl language spoken in Amatlán is the southernmost extension

of the Uto-­Aztecan family of languages centered in the US Southwest, where Nahuatl-­related languages include Ute, Paiute, Hopi, Comanche, and Shoshone; in modern Mexico they include Huichol, Mayo, Opata-­Eudeve, Tarahumara, Cora, and Tepehuan.35 As part of the long-­ standing discrimination against Indigenous people throughout Latin America, Spanish speakers often refer to autochthonous languages as dialectos (“dialects”), thereby implicitly denying them the status of languages in their own right. The Nahuatl-­speaking Aztecs of the early sixteenth century who lived in the capital city of Tenochtitlan called themselves (and were referred to by others as) Mexica; spelled mēxihcah and pronounced me-­SHEE-­ka,36 which is the term from which Mexico gets its name. Contemporary Nahuatl speakers recognize the appellation but generally do not use it as an ethnonym. Instead, many Nahua people self-­identify as Mexicano and call their language “Mexicano.” Pluralized as in Spanish and pronounced me-­ hee-­ KA-­ no, Mexicano today connotes a citizen of Mexico and thus holds for some Nahuas a double meaning: a citizen of the modern nation and a proud descendant of the Aztecs (or, by extension, the other civilizations of pre-­Hispanic Mesoamerica), even though they may not be direct descendants of the Aztecs themselves.37 The name “Nahua” designates a speaker of the Nahuatl language; however, it is a term that people recognize but rarely use to identify themselves. The Nahua who live in Amatlán also have a general designation for themselves and, collectively, for all other Native American groups: macehualmeh in Nahuatl, campesinos in Spanish, meaning “countrymen” or “farmers.” The definition of mācēhualli (in the singular) today encompasses “human being, indigenous person.”38 In the Nahuatl spoken by the Aztecs, macehualli had other, more restrictive meanings, including “subject, commoner” as well as “[I]ndigenous person, speaker of Nahuatl.”39 Most Nahua in Mexico today live in what was the periphery of the Aztec empire. The largest concentrations of Nahua are in the Mexican central highland region, Sierra Norte de  Puebla, and the Gulf Coast, but Nahua settlements range from southern Mexico through Central America. The group extends into Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, where they are known as Pipil (a Nahuatl term meaning “children” or “nobles”), and into Nicaragua, where speakers of Nahuatl are called Nicarao after a sixteenth-­century leader who also gave his name to the modern country.40 The Gulf Coast of Mexico is home to the largest single concentration of speakers of the Nahuatl

Preparations for the Journey  :  11

language today. Although the history of the Nahua people of this region is little understood, some scholars conclude that Nahuas of the Huasteca are remnants of a fifteenth-­ century Aztec invasion.41 Based on her study of Nahuatl variations, linguist Una Canger concurs that there were two waves of speakers of the language that entered central Mexico and then moved outward from there. The first were the Toltec, followed centuries later by the Mexica. She writes that “the ancestors of today’s speakers of the dialects of the Huasteca . . . represent the first group of Nahuatl speakers—­ including the Toltecs—­ in central 42 Mexico and further south.” Thus, based on linguistic affiliation, ancestors of the people living in Amatlán may have preceded the Aztec incursion.43 It is very difficult to evaluate population figures reported for the Nahua and other ethnic groups in Mexico today. Language is not a completely accurate marker of Indigenous status or identity, but it gives a general idea of the number of people who identify as Nahua. The latest Mexican census count of 1,651,958 Nahuatl speakers three years and older confirms that it remains the most widely spoken Indigenous language in Mexico (INEGI 2020). Based on available information, we can safely conclude that there are between upwards of 2 million speakers of the language in Mexico and Central America.44 Along with members of other Native Americans groups in the greater culture area, Nahuas join in the global movement of migrants searching for employment opportunities. Many Nahua men and women today work in the US on construction crews and farms, in retail or restaurants, and in other occupations. It is likely that those of us going about our own daily round may have encountered someone who speaks Nahuatl.

The Village of Amatlán Amatlán is located in a lush, humid, tropical-­forest environment. Nahua settlements in the Huasteca region range from small hamlets scattered across the countryside to communities organized into a grid, reflecting the urban model.45 In 1970 the community had a population of around 600 people living in thatch-­roofed houses made of poles lashed by vines to a wooden frame. Floors were of packed earth, and building materials were almost entirely gathered from the surrounding forest. Houses were widely distributed, hidden in the dense vegetation, and the households were loosely organized as nonresidential, patrilocal extended families.46 Well into the late twentieth century most adult men dressed in homemade,

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loose-­fitting white cotton shirts and pants, tire-­tread sandals, and a straw hat and carried a machete in a leather case wherever they went. Women arrayed themselves with earrings and multiple necklaces, beautifully hand-­ embroidered blouses, and long skirts decorated with horizontal bands. They went barefoot and wore their hair in long braids interwoven with colorful ribbons. Houses were sparsely furnished, and virtually all of the tools and implements in daily use were made locally, with the exception of cloth (formerly woven by the women) and the steel machetes essential to the men’s work. The villagers produced food through slash-­and-­burn cultivation, which entailed clearing the trees and dense brush by hand using these razor-­sharp machetes. Each family raised patio animals such as chickens and turkeys, fished in local streams, and gathered wild products from the forest. Major crops included maize, beans, squash, camotes, tomatoes, amaranth, chili peppers, and fruits of all types. It was maize, however, that was considered to be the most important crop—­a crop customarily eaten in the form of tortillas cooked on a clay griddle or comalli—­and as we will see, maize continues to play a central role in Nahua myths and rituals. Maize remains the staple in the diet, and people feel that it links human beings to larger sacred forces in the cosmos and yields benefits beyond its nutritional value. In his chants Cirilo sometimes could be heard to utter the phrase Dios icuatzincahuan, “sprouts of God,” to describe humans.47 Speaking in Spanish, Cirilo underscored the supremacy of maize and its role in Nahua culture: If not for [maize] we are not going to eat, we are not going to talk, and we are not going to drink a cup of coffee. This one always goes ahead. We have strength because we are eating [maize]. That is how this antigua is, this ancient one. She also talks about how we who believe should go on living: “If they do not believe me, they know my children. If they do not know me, I am going to teach them.” That’s what she says. She says if they do not believe in her, then she will teach them.48

The importance of maize for Amatlán residents is further reinforced by the explication offered by the novice ritual practitioner Raymundo, who also spoke in Spanish: Well, yes, we live because of this maize. If there were no maize we would not eat, we wouldn’t be able to walk, we wouldn’t be able to speak. We couldn’t go anywhere if we didn’t eat. That is why maize is our blood. Everyone—­it is the blood of everyone—­because

Photo 1.4. View from the xochicalli (“flower house”) shrine on the first morning of preparations for the pilgrimage to Postectli in June 1998. The maize harvest is piled beneath new electrical lines serving the village of Amatlán, while a woman walks between her traditional thatched-­ roof house and a new house made of concrete block that eventually will replace the older structure.

even animals, some of them also eat maize. That’s why it’s the blood of the whole world, because without maize not even the rich would eat. But because there is maize, that’s why the rich eat. And the rich don’t believe anything because they already have money. We hold el costumbre rituals because we are poor. We have to buy things. If right now, for example, it does not rain, there would not be much maize. We would not have it to sell nor have it to eat. When it rains there is maize, and there is work. Many people do not have money now. Why? Because it has not rained—­it has not rained, so they do not work. And when it rains they work, and there is money. They have to eat, they have to buy things. Some do respect el costumbre for this reason, yes, because in truth, yes, it really is true—­maize lives and it feeds us every day. If there were no water, if there were no maize, what would we live on? For this reason it is said, maize is our blood and everything.49

Amatlán is an ejido, meaning that it is authorized and internally organized according to the laws and policies implemented under agrarian reforms following the Mexican Revolution of 1910–­20. The people living in Amatlán exhibit a great deal of pride in their ability to remain free of overlords, including governmental officials and local ranchers. At the same time, villagers have long relied on ranch owners needing to hire them for temporary employment, enabling them to earn money to pay ejido taxes and buy necessities they cannot manufacture themselves. In the 1980s the federal government introduced electricity into the area’s rural

communities and rearranged the houses into a grid pattern to accommodate the lines, with assigned lots and unpaved streets (photo 1.4). By 2007, there were still about 600 people residing in the village, but many fewer thatch-­roofed houses were in evidence. Most dwellings were by then constructed of cinder block made locally, with metal-­framed windows, flat roofs, and poured concrete floors. For the first time in history, someone walking through Amatlán would hear televisions blaring, the sound of mechanical corn grinders, and CD players belting out ranchero music. A few older men continued to wear white cotton shirts and pants, but most men and boys by that time preferred to dress in more urban styles, which included wearing shoes. Mature women tended to dress as before, but younger women also switched to urban-­style clothing and footwear purchased at weekly markets. The primary productive activity in the region today continues to be swidden horticulture, and maize retains its prominent place in the diet and religious sentiments. But many traditional cornfields or milpas have been transformed into orange groves or cattle pastures as a result of government programs to move people away from traditional productive activities toward cash crops. The ideal of community self-­sufficiency has been forgotten, and most households depend increasingly on money sent back to the village from younger members of the family who have gone away to work in cities. Amatlán has been reduced from an independent producer of its own food and wealth to a remittance economy dependent on outside sources of income. It is a pattern repeated in many small communities throughout the world.

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It is important to have a clear picture of the constraints and limiting factors experienced by the people of Amatlán in order to better understand our analysis of their religious pilgrimages. The Nahuas and other Indigenous peoples are considered to be at the very bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy of the region. We have made the case that Nahua identity can be explained partly as a mechanism protecting against dominant-­group violence and creating a separate realm in which people can thrive without directly competing with an overbearing Hispanic elite that attempts to dominate them in every way.50 To be Native American is to be defined by the power brokers as someone lesser, with “low culture,” and incapable of negotiating the complexities of urban Mexico. Even if a person has a perfect command of Spanish, often his or her life experiences and education level militate against success in such a world. At the village level, on the other hand, people sometimes feel hampered by strictly local constraints that leave them little room to innovate or experiment with new approaches to solving problems. A small community like Amatlán is home to one’s kin and in-­laws—­all the people one has grown up with since infancy. Everybody knows everyone else’s business, and there are mechanisms that keep things in a kind of stable equilibrium. Social pressure can be applied in uncounted ways. Anthropologist George Foster (1965, 1967) developed his controversial concept of “the image of limited good” to characterize the sense that people in small communities have of being locked in by multiple constraints. The idea is that people perceive the world as containing a limited store of utility (or good) and others’ success somehow subtracts from their own ability to succeed. This belief, Foster argued, prevents people from striving to get ahead through hard work or cooperation. His formulation has been roundly criticized by anthropologists, however, and even if the concept is faulty as he presented it, Foster detected a sense of stasis in village life that undoubtedly is felt throughout the world.51 Life in small communities can lock people into a set of relations, expectations, and obligations that can serve to dampen innovation or at least deviation from the accepted (so-­called traditional) way of doing things. The rules of social life tend to be accompanied by negative-­ feedback mechanisms that channel and limit the range of responses available to people. An excellent example of how these constraints work can be found in the system of ritual kinship, which for the Nahua is a key mechanism of extending one’s social network.52 It is important to have a wide network of support in situations where survival

14  :  Preparations for the Journey

is insecure and a formal social safety net is lacking. The system of ritual kinship in both Mestizo and Nahua communities amounts to a fairly intense version of the Euro-­ American system of godparenthood. Ostensibly, the most important tie of ritual kinship is between the adults—­the godparents—­and a child; called compadrazgo in Spanish, its literal definition is closer to “coparenthood.” Godparents typically buy clothes and presents for godchildren and are expected to take them in as their own should something happen to the parents. Godparenthood is clearly a form of social security for children. What we found in Amatlán, however, is that an equally important link is forged among the four adults. These men and women become ritual kin with a very powerful set of mutual obligations and expectations. Even as outsiders, we were frequently approached by people interested in becoming compadres as we began to form ritual kinship ties in the village.53 Such bonds of compadrazgo vary in intensity and strength, we found, but the complex web of intersecting relationships can create a straitjacket of obligations that become difficult to evade. If ritual kin ask for a loan, whether of money or effort, one is obligated to try to help. If a person also has ties of ritual kinship to members of the borrower’s extended family, he or she has little choice but to comply or risk jeopardizing multiple other relationships. The system works both ways, however, and people must not make unreasonable demands for fear that they will threaten others in the network. On numerous occasions in our years in Amatlán we have been asked for favors, some of which seemed clearly inappropriate, but we felt the strong pull to cooperate so as not to alienate others; such constraints on villagers themselves is much stronger. Innovators can face a daunting obstacle in overcoming the stagnancy created by such an enduring network of relations. For this reason successful entrepreneurs may feel they must leave the local scene to pursue their dreams elsewhere. We caution the reader against misinterpreting this aspect of community life. The idea of leveling mechanisms, which have been described as systems of negative feedback (especially in rural farming communities, a context that requires a great deal of mutual support), has given rise to a pernicious stereotype that these communities are inherently conservative and immune to change. The failure of development programs around the world is often blamed on people’s so-­called “backwardness” or unwillingness to embrace change that clearly would improve their lives. Our experience in Amatlán is

decidedly the opposite, and we do not wish to contribute to that erroneous view. We have documented many attempts on the part of individuals to launch new enterprises and improve the conditions of their lives. Somehow they were able to overcome local restraints and effect changes on a micro level. People have grown new cash crops such as peanuts, coffee, or limes, for instance, to sell at regional markets. We know individuals who have introduced animals such as sheep, goats, ducks, or rabbits to be raised and sold. Some have peddled clothing, sold frozen treats out of new refrigerators, or set up small shops and maize-­grinding businesses, and one family in Amatlán opened a federally subsidized general store within the CONASUPO (Compañía Nacional de Subsistencias Popu­ lares) program. Other residents experimented with public solar-­ powered telephone service or developed taxi services with a newly purchased vehicle. We witnessed many examples of the indomitable entrepreneurial spirit among our Nahua friends and acquaintances. Sadly, few such enterprises succeed in the long run, not because the people are somehow averse to innovation but rather because the system in which they are forced to operate militates against them. Communication systems are ineffective, roads are poorly maintained or nonexistent, and there is no mechanism for people to obtain financial support or credit to back their schemes. Furthermore, people may lack accounting skills or find that there is simply not enough money flowing locally to carry out a new enterprise. In any case, there is no banking system in which to keep accounts, corruption among local officials is widespread, and innovators lack access to regional or state markets. Virtually no one in the financial-­services industry is willing to invest in milpa horticulture. In short, the success or failure of enterprise is ultimately determined not by the people who are too conservative or social ties in the local community but rather by the larger system in which the people are forced to operate. With finesse, local constraints can sometimes be skirted, but regional and national obstacles are nearly impossible to overcome. All of these factors can lead individuals to feel that they are trapped and that any kind of movement within the local social system is difficult if not impossible. For some younger people, the lure of the city has proven irresistible, and they have moved out and on with their lives, restricting interaction with family members to brief return visits during holidays. There are few alternatives for older villagers who might lack facility in Spanish or who would have a more difficult time adjusting to the fast pace of urban life. Going from the familiar scene in Amatlán with its known

positives (not the least of which is the support of extended families) to an isolated existence in a city slum where dangers lurk is hardly an attractive alternative for most people, young or old. The one available choice for many people is to follow deliberately the path of traditions that define their Nahua identity and set them apart from the unforgiving social system ruled by Mestizo elites. An important dynamic of Nahua religion is that it constitutes a form of resistance to the dominant social class that many refer to locally as los ricos, “the rich.” Here is Cirilo’s commentary (spoken in Spanish) on this overbearing group and on the power that the traditional religion brings to villagers: Where I am, the rich person is just dirtying me. El rico, the rich one, gives me nothing. He does not see me. Yes, he does not see whether I might want something to drink, if I also would like to have a soft drink. But the rich person pays me no attention because he is rich. So they only want to drink their soft drink, their beer. And I also want some. That’s why I want to be rid of them. That’s why the cyclone that travels in the sea is raised—­I, myself, am the one who raised it. One says that’s the way it goes. The patron saint of hurricanes goes out, as is said, from San Jerónimo [mountain]. Whether we accept what is going to play out in this year of 1998, San Jerónimo’s patron has spoken, and [she] said, “If they are not going to feed me, then three hurricanes are going to pass by in this year.” But we ourselves, that’s what we’re doing [making the offering]—­all of us, myself included. Whether they like me in my village of Amatlán or not, I am helping with my own money, my own ritual offering. The others do not want to [cooperate] because they are little fools. They do not know where they are heading. But I am not. Frankly, I am for helping the people. I am for making offerings to the earth. I am for seeing the birth of God. We are going to give God a crown so God can witness us where we are. [God] has the list, the roll of names. We all live there. If we do not die, it is because she [la antigua de san Jerónimo] is guarding over us at night and during the day. That is why when you light a candle, you feel contented. We are attesting to those of us who are lighting a candle. Let us light one.54

For Cirilo, to participate in pilgrimages and ritual offerings not only balances the relations between human beings and the spirit entities, but it is also a political act that addresses the divide between the rich and the poor, the Hispanic elite and the less powerful villagers.

Preparations for the Journey  :  15

Problems of Translation Words have power in every culture in the world. For the Nahua, spoken utterances—­zanilli, a synonym for Nahua Oral Tradition—­are particularly potent tools. Words are for commanding attention, evoking reality, transcending daily experience, addressing the divine, conceptualizing the abstract and remote, or adjusting the precarious balance between humans and the surrounding spirit world. Perhaps because of their philosophy of monism, words are far more than labels or symbolic abstractions; words perform real work in the world, and a person’s speech is generally taken very seriously. The measured words of a ritual specialist are particularly forceful and commanding. Throughout this work we present myths, chants, and many concepts taken directly from the Nahuatl. We have done our best to translate terms accurately while retaining some of the poetry, but inevitably much is lost in moving from one language to another. Nahuatl word power is difficult to convey via the printed page and across a considerable cultural barrier. Perhaps the most succinct way to convey to readers how the Nahua view words and speech is to quote the opening lines of a chant in Nahuatl in which Cirilo, standing respectfully before a village spring, addresses apanchaneh, the water dweller: On this day, this word was raised, here where I have gathered the children of God, the sprouts of God, the sacred [flower] sounds come, the chants come, the orations come, the spoken words come. For all of them, everyone around here, I speak these words. Here we have come, all of us.55

Cirilo begins his appeal by establishing the power of speech for the Nahua. It is the ritual specialist who raises the word, to whom the prayers and orations come, and who speaks for others. His role as interlocutor is to communicate humanity’s needs to powerful spirit entities, to have a dialogue with them, and to obligate them through ritual prestations to respond—­that is, to provide answers. Vocabulary pertinent to our theme of religious pilgrimage is collocated in the section “Nahuatl Glossary and Terminology” at the end of the book. However, we have found translating certain Nahua concepts to be especially difficult. The Nahuatl word tlaneltoquilli, for example, only approximates the Euro-­American definition of “religion” in signifying “a system of beliefs, faith, devotion, and worship” directed toward powerful spirit entities.56 Indigenous ethnographers admit that the meaning of tlaneltoquilli “is distant from its Western counterpart” and

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that “Nahua conceptualize it as an ancestral belief, linked to both tangible and intangible objects.”57 When speaking Spanish, the Huastecan Nahua call their religious practices costumbres or el costumbre, meaning “customs” or “the custom.” In conventional Spanish, the word costumbre would normally take the article la, but in changing it to el the Indigenous people of the region have claimed the word as their own with its own special meaning. The phrase can also refer generally to distinctive nonreligious social customs, that is, Indigenous Nahua practices as opposed to those of Mestizo elites. The Nahua rely on recognized religious leaders to divine the causes of problems and to organize and conduct rituals, including pilgrimages. As we have mentioned, the Nahuatl term commonly used for this kind of leader or person of knowledge is tlamatiquetl (or sometimes pahchiuhquetl, “medicine person”), typically rendered in Spanish as curandero, meaning simply “curer” in English. In recognition of their ability to foresee events or determine the causes of disease and misfortune, the ritual specialist is sometimes called tlachixquetl in Nahuatl or adivino in Spanish (“diviner” in English).58 Nahua rituals are essentially elaborate feasts that beckon powerful spirit entities along with human participants to partake of the bountiful offerings on display. Experts like Cirilo must act as organizers, hosts, authorities on matters of the sacred and especially ritual techniques, as well as curers of disease. Such charismatic individuals fulfill a critical role in the community that demands courage, intelligence, empathy, and a desire to help people. At the conclusion of a ritual specialist’s training, he or she is taken by the master to the top of a sacred hill where the person’s status as a new practitioner is confirmed. Because any one of these Nahuatl appellations fails to describe the full range of their activities, we have chosen to use the unwieldy English phrase “ritual specialist” to refer to these Nahua religious leaders.59 We try to avoid using such culturally loaded concepts as “gods,” “deities,” or “spirits,” favoring instead the somewhat awkward “spirit entities” to refer to beings that the Nahuas themselves regard as operating in the everyday world. Nahua ideas about the existence of spirit entities are complex and not fully understood by most outsiders. As we explain more fully, Nahua spirit entities are more like energy centers or nonpersonalized forces associated with what people in the West might think of as processes of nature. Often the spirit entities appear to have individual histories, names, and personalities. They are animated and have agency, they cause things to happen like

making it rain, and they possess emotions and tastes just as a person does. However, as we argue, it is by providing them with these temporary or transitory attributes that ritual specialists can address and engage them in ritual exchanges on behalf of the human community. Outside of appearing as characters in myths or being named as concrete manifestations on ritual occasions, these spirit entities tend to lose their individual identities and return to being a part of the generalized life force of the cosmos. The people often use the Spanish word dueño (“owner”) to label such entities; thus, for example, a water spirit would be an “owner of the water.” However, even this construction fails to convey the variety of roles played by these beings. Again, we have settled on the expression “spirit entity” for its greater precision and intelligibility. In anthropological usage “ritual” as a technical term refers to formal repetitive acts performed in sacred places or at special times with the aim of influencing spiritual beings—­ the Nahua spirit entities.60 We use the term “ritual” interchangeably with “rite” or “ceremony” with the understanding that virtually all Nahua rituals involve some kind of offering sequence and, as such, are efforts by people to engage spirit entities in reciprocal exchange. Nahuas of the Huasteca refer to a ritual as tlamanaliztli or tlamaniliztli (“the spreading out of something” or “something spread out”) and also xochitlalia (“to put down flowers”). When speaking Spanish, they simply use the word ofrenda (“offering”). Another general term for a ritual offering such as described here is tlatlacualtiliztli (also tlacualtiliztli), meaning the “act of feeding someone or a spirit entity”; similarly, tepetlacualtiliztli is “the act of feeding the hill or mountain.”61 In chants, the ritual specialists in Amatlán refer to libations sprinkled or splattered on the ground or the altar as tlatzicuintli, akin to offering a toast to the spirit entities. In some cases the ritual offering is called tetlahpallole, meaning “greeting.”62 The commitment to sponsor a ritual is se tlasenkawalistli in Nahuatl, una promesa in Spanish (“promise” or “vow”).63 Some form of altar is the central feature in all Nahua rituals. People call the altar tlaixpamitl (literally, “something faced”) in Nahuatl. They specify the altar (or any ritual display) and the offering placed upon it using the Spanish term mesa (“table”). In the context of the ritual act of dedicating offerings on altars, the mesa conception is widespread and its meaning is complex. Apparently, the table as a piece of furniture constructed as a flat surface with four legs—­so familiar to Euro-­Americans—­was novel to the people at the time of the conquest, and it soon took on a number of ritual uses. In his study of the mesa

in Indigenous Mesoamerica, John Monaghan concludes that tables became important because of their association with “officialdom, the state, the church, and European food habits and the fact that the power of the mesa in ceremony and belief is derived from the role it initially played as a place of mediation between Spanish colonialists and indigenous subjects.”64 The contemporary mesa resembles the Catholic Church altar but represents a continuity with stone altars of the pre-­Hispanic era. Its physical shape is a space or surface area described by a quincunx, an arrangement of four points in a square or rectangle with one point in the middle.65 Most important of all, mesas reflect the “longstanding Mesoamerican proposition that the relationship of debt and merit, which are so important in structuring the moral universe, are articulated through self-­sacrifice and expressed in acts of consumption.”66 In sum, the conception of the Mesoamerican mesa (or mezah, the Huastecan Nahuatl spelling we adopt here to define the altar offering of el costumbre practice) is a construct that encompasses both the offerings of precious food and ritual items and the strategy whereby people expend value to keep in balance the tenuous relationship between humans and the powers of the cosmos.67 The Nahuatl word for pilgrimage, nehnemiliztli, refers to the act of leaving the community, visiting a significant geographic feature or historic location, and returning to the point of origin. By contrast, a procession is termed tlayahualolli, which refers to a group of worshipers proceeding from point to point within a community or the nearby environs. Leaving offerings at the local spring is an example of a procession, not a pilgrimage.68 In An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl, Frances Karttunen defines the related Classical Nahuatl term nehnemiliztli as “the act of walking about, travel” and the related construction nehnenqui as “walker, foot traveler, pilgrim” or “one who comes to a fiesta from a distance”; the verb tlayahualoā is defined as “to go in a procession around something,” but no source attesting to the noun form is given.69 In Euro-­American societies religion generally refers to activities or beliefs set apart from the routines of daily life, part of what we would designate “the sacred.” We use the terms “sacred” or “sacralized” throughout the book in keeping with the sense of the equivalent Nahuatl word malhuilli, “something protected, hallowed.”70 Although it can be said that religious thinking or concepts of the sacred influence people in every culture, in the West it seems often compartmentalized, distinct from everyday affairs. By contrast, the Nahua sense of the sacred is more a part of living reality that informs everything that

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individuals perceive and do throughout the day. People may make a small offering to the earth when eating or drinking, recall mythic associations as they pass a feature in the sacred landscape, or observe the sky for evidence of rain dwarfs in the form of dark clouds carrying water to the top of Postectli for distribution to the fields. While one can discern Nahua expressions of the sacred most clearly during particular ritual events, from our own observations we maintain that religious experience has a more ubiquitous presence for most Nahua than it has for many individuals in Western cultures. As we explain more fully in chapter 2, the Nahua are philosophical monists in that they see all of reality, animate and inanimate, as the expression of a single sacred substance or ground of existence. In their view, the cosmos itself is the deity and all of the diverse objects and beings we experience in daily life are seen as manifestations or aspects of that single totality. This fact has led us to interpret ritual behavior and iconography in a way that might seem strange to those rooted in the Euro-­American dualistic system of thought. To dualists, there is the unspoken assumption that a gulf exists between a symbol and what it represents, between a signifier and what it signifies. For philosophical monists such distinctions make little sense: the symbol and all that it represents partake of the same fundamental substance as that which is symbolized. In attempting to understand Nahua religion and ritual practice, it is important to overcome the imposition of philosophical conceptions of dualism based on a fundamental distinction between material and spiritual, body and soul, or representation and that which is represented.71 As we argue throughout the book, Nahuas have a pantheistic religious system leading them to regard altars and sacred paper cuttings not as representations of some deeper reality but rather as extensions of them—­their very embodiment. In such a perception, a properly cut paper figure of the water dweller is not symbolic of the spirit entity or of water generally; rather, it embodies and reveals water and so serves as a window or portal into that singular reality in which water is a salient aspect. We generally avoid the terms “symbolize” or “represent” when discussing the meaning of the paper figures, substituting such words as “embody,” “manifest,” “disclose,” or “reveal” so as not to undermine our analytical efforts. These choices sometimes lead to awkward or repetitive phrasing, but we hope the technical terminology leads a deeper understanding of Nahua culture.

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Becoming a Ritual Specialist Ritual specialists are called to their profession through dreams (temictli, singular) or signs, such as a miraculous recovery from serious illness. There is a shared assumption that when individuals are chosen through such means, they must acquiesce and undergo several years of training as an apprentice to a master in order to serve their community. If they refuse such a calling, they are likely to face negative consequences, leaving themselves vulnerable to attack by spirit entities.72 Among other skills, the novice must learn to cut hundreds of different paper figures, create and memorize long prayers or chants to address the forces of the cosmos, construct complex altars, and possess the organizational skills to coordinate the activities of dozens of helpers. Above all, in Cirilo’s words, “a curer is always thinking, always analyzing.” He or she has to have the talent to create rituals that are beautiful and produce results. To perform effective rituals, such individuals must possess powerful personalities that command respect and have the ability to maintain control of sometimes dangerous spirit entities. For larger ritual events, it is the well-­organized ritual specialist who reaches out to political authorities to secure proper permissions and who contracts with musicians to perform the sacred guitar and violin music called xochisones (“flower sounds”). They are also the ones who make sure that the “flower house” shrine or xochicalli is filled with candlelight, the rich scent of copal incense (copalli in Nahuatl), and copious offerings (including flowers, of course)—­gathering all the requisite items to dedicate to the spirit entities.73 As a child, Cirilo was an orphan, “dressed in rags” as he put it. He fell seriously ill, and a curer took him to the arroyo to cleanse him of infecting winds emanating from polluted water. When he dreamed of the water dweller, apanchaneh, whom he remembers as having blonde hair with fish coming out of her body, it was a sign of his fate to become a ritual specialist. As a young man, he apprenticed with Evaristo, the powerful Otomí ritual specialist whose reputation is widely known throughout the entire southern Huasteca region.74 By becoming his acolyte, Cirilo brought together in his work two cultural traditions, and he would sometimes joke, “I am half Otomí.” People from both ethnic groups fully identified with the ritual procedures and eagerly participated in the pilgrimages he organized. His connection with Evaristo was one reason why Cirilo welcomed people from outside his community to the pilgrimages. Local Nahua had no problem with this arrangement, and the Otomí visitors seemed equally satisfied to

participate in a pilgrimage originating in a Nahua community. A consequence was that people from the two groups had to communicate in Spanish when speaking to one another, while those who spoke little or no Spanish could only interact with members of their own group. At first, villagers were reluctant to recognize Cirilo as a ritual specialist, not an uncommon reaction among local denizens to newly minted practitioners of this esoteric profession. People from neighboring communities, however, were quick to call on him to cure their various ailments, and soon they would come to consult with him about future events, to find out how a child in a distant city was faring, or to determine the causes of a recent run of bad luck. As his clientele grew, people from Amatlán, too, began to consult him to settle important concerns. After several years, he began to take charge of village-­wide ritual occasions such as tlacatililiz (the winter-­solstice ritual, now combined with Christmas observances), yancuic xihuitl (the new year observance), and various planting and harvesting celebrations. It was just as his reputation was growing in the early 1980s that the Protestant invasion began in earnest and the crisis in Indigenous religious practice turned ominous.75 Another ritual specialist from Amatlán, María Dolores Hernández (Cirilo’s half sister) also participated in the pilgrimages. She responded to questions posed by anthropologist Arturo Gómez Martínez, both speaking in Nahuatl, and explained how she became a ritual specialist: MARÍA DOLOREs: Well, it seems that I was very sick—I fainted, that’s why they cured me, to strengthen me. I grew stronger [as if it were something natural] and they didn’t explain anything to me—why should they tell me?—I was just growing up [without guidance or knowledge of my destiny]. Because I wanted to get married, they were going to make mole [rich food, in celebration]. But no, I was brought up with el costumbre in order to cure others, and that’s why my mother began to cure me. My mother cured me so I could take on this work [as healer, a person of knowledge]. It required a lot of turkeys, jutah! [she exclaims] to do the curing—I needed many things: two large chiquihuites, two carrying baskets filled with pemoles, tintines, alfejores [types of cornmeal sweets]. All kinds of flowers, all sorts of things—they were taking it all. Bananas, chayote, camote, acaxilotl [a type of tuber]—we used it all. Atole, all the alfejores, salted and sweet chahuacanes [crispy tortilla treats]—all of it. We made sweet and

salted bocoles, empanadas and gorditas with beans—they did it all, just to take to the hill to cure me. Because of it, I took on this work. I was fainting, but once they cured me, I no longer fainted. That’s why I took on this work. I didn’t want to do it, but two of my children died because I was not doing the work. I did not want to work with these prayers, these words [of el costumbre tradition], because I was ashamed—I was still a young girl. They cured me when I was only this big [indicating a child’s height with her hand]. But because they proceeded to cure me—and I was cured—I felt I had to take it on. My husband died and I began this work so I could go on making a living—I had nothing, with my husband dead. Well, I took on this work, and in this way I was able to raise my children. Even though I suffered greatly, well, I took on this work [wholeheartedly, despite feeling pressured]. Yes, I was able to buy myself some things because they were paying me for my work. I put babies to bed—I took on the work of laying down babies [a birth ritual that involves cleansing and putting a neonate down to sleep, analogous to laying the warp for weaving]. I began work as a bonesetter for people who had injuries. I received newborns, I cured them, I performed cleansings, I examined them to see their fate—that is what I went about doing. Well, yes, you’ll start on the earth, you’ll go to the altar, then you’ll go to the hill—all of this I have gone about doing. ARTURO: And how did you cure? How were you able to start to work as a curandera, a healer? MARÍA DOLORES: Well, I dreamed it. ARTURO: Ah, through dreams? MARÍA DOLORES: Well, yes, I dreamed that the Virgen María was speaking to me. Jesús Dios told me how I must go about, what I must do. And as it happened, for a whole week I dreamed that a Mestiza woman came to talk to me. [She said to me,] “There, daughter. Wake up.” “Why?” [I replied]. [In my dream, she said,] “Well, a cat is there, wailing.” When I got up, I saw that it was a fox howling [an omen]—it was a howling fox. It went in this direction [pointing with her hands]. Then I realized the howling fox had climbed up and was gone. So then the Virgen María came to wake me up. Everything that I was seeing, what I was looking at, I was ordered to see. And as I lost consciousness, I saw that I had arrived in heaven. I had arrived at the sixth doorway. It was beautiful—pure gold—and I saw coyol palm adornments arranged in the form of a star. I

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passed through [an abundance of] coyol palm flowers, right through the door. Then [with a hand gesture, signaling no], Jesús Dios told me, as did the Virgen María, “We don’t want you here—although you were sent here, we are not going to receive you.” And I was held here, and the Virgen took hold of me here, and God here [demonstrating how they grabbed her and asserted]: “We will not receive you, daughter.” Jutah! I saw the people just like worms, there they were [gesturing], there from above I saw how the people were. All of them received me with candles. God told them, “Don’t greet her—put out the candles. Your friend, your sister here, she will not stay. She will go because she is with child. She has to go back to see her children.” And so I returned. I recovered because they helped me look into my future, to see my fate, so then I was strengthened. They cured me, again they cleansed me—yes, I became healthy and strong. If it were doctors alone they could not cure me—a doctor and a curandero, a traditional healer, they cured me. I have spent a lot of money, not a little—I’ve spent a lot. I didn’t have a good house or resources because I cared for my children. I cared for my children, clothed my children, bought them something to eat, some chili, coffee, soap—everything that they lacked. It takes more than a day for children to grow up. It’s been rough—with hardship I’ve gone on living but I’ve had a hard time, a hard life. It was difficult to raise my children, and for this reason I weep. Sometimes I cry because I remember how I have cared for my children, how I have been surviving. And I was a young woman. That’s why I felt obliged to begin the path, and I dreamed—I dreamed about how I should act, how I should go along in life. In this way I dreamed I could not be both in heaven and on earth. I was watching out to see how many meters further I had to go to come back to earth. And they told me I was not ready to die, that I am not going to leave this world. Well, I returned, I came back— that’s what happened.76

The young man from a neighboring community, Raymundo, who was quoted earlier and an apprentice to Cirilo at the time, also joined in the 1998 pilgrimage. During the preparations, he was asked how he embarked on the path to become a ritual specialist. The exchange follows, with Raymundo responding in Spanish to questions posed by anthropologist Hugo García Valencia.

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Hugo: And you, who taught you? Dreaming alone? Or only seeing what [other ritual specialists] were doing? Raymundo: Dreaming and seeing what they do. Hugo: And you get sick if you don’t want to do it, if you don’t accept? Raymundo: Yes. Hugo: You didn’t get sick? Raymundo: Yes, for me it was nothing else that caused me such pure headaches. I was going to secondary school and I couldn’t study in class, I just couldn’t. I started to get headaches, nothing but daily headaches. And that is how I studied. I wanted to finish secondary school, but in the end they let me know I was done. As I went, I came here with my compadre Cirilo. I came to find out what happened to me because I had these daily headaches. He told me take on the work, the work of being a curer. I told him, “No, not me.” But he tells me, “No, you have to do it, you have to cure. Because, because if you don’t, you will continue to suffer from that pain as you get older.” Well, I got cured. And that is why I go along helping in every place they are going to hold the costumbre. I help them every place they go. They say that you dream of animals chasing you, the bad air, because I don’t want to do the work. They say that the bad air is going to get all over me, into my body. They say if I don’t take on this work, I could get sicker. Hugo: And what animals did you dream about? Raymundo: Well, like cows, sheep, deer. All of those went chasing me. Snakes, all of this. It’s horrible, no? Hugo: Or nightmares? Raymundo: Yes, and then [Cirilo] tells me, “If you do not take on this work, you are going to continue dreaming of these things.” “No,” I said, “no.” And then, “Well, okay, yes.” I’ve barely begun to work like this, but it’s been a long time that I’ve followed this costumbre, ever since I was young. I have been to San Jerónimo, I went to Laguna—­places far away. Hugo: Laguna is on the other side of the dam? Raymundo: Yes, [but] I don’t know where it is. It is very far. I don’t know where it is, but it is far. I had already gone as a kid. Hugo: Where they went to see the sirens? Raymundo: Yes, over there, there at Laguna. Later, near here, at San Jerónimo.77

Through these exchanges we can appreciate how, in order to be able to cure and deal with the spirit entities, a ritual specialist has to have had dreams and survived a serious illness. Additionally, the new practitioner must begin to

develop a clientele to be a legitimate member of the profession. The most revered leaders among these specialists are the huehuetlacameh (“elders,” singular, huehuetlacatl). Gómez Martínez reports that the position of huehuetlacatl is open only to males, but we did not find that was necessarily the case in Amatlán, where we observed that women could also achieve high status among this select group.78 Based on his stature among his followers, we can say that Cirilo was a huehuetlacatl, although he would have surely disavowed the label out of modesty.

Conducting Research on Nahua Pilgrimage By the time we participated in our first pilgrimage in June 1998, we had accumulated a considerable base of knowledge about Nahua religion and ritual practice from this region. Without that familiarity, it would have been impossible for us to document the many ritual episodes that take place during a pilgrimage, particularly when they occur simultaneously or meld into one another. Despite this advantage, Nahua pilgrimages pose special methodological problems that ethnographers must resolve. No matter how friendly their dealings are with outsiders, Nahua ritual specialists and laymen alike are generally reluctant to provide exegeses of their religious practices. Ethnographers have found reticence a characteristic of interaction with Native American groups throughout the wider culture area.79 People expected others to learn about the rituals by participating in them, as locals do from childhood, supplemented by occasional comments provided by the ritual specialists. Those with a deeper interest can apprentice themselves to an established master to learn more about the religion. Another barrier to documenting major Nahua ritual events is that preparations and the ritual observances themselves often take place over many days and nights, allowing little if any opportunity for rest or to write up field notes. We were accustomed to Nahua ritual events lasting for days, but when they stretched into weeks, physical exhaustion became a major obstacle to participant observation. Finally, there was the problem of the extreme physical exertion required to keep up with the pilgrims once they embarked on their journey. Under such conditions, it is a decided challenge to record systematic observations, question a broad sample of participants, draft coherent field notes, or even pause to take photographs. A number of deliberate strategies helped to mitigate some of these obstacles. First, we went as a team

and established a division of labor. During the first pilgrimage to Postectli, we gained permission of the ritual specialists to invite four Mexican anthropologists and a videographer attached to the Institute of Anthropology of the University of Veracruz in Xalapa to come along and assist in recording the proceedings. As we will discuss, some plans did not work out as envisioned, but we nonetheless managed to videotape about ten hours of the preparations during the 1998 pilgrimage. During the second pilgrimage to Postectli in 2001, two Mexican researchers accompanied us to help with data gathering. On both occasions we were able to spell one another and grab random hours of sleep so as to remain sufficiently alert. It was indeed good fortune to be able to participate twice in major pilgrimages to Postectli and thus ask questions and make observations on the second trek that amplified our comprehension of activities we had witnessed earlier. The three subsequent (and slightly less arduous) pilgrimages to different sacred mountains allowed us to amass new information. We are able to conclude that the variations we observed did not significantly modify the overall structure, purpose, and meaning of the Nahua sacred journey. An example of a difference that struck us as notable occurred on the second trek to Postectli when the organizers hired a small brass band (banda de viento) to accompany the pilgrims. Remarkably, the musicians played their instruments all the way to the summit of the sacred mountain. This unexpected development did not seem to interfere with the guitarist and violinist performing the sacred melodies or the construction of altars and dedication of offerings, all of which was consistent with the first pilgrimage. We photographed or videotaped as much of the proceedings as we could. By making a visual record of the preparations, altars, and the offerings we were saved from having to write down detailed descriptions as events unfolded. To accompany this work we have selected many highly evocative images from the documentary record. One member of our team also brought along an additional video camera during the first trek in 1998, which allowed us to record ritual sequences that might have been lost after the premature departure of our hired videographer. Nevertheless, we were able to preserve only a portion of the audio content of the pilgrimages. Ritual specialists chanted intensively as they dedicated offerings, and it would have been ideal to record everything they were saying as they addressed the spirit entities on the pilgrimage trail. We hit on a solution to the problem of these

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missing data almost inadvertently when we later analyzed the videotapes in our possession that recorded lengthy chants and explications delivered mostly in Nahuatl in the Amatlán shrine during preparations for the 1998 pilgrimage. We are fortunate to be able to include portions of these poignant invocations here. Adept practitioners of el costumbre religion create their own repertoire of chants, and they do not appear to modify them much for different ritual occasions. Thus, chants to the earth, water, or seeds performed as part of crop-­fertility rituals during the year appear to be quite similar to those employed for the pilgrimage.80 One serious data-­ gathering challenge we faced was identifying the array of anthropomorphic figures cut from paper that play key roles in Nahua rituals. Ritual paper cutting was a widespread practice in pre-­ Hispanic Mesoamerica, but the Sierra Norte de  Puebla and Huasteca regions of Mexico are among the few places where it survives today.81 It was clear to us that we needed to know which particular spirit entities were being addressed at the various altars in order to make sense of the pilgrimages. The paper figures are the tonalli or “heat soul,” sometimes called in Spanish sombra, “shadow” or “shade.”82 The important figures embodied in the medium of paper receive the offerings themselves, or they act as intermediaries and transmit them to other spirit entities. As León García Garagarza writes, these paper figures reveal “the ubiquitous forces that rule the world.”83 In Nahuatl, a ritual paper figure is called simply tlatectli (“something cut,” plural, tlatecmeh) or sometimes amatlatectli (“paper cutting”). A figure embodying a particularly powerful spirit entity can also be termed teoamatlatec­tli or “sacred paper cutting.”84 When speaking Spanish, people call the figures muñecos de papel (“paper dolls”) or simply recortes (“cuttings”). The most time-­consuming activity in preparing for a pilgrimage is cutting the requisite number of paper figures, requiring many days and nights for ritual specialists and selected helpers to fold and cut the paper and ready the finished cuttings for use in rituals. After cutting the figures, they carefully fold open the eyes, the mouth, and some of the features of the body and head that distinguish one from another iconographically. They then count the figures and lay them out neatly on a decoratively cut rectangle of paper called in Nahuatl petlatl, after the sweet-­smelling, woven palm mat used throughout Mexico. We consistently use the Spanish loanword petate for this paper bed or mat; another Spanish equivalent is cama. People may also refer to either the palm or paper petate by the Nahuatl term

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tlapechtli, meaning “litter, stretcher, bed, platform.”85 They stack the petates one atop the other to form several large bundles, and then wrap the contents securely in an actual palm petate for transport. These petates and the paper figures they contain are illustrated in chapter 6.86 The figures are created in such profusion that it was impossible to identify them during the pilgrimage itself. We took photographs of altars and were able to recognize quite a few of the spirit entities involved, but we could not document them well enough to draw conclusions about how individual cuttings were deployed. We already knew the identities of the disease-­causing figures that were used in the cleansing rituals held at multiple points during each pilgrimage, but the salutary spirit entities that participants carefully arranged atop and beneath the various altar displays remained beyond our reach. Close questioning of ritual specialists revealed that they receive instructions from dreams about which paper figures to cut and the proper design of the various spirit entities. While it is undoubtedly true that dreams influence which figures populate each altar, we discerned some patterns in the identities of figures used at the different locations. We persisted in questioning ritual specialists about the matter until Cirilo, following through on his wish for us to document the pilgrimages, agreed to cut for us a representative set of paper figures identical to those he created for the pilgrimages to Postectli. Cutting so many paper figures is quite an undertaking, and he enlisted the services of three other ritual specialists for the task. He furnished the sample collection with labels specifying where each bed of figures was to be placed, from the village shrine to the altars leading all the way to the summit. He asked only that we compensate his compatriots for their time. Before beginning the project, Cirilo inquired about which crops we grow at home so that he could cut the proper figures. We explained that we live in the city and do not grow our own food but that we wanted him to emphasize maize and beans. He seemed satisfied with the answer and within a few days the work began. Because the handmade bark paper, called amatl (amate in Spanish), is no longer manufactured in Amatlán (as it is in a few villages elsewhere in the region), he purchased thick stacks of manufactured paper at a distant market. The inexpensive pulp-­paper product favored by Cirilo and his colleagues is of the quality of newsprint (papel revolución) and consequently fragile, becoming yellowed and brittle over time. The ritual specialists placed the figures they cut for us, twenty each, on the decorated petates. When finished, the stacks of petates formed two dense piles roughly 30

centimeters (12 inches) tall. We followed the project closely until one day, on a visit to Cirilo’s xochicalli, we noticed the figures stacked on his altar and inquired about them. He assured us that the assembly of paper figures was complete and commensurate with what he would prepare for the pilgrimage to Postectli. We were gratified but taken aback by the amount of work expended in the creation of so many paper cuttings. To compensate the ritual specialists for their time and effort, we produced an envelope containing the agreed-­upon sum and offered it to Cirilo. He directed us to place it on the altar but said that we could not take the collection of paper figures at that time. In a hushed voice he pointed out that we had entered the period of nanahuatilli, a time when the souls of the dead return to the village in the form of masked dancers who go from house to house causing disruption. Following the Catholic liturgical calendar, the observance coincides with the Lenten celebration of Carnival (Carnaval) in early spring.87 Cirilo informed us that it would be disrespectful and dangerous to carry the figures across the community with so many dead souls wandering about. We waited several days until it was deemed safe for us to take possession of the sacred paper images. Immediately upon leaving Amatlán, we properly ar­ chived the images, painstakingly coding each one to keep it in the exact order in which we had received it. As part of our long-­term research, we had already gathered and archived an extensive collection of the sacred cut-­paper figures along with the name of the spirit entity and any iconographic data or mythic associations of each figure. We thus already had examples of many of the figures cut for the Postectli pilgrimage and were able to supplement the new cuttings with the previous information. To clear up any confusion, we took some of the problematic figures back to Cirilo for proper identification. We were able to correct quite a few errors before leaving the field, and we feel confident that we have a collection that is representative (if abbreviated) of the typical paper figures Cirilo would cut for the Postectli pilgrimage. We want to be clear, however, that the drawings that illustrate the book do not reproduce the exact configuration of figures actually deployed in the pilgrimages we report on. The paper-­figure collection was produced after the fact because the paper cuttings prepared for those rituals were unavailable for study, having been left behind on altars or destroyed during the proceedings. The demonstration set was cut by the same ritual specialists who participated in the Postectli pilgrimages and the subsequent journeys, and they assured us that these

illustrative cuttings were identical in every way to the ones they would actually produce for a major ritual event. We have known these generous people for years, and they have always proved trustworthy and reliable in the past, so we have no reason to doubt their word. The observations and photographic evidence that we present in this work affirm the ritual specialists’ commentary on the identity, iconography, and deeper meaning of the figures. It is important to point out that, as enormous as it is, the collection of paper figures for the Postectli pilgrimage does not by any means exhaust the range of images cut in Amatlán or other Nahua communities of the culture area. Virtually any being or object can be cut from paper by the practitioners of el costumbre. We have collected many such examples over decades of field research, and now we can fully appreciate that the spirit entities invoked in rituals and their embodiment in the medium of paper are limited only by the skill and imagination of the paper cutters. We will occasionally illustrate the iconographic and design variations of the figures and present ethnographic information on these earlier cuttings in notes.

Analyzing Nahua Myths and Oral Narratives Before ending this chapter, we want to recount a central myth that, among many other functions, links the sacred mountain Postectli to rain, maize seed and other crops, clouds, wind, thunder, and deer. The myth is about Chicomexochitl or Seven Flower—­ the name of a sacred boy with hair the color of corn silk who is the spirit of the growing maize plant (Zea mays).88 The story of Chicomexochitl helps to explain why people are motivated to make the pilgrimage to Postectli.89 Regarding the prominence of maize in the religious system, Nahua anthropologist Abelardo de la Cruz writes, The cult of maize is one of the essential components of el costumbre. The Nahuas of Chicontepec maintain a strong religious connection with maize. Maize is more than a seed, more than a source of food in Nahua religion; it is primarily a deity. It is not easy for outsiders to understand this cult as a cultural expression. However, there is a parallel between both religions [Christianity and el costumbre], as maize stands for the image and blood of Nahua man just as in Christianity the Eucharist stands for the body and blood of Christ.90

The importance of Postectli as the home of maize and dwelling place of those elements required for growing the

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sacred grain is attested in this statement made in Spanish by Raymundo, the young man then apprenticed to Cirilo. As he put it: Yes, yes, that’s the siren, that’s the thunder, that’s the lightning there. Thunder is one, lightning is another, no? And all the seeds that there are, they also live there [on Postectli]. The [good] wind has its house there. The sun also has its house there. Yes, that is why they’re now going to cut so many paper figures. That’s one of the earth. All of the saints have their cuttings too—­that which is the siren, the thunder, the wind, the sun.91

During the course of ethnographic fieldwork research over four decades, we recorded well over a hundred myths, stories, and oral narratives told by Nahua men and women, most of whom lived in Amatlán. The people of this community continue to speak Nahuatl in their everyday interactions, and so we asked them to recount the stories in their native language. We paid bilingual research assistants to transcribe the narratives and translate them into Spanish and, later, into English. In April 2011 we deposited these primary resources (in draft form) in the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) repository at the University of Texas at Austin to make them readily available to scholars and listeners interested in the corpus of Nahua oral literature. The Chicomexochitl–­Seven Flower myth and the other myths we present here are actually composite renditions by multiple storytellers; as we present each story outline, we note the component sources preserved in the AILLA archive.92 We found that the core body of Nahua myths is highly variable, existing in different forms even within the same community. Despite variations, however, individual story outlines share key elements and likely draw from the same cultural reservoir of themes and motifs.93 In Amatlán people prefer to use the Spanish word cuento (“story”) to describe oral narratives generally, but the Huastecan Nahuatl terms (in the singular) for such include zanilli (“spoken words,” “tales,” or “conversations”) as well as tlapohuilli or tlapohuiliztli (“stories of the grandparents”).94 Although people may call these narrations “stories,” many are closer to our concept of mythic tales in that they reflect core concerns of the group that extend beyond everyday experiences and incorporate sometimes fantastic beings that have no counterpart in empirical reality. As such, they provide guidance for how people should think and feel about the world in general and particularly the important events that affect their lives. For this reason a myth is sometimes called neixcuitilli, meaning a “model” or

24  :  Preparations for the Journey

“example” or “lesson with moral significance.”95 Typically, myths supply the reasons for why things are the way they are, and they elicit emotional responses from listeners as events of the narrative drama unfold. Myths can also provide the rationale for holding religious rituals. Probably the Nahuatl word huahcapatlahtolli comes closest to our concept of myth, meaning something akin to “ancient discourse.”96 We call them myths reservedly, not to convey a sense of the stories being false or unreal, but rather to celebrate Nahua Oral Tradition that so effectively expresses the truths of a profound philosophy and world view. For the reader unfamiliar with cross-­cultural studies of myth, we wish to issue a warning. From the perspective of the people in a given society, the myths of people from other cultures always seem singularly outlandish. We can testify firsthand that beliefs and practices forming the basis of myths, religious dogma, and even day-­to-­day customs accepted as normal by many North Americans are seen by Nahuas in Amatlán as equally bizarre.97 An alien world view expressed in myths can also threaten a person’s grasp of reality and undermine his or her meaning system. For many reasons, the beliefs of people from other cultural traditions are often dismissed as primitive, foolish, and childlike. In addition to the inherent problem of ethnocentrism, myths are extremely difficult to translate adequately, especially across divergent language families. We found this to be particularly true in undertaking our project to record the Nahua storytellers of Amatlán. Recounting myths assumes that one’s audience possesses substantial background knowledge, and in most cases that is an accurate assumption. Raconteurs often omit key points simply because everyone already knows about them, and so narrations often make little sense to outsiders and appear to lack a proper beginning, middle, or end. Of course, having the narrative requirement of linear development as a story unfolds is itself a cultural practice not found in every society.98 To illustrate, we first offer a short verbatim translation from the Nahuatl of the beginning of the Chicomexochitl –­Seven Flower myth, which we recount in full afterward, supplying the needed contextual details. The storyteller was an old man from Amatlán named Jesús Bautista Hernández. He was accompanied by a younger Nahua man who had become a schoolteacher in a different community and was losing touch with his village traditions. Old man: How does it begin? Well, when Chicomexochitl was being raised, the boy didn’t grow. They say he was killed. He’s over there.

Young man: He has something to do with the hill [over there]? Old man: He stayed over there. Young man: How was that? The boy stayed in the hill? Old man: He stayed there. Well, he . . . and there . . . [at first] he grew a lot. The one who takes care of him did that. That is the reason no one surpassed him in height. This . . . they are. This, too, is how big he was. Young man: About how big, more or less? Old man: This big. Young man: About a meter? Old man: Maybe, about one. . . . Young man: One meter tall, or less? Old man: Maybe two months. Young man: Two months . . . ? Old man: Perhaps about three months. So he is big. Young man: About a half meter, a half meter was his height? Old man: Yes. Young man: Um, his height. Old man: That’s right. His grandmother killed him. Yes. His grandmother, she killed him. His mother was not home. She returned and found him quite dead. The grandmother made him into tamales so that she could eat him. Young man: Hmm. Old man: But his mother did not eat him. Young man: She didn’t eat him? Old man: She did not eat her son. Instead, the grandmother went to throw him away. Young man: She went to throw him away? Old man: She went to throw him in a lake. Young man: In the water? Old man: In the water. The grandmother ran off, she left. Young man: She ran off? Old man: She went to throw Chicomexochitl away because she couldn’t stand him. But it’s not true. He survived after all, he didn’t die. He went on to become Chicomexochitl.99

The narration goes on like this for many typed pages in the transcription. One point of clarification is that the old man is speaking of the maize as it is embodied in its spirit form. Thus, when the younger man asks about how tall the boy was, the old man, responding as if the boy were a maize plant, switches from meters to months: he was as tall as the maize after two or three months of growth. Even from this brief passage, it is easy to see that a great deal has been left out of the story. The young man, who is bilingual

in Nahuatl but not very familiar with the narrative, clearly was having a hard time following what the old man was saying. Yet the old man’s approach is typical of the way that myths are told by Nahuas. With that said, we also must point out that several of the narrators we recorded recognized that we were naive outsiders and probably filled in details to make it easier for us to follow the stories.100 Among Nahua people of our acquaintance, men are the primary storytellers and carriers of the mythic traditions. Women are very familiar with the narrations but would agree to recount them for us only on rare occasions. As an aside, it is inevitable that when the stories begin, people stop what they are doing and gather around the narrator in rapt attention; all the other activities in the normally busy Nahua household come to a halt. For those who follow the religion of el costumbre, these narrations are riveting, and people apparently never tire of hearing them repeated. In order for us to understand the myth of Seven Flower we had to record multiple versions, piece together the narration, and question people about the more obscure points.101 In fact, the myth of Seven Flower makes perfect sense when conveyed in its entirety, although it tells of a world beyond empirical reality. One central character in the myth unfamiliar to most Western audiences is the grandmother of Seven Flower. She is a tzitzimitl, a frightening figure also found among the ancient Aztecs who is a kind of angry crone or hag with the supernatural attributes of a sorcerer. Paradoxically, she is associated both with fertility and with dangerous, disease-­causing wind spirits.102 We illustrate the Nahua myth of Seven Flower with ten fine, copperplate etchings created for the project by Michael K. Aakhus, reproduced here with the artist’s permission.

Myth of the Nahua Maize Spirit Chicomexochitl (Seven Flower) According to the people of Amatlán, there once was an angry crone, a tzitzimitl, who lived with her beautiful daughter in a house in the tropical forest, far removed from other houses in the village. The old hag loved the daughter in an overly possessive way and lived in fear that someone would come along and take the girl away in marriage, leaving the tzitzimitl abandoned and alone. To prevent this from happening, she kept close watch on the daughter and even made her stay in a chachapalli, a large cooking pot, so that she would not meet other people, particularly boys. One day when the young woman was getting water at the nearby spring to carry back to their house, she heard a rustling

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sound behind her and there appeared a handsome young man. He addressed her softly from a distance, saying he would see her again soon. She worried what her mother would say and turned to go home. As she began to walk away, she looked around just in time to see a beautiful deer, a mazatl, bound away. She returned to the house and said nothing to her mother about the incident. That night, with her daughter secured inside the chachapalli, the old woman went bustling about the kitchen fire. The tzitzimitl suddenly heard laughter coming from the pot and became alarmed. She opened the lid and saw that her daughter was having an animated conversation with a flea that had gotten in. But the flea was actually the young man, who in reality was the mazatl, the transformed deer spirit that the girl had met earlier. The old woman was furious and feared the worst. The flea escaped her wrath and fled into the night only to turn once again into a magnificent deer. The daughter of the tzitzimitl found herself pregnant, and in the time that it takes maize in the field to grow to maturity, she gave birth to a boy and girl, both already half grown. These were remarkable children with hair the color of corn silk. The young woman knew that she had given birth to Chicomexochitl—­the maize spirit Seven Flower—­and his twin sister, Macuilli Xochitl, Five Flower. In alternative versions of the myth, the old hag’s daughter finds a crystal in the spring and puts it in her mouth to hide it from her mother. She accidently swallows it and later gives birth to Seven Flower and Five Flower. In this telling, the maize spirit is the product of a virgin birth, but sometimes it is told that the deer spirit miraculously turns itself into a crystal that impregnates the girl. This version accords with the widespread Nahua belief that the deer is father to maize; we will offer a possible explanation below for this belief.103 At this point in the narration, the tzitzimitl grows angry at her grandson Seven Flower for coming between her and her daughter, even though he could hardly be blamed for the situation. In another rendition of the story, the old woman becomes furious with her grandson when he informs her that he intends to marry his sister. The prospect of incest drives the tzitzimitl wild with anger, and she vows revenge against him. In both accounts she plots to kill the boy so that she will no longer have to face his effrontery. His twin sister Five Flower drops out of the narrative for a while as the story continues:

The old woman became consumed with thoughts of revenge against the extraordinary boy and so entered into a series of competitions with him. She told him to go to the spring and bring back water in a matlatl or ayatl, a type of fishing net.104

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Seven Flower succeeded in the task and then asked his grandmother to do the same. She came back in a rage, soaking wet, having failed to carry any water. After thinking about the problem, she developed a plan to bury Seven Flower in the earth. She dug a hole in the ground and put him in, saying, “That should do it. Now we will truly see if you can grow.” To make sure that the boy would die, the old lady also placed a tarantula in the hole as she interred him. Seven Flower stayed within the earth for some time, but soon he began to sprout. He converted himself from a boy and grew into a vigorous maize plant. The tzitzimitl struck at the maize plant with a machete to prevent it from growing and repeatedly scolded the boy. She saw that the plant kept growing anyway, and so she left it alone for four months. By this time the plant had sprouted beautiful ears of maize. The tarantula that she buried in the earth with Seven Flower turned into its roots. Then the old woman said, “Now you will see what I am going to do. Now I am going to make you into atolli,” a sweetened beverage made of maize. She went out into the milpa and found two ears of maize stuck together. She placed them—Seven Flower and Five Flower—on the metatl, her metate or stone quern, and tried to grind them to meal. But in the attempt she broke her mano, the handheld grinding stone. The old woman went to a neighbor to borrow another mano, but it, too, broke when she tried to use it. Seven Flower was winning again. She swore vehemently, “Oh, coward, whore of hell!” But somehow she managed to grind up Seven Flower and make atolli out of him. She prepared to serve it to the boy’s mother who had just returned home. As his mother was about to drink the atolli, Seven Flower cried out, “Mother, you are about to consume your own son!” The daughter turned to her mother, the tzitzimitl, and exclaimed, “Oh, you have killed my son!” The old woman drew back, took the atolli, and went to throw it into the stream. At the stream bank, the tzitzimitl addressed Seven Flower, “Now, you are going to remain in the water where the fish will eat you. If I leave you in the water, the fish will finish you.” A few of the fish did eat some of the atolli, but the others fled. Those fish that consumed the ground maize were unable to vomit it up, and they developed the big bellies that they have to this day. The acamaya, a tropical crayfish, tried so hard to purge the sacred maize that even now its eyes bulge out. The water creatures menaced Seven Flower, who squirmed about and changed himself into a boy again. It was his soul, his tonalli, that had converted back into human form. Seven Flower revived and began to annoy the fish with big bellies by poking them with a stick. The fish responded by proclaiming, “Coward, why are you wounding us?” Seven Flower answered, “Because you ate me, that is why I am injuring you.” He searches for the wounded fish and grabs them, putting them into a basket.

Plate 1.1. The tzitzimitl, an old hag, hides her daughter inside a clay pot. Etching by Michael K. Aakhus.

Plate 1.2. Seven Flower and his twin sister, Five Flower, are born. Etching by Michael K. Aakhus.

Plate 1.3. Seven Flower is ground up and fed to the fish. Etching by Michael K. Aakhus.

Plate 1.4. The turtle carries Seven Flower on its back. Etching by Michael K. Aakhus.

Now Seven Flower wanted to leave. He asked several different types of creatures if they would help him travel to the shore. He asked the guavina, but this fish could not help because it darts fast but then stops and does not go far enough. He asked the crayfish, but it could not help because it only goes backward. He asked the mojarra too, but that fish couldn’t help either since it swims sideways. None could help. But the turtle, who was off to the side listening, approached Seven Flower and said, “I will take you. I will carry you. I travel well carrying a load on my shoulder.” The turtle carried the boy for a long time until they reached the water’s edge. When they arrived at the shore, Seven Flower began to strike the turtle on its back and make drawings on its shell. The turtle was upset, but in reality the boy was making his shell beautiful. From then on people have said, “Here comes the flowery painted turtle, xochiayotzin.” The turtle left the boy near his mother on the shore, far away from the tzitzimitl. Seven Flower’s mother told him to keep away from his grandmother, but he responded that he was going to see her because he wanted to talk to her. He said, “At this point, she cannot do anything to me. I’m big already.” So the boy snuck up on his grandmother and could see that she had removed the scalp from her own head and was seated with it in her lap. She sat there, slowly picking lice out of her hair. Seven Flower climbed up into the loft of the house and urinated on her head. The old woman was annoyed but thought that it was mice that were responsible for the outrage. She never suspected Seven Flower. The tzitzimitl attempted to put her hair back on but noticed that it would not stay in place on her drenched head. Growing increasingly frustrated, she constantly moved the hair around as her scalp dried. After a short while the hair became fixed, but it remained crooked on her head. Try as she might, she could no longer dislodge it. The boy approached the tzitzimitl and said, “What have you done, Grandmother?” She exclaimed, “Ah, devil boy, then you are not dead!” Seven Flower said that he wanted to talk to her, but she didn’t want to talk. The old woman instead dumped a cuartillo (a five-­liter box) of tiny amaranth seeds on the ground and ordered the boy to pick up each and every one of them. She herself left to try her hand again at carrying water in the fishing net. The boy recruited all types of birds to pick up the seeds and return them to the box. When his grandmother returned again, empty handed, she saw the full box of the seeds and became even more enraged.105 Seven Flower’s malevolent grandmother suggested next that they bathe in the sweatbath, the temazcalli, seeing the plan as an opportunity finally to finish him off. He agreed, and she suggested that he go in first. She piled on firewood until the temazcalli became glowing hot. After a short while inside, Seven Flower emerged unhurt.106 Seven Flower suggested that the old woman

enter the sweatbath herself. The tzitzimitl did so and immediately burned up, leaving nothing but a pile of ashes. Seven Flower took his mother to see what happened and told her that the tzitzimitl was no more, that she could no longer hurt him. Seven Flower searched for an earthen jug and placed the ashes of the tzitzimitl in it. He asked the toad if he would take the ashes and empty them into the sea. He warned the toad not to open the jug, no matter what. The toad placed the jug on his back, fixing it in his tumpline that he wore across his forehead, and transported it the great distance to the shore. As he hopped along, he began to hear buzzing and a great hubbub inside the jug. His curiosity overcame him, and he opened the jug and peeked in. At once, out flew all the world’s biting insects and venomous snakes to torment man and beast alike. The bumpy skin that toads have today is the result of their ancestor’s disobedience to Seven Flower.107 When the toad arrived at the sea and dumped the old hag’s ashes into the water, they immediately changed into a caiman (or alligator or other crocodilian species) that swam slowly away. The rough, scaly back of the giant reptile is said to be the surface of the earth where human beings live, and so ultimately the tzitzimitl became the earth’s surface. After this escapade, Seven Flower hid a knife in his clothing and traveled to the sea. He approached the shoreline and began to splash around in the water. He beckoned to his grandmother, the caiman, who was floating nearby, eyeing him. She was still furious, but eventually she swam over alongside her grandson. He remarked that she had a beautiful tongue and asked her to open her jaws so that he could see it. She complied, and he instantly grabbed the flickering tongue and cut it out with his knife. His grandmother shrieked and swam furiously away from the shore. Seven Flower carried the tongue to the top of a hill and sat down to rest. He then began to whip the tongue around, causing thunderclaps and lightning bolts to discharge from the hilltop. He later entrusted the tongue to the pilhuehuentzitzin, the rain dwarfs, so that thunder and lightning can announce their arrival as they carry water from the sea to the sacred hills.108 Seven Flower then asked his mother to tell him about his father. She responded, “But he died a long time ago.” He said to her, “But now, now he is dead, let’s take him out. I will go get him, I will bring him back. I know how to take him out.” His mother warned him, “And now, do not become frightened if you hear a bird or some sound. Don’t get excited and maybe you will succeed.” His twin sister Five Flower went with him. They took along a palm mat and a rope. They located the grave and dug down to find their father. They came across bones, placed them in the palm mat, and tied it up. As they carried the bones away, papan birds called out, startling the twins, and the contents of the palm mat began to squirm and move about. As they lost their grip on the bundle, a deer suddenly sprang out and bounded off down the trail. The deer was their father.

Preparations for the Journey  :  31

Plate 1.5. The tzitzimitl removes her scalp. Etching by Michael K. Aakhus.

Plate 1.6. The amaranth seed and sweatbath trials are put to Seven Flower. Etching by Michael K. Aakhus.

Plate 1.7. The toad carries the ashes of the tzitzimitl to the sea. Etching by Michael K. Aakhus.

Plate 1.8. The sacred twins are aided in the search for mazatl, their deer father. Etching by Michael K. Aakhus.

Chasing after the fleeing deer, Seven Flower screamed at it, “Your legacy is seven lead, seven steel, seven books, and seven reeds. From now on, people will hunt you, they will kill you.” After these traumatic events, Seven Flower and Five Flower escaped to Postectli to hide themselves inside the mountain. At that time, the monolith reached up to the sky and connected the earth’s surface with the celestial realm. All the crops, not only maize, depended on Seven Flower for their growth and abundance. With the absence of the sacred children, the crops began to fail and the people were starving. Everybody, including the ancient ones and the saints, searched in vain for them, for they remained hidden. One day people observed ants carrying maize kernels away from Postectli and realized that the pair was hiding there.109 The people sought far and wide for someone who could break off the mountain, but it was so enormous and strong that nobody knew what to do. They asked the cuachenchere, a huge woodpecker, to try to break open the mountain. The bird pecked and pecked all around Postectli to weaken it, but it remained standing. The situation had clearly become desperate. As time passed and the sacred maize twins remained in exile, eternal night descended on the earth and the people grew hungrier. Finally, someone thought to call Zahhuan, the water owner who is chained at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Zahhuan’s fury was just what was called for to split open the mountain. The short-­tempered water owner sent his thunder and lightning spirit helpers from the Gulf of Mexico to Postectli. They wreaked a wild and savage storm in their path. The night glowed with surreal light as the storm approached the sacred mountain. Although they attacked with all their force, thunder and lightning only produced immense noise and flashes of light. Still the monolith remained intact. At last, Zahhuan himself reached Postectli, and with a magnificent effort he cast his thunderbolts at the huge rock. With a thunderous roar heard by the fleeing people over the chaos of the storm, the top of the mountain finally was broken off, permanently severing the link between the terrestrial and celestial realms. The force was so great that Postectli turned into an inferno. The conflagration lit up the black sky, casting an eerie glow over the landscape. Seven Flower and Five Flower were now in grave danger as the fire threatened to incinerate them in their hiding place, reminiscent of the fate of their grandmother in the sweatbath. Soon clouds rolled in, sprinkling water on the mountain and cooling the molten rock. The ancestors and saints searched frantically for the precious twins and their store of seeds. They were at last located and safely rescued from the inferno, but some of the seeds sustained damage from the intense heat. The white maize, chipahuac cintli, escaped unscathed, but the yellow maize, costic cintli, was scorched, while the yahuitzin or yayahuic cintli, the black or purple kernels, were

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charred. To this day, maize varieties can be distinguished by the color of the kernels. Seeds of the other crops were also retrieved, and the human race was saved on that momentous day. Zahhuan formed enormous piles of once-­molten rubble from the top of Postectli, scattering them in all directions. These mounds with their rounded bases became the other sacred mountains that people visit every year to dedicate offerings. Not far from Postectli’s summit where this drama unfolded one encounters two narrow clefts in the basaltic monolith. One of the openings is said to be the home of thunder and lightning spirits that help bring rain to the fields. The other cavity is the dwelling place of the mother of Seven Flower and Five Flower. Storytellers in Amatlán address her as Tonantzin, “Our Honored Mother,” but she is familiar to many in her guise as the Virgin of Guadalupe.110 It was in that cave that the ultimate earth mother gave birth to the seeds—­maize, beans, squash, amaranth, chili, and tomatoes—­ that sustain human beings. In the same cave, people say, lives apanchaneh, the water dweller who controls the streams and calm bodies of water—­a manifestation of the temperamental water owner zahhuan. Beliefs and rituals surrounding the siren were recorded in this region by Spanish missionaries in the mid-­sixteenth century. Francisco de  Zorita (1558) wrote about the great reverence that the people had for a deity they called apanchantecuhtli, “water dweller lord,” who looked after rain and water on the ground.111 He described how the local people offered food to this so-­ called “demon” and performed dances, reminiscent of practices found in Amatlán today. The angry owner of water himself resides at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. From there, zahhuan commands his servants, the pilhuehuentzitzin (“honored little old ones,” sometimes called chaneque or “dwellers”). These twelve rain dwarfs, dressed in iridescent golden clothing with black rubber sleeves, are said to be about a meter in height. Each occupies its own mountain peak, and together they carry water from the Gulf to the caves on Postectli where apanchaneh sprinkles it over the fields. People include these rain dwarfs in the list of sacred figures they call “saints,” or santos, and say that they carry walking sticks or staffs as well as axes, chains, and swords, striking them as they go along felling trees and raising the thunder and lightning. The prehistoric copper axes that people occasionally find in their fields are regarded as the machetes of these spirit entities.112 During the first pilgrimage to Postectli, we videotaped a man named Lucas from a neighboring Nahua

Plate 1.9. Water owner Zahhuan breaks off the top of Postectli mountain. Etching by Michael K. Aakhus.

Plate 1.10. Maize returns to the people who observe el costumbre rituals. Etching by Michael K. Aakhus.

community as he explained the nature of apanchaneh. He offered a clear explication in Spanish about this all-­ important spirit entity: The siren is male and female. They are two things, yes, but it’s the same. At one moment she is a young lady. At another time, she is a gentleman. One moment she’s an alligator, another moment she’s a girl—­yes, the siren changes into many things. The siren maintains them [the people], she gives them food. That is why they make a vow [to her] so that it might rain. Yes, we also dress up the spring, and she promises to provide them with water there. The lady of the water, the siren, we ask her for a favor to see diosito, the little god. There at the spring we ask for plants, for example, maize, chilies, bean, peanut, oranges, banana, camote, and squash seeds. We ask at the spring . . . and the vow goes out over there. Even if it’s animals you want, such as chickens, hens, turkeys, ducks, as well as cows, mules, horses, bulls—­yes, you ask as part of a vow there.113

An important characteristic of Nahua religion essential to understanding its nature is that the spirit entities have mutable identities. They are not independent figures with stable, individual personalities. In myth and belief their protean nature means they readily blend into one another and shift personas. Such mutability was likewise a feature of the religion of the ancient Aztecs. In the minds of many people in Amatlán, tonantzin and apanchaneh are one and the same: the mother of maize is an aspect of the water dweller. Seven Flower and Five Flower themselves are merely nominal aspects of cintli, maize, and their distinctive male-­female qualities are invoked by ritual specialists and storytellers for the purpose of addressing them in ritual or fulfilling some mythic role. Just as Seven Flower and Five Flower went into exile within Postectli when they were treated badly by their tzitzimitl grandmother, they threaten again to depart if people fail to show them respect or demonstrate disrespect for others. The world is conceived as a perilous place: should the twins depart, the crops will fail and people will starve. People in Amatlán say that a ritual specialist during ancient times lured the seeds (and some say animal souls, too) from Postectli to the village so that they could support the people. Knowing the outline of this story we were astounded to learn that, to this day, paper figures embodying these seeds are carefully collected and preserved in a special wooden box kept on the altars of ritual specialists and laypeople who wish to demonstrate

their religious commitment.114 These large paper figures of the crop seeds are often cut from a type of heavyweight, glossy paper called papel lustre in colors corresponding to the actual crop. We noted that these permanent seed figures are assembled in groups of three or four, dressed as a single figure in a cloth outfit befitting its gender. The female-­designated figures are clothed in one-­or two-­ piece dresses and outfitted with tiny hair combs or hairpins, braids of ribbon, earrings, rings, and necklaces. The ones dressed as males wear white cotton pants, shirts, and a colorful bandana. The groupings usually contain maize, beans, and chili, but sometimes a paper image of squash, camote, or another crop is included. Based on comments from the ritual specialists, the assorted figures make up a complete meal, reflecting the way that people actually consume these foods. We illustrate and analyze these dressed seed figures in chapter 6. The box may also contain tiny pieces of furniture, implements, or articles of clothing such as miniature shoes. Periodically people set offerings before it, and they open the box and remove the figures for major ritual occasions, as we describe in chapter 3. Ritual specialists and their helpers scrub out the box and remove the clothing from each figure. They wash the clothes and let them dry, and afterward dress the figures again. The purpose of these activities is to create a pleasant, orderly environment for the seeds. People believe that disruptive and bad behavior will cause the seeds to depart and return to the cave on Postectli, leaving them without the means to produce food. A clear demonstration of respectful behavior includes dedicating offerings to the seeds during elaborate rituals. The ultimate act of respect is to undertake a pilgrimage to Postectli and make the offerings directly at the original homes of the seeds and other spirit entities. In sum, because of the primordial struggle at Postectli and the enticement of the seeds to remain in the village, people believe that it is imperative to hold ritual offerings to restore and maintain balance between human beings and the spirit entities that support life. Providing beautiful altars and offering the best food, drink, music, dancing, and chanting (as well as blood, the ultimate valued offering), they balance the debt owed by the human community to the cosmic forces that support them and keep starvation and annihilation at bay.115 The Seven Flower myth is central to understanding Nahua religion in this part of Mexico, and it addresses many of the people’s significant concerns. As slash-­and-­ burn horticulturalists coping without machinery with the unique flora and fauna of a tropical-­forest climate, these

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farmers rely on the fertility of seeds, the fecundity of the earth, and the vagaries of rainfall to produce the food they require to survive. They link weather phenomena and its impact on the fields to the erratic personality of the water owner zahhuan, who arbitrarily may bestow life by providing rain or inundate the world and exterminate its inhabitants. The myth concerning the struggle between Seven Flower and his dangerous grandmother, the tzitzimitl, addresses the abuses that humans inflict on maize. She buries the maize kernel in the earth, grinds it on a metate, and throws it into the water—­just as ordinary people do every day. And yet the miraculous plant always comes back to life. The myth places people in relation to the entities of the spirit realm and to the natural forces they embody that make human life possible. It reveals a cosmos that is basically neutral regarding human interests but, at the same time, precarious and in constant danger of collapsing into chaos. The story of Seven Flower is also intimately connected to the sacred landscape of the Nahua. Postectli is more than an unusual geological formation. The monolith contains within it many of the key forces of the natural world that create the conditions for life. All such landscape features are part of a sacred totality that impinges on people’s lives in countless ways.116 H. E. M. Braakhuis has examined the oral narrations about Seven Flower that we recorded in Amatlán.117 Com­ paring them with oral narratives collected by other Gulf Coast ethnographers, he finds antecedents of the contemporary stories in the Borgia and Vaticano B codices. The ancient documents, as an example, show an old woman who breaks the mano while grinding corn on her metate. Based on his analysis, he concludes that the tzitzimitl in the Amatlán myth today corresponds to the Aztec goddess Cihuacoatl Ilamatecuhtli. Braakhuis argues that her daughter, Tonantzin (the mother of Seven Flower), is a version of the well-­known Aztec deity Xochiquetzal, while Seven Flower corresponds to the deity Xochipilli.118 Braakhuis interprets the myth of Seven Flower as marking the primordial transition from hunting and gathering to horticulture based on maize cultivation. The grandmother characterizes the older way of life and is threatened by the appearance of maize in the form of Seven Flower, and for this reason she tries to kill him. That the deer is father to maize underscores the idea that hunting and gathering preceded horticulture.119 The story of Seven Flower accomplishes much more than merely recording history, however; it illustrates for people what it means to lead an ethical, moral life. The life well lived reflects moderation, balance, and, most importantly,

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respect for all things—­for other people as well as the seeds and those elements of sun, earth, and water that make human existence possible. The all-­important precept of “respect” is expressed in Nahuatl by the people in Amatlán as tlatlepanittaliztli, a noun that means “that which looks upon, sees, or regards things respectfully” or “respect for something or someone.” Its opposite is axtlatlepanitta, a verb construction (and negation) that means someone or something “does not respect” or “lacks respect for something or someone.”120 The story also explains phenomena of nature: why the skin of the toad and the surface of the earth are so rough, why the painted turtle has a colorful shell, why hills are rounded, why roots of the maize plant appear as they do, and why ears of maize come in different colors. The Seven Flower myth provides the rationale for holding rituals designed to ameliorate the sometimes difficult conditions of village life. It also shows that rituals are essentially social exchanges whereby values in the form of offerings are traded to spirit entities in return for human and crop fertility and life’s necessities. To illustrate the sometimes paradoxical nature of Nahua myth, we summarize another narration told about Postectli by our compadre Bartolo Hernández Hernández in Amatlán in 1990, which gives an alternate explanation for why the sacred mountain is broken off at the top:

It seems that a long time ago, when Postectli was still whole, the earth mother Tonantzin was in her garden tending to her flowers. She became disturbed by the leaf-­cutter ants crawling up the mountain from the earth below that were destroying the flowers. At the same time, sorcerers were ascending Postectli to spy on God and observe what was going on in the sacred realm.121 Something had to be done. To solve the problem, Tonantzin invited a large woodpecker to demolish the hill so the ants could no longer reach her garden. The bird pecked all around the peak, but the hill did not fall. She then invited the ancient ones, the water owner Zahhuan, and lightning and thunder to demolish the hill. After a monumental effort, they broke off the top of Postectli, and the fragments became all of the sacred hills in the region. As the hill was being destroyed, the maize stored inside was exposed to heat. Some of it was burned black, some yellow, and some of the sacred grain was untouched and remained white. The burned maize was distributed to Zahhuan to plant in his milpa. The superior, untouched white maize was given to the thunder and lightning so that those ancient ones could plant it in their milpas. Everyone thought the burned maize would not sprout and Zahhuan would fail in his efforts. To make matters worse, Zahhuan did not cut down the trees and brush and burn them to make the fields ready. He planted his maize on the feast day of

San Juan Bautista, June 24. He then went to live in the middle of the sea, where he made a great disturbance and sent rain to the fields. After a few weeks it sprouted and came up nicely. The white, unburned maize planted by thunder and lightning, however, completely failed to sprout. They were furious and went around casting loud thundering noises and violent lightning flashes. Thunder and lightning asked Zahhuan, “Why did your maize grow and ours did not?” Zahhuan replied, “You only produce thunder and lightning, pure sound and light, but you do not bring rain. I went to live in the sea so that I could raise the clouds and send water to the milpas. I beat both thunder and lightning and succeeded in bringing forth Seven Flower, the maize, in all of its glory.” In this telling, the sacred mountain was severed by zahhuan to prevent ants and sorcerers from getting into Tonantzin’s garden. We do not know how to reconcile this version with the rationale that Postectli was broken off to free the maize spirit. However, it is interesting to observe how many elements of the two accounts do coincide. They both offer identical explanations of the mechanism by which the mountain was broken, why maize comes in colors, the origin of sacred mountains, and the differing abilities of zahhuan and the thunder and lightning spirits. The variations between these two myths pose an analytical difficulty for us as anthropologists, but they do not seem to bother Nahua listeners. Evidently, wide variations in the Seven Flower myth exist among Indigenous people throughout the southern Huasteca, but we found no pattern linking specific variants with a particular ethnic group or locale. We conclude that the stories surrounding Seven Flower must be freely elaborated and widely shared among Indigenous storytellers of this region. We want to make it perfectly clear that the Nahua individuals we know would not tell the story of Seven Flower in precisely the way we present it here. To make the account understandable to outsiders, we have organized

its narrative elements into a sequence that fits a time line and an internal logic that allows unfamiliar readers to follow the story. The reality, however, is more complex. Nahua stories are often composed of smaller narrative components strung together by the narrator—­units or modules that stand on their own and often become stories in their own right. While we based the myth of Seven Flower predominantly on the narration of one Nahua elder with extensive knowledge of the corpus of myths, we have filled in gaps by compiling details from other storytellers who recounted portions of the overall myth. To validate our method, we recounted our composite version of this myth to Nahua colleagues familiar with the region’s storytelling traditions (and we did the same with the additional myths we present below). They agreed that the major story motifs are readily comprehensible.122 What the storytellers themselves do is piece together narratives from these modular units, all of which are very familiar to Nahua listeners. What seems confusing to many of us is when these units contradict or depart from the broader story line. For example, the story of Seven Flower that Jesús Bautista Hernández told starts out by recounting how the maize spirit Seven Flower grew after being planted in the milpa. Jesús skipped over the entire earlier part of the myth involving Seven Flower’s mother and the explanation of how she became pregnant. The story covers the trials of the maize spirit at the hands of his tzitzimitl grandmother and his exile to the interior of Postectli. It then switches to another story module in which ants crawl up Postectli and irritate Tonantzin, who then recruits Zahhuan to destroy the mountain and sever the bonds between the celestial and terrestrial realms. To us, such a shift seems abrupt, but to Nahuas the contradiction is understandable. What is important is that the story explains why Postectli was broken off. We examine this modular way of thinking in more detail in chapter 7.

notes 1. Taggart (2008: 100) explicates the changing cultural meanings of coyote in a riveting analysis of ethnic conflict and violence among the Nahuat of the Sierra de Puebla. Stresser-­Péan (2009: 477) writes that across ancient Indigenous Mesoamerica, canines were symbols of “unbridled masculine sexuality,” which may explain why Spaniards and other outsiders have come to be identified with the coyote. See Sandstrom (1991: 69) for more on the subtleties of ethnonyms used by Nahua people and their Mestizo neighbors, whereby coyotl has come to encompass, in an ironic sense, “gentleman.”

2. We generally follow the usage and orthography guidelines recommended by the Native American Journalists Association (2018), Younging (2018), and Weeber (2020). 3. We recorded Cirilo’s commentary in our written fieldnotes on February  18, 2007. Videographer Jeff Kaufman was there to document Cirilo’s cleansing-­curing ritual for a client with the participants’ permission, but this exchange was not recorded. Our account of the pilgrimages in 2007 (featured in appendixes A, B, and C) is supported by our photographs and fieldnotes, but the video recordings remain to be curated for

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public access. Throughout the book we cite numerous audio recordings of Nahua storytellers, along with the audio portion of videos documenting the 1998 Postectli pilgrimage, preserved at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA); see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986–­98, 1998). 4. See Preston (1992: 31); Graham-­Campbell (1994); and Palka (2014). 5. Bruce Feiler (2014). 6. Nolan and Nolan (1997: 61). 7. Examples of Protestant pilgrimage are found in Nolan (1991: 20); Glazier (1992: 147); Coleman and Elsner (1995: 118–­20); Clift and Clift (1996: 13, 16–­17, 29–­30); and Coleman (2004). 8. See Feiler (2014) and the Pew Research Center (2015) study, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.” 9. Westwood (2003: 13). 10. Mapcarta​.com locates the monolith at latitude 20° 54' 29" (20.9081°) north, longitude 98° 1' 46.7" (98.0296°) west and identifies it as Cerro Ixcacuatitla, a variant spelling of Ichcacuatitla, the Nahua community located at its base to the east; see https://​ mapcarta​.com​/​29791196. Although the official government locality is named Ixcacuatitla, Chicontepec, Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (INEGI 2021), we spell it Ichcacuatitla, the more common designation in the anthropological literature. Many Nahuatl speakers in the region prefer Ichcacuatitlan, spelling it with a silent ending letter n; see the Wikipedia entry in Nahuatl at https://​nah​.wikipedia​.org​/​wiki​/​Ichcacuatitlan, which translates the name as “place of cotton trees,” that is, ceiba or silk-­ cotton trees, the source of kapok. 11. The six other hills are Tepenahuac, Tzoahcali, Tepeicxitla, Xochicoatepec, Ayacachtli, and Xihuicomitl, reported in Báez-­ Jorge and Gómez Martínez (2000: 82); Gómez Martínez (2002: 106). 12. Karttunen (1983: 205). 13. The Nahuatl designation tepetl (and words constructed from the morpheme tepē-­) translate as “hill” or “mountain” without regard to size, and so we have used both terms interchangeably throughout this work. 14. Our brief accounts of the Palaxtepetl, Tres Pozitos, and Xomulco pilgrimages in appendixes A, B, and C, respectively, are augmented by 220 captioned photos. 15. See Hill (1998) on the discourse of nostalgia among Nahuas in the Malinche volcano region of central Mexico. 16. Ochoa and Gutiérrez (1996: 96) and Martín del  Campo (2006: 93, 169) report that the Otomí village of Cruz Blanca is a center where many Indigenous people in the region go to receive training as ritual specialists. Following the designation familiar in Amatlán and in keeping with usage widely referenced in the anthropological literature, we persist in using the ethnic-­group name “Otomí” rather than ethnonyms such as “Ñähñu” (Dow 2003: 25) or alternate names from other regions (Wright-­Carr 2005). Dow (1995, 2005) provides cultural summaries of Otomí people living in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, as does Oehmichen Bazán (1995) for Otomí communities in central Mexico. Dow’s (1986) detailed analysis of Sierra Otomí curing techniques, religious beliefs, and symbolism is discussed

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in chapter 6. In his multi-­sited ethnography Galinier (1987) canvasses Otomí villages of the southern Huasteca and Sierra Norte de Puebla region; he examines (Galinier 2004 [1997]) people’s religious beliefs and practices within a framework of psychoanalytic theory. Lenz (1969: 86, 93–­94) offers a brief description of an Otomí pilgrimage. 17. See Sandstrom (1991, 2001a, 2008a, 2010c); Garma (2001) on the impact of Protestant conversion in this area of Mexico. 18. Sandstrom (1995: 184). 19. Richter and Faust (2015: 3). 20. For a summary of Huastec Maya culture, see Ruvalcaba Mercado (2005) and classic works referenced in Alcorn and Edmonson (1995). The growing body of ethnographic work usually references the designation “Huastecs” (and the Mexican government calls the language “Huasteco”), but we adopt the ethnonym Teenek to avoid confusion with the region’s name. 21. Ruvalcaba Mercado (2015: 202). 22. Ruvalcaba Mercado (2015: 198). 23. See Stresser-­Péan (1979: 247–­48); Sandstrom (1991: 241–­ 43, 300). 24. Heiras Rodríguez (2005: 226; 2008); Lazcarro Salgado (2008). 25. Morinis (1992: 5). 26. See Wagner (1997: 320) on the idea of a “supernatural resource.” 27. In the variant of Nahuatl spoken in Amatlán, tonatiuh is pronounced as if spelled tonatih, omitting the final syllable. In the book’s closing section, “Nahuatl Glossary and Terminology,” we provide more information on the orthographic system (Sullivan et al. 2016). 28. Paso y Troncoso (1905 [1580–­82]: 188), translation ours. Jerry Offner kindly alerted us to this passage (personal communication, November 28, 2009). 29. Isaac (2005: 1). 30. For an updated review of human sacrifice in relation to Aztec dietary practices, see Ruvalcaba Mercado (2018). 31. Crowley (2015). 32. Martínez de la Cruz (2000: 75–­97). 33. See descriptions of pilgrimages to Postectli and associated rituals by Medellín Zenil (1979; 1982 [1955]: 101); Báez-­ Jorge and Gómez Martínez (2000: 89–­90); Gómez Martínez (2002: 108–­13; 2004b; 2013); Gómez Martínez and Hooft (2012); Pacheco (2014); Cruz Cruz (2015); and González González (2019: 164–­96). Also see similar descriptions by Hernández Hernández (1990) of Nahua pilgrimages near Amatlán and by Lara González (2019: 154–­68) in Hidalgo and elsewhere. 34. See Madsen (1969) and Sandstrom (2010a) for general statements on the Nahua; Nutini and Isaac (1974) on Nahuas of Tlaxcala and Puebla; Sandstrom (2000a: 87–­91; 2005b) and Rodríguez and Valderrama (2005) for coverage of Gulf Coast Nahuas; and Sandstrom (1995) and Valle Esquivel (2003) for summaries of Nahuas of the Huasteca; see also Montoya Briones (1964) and Marie-­Noëlle Chamoux (1987) for ethnographies of Nahua communities in the Sierra Norte de Puebla. 35. Kaufman (1994: 39–­40).

36. Karttunen (1983: 145). 37. Berdan (2014: xvii); Sandstrom (2017). 38. Online Nahuatl Dictionary (n.d.). https://​nahuatl​.wired​ -humanities​.org​/node​/​203792. 39. Karttunen (1983: 127); compare https://​nahuatl​.wired​ -humanities​.org​/node​/​173016. 40. Fowler (1989); Sandstrom (2010a). 41. For example, Hooft (2007: 265). 42. Canger (1988: 63–­64). 43. See also Provost (1975: 28–­29); Berdan et al. (1996: 291–­93); and Berdan and Anawalt (1997: 131–­41) on Aztec incursions into the southern Huasteca region. See Ochoa (1984 [1979]) and Ochoa Salas and Jaime Riverón (2005) for authoritative summaries of Huastecan prehistory; Pérez Zevallos (2005) on the region’s ethnohistory; and Santiago (2011) for a brief environmental history. The pioneering archaeological survey by Medellín Zenil (1982 [1955]) includes information on contemporary ritual practices as well. 44. Kaufman (1994: 34); Sandstrom (2000a: 88–­89, fig. 6.1); and INEGI (2009: 36–­41). 45. A comprehensive ethnography of the village of Amatlán can be found in Sandstrom (1991, and the Spanish translation, 2010b). Sandstrom (2006) presents a memoir of friendship in the field, and Smith-­Oka (2013) presents findings of her study of women’s health in Amatlán. To help provide context for the present study, Alan began ethnographic studies in Amatlán as a graduate student in the summer of 1970, with an extended stay in 1972–­73, and Pamela has participated in the research work since 1974. Our residence in Amatlán during the 1985–­86 academic year was supported by a Fulbright research grant; by that time significant cultural and economic changes were evident in the village. We have written about these transformations based on fieldwork undertaken during sabbatical leaves in 1990, 1997–­98, and 2006–­2007. 46. Sandstrom (1991: 168–­69). Sandstrom (2000b) proposes that the typical Nahua residence pattern constitutes an embryonic “house society.” 47. Knab (1986) discusses such botanical metaphors used by Nahua of the Sierra Norte de  Puebla. We use the designations “maize” and “corn” interchangeably throughout the book, although the English word “corn” actually designates any predominant cereal crop grown in a region. For farmers in Scotland “corn” means oats, and in England it signifies wheat, but because maize is so common in the US, North Americans call it corn. 48. Statement 1, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 00:11:04–­00:11:41 (AILLA resource ID: 284722). Cirilo’s statement is part of the commentary by ritual specialists recorded in Amatlán by videographer Benjamín Marín López in 1998. The Nahuatl recordings have been transcribed and translated into Spanish by bilingual Nahua investigators Abelardo de la Cruz and Alberta Martínez Cruz (Tapes 1, 2, 4, and 5) and Eduardo de  la  Cruz Cruz (Tape 3). MP3 audio files derived from the five digitized 1998 VHS video recordings along with the annotated transcripts have been preserved in the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA), available for download

after free registration at https://​ailla​.utexas​.org/; see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1998). 49. Statement 2, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 01:17:35–­01:19:03 (AILLA resource ID: 284722). 50. Sandstrom (1991, 2008a). 51. Harris (1979: 297–­300). 52. See Nutini and Bell (1980); Nutini (1984); Sandstrom (1991: 188–­92). 53. See our account of negotiating such obligations in Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2011: 28–­29). 54. Statement 16, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 00:06:08– ­00:08:52 (AILLA resource ID: 284722). 55. This beginning portion of Cirilo’s chant is on VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 01:43:28–­01:43:45 (AILLA resource ID: 284722); the complete audio of his chant continues through counter 01:56:55, accompanied by the Nahuatl transcript with Spanish and English draft translations. 56. Also tlaneltokilli (Gómez Martínez 1999b: 1), following Gómez Martínez (2002: 11); translation ours. 57. Cruz (2017: 271). 58. Hernández Cuellar (1982: 40–­46, 107); Lupo (1995: 63); Gómez Martínez (2002: 97–­102). 59. Following the suggestion of Alice Kehoe (2000), we now avoid labeling Nahua religious practitioners as “shamans,” even though the term has commonly been used by other anthropologists in Mesoamerica and we have used it in the past. The Siberian term properly labels an Evenki or Tungus practitioner and usually refers to someone who enters into direct contact with spirit beings with the purpose of influencing them. Nahua religious leaders do make contact with such beings in dreams, and they sometimes act as mediums through which otherworldly entities speak, although their role differs from that of the Siberian ritual specialists. Iwaniszewski (2011) likewise concludes that describing Mesoamerican practitioners as shamans is generally inappropriate. 60. See Harris and Johnson (2007: 278). 61. Martínez de  la  Cruz (2000: 35–­36); Gómez Martínez (2002: 130–­31). 62. Reyes García (1976: 128). 63. Nava Vite (2012: 12). 64. Monaghan (2003: 146). 65. Maffie (2014: 230–­40). 66. Monaghan (2003: 147). 67. In 2002 Sharon convened a symposium and curated the museum exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Man on the historical and cultural significance of mesas among Indigenous Mesoamericans (Sharon 2003); see also Sharon (1976). Dehouve (2012) traces the contemporary use of mesas in religious offerings to the pre-­Hispanic practice of creating seats and thrones for deities. We adopt the alternative spelling of mezah as a Spanish loanword following Huastecan Nahuatl orthographic conventions; see the entry in Sullivan et al. (2016: 310), a monolingual dictionary compiled by a team of Indigenous lexicographers. The entries are being added to (and amplified with English and Spanish glosses) in the

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Online Nahuatl Dictionary (n.d.). Abelardo de la Cruz (personal communication, August 18, 2021) confirmed the nonstandard plural form mezaz. 68. Arturo Gómez Martínez confirmed this distinction (personal communication, October  1, 2013); also see Orr (2001), who writes about Mesoamerican processions in pre-­Hispanic Oaxaca. 69. Karttunen (1983: 162, 304); the usages may not be widely familiar to contemporary Huastecan Nahuatl speakers, however. 70. Karttunen (1983: 134); Cruz (2017: 271). 71. Martín del  Campo (2006: 245) observes that for Pentecostal converts among the Nahua of Chicontepec, Veracruz, the Bible embodies the actual presence of God. Perhaps the converts, who vehemently reject traditional religious beliefs and practices, retain some of the philosophy of Indigenous monism. 72. Sandstrom (2001c: 316); Gómez Martínez (2002: 98). 73. Eduardo de  la  Cruz Cruz (personal communication, July  15, 2021) commented that the English word “shrine,” or sanctuario in Spanish, does not do justice to the Nahuatl concept of xochicalli (“flower house”) as the site where people gather for el costumbre devotions. He suggested that the designations casa de culto (“house of worship”) or, simply, casa de costumbre (“house of costumbre practice”) might be more apt, as today the observances often take place in a corner of a ritual specialist’s private dwelling. A capacious thatch-­ roofed xochicalli used for community-­wide observances once stood near the center of the dispersed settlement of Amatlán until the late 1970s or early 1980s. People called the structure a “chapel,” or capilla when speaking Spanish, and the permanent, concrete-­block structure in Ichcacuatitla (built for use by residents and visitors on pilgrimage) fits the conventional definition of a chapel as a place of worship. Sandstrom (2000a: 66–­68) discusses the physical house–­home altar–­shrine in the context of Nahua social organization and cosmology. Here we persist in using the English term “shrine” in the narrow sense of a structure “that serves as the focus of the performance of some ritual,” per Merriam–­Webster Unabridged (n.d.). 74. Barrera Caraza (1996). 75. See Dow and Sandstrom (2001) for an overview of this turbulent period throughout Mesoamerica. 76. Statement 3, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 00:51:05–­00:56:25 (AILLA resource ID: 284722). 77. Statement 4, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 01:07:45–­1:10:45 (AILLA resource ID: 284722). 78. See Gómez Martínez (2002: 73); also Gómez Martínez and Hooft (2012: 3). For additional accounts of how Nahua ritual specialists are called to their profession in nearby Acaxochitlán, Hidalgo, see Díaz Hurtado (2015). Knab (2004) offers what he calls a fictionalized account of dream interpretation among Nahua ritual specialists in the Sierra Norte de Puebla. 79. One telling example of the problem of determining the meanings of pilgrimage in Mesoamerica is offered by Straub (1992), who writes of her difficulties in reconciling historical and ethnographic data with participants’ statements about the

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Niño de Atocha shrine in San Juan de Amatitlán, Guatemala, and speculates that the sacred journey to the church is related to rain and a solar-­maize deity (and similar, as we will see, to the pilgrimage to Postectli). For other statements about the particular challenges of conducting ethnographic research in Indigenous Mesoamerica, see Vogt (1976: 1–­7); Harvey (1991: 95); and Lupo (1995: 17–­27). 80. We discuss the transcription, translation, and interpretation some twenty years later of the videotaped orations in chapters 3 and 4. Additional collections of orations in Nahuatl recorded in the Huasteca (with Spanish and German translations) appear in Reyes García and Christensen (1976: 45–­119). Báez-­ Jorge and Gómez Martínez (1998: 79–­ 89) transcribe and translate Huasteca Nahuatl chants into Spanish, and Lupo (1995: 107–­243) analyzes orations from the Sierra Norte de Puebla, presented in interlineal Nahuat-­Spanish. For additional sources, consult Stiles (1985); Stiles, Maya, and Castillo (1985); Hooft and Cerda Zepeda (2003); and Hooft (2007). 81. The present analysis, especially chapter 5, updates the Nahua material in Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986), which examined the complex of ritual paper cutting among Nahua, Otomí, and Tepehua practitioners. Sandstrom (1991: 229–­322) provides additional information about the Nahua practices. 82. See further discussion of the tonalli soul in chapter 2. 83. García Garagarza (2012: 196). 84. Gómez Martínez (2002: 75). 85. Karttunen (1983: 290). 86. Braakhuis (forthcoming: 26n42), in discussing Mesoamerican rituals and oral narrations concerning maize fertility, posits that these ritual items may be designated as beds because the paper figures correspond to infants and children. We cannot affirm that the ritual paper figures are regarded as immature beings without further field research, but the suggestion is a fruitful one to pursue. We recorded a man from a nearby village who participated in the Postectli pilgrimage in 1998 and came early to help facilitate the work of the paper cutters by folding the sheets of paper and laying out the finished cuttings on their petates. The speaker used the Spanish verb acostar, “to lay down, to put to bed,” to describe the task. 87. Provost (1975) documents this rite of reversal in an ethnographic account of a nearby Nahua community; see also Sandstrom (1991: 251); Báez-­Jorge and Gómez Martínez (1998: 47–­55; 2000: 90–­91). 88. Authors (including us) have rendered and translated the appellations Seven Flower, Siete Flor, and Chicomexochitl inconsistently in the published literature, sometimes capitalizing initial letters, hyphenating the compound name, or substituting numerals. Generally, we prefer to put the Nahuatl names of spirit entities in lower-­case italics, not only to set them off in the text but also to avoid fixing their identities as proper nouns akin to the naming conventions that writers have adopted for the ancient Aztec deities. In so doing we aim to affirm that individual spirit entities are impermanent aspects of divinity. However, as we have stated, we depart from this convention and capitalize the names of entities rendered into

written English when they figure as terms of address in oral narratives and ritual chanting (versus terms of reference in our discussion). We apologize for this deliberate inconsistency, which may pose a burden to copy editors and strike the reader as ambivalent or even disrespectful, as if we mean to put Nahua entities on some lesser level compared to those whose names are capitalized (e.g., the Christian God or Dios, named Catholic saints, etc.). This is not the case, although the uncomfortable ambiguity that results is in fact central to our argument, as we hope to make clear. 89. Schryer (1990: 182–­84) argues that the widespread Chicomexochitl ritual complex in the Huasteca and Sierra Norte de  Puebla derives from a 1940s revitalization movement centered at San Jerónimo, Puebla. Taube (2006) summarizes the body of evidence for the shared symbolic and ceremonial complex surrounding maize. Cruz Cruz (2015) places the veneration of Chicomexochitl–­Seven Flower in historical context in an ethnographic account of ritual practices in Chicontepec, Veracruz. 90. Cruz (2017: 271). 91. Statement 15, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 00:27:39–­00:28:26 (AILLA resource ID: 284722). 92. See Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986–­98) for information about the resources (cataloged as AILLA collection ID: 124452) available after free registration at https://​ailla​.utexas​ .org/. Peregrina Llanes (2005, 2013, 2015) undertook a linguistic analysis of seventy-­five of the storytellers’ narratives for his master’s and doctoral theses. 93. Additional sources of oral narratives include the following (although the list is far from exhaustive): Cruz Hernández (1982: 76–­81); Leynes and Olguín (1993); Güemes Jiménez (2000); and Pacheco (2014: 103) relate variants of the Chicomexochitl–­Seven Flower myth told in Nahua communities in the vicinity of Amatlán. Hooft and Cerda Zepeda (2003: 23–­55) present the myth as related by Nahua and Teenek people in the Huasteca north of Amatlán as well as stories (2003: 57–­79) about how Postectli came to be broken. Variants of the story from Hidalgo appear in Szeljak (2003); Hernández Bautista et al. (2004); Lara González (2019: 187–­89); and Tiedje (2008: 102–­3) relates a version from San Luis Potosí. Stiles (1986) has published five Nahua myths collected in the 1970s in Hidalgo, where many familiar motifs of the Seven Flower myth are repeated but organized differently. Additional oral narratives were recorded in a Nahua community located not far from Amatlán by INAH investigators González González and Medellín Urquiaga (2007). García de León (1968) recorded a Nahua myth of the owner of maize among Nahua of southern Veracruz. Reyes García and Christensen (1976: 45–­119) and Nava Vite (2012: 23–­36) provide additional Nahua narratives from the Huasteca and Puebla regions. Stresser-­Péan (2009: 431–­42) discusses myths about maize among people in and around the Huasteca. Raby (2007) shows how the storyteller’s gender affects oral narrations among Nahua of the Rio Balsas region. Hooft (2001, 2007) discusses concepts of time and space in Huastecan Nahua myth. Taggart (1983) undertakes the systematic analysis of a corpus of oral narrations he collected in the Sierra Norte de  Puebla among speakers of Nahuat (a

regional variant of Nahuatl). By comparing cognate tales from Puebla and Spain, Taggart (1997) examines definitions of masculinity, and he further shows (Taggart 2020) how Nahua in the region modify tales of water spirits to reflect political circumstances. Williams García presents a complement of Tepehua myths (1970, 1972) and chants (1966a, 1966b, 1967) from Ixhuatlán de Madero, and Ichon (1973 [1969]: 73–­93) records similar stories about maize in neighboring Totonac communities. Myths about the origin of maize recorded by Alcorn (1984: 62) and Alcorn, Edmonson, and Hernández Vidales (2006) in Teenek communities in Veracruz and San Luis Potosí also closely mirror those told in Amatlán. Hernández Ferrer (2004) analyzes parallels in the Thipaak/Dhipak–­Chicomexochitl–­Seven Flower story cycle and the role of children in Teenek maize rituals. 94. Martínez de  la  Cruz (2000: 4); Arturo Gómez Martínez (personal communication, August  20, 2014) also confirmed these terms. 95. Burkhart (1996: 46–­47); Taggart (1983: 161). 96. Arturo Gómez Martínez defined this term as well (personal communication, August 20, 2014), but it may be a construction unfamiliar to Nahuatl speakers elsewhere, formed from huahcapatl (“antiguo, viejo, inmemorial,” i.e., “ancient, old,” and “beyond the reach of memory, record, or tradition,” as Merriam-­Webster Unabridged defines “immemorial”) + tlahtolli (“palabra, discurso,” i.e., “word, discourse”). Abelardo de la Cruz explained the morphemes forming the word are huahcapān (meaning “up” or “high”), from huahca (“far,” but locally connoting “a long time ago, ancient”). An anonymous reader suggested that “ancestral words” might be a plausible alternative, and Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz added “ancestral advice.” 97. We recall the shocked reactions of women in Amatlán upon hearing our account of a Tupperware party held for friends and relatives (Sandstrom 1991: 344). 98. See this point in Lee (1950). 99. Sandstrom (2012a). 100. See the similar explications given by Myerhoff (1974: 19, 114–­15) and Bierhorst (2002 [1990]: 40). 101. For this composite account of the myth of Seven Flower, we relied for the basic story outline on the narrative told to us on December 26, 1985, by Jesús Bautista Hernández, an elder of Amatlán. His audio recording (no. 107), with the Nahuatl transcript and Spanish and English draft translations are preserved at https://​ailla​.utexas​.org/; see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986–­98) for more information about the collection and finding aids. His account is supplemented by versions we recorded in 1990 in Amatlán: Bartolo Hernández Hernández (no.  3); Domingo Lagos Hernández (nos. 5, 25, 88); Nicolás de la Cruz (no. 19); Efrén Hernández Hernández (no. 39); Silveria Hernández Hernández (nos.  40, 41); José Luis (Carlos) Hernández Magdalena (nos.  47, 96, 97); Juvencio Hernández Hernández (nos. 56, 57, 64); Guadalupe Morales (nos. 69, 70); Antonia Hernández Hernández (no. 74); and Encarnación (Cirilo) Téllez Hernández (no. 92). 102. For more about the Nahua tzitzimitl, see Leynes and Olguín (1993: 129); Báez-­Jorge and Gómez Martínez (2000: 94);

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Klein (2000); and Gómez Martínez (2009). In Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2021: 89, fig. 3.1), we illustrate a paper image of the tzitzimitl given to us by Arturo Gómez Martínez. 103. Chinchilla Mazariegos (2010) compares the theme of impregnation in origin myths across ancient and contemporary Mesoamerica. 104. In some versions it is a chiquihuitl, “carrying basket.” 105. The motif of the murderous grandmother is repeated in the sixteenth century Quiché Maya text Popol Vuh, in which she tries to kill the hero-­twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque (Tedlock 1985: 117–­30). 106. In some versions he climbs out of the top of the sweatbath to escape the extreme heat. 107. In some versions of the story the boy asks a peon, a worker or field hand, to carry the ashes, and the man himself is turned into a frog when he opens the box. This motif of containers filled with stinging insects is also found in the Popol Vuh (Tedlock 1985: 196). 108. The tongue of a primordial earth monster features in a similar story recorded by Stresser-­Péan (2009: 478), who writes that Indigenous people of the region may have believed that some lizards and crocodilians lacked tongues and the myth thus explains another natural observation. 109. In another version of the myth birds heard noises coming from within the mountain, and they flew to inform people that the sacred twins had hidden there. 110. The autochthonous figure of tonantzin, also translated “our sacred mother” in Sandstrom (1982: 26; 1991: 242–­44), is regarded as the progenitor of the seeds, and Ichon (1973 [1969]: 93, 136–­42) records similar beliefs among the neighboring Totonac. Wolf (1958) writes about the symbolic associations of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and Burkhart (2001) examines the pre-­Hispanic divinity’s Marian associations. 111. Cited in Gómez Martínez (1999a: 31). 112. See Gómez Martínez (1999a: 13–­14) for a somewhat different description from the Chicontepec region of these important spirit entities. Stresser-­ Péan and Stresser-­ Péan (2008) record beliefs surrounding small rain figures associated with caves in Teenek communities to the north of Amatlán. Lorente Fernández (2011: 97) reports for Nahuas in Texcoco that rain spirits called ahuaques (also small in stature) are said to be the souls of human beings. 113. Statement 11, VHS Tape 3, MP4 counter 01:05:48–­01:07:23 (AILLA resource ID: 284726), recorded by videographer Benjamín Marín López, and transcribed and translated by Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz. 114. See accounts in Lenz (1984: 392–­98) and Sandstrom (1991: 244). 115. Medellín Zenil (1979: following page 121; 1982 [1955]: 96) presents photographs of dressed archaeological figurines from the Huasteca. Analogous stone or clay boxes have been found in archaeological excavations in the Aztec region, often decorated with images of maize, water, and/or the earth; see studies by Urcid (2009, 2011); López Luján (2009); López Luján and López Austin (2010).

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116. Sacred geography is discussed in chapter 2, but see Sandstrom (1991: 239–­44) for elaboration on this point and the importance of place among the Nahua (also Sandstrom 2000b: 67; 2004; 2008b). The Quiché Maya authors of the Popol Vuh discuss where “the yellow corn, white corn came from,” and in conjunction with it, tell of “a good mountain, filled with sweet things, thick with yellow corn, white corn  .  .  . the rich foods filling up the citadel named Broken Place” (Tedlock 1985: 163). Annals of Cuauhtitlan, compiled in 1570, tells of the young Quetzalcoatl searching for the bones of his father (Bierhorst 1992: 29), while Legend of the Suns, compiled in 1558 (Bierhorst 1992: 146–­47), recounts the Aztec myth in which ants locate maize inside a sacred mountain, lightning bolts break open the mountain, and the ancestors perform a maize-­kernel divination (a divinatory method practiced in Amatlán today and discussed in chapter 3). Taggart (1983: 85–­113; 1997: 47–­48; 2020) provides detailed symbolic analyses of related myths among Nahuat speakers of the Sierra Norte de Puebla, where lightning-­ bolt spirit entities rescued maize from inside a sacred mountain. Velázquez Galindo and Rodríguez González (2019: 80–­81) record similar beliefs in the same region. 117. Braakhuis (2021). 118. Mikulska (2015: 81, 96, 107, 121) also links the identity of Seven Flower to Xochipilli in her study of the ancient codices. 119. The myth explains why Seven Flower’s deer-­father, once brought back to life, bounded away from his mother Tonantzin, to be forever hunted and to return home only as meat to feed the family (Braakhuis 2010: 161–­62); Braakhuis (2021) credits Seven Flower with the invention of fishing. See also Ichon (1973 [1969]: 87) and Stresser-­Péan (2009: 386), who discuss Totonac stories of the maize spirit’s adventures. Myerhoff (1974) links the Huichol deer spirit to mythic accounts of the transition in ancient times from a hunting-­gathering way of life to that of settled agriculture. 120. Abelardo de la Cruz explained (personal communication, April 27, 2018) that the verb tlepānitta, “to respect,” incorporates the morphemes tlen (“that” or “which”), ipān (“on” or “upon”), and itta (“to see” or “to look”). The root verb itta is a component that can also be translated “to look at oneself; to see something or someone” (Karttunen 1983: 108), and so a literal gloss might be “to see or look upon something or someone.” A further insight may be found in noun and verb forms of the English word “regard” (“an aspect to be taken into consideration”)—­a synonym for “respect” related to “esteem” (as to hold in “high regard”), and “to look” (“to regard favorably”), defined in Merriam-­Webster Unabridged. In the usage of tlatlepanittaliztli we have documented in Amatlán, the English connotation is something closest to “that which looks upon, sees, or regards things respectfully”; a more straightforward translation might be “respectfulness.” One can see expressions of the concept in constructions using tlepānitta in the ritual specialists’ chants, which we discuss further in chapters 3 and 4. Abelardo de la Cruz commented that the Sierra Norte de Puebla term for respect that Taggart (2008: 188–­91) reports—­icnoyot in the Nahuat dialect—­ may incorporate ideas about sibling bonds or brotherhood with ideas

of compassion, both honing closely to the regard one feels for others. The Huastecan Nahuatl morphemes icnī (“someone’s sibling”) and, by contrast, icnōtl (“orphan,” or someone “humble, worthy of compassion and aid”), based on icnēliā, meaning “to have strong feeling for a person” (see the entry in Online Nahuatl Dictionary [n.d.] at https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​ /​203704) or “to look after one’s welfare, to do a favor for someone, to be charitable to someone” (Karttunen 1983: 94) all point to an important semantic domain involving respectful relations. Additional sources that explore this critical area of Nahua understanding include Sandstrom (1991: 255); Hooft (2007: 223); Taggart (2007: 91–­92); Lorente Fernández (2011: 204–­5); and Maffie (2014: 523–­27). 121. See Báez-­Jorge and Gómez Martínez (1998: 36, 69) and Gómez Martínez (2004b: 258–­59) on this element of the story.

We also report a ritual specialist’s assertion that Totiotzin ordered the mountaintop severed to prevent ants and other insects from reaching the sky realm (Sandstrom 1991: 241–­42). 122. Additional stories preserved in AILLA that contribute to the Seven Flower story include: “The Hill Postectli” (no. 3), told by Bartolo Hernández Hernández; “A Boy and His Grandmother” (nos. 25, 88), by Domingo Lagos Hernández; “A Woman and a Boy” (no. 39), by Efrén Hernández Hernández; “The Witch” (no. 47), by José Luis (Carlos) Hernández Magdalena; and “A Girl and a Flea” (nos. 70, 74), by Guadalupe Morales and Antonia Hernández Hernández, respectively. The recordings and documentation can be accessed online or downloaded after free registration at https://​ailla​.utexas​.org/; see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986–­98).

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2 The Nahua Sacred Cosmos Myth of the Time before the Current Era One way to understand Nahua religion is to begin with the stories that people tell of an ancient time when humans lacked rules of conduct and culture. To that end, we present a variant of a myth about a universal flood that completely (or nearly) destroys humanity. The outline of the story is shared throughout Indigenous North and South America and elsewhere, and for the people of Amatlán it serves as a foundational narrative that explains the beginning of history as well as the current state of the world. As villagers related the story components to us, they often spoke of how, in past ages, people were cannibals who ate their own family members. Some told about a woman who carried lunch to her husband working in the milpa, where he killed and cooked her before returning home to serve the meat to his children. Sometimes the parents or grandparents would feed amaranth to children and tickle them until they choked to death, and after roasting them in the hearth, would eat them. On these themes, we assembled the following account of that ancient time:

One day a woman put her baby in a cradle, covered him with a blanket, and tucked him in tightly. She then went off to the arroyo to wash the laundry. When she returned to the house, the baby was gone. The woman’s mother offered her a tamale with a piece of meat inside and she asked, “Where did you get this meat?” “Over there,” her mother pointed, “the neighbors gave us a piece of pork.” The woman again bit into the tamale and was shocked to find a child’s finger. She responded, “Ay, little mother, it’s my baby! You cooked him.” “No,” her mother again responded, “our neighbors gave us a piece of pork.” But the mother of the child had already taken a bite of the meat. Immediately the cricket called out “Tzil, tzil, tzil, you have eaten your baby.” The young woman became angry and began to search for her baby in the cradle. In the end, she knew that the baby had been cooked and eaten.1 In another variant of the story, a man went to his milpa with his wife:

The man made a big fire and said, “Let’s jump over the fire, from side to side.” Soon the woman became tired, and he threw her into the fire and cooked her. He began to eat her, but then thought the better of it. He wrapped up the meat and took it home to his children.

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https://​doi​.org​/​10​.5876​/​9781646423309​.c002

As he arrived, the children called out, “And our mother?” He responded, “She went somewhere to look for a gourd.” Soon the children saw that their father carried chunks of roasted meat in his bag. He said, “Eat this meat, children, eat this meat.” The children asked, “Where did you get it?” “Over there, a deer was killed and I grilled it,” he replied, telling them, “Now eat it.” “Ay, Nanatzin, Little Mother,” they worried, “maybe it is our mother that you grilled?” “Ah, no,” he said, “this is a deer.” The children began to eat, and the cricket spoke up, “Tzil, tzil, tzil, you are eating your mother.” The cricket was warning the children that they were eating their mother’s flesh. The man ordered the children up into the loft to sleep and told them that their mother would return soon. He did not want to stay in the house because he had eaten his wife. He thought that she might return to look for him. He went to sleep in another place. That is the way the ancient ones ate. Every day they ate one of their children. These gruesome stories take place in a world without a moral basis, one that clearly had to come to an end. The villagers we talked with were not completely consistent in their beliefs about how our current era came to be. They seemed to agree that a series of previous periods or eras had ended in cataclysm, but few were able to identify the periods or explain just how they ended. People said that their history had been told to them by their grandparents, but they also averred that they had forgotten many details. Several people, however, recounted how Tonantzin had given birth to four sons, each of whom ruled over an era. The firstborn was Tlahueliloc (whose name means, loosely, “one who rages” or “one who is furious and wrathful”), a dangerous denizen of the underworld. The second of her offspring was San Juan (in Nahuatl, Zahhuan), the water owner. The third son of Tonantzin was Montezoma, whose name probably derives from Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, the Aztec emperor or tlatoani who ruled over the southern Huasteca at the time of the Spanish invasion. This figure is seen by Nahuas in Amatlán as an earth-­ related spirit entity credited with building the prehistoric ruins and remnants of Spanish colonial churches that are common throughout the region. At the beginning of the final era (the one in which we live), Tonantzin gave birth to the sun, Tonatiuh, who in its Christian guise people identify as Jesús or Jesus Christ. The four eras, each with its dominant spirit entity, correspond to the four realms of the cosmos: Tlahueliloc with interior earth, including the underworld; Zahhuan with the water; Montezoma with the earth’s surface; and Tonatiuh with the sky. People say that the sun, Tonatiuh,

is the youngest of the brothers and thus less powerful, a fact that helps explain why the current era is so plagued with problems. With the birth of the sun, the amoral age when cannibalism reigned came to an end and the present historical period was initiated, which leads to the world as it exists today. It was the sun’s turn to preside over the cosmos. Shining from the sky, Tonatiuh noted that people had lost respect, and he ordered a flood to wipe out life on earth. But after the sun’s heat dried the inundated land, he found that a few people and animals survived. Just how this happened is the subject of another version of the myth told by the Amatlán storytellers:2

There was once a man, a long time ago, who worked very hard to clear an area of dense forest and undergrowth in order to create a new milpa. This man and his helpers worked from dawn until late in the evening to cut down the towering trees, vines, and brush that choked the patch of land. All of the work was done with machetes, and they returned home completely exhausted from their labors. Early the next morning, the man returned to the area and was astonished to see that all of the vegetation had grown back. The trees were standing tall, and the vines and brush were just as they were before. There was no evidence of the tremendous amount of work they had accomplished on the previous day. The man was exasperated and once again assembled his companions to help again cut down the vegetation on his future milpa. They worked all day long and succeeded in clearing the area for a second time. The following morning, the man returned to the area to find the thick vegetation growing normally, as if it had never been cut.3 Before long, he formulated a plan to find out what was happening—­he had to find the cause of their labor’s undoing. He called on his helpers once more, and they cut everything down to the ground so there would be no mistaking if any change occurred. He sent the helpers home but stayed behind and hid himself in the surrounding forest so that he could see what was going on. It soon grew dark. At midnight, he heard a voice say, “Rise up, trees. Rise up, vegetation.” The man looked around, but he did not see anyone standing there and became frightened. Then again, he heard the command, “Rise up, trees. Rise up, vegetation.” He looked more closely and saw a white rabbit standing in the middle of his new milpa. He cried out, “Who is saying that? What are you saying?” To his great surprise it was the rabbit who responded. The animal continued, “You are never going to eat what you grow here. You will never grow maize on this land.” The man said, “Why are you saying that? I am going to kill you.” The rabbit replied, “Don’t kill me, please. If you don’t kill me I will tell you a great secret. We are all going to be lost, the world is coming to an end. You will witness what I am telling you. Don’t exert

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yourself cutting down all of these trees and vegetation. You will never be able to plant here. I have been given orders to raise up the forest again despite all of your effort. We must not delay any longer. You must prepare all of this wood to make a large box from it. Not a small one, but a very large one. The larger, the better, because more will fit in it. If you do not build the box, we will all be lost.” The man began to prepare the wood and soon built a huge box from it. The rabbit said, “Now put all of your chickens and pigs in the box. Have the people from the village get into the box, quickly.” The man gathered all of the people, but they asked why they were being told to get into the box. The rabbit replied, “Soon it will start to rain like you have never seen it. Water will be coming down for a long time. Oh, I don’t know for how long. It will rain so much that eventually the box will begin to float.” The people were afraid, but they stayed put in the box along with all of the other animals. Soon the rabbit entered the box and said, “Ah, nothing will happen to me now.” The rabbit was joined by a parrot who also wanted to escape the coming flood. Then it began to rain, slowly at first, but it soon turned into a downpour. It rained for a long time, and the water began to accumulate. The box lifted off the ground and then floated straight up into the air. As it was lofted higher and higher everyone wondered how high it would go. Soon the waves started moving the box about as it ascended. Just what was up there so far from the ground? Nobody knew. Eventually the box hit a hard surface that was the sky. The parrot was looking up, and the sky crushed his beak. To this day, the parrot’s beak is bent from that impact in ancient times. The rabbit leaped up and also smashed against the moon. He stayed there, and to this day the rabbit reappears during the full moon.4 As the box reached the sky, the rain began to diminish and eventually ceased completely. The new sun beat down from the cloudless blue sky and the water retreated. Everything began to dry, and the box descended rapidly as the water drained away. When the water was completely gone, the box rested on the ground, and all that was left was a mist covering the land. As the people peered out of the box, they were met with a terrible sight. All around lay dead animals, including deer, fish, and pigs. It wasn’t like before. This was a new era that was different from the past. The people were hungry, and they lit a fire to cook the meat of the dead animals. As the fire roared to life, a plume of smoke rose into the air. It traveled all the way up, staining the clear blue sky, and God took notice. God wondered, “Where is that smoke coming from? I finished off all of those who were living on the earth because they no longer respected me, and yet I see smoke. Who helped the people who offended me? The smoke stinks of rotten meat. Who is down there cooking the foul meat of dead animals?” God sent a bird down to investigate and told it, “Go see what is happening on earth. Find out what is causing that smoke and the bad smell that has risen up here. But do not eat anything,

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even if they invite you to have some food.” The bird flew toward the smoke and saw very clearly what was happening. The people invited him to eat, and he could not resist the roasted meat. He ate and ate and eventually became so heavy that he could not fly back to inform God about what he had found. Soon God became annoyed and he proclaimed, “Where is that messenger I sent to find the origin of the stinking smoke?” He chose another bird to send below and instructed it likewise, “Whatever you do, do not accept food from whomever is causing the smoke.” The bird agreed and flew toward the smoke to witness what was happening on the dry earth. He, too, was invited to eat, and he broke his word to God and ate a large amount of the roasted meat. God now became angry, and anxious to know where his second messenger had gone and why it did not come back to report to him. In frustration, he sent a very small bird to investigate the commotion below, once again warning it not to touch any food offered. This time, the little bird did as it was told and reported back to God what it had seen. God was furious at the idea that people had survived the flood and had the temerity to spoil the brilliance of the sky and foul the atmosphere. He was also furious at the bird messengers who had failed him. He condemned the first two to eat rotten meat forever; one bird became tzopilotl, the buzzard, and the other chamacoh, the vulture. The small messenger bird who did God’s bidding became huitzitzilin, the hummingbird, and it now lives on the nectar of flowers. God then turned his attention to the people who survived in the wooden box. In the end he turned them into monkeys, who live to this day in the trees of the forest. We collected variants of the universal flood myth that seemed to account for the previous era’s destruction but gave little hint of what was to come next. It was not clear, for instance, whether all of the flood survivors were turned into monkeys or a few were allowed to live, giving rise to the people of the current era. The villagers also told a variant story about a monkey who captured a girl while she was washing kernels of maize. Eventually, the girl gave birth to a child who managed to free his mother from the monkey father. Because this child was both hairy and strong, they called him Juan Oso (John Bear). In a number of trials and adventures Juan Oso proved himself to be intelligent with the ability to outwit his adversaries.5 A number of storytellers described how God created from mud gathered after the flood the ancestors of today’s humans. In Huastecan Nahuatl the ancestors are called antihuameh, a borrowing from the Spanish antiguas, meaning “ancient ones” or “old ones.” One commentator remarked that the people of that previous time were filled with envy, and added, “Envy

undoes your work.” This sentiment explains why the rabbit raised up the forest after the men had worked so hard to cut it down. In any event, it is the coming of Tonatiuh—­the sun, in the persona of Jesús—­who dries up the flood, replaces the disrespectful people of that earlier time, and ushers in the present epoch. The myth seems to reproduce the Biblical story of Noah and the Ark, giving the impression that it was borrowed from the Spaniards. However, just as with the story of Chicomexochitl–­Seven Flower, plot elements from this particular myth are found in the Legend of the Suns, written in 1558, within four decades of the conquest. In that text the god Titlacahuan is recorded as ordering a primordial couple to hollow out a big cypress log in order to escape a coming flood.6 It also discusses the displeasure of the gods Citlalinicue and Citlalatonac when the survivors defile the sky by cooking animals killed during the flood. Anuschka van ’t Hooft provides an extensive analysis of this myth in a variation told by Nahua people living in San Luis Potosí to the northwest of Amatlán.7

Nahua Belief and Ritual Practice Recent decades have seen a flurry of research publications on the religion of the Huastecan Nahua and their neighbors, and we offer a succinct summary of the findings of this body of work. Our knowledge of the contemporary Indigenous cultures of the Huasteca begins with the pioneering ethnographic work of Frederick Starr (1901, 1978 [1908]) at the turn of the twentieth century. Based on research conducted in the early 1960s, works by Roberto Williams García (1963, 1972) and Alain Ichon (1973 [1969]) provide valuable mid-­century information on the Tepehua and Totonac, respectively.8 Beginning in 1973, the Mexican government has coordinated efforts to support anthropological research through its Consejo Nacional de  Ciencia y Tecnología (National Council of Science and Technology, CONACYT). From the 1980s on, the Centro de  Investigaciones e Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, CIESAS) has sponsored a generation of advanced-­level Mexican students and professionals, and their investigations have produced a wealth of research reports that add to the literature on Indigenous history and culture. The component of the program focused on the Huasteca (developed under the leadership of Jesús Ruvalcaba Mercado and Juan Manuel Perez Zevallos) has expanded tremendously the scope of ethnographic and ethnohistorical knowledge of this hitherto inadequately studied region.9

Alfonso Medellín Zenil (a Nahuatl speaker from the region and former director of the University of Veracruz’s Institute of Anthropology) writes this about the Huasteca: The spiritual life of the Indigenous people, their customs, agricultural techniques, traditions, and institutions from pre-­Hispanic culture, have been lightly influenced by Western forms of life. One can correctly assert that it is the Mestizos who participate more in the Indigenous life and culture, despite the fact that they have the feeling and idea that they are the dominant and superior group.10

Medellín Zenil seems to be saying that Indigenous technology alongside beliefs and practices have made a greater mark on the dominant culture in the Huasteca compared to other places in Mexico. The Spaniards largely neglected the geographically remote Huasteca because it lacked mineral resources and population centers whose concentrated labor could be exploited. Its Mestizo population remained small relative to the number of Indigenous inhabitants, thus reducing their influence. Ethnohistorian Johanna Broda points out that material conditions provide a major reason for the retention of presumed ancient Indigenous practices throughout rural Mexico, particularly where the factors of geography, climate, and the agricultural cycle have remained steady over the centuries.11 One cannot argue that these conditions perdure today. And it must be emphasized again that the persistence of traditional practices in no way implies that people and their culture have not experienced fundamental changes over time. With the mid-­twentieth-­century construction of a dirt road through the southern Huastecan outback and the widespread exploitation of significant petroleum resources in more recent times, processes of globalization have accelerated the changes that are plainly evident. Despite major alterations in the lives of the present-­day Nahua living in and around Amatlán, their religion and world view along with their slash-­ and-­ burn technology have remained remarkably resilient, with some elements clearly tracing to the origins of agriculture in this world area.12 Early in our research in Amatlán we discovered that spirit entities in Nahua religion are best conceived as shifting or temporary manifestations of an encompassing presence that the people call Totiotzin, which we translate as “Our Honored Divinity.” It is an error, however, to distinguish Totiotzin’s divine or sacred character from the rest of reality. This supreme being is sacredness itself, not an independent deity or god, goddess, or celestial divinity in the Western understanding of these terms.

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Totiotzin encompasses the entire cosmos, making everything contained therein divine by definition. We discuss the complex nature of people’s conceptions of divinity later in this chapter. To lay out these cosmological concepts briefly here, the Nahua universe is cemanahuac tlaltentli, translated as “everything in the world” or “edge of the earth” (also cemanahuactli, “a container”).13 The Nahua cosmos is composed of four fundamental elements: water, earth, fire, and air. These elements are reflected in the identities of the sacred paper cuttings as well as the ritual offerings.14 To clarify the presentation, we divide the Nahua cosmos into four basic realms: sky, earth’s surface, earth’s interior, and water. Each realm is home to a number of conventional or commonly addressed spirit entities. We have to point out that many Nahua themselves, although certainly recognizing these realms, might find our scheme too organized for their tastes.15 The sky realm ilhuicactli is where tonatiuh, the sun, makes its daily round. The sun is associated with the cross, and its life-­giving heat and light are what animate the universe, making the cosmos a living entity. In their sermons early Spanish missionaries portrayed the Nahua as a people living in the darkness of Satan, and told their congregants that they were bringing the clarifying light of Jesus Christ and Christianity to New Spain.16 Because the sun was sacred among pre-­Hispanic peoples, the message fit remarkably well with local understandings. To this day, people in Amatlán call the sun “Jesús” or sometimes “Dios” when speaking Spanish: Tonatiuh is synonymous with God.17 We do not understand very well how different forms of energy circulate throughout the cosmos and are interrelated in contemporary Nahua thought. People told us that the sun produces the heat energy (tona or tonalli) stored in plants—­maize especially; once consumed, it is converted to energy, power, or strength (chicahualiztli) in our bodies and in the bodies of animals.18 The vigor of chicahualiztli is carried in the blood. The moist earth (tlalli) also has a form of energy that provides plants with their life force. Finally, refuse, trash, or disordered matter (tlazolli) has the power both to cause disease in people and to produce the fertility that is key to plant growth; we discuss tlazolli and order-­ disorder more fully in chapter 7. It is probable that in the Nahua philosophical system of monism, people view forms of energy as transformations of a single type, likely originating from the sun. Additional ethnographic research, particularly by Indigenous investigators, may help to clarify these complex physical-­metaphysical issues.

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The sky realm is also home to the saints, that is, the ancient ones associated with the sacred hills, who played important roles in the development of the current era and who have been reinterpreted according to Nahua understandings. Nahuas often combine particular Catholic saints with Indigenous spirit entities, as we will amply illustrate. A variety of additional spirit entities associated with the sky includes stars (citlalimeh, singular, citlalin), comets (singular, citlalcuitlapilli, or “star with a tail”), the moon (mētztli, closely linked to fertility), fire (tlixihuantzin), the Milky Way (citlalcueitl, “star-­skirt,” also Santiago ohtli, “Santiago’s trail”), and the clouds (singular, mixtli, although clouds are said to originate from within the earth or from the sea). Tlalli, the earth realm, is profoundly sacred to most Nahuas, who see it as a living body pulsing with power and life. It is home to the most important spirit entities felt to be closest to the daily interests of the people. Nahuas divide the earthly realm into two parts: the earth’s surface and the earth’s interior regions. The surface of the earth, tlaltepactli, is occupied by human beings. This zone between the sky and underworld is also called nepantlah, “in the middle,” and people say, “We live in nepantlah.” Another term for the surface of the earth where humans walk is tlatlanextli, meaning “in the light or radiance” (i.e., where the sun illuminates the earth, or where the dawn arrives). As described in the Seven Flower myth, humans walk on the back of a cosmic lizard or aquetzpalin, the transformed grandmother of the maize spirit. Most people say that the surface of the earth is circular-­shaped like a griddle (comalli, typically made from clay, used for cooking tortillas), surrounded by the ocean (huey atl, literally, the “big water”).19 The shoreline is irregular due to erosion caused by the action of the water. On the earth’s surface live the seeds, along with tonantzin, the mother of maize, who as we saw earlier is identified with water, fertility, and a cosmos that has the potential to supply the entirety of human needs. People say, “We live because of tonantzin and she lives in the whole world.” In addition to the human community, the earth also supports on its surface the sacred hills and mountains (tepemeh, singular, tepetl), the crop seeds ready for planting (xinachtli, usually singular), and thunder (tlatomoni) and lightning (tlapetlani) spirit entities. These last two merge identities with the water carriers–­rain dwarfs–­pilhuehuentzitzin who inhabit hills, caves, bodies of water, and the forest.20 The third realm of the earth’s interior region is designated tlaltzintlan (“below the earth”), or sometimes yoalcalco (“house of night”).21 At the earth’s surface and below it live

mother earth and father earth (tlaltenanan and tlaltetatah, often referenced in Spanish abuela and abuelo, “grandmother” and “grandfather”), figures closely connected to the fertility of the fields. As we illustrate in chapter 6, paper images embodying these important entities are clothed and seated together on a miniature chair beneath the main altar in the shrine. In the dark interior of the earth is located mictlan (“place of the dead”), inhabited by the ancestors. This subterranean region is also called tzo­ pilotlacualco (“place of the buzzard’s food”).22 Mictlan is overseen by a frightening figure called tlacatecolotl (“man owl”) and his hideous consort tlacatecolotl cihuatl (“man owl woman”). These figures are closely associated with miqui­liztli (“death”) and tlahueliloc (“wrath”). They lead the swarms of disease-­causing winds (ehecameh, in the singular, ehecatl, meaning simply “wind” but implying “bad wind”) that are responsible for so much human suffering.23 The fourth division of the cosmos is apan, the water realm. It is home to water owner zahhuan and water dweller apanchaneh, who appear in the myth of Seven Flower. The domain of apan is associated with rain, bodies of water, streams and rivers, fish, thunder, lightning, and ultimately, the earth mother tonantzin. As the owner of water, zahhuan is directly associated with the sea and with rain, while apanchaneh, whose main dwelling is Postectli, is that aspect of zahhuan who lives simultaneously in still and flowing bodies of water—­all of the springs, pools, and arroyos from which she oversees her kingdom. She occasionally appears as a lizard or a being called la sirena—­the siren—­a familiar mermaid-­like figure in Mexican folklore who has the tail of a fish in place of legs. The spirit entity apanchaneh embodied in paper appears as a young girl in a blue-green, one-­piece dress decorated with ribbons, or as a mature woman wearing a beautiful blouse and a white skirt decorated with colorful embroidery and a traditional quechquemitl garment over her shoulders. Her hair is worn in braids plaited with colorful ribbons. Along with her male counterpart, who is sometimes called apantlacatl (“water man” or “water person” or even el sireno24), both male and female aspects of water dweller dress much like villagers themselves do. People envision the water realm apan as a kind of bubbling paradise filled with beautiful plants and colorful fish. The souls of people who have drowned or died from certain water-­ related diseases manage to avoid mictlan and instead reside in the water realm with apanchaneh.25 In Nahua belief then, any of the innumerable spirit entities are capable of attacking human beings if they

feel neglected or disrespected; none are wholly good or bad actors. Most Nahua see the universe as a moral place in precarious balance, always on the verge of collapse due to disturbances associated with human behavior. For this reason rituals often exhibit a degree of anxiety or even desperation as ritual specialists and participants attempt to set things right between the human community and the array of powerful spirit entities.26 In one interpretation Nahua offerings to cosmic powers can be viewed as a means for participants to seek pardon for offenses against them. Thus, rituals are important mechanisms for addressing human failures and fears, which helps explain why they often elicit uncharacteristic displays of emotion from participants. This delicate, existential balancing act is cause enough to worry people, but there is also a specific threat, namely, the class of dangerous spirits that is always at the ready to attack individuals, particularly those most vulnerable, such as the very young or elderly. These malevolent beings are the feared winds (ehecameh). All four realms are infested with these dreaded entities, many of whom are the souls of the dead emerging from mictlan and associated with disorder and pollution. Carrying disease and misfortune to people, they are attracted to fighting, drunkenness, expressions of envy or any type of discord, as well as evidence of disrespect toward spirit entities. Most worrisome, they may also be dispatched by sorcerers.27 Controlling such dangerous and aggressive yet elusive beings is a major task of curers who dedicate offerings to remove them from the area generally or prevent them from afflicting patients. In sum, the Nahua quadripartite universe consists of the sky, earth’s surface, earth’s interior (including the region of the dead), and water, each associated with particular spirit entities. As we will later examine in detail, Nahuas express these cosmic realms in the design of their altars. Some people say that the sky is held up by four columns or pillars called tlaquetzalmeh (singular, tlaquetzalli), one in each corner of the rectilinear earthly space. People call the east inesca tonalli, “where the sun comes from.” The west is ihuetziyan tonatiuh, “where the sun sets.” The north is called inesca xopanatl, the direction from which rain comes, associated with the summer rainy season or the “green time of year.” Finally, the south is miccaohtli or “road of the dead” where the dead are said to walk.28 For many Indigenous Mesoamericans, ancient and contemporary, the universe exists in layers.29 People of Amatlán, however, say that it is not so much layered as divided into separate “offices” or “palaces.” Thus, the underworld may

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be designated chicome mictlan (“seven place of the dead”) and the sky chicome ilhuicactli (“seven sky”), but in our view these names more likely refer to multiple places within the realms rather than conventional layers per se. Tlahco ilhuicactli, “middle of the sky,” is the place from which both beneficial and harmful winds come and also ahhuechtli, the life-­giving rain.30 Although tlahco ilhuicactli is filled with clouds, the clouds actually originate from the hills and caves or, as others aver, from the sea. The stars in the firmament are guardians who look after people at night, while meteors are the arrows they shoot to kill beasts and other dangerous entities that threaten human beings.31 As we present our panorama of the Nahua religious system, a word of caution is in order. We want to be clear that most of the information we present here and throughout this work comes from our field research in Amatlán proper. However, we confirm that a high degree of variation in belief and practice exists among different communities of the southern Huasteca.32 Our findings, while in overall agreement with the published accounts of other researchers, thus may deviate on certain points. For example, Arturo Gómez Martínez focused on ritual practices in the Chicontepec area, to the north of Amatlán. Working in a number of communities and assembling data from all of them, he was able to document a far more complex view of the structure of the cosmos than we could find evidence for in Amatlán. He found, for example, that some of the people he interviewed regard the sky realm as consisting of seven distinct layers, each in the shape of a quadrangle, while the underworld is composed of five such layers. Each layer is dominated by a different spirit entity, and both the sky and earth are held on the shoulders of four Atlantean figures placed at the corners. In addition, he found a highly elaborate conception of the cardinal directions with associated spirit entities (and cognate paper figures), natural phenomena, and colors, as well as a cosmogony that encompasses four well-­defined ages previous to the one in which humans currently live. Although we have found intriguing hints of such features in Amatlán, they seem to be less clearly conceived.33 Gómez Martínez’s descriptions of certain Nahua spirit entities also differ to some extent from what we present here. For instance, he reports that the figure of tlacatecolotl, although linked with the Christian Devil, is a kind of trickster who is married to the moon, whose twin is the wind, and who exhibits many positive traits.34 Félix Báez-­ Jorge and Gómez Martínez (1998, 2001) link the contemporary figure of tlacatecolotl to the ambiguous Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca. In our findings, tlacatecolotl is the dangerous

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leader of dead souls and a cause of disease and misfortune. Paper images of man owl, blackened with charcoal, play a prominent role in cleansing-­curing rituals. Despite being associated with the Devil, tlacatecolotl is not evil in the Euro-­American sense and can be recruited to help cure patients. Overall, the ethnographic data reported by Gómez Martínez are highly consistent with the information recorded by sixteenth-­ century chroniclers among the Aztecs. His findings are a composite drawn from many communities, and they expand—­rather than contradict—­our ethnographic data from Amatlán. We want to make clear, however, that although we refer readers to other ethnographers’ reports, the account presented here is based primarily on information amassed in our single community of study. People in Amatlán have created a large inventory of ritual occasions to deal with Totiotzin in its many aspects, manifestations, and the forces of the cosmos it embodies. Certain observances are calendrical and syncretized with Catholic practices: examples include xantolon (All Saints’ Day–­All Souls’ Day), tlacateliliz (Christmas), and nanahuatilli (Carnival). Other rituals mark the new year (yancuic xihuitl), the stages of a child’s growth (nacazpitzaliztli or moaltiliztli, an ear-­blowing ritual for small children), or rites of passage (titeixpiyah, the funeral vigil), for instance. The most frequently performed ritual procedure is that of ochpantli (literally, “sweeping”), which serves cleansing and curing functions.35 More directly related to pilgrimage are the series of offerings linked to the stages of the growth of maize. Again, the cycle loosely correlates with the Catholic liturgical calendar, and thus the crop’s development is associated with certain saints. For example, the feast day of San Juan Bautista (Saint John the Baptist) is June 24, a day that Nahuas of the Huasteca associate with the beginning of the rainy season and a time for the planting of milpas. San Lucas, whose feast day falls on October 18, is associated with the timing of the Northern Hemisphere’s autumn maize harvest and the observance of xantolon (a Spanish borrowing of Sanctorum, syncretized with the Mexican observance of Todos Santos or Día de Muertos on November 1–­­2). These special days may be celebrated in a community (or not), depending on local interest. Obtaining consistent information on how the Nahua divide up the growth cycle of maize has proven surprisingly difficult. Individuals view the process somewhat differently and may use alternative vocabulary to describe the various stages. Sociologist Rafael Nava Vite presents information obtained from Nahua schoolmaster Átalo Cruz Reina in Ixhuatlán de  Madero, which is consistent

with the data we were able to gather in Amatlán. In his enumeration each stage is artfully rendered a “flower”: 1. Achtowi xochitl (meaning “first flower”), kema mowitzmalotia (when the seed sprouts underground) 2. Ompaxochitl (“second flower”), kema koponi (when the leaves emerge on the surface) 3. Expaxochitl (“third flower”), kema mohyawalotia (when the plant grows green in the milpa) 4. Nahpaxochitl (“fourth flower”), kema mimiliwi (when the cob swells and unfolds) 5. Makuilxochitl (“fifth flower”), kema xiini or xitini (when the plant grows a tassel) 6. Chikuasenxochitl (“sixth flower”), kema xilotia (when the cob emerges) 7. Chikomexochitl (“seventh flower”), kema tzonkal­ kawani (when the silk grows)36

Rituals linked to this development cycle also appear to vary considerably across different communities. Nahua scholar Eduardo de  la  Cruz Cruz categorizes the stages of crop growth and their associated observances into five basic types found throughout the Huasteca: 1. Xinachtli (meaning “crop seed”) [maize seed for planting] 2. Miltlatlacualtiah (“to feed the growing plant”) and miltlatlacualtiliztli (“growing plant offering”) [when the maize plant growing in the milpa is still small, before the tassel and ears emerge, about two months after planting] 3. Miyahuatl (“the tassel emerges”) and elotlamanaliztli (“young maize offering”) [also miyahuacalaquiah, the household observance, and elotlamanah, the community-­wide fiesta to celebrate the arrival of elotes, the tender, sweet maize] 4. Cintlacualtiah (“to feed the maize”) and cintlatlacualtiliztli (“maize offering”) [when the maize has dried and is ready to harvest] 5. Tlatlacualtiah (“to feed something to someone”) and tlatlacualtiliztli (“offering of food”) [in gratitude for the harvest]37

Observers have sometimes indiscriminately applied the designation of chicomexochitl to all crop-­related rituals, but Eduardo de  la  Cruz Cruz confirmed that only certain rituals (the third and fifth types in his itemized list) can properly be designated as such.38 In conclusion, this brief review of research by no means exhausts the inventory of ideas concerning the realms of the Nahua cosmos,

knowledge about the variety of spirit entities dwelling therein, or the ceremonial observances around which el costumbre religious practice is structured. However, it suffices to introduce some of the main settings, players, and rituals that will situate the pilgrimages in their wider cultural context.

The Sacred Landscape Critically important in Mesoamerican religion generally and certainly among the Nahua today is the paramount role of the landscape in conceptions of the sacred.39 As ethnohistorian H.  R. Harvey puts it, the “incomplete conversion of the native sacred landscape was probably an important factor contributing to the persistence of paganism.”40 It is impossible to exaggerate the prominence of geographic features in Nahua religious conceptions. For most people, Totiotzin exists in certain places in greater concentration than elsewhere, and it is at particular spots on the earth’s surface where the divine unfolds and reveals itself. Places that manifest Totiotzin include mountains, hills, caves, anomalous rock formations, sinkholes, archaeological ruins, springs, streams, lakes or bogs, and especially pools of water or moist caves located near the tops of mountains. All of these distinctive places favored by supplicants for rituals and as sites for offerings play a role in local myth and history. As Carlos Rincón Mautner writes, Mesoamerican peoples have long sought divine intervention by contacting supernaturals and ancestors at nodal, isolated points in the landscape where supernatural power is mostly concentrated, especially promontory features that exhibit subterranean conduits. Caves serve as portals through which this divine realm can be accessed and the spirits and deities summoned.41

Along the same lines, James Brady and Keith Prufer confirm that “[c]aves are portals—­places where humans have attempted to intervene and mediate with the forces that make the universe animate.”42 The rock-­cleft homes of apanchaneh and the thunder and lightning spirits near the summit of Postectli fit these descriptions perfectly.43 One can hardly overstate the importance of hills and mountains in the religious ideology of the Huastecan Nahua today.44 As García Garagarza puts it, The cult of sacred mountains lies at the heart of the Mesoamerican notion of the world, so that every effort to obliterate this form of worship has so far

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failed. Across the high sierras of Mexico, representatives of the church come and go, but the mountains remain, continuously communicating the bounty of their living presence to the communities that find shelter at their feet. There, during ritual pilgrimages to the sacred peaks, the traditional shamans . . . still transmit the original memory of creation.45

García Garagarza goes on to state that in pre-­Hispanic Mexico “the whole landscape was personified as a dynamically interrelated, organic ensemble of living mountains, each with its own particular identity.”46 These statements apply equally to the Nahua of Amatlán today. As we have seen in the Seven Flower myth, even the life-­sustaining seeds and the water needed for them to grow originate from within a mountain. The two clefts in the rock face below the summit of the sacred mountain are of special interest for people who observe today (as in the past) that apanchaneh’s cave home is the source of a steady trickle of water. The inhabitants of Amatlán rank the prominences in their familiar terrain using governmental offices as the model, as we noted earlier; thus Postectli is “the governor” while other, lesser hills surrounding it are designated “treasurer” and “secretary.”47 People in Mesoamerica often attach the names of Catholic saints to the cerros (e.g., San Jerónimo hill, San Bartolo hill), and it is also common practice for people to name these sacred places not only for some distinctive geophysical feature but also their mythic association. It is important to regard the hills and mountains as more than simple residences of spirit entities. As the Nahua see it, these landforms are gigantic living beings in their own right, significant presences in an animated cosmos. Entities associated with hills can and do act to intervene in the affairs of human beings. The paper figures cut for the pilgrimages (the focus of chapters 5 and 6) present numerous examples of sacred hills given form in that medium. In some cases the paper cuttings embody hills generally, while others play specific roles in Nahua Oral Tradition.48 Outside of the pilgrimage context, ritual specialists often cut paper figures of designated and unnamed prominences to enlist their aid in protecting people and their families. Hills are guardians as well as the containers of considerable treasure.49

The Human Body The Nahua and other Indigenous people of Mesoamerica employ the human body as a vehicle for conceptualizing reality in many different contexts. Karl Taube shows that among the Olmec “the human body served as a graphic

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model of the cosmos.”50 Alfredo López Austin, in The Hu­­ man Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas (1988 [1980]), a highly influential and comprehensive treatment of the subject, has sensitized scholars in many disciplines to its ubiquitous, central place in ancient and contemporary cultures. For the present study (and to introduce our later discussion of anthropomorphism and corpomorphosis), we simply want to point out here that many in Amatlán view the earth as a gigantic body that is highly responsive to human activities. They also believe that sacred mountains share sexual identities with humans: García Garagarza observes that Nahua of Chicontepec attribute double gender to mountains, defining the peak as male while considering as female the lower reaches from which springs often flow.51 Nahua men make offerings to the earth as if it were a living being in compensation for burning and poking it during planting. One man told us during a ritual offering, “We need to give food to the earth so it can have good blood.” At funeral rituals amends are made for the times the deceased scorched the earth in clearing fields or making cooking fires. People think of the sky as a sentient being in the form of a huge human body.52 In addition, they conceive the maize plant as the template for the human form with the tassel its hair, the stalk its body, and the roots its feet. As the source of life, people say that maize is the reason we look the way we do. When the crop stands in the field ready to harvest, the dried maize plant is the ilamatl—­an old lady carrying in her arms the infant ear of maize wrapped in its dried swaddling leaves. Bamboo and flower implements called xochimapilli (“little flower hand”) resemble forks with long tines and are used by ritual specialists during offerings to embody the helping hands of Seven Flower. Even the small crystals they use in divination are said to have a head, torso, and feet. Much in Nahua life is directly linked to the human body, and as we explore further, its manifestations include Postectli itself and the cave homes of lightning-­ thunder and tonantzin-­apanchaneh hidden within.53

Empirical Observations, Colors, and Numbers One characteristic of Nahua religious thought is that it is typically based on people’s close observations of what most Euro-­Americans call the natural world. Writing about how these empirical observations are integral to belief systems, myth cycles, and rituals in the pre-­Hispanic religions of central Mexico, Rubén Morante López affirms that “it was a cult derived from the observation of natural

phenomena.”54 The best illustration of how observations of nature inform religious belief among the Aztecs can be found in Jill McKeever Furst’s The Natural History of the Soul in Ancient Mexico (1995). In this fascinating study she examines Aztec beliefs about human souls and links these to physical conditions of human physiology and experiences with the environment. She writes, “I am concerned with how one Native American group turned, not to theological pronouncements and speculations to verify their ideas, but to experience—­to what can be seen, touched, heard, and in some cases, even smelled.”55 In our ethnographic research with the Nahua we have found ample confirmation of McKeever Furst’s observations in a number of arenas.56 For instance, people say they have a yollotl soul connected with the heartbeat and a tonalli soul linked to body heat. The yollotl and tonalli souls together with the body are the major components of a complete human being. The tonalli soul receives its heat energy from the sun (tonatiuh), energy that is stored in the maize that people consume. According to our own scientific understanding, the relationship the Nahua draw between the sun, maize as food, and body heat is quite accurate. The relation is summed up in the saying that “Jesus Christ [i.e., tonatiuh, the sun] speaks to us through the maize.” An excellent empirical example of how people in Amatlán conceive of the tonalli soul can be observed in the form of the paper figures of this animating principle. Such cuttings can be created by ritual specialists for any number of applications but mainly are deployed to protect a person from danger or to cure a specific ailment or disease.57 In an example of how the Nahua employ observations of natural phenomena in relation to the pilgrimage, the rain dwarfs (pilhuehuentzitzin), transport water from the Gulf of Mexico to the cave of apanchaneh at the top of Postectli, from which vantage she sprinkles it as rain on the milpas. It is easy to see that this scenario is based on the close observation of weather patterns. It is an empirical fact that water vapor from the Gulf is wafted upward as it moves westward over the Sierra Madre Oriental, where clouds form along the mountain chain and drop their moisture as rain. The rain dwarfs, wearing rubber garments with black sleeves, are a closely observed characterization of the clouds bringing water from the Gulf, and we were often told by people in Amatlán that it is a sure sign of rain whenever they observe clouds envelop the summit of Postectli.58 Nahua slash-­and-­burn horticulturalists draw numerous connections between the climate, meteorological phenomena, and ritual practices. Here, for example, is Cirilo’s

explanation, translated from Nahuatl, of the rain cycle and its relation to the sacred hills in the southern Huasteca: [The water] rises up from the sea and comes here to bathe the plantings, to bathe the plantings of those who invoke the spirit entity [apanchaneh, the siren]. [The rain for] all the plantings comes from the seven branches [chicome rramal, where the hills originate]; from there it embarks for Citlaltepec. She [apanchaneh] comes here to make her appearance, to stand up [moquetzaqui] at Xochicuatepec, or Soltepec, at Ayacachtepec by way of the cordillera of hills and peaks [tepemecatl], up to Postectli. There the siren rests; there she will come again to be seated [mopachtiquiza]. The siren comes here by way of Cuatzapotitlan, and from here she comes to San Juan hill, so that she comes to Tzayacaltipan, to Limón, to Lindero, to Chicón. There she truly is—the true great mother. There in Chicón is a huge rock that communicates with [monahuatia] the sacred mountain Postectli. Nothing will happen to the inhabitants of Chicón because we dedicate offerings to that great hill of Chicontepec.59

Cirilo uses the Nahuatl word tlatoctli to refer to all planted crops but particularly maize (matas de maíz in Spanish). He invokes the birthplace of the hills (chicome rramal, a mixed Nahuatl-Spanish phrase meaning “seven branches”) to describe the path of rain crossing the hills that lead to the sacred mountain Postectli, using the the poetic Nahuatl term tepemecatl to invoke of the region’s sacred landscape and ecosystem combining tepetl (“hill”) and mecatl (“cord, rope”).60 Another idiomatic expression heard repeatedly in the pilgrimage chants presented in the next chapters is some variation on moquetzaqui from the Nahuatl verb quetza (in its reflexive form, moquetza), meaning “to stand up” or “to raise someone.” Such an action can be understood to mean that the spirit entities (and human beings, too, for that matter) do not merely raise themselves up in a physical sense but make their presence known: the siren appearing receptive and actively engaged; the ritual participants presenting themselves with purposeful resolve as they stand before the altar. Likewise, the Nahuatl verb pachoā, “to be seated” (expressed by Cirilo as mopachtiquiza) connotes that the siren, once seated, will receive the offerings that people have laid out for her.61 Color is important to the Nahua, but there is significant variation among ritual specialists regarding its meaning and significance. Despite our concerted efforts, we were never able to elicit what seemed any systematic pattern (to us at least) in the meaning of color for Nahuas in

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Amatlán, including the colors chosen for the paper figures. The dressed figures of the seeds carried in new sisal carrying bags to the mountaintop do appear to be color coded to match their particular crop.62 These clothed and carefully guarded paper figures of the sacred seeds likely derive their colors from empirical observations: the ritual specialists often choose red paper to invoke the color of ripened chilies; brown or black for beans; and white, yellow, red, and dark purple (sometimes black) for the familiar varieties of maize. A large paper figure of apanchaneh, the siren, is cut from white paper but clothed in a vivid blue-­green dress, clearly reflecting the appearance of bodies of water. A problem arises in analyzing the colors associated with the malevolent, disease-­causing wind spirits: different ritual specialists seem to apply a divergent range of meanings regarding color. Some say that the colors of winds are the same as the rainbow (acozamalotl). The rainbow has a negative connotation for many Nahua, probably because it signals the end of a rainstorm. Colors of the winds can also indicate the location in the cosmos where they are likely to be found or encountered. For example, black or dark-­hued figures come from the earth, from inside rock, or from the tangled underbrush of the forest. Blue or green paper is used for spirit entities emanating from dank, disordered, and filthy places in the water of an arroyo. Red or yellow images are associated with the sun and the sky realm. Gómez Martínez, however, found that color in Chicontepec indicates the direction from which the winds may come. He reports those coming from the east are red, while winds from the west are yellow. North is the origin of white winds, and south is the origin of black ones.63 It is evident that color is a communication device for the people who follow the religion of el costumbre, and the ritual specialists seem to spend time carefully selecting the proper color of paper for each of their figures. A good portion of the dangerous ehecatl figures is cut from the full range of vividly colored tissue paper (papel de china). This set of cuttings has strong or bright colors (colores fuertes). As Trejo Barrientos and colleagues describe them, they seem to serve as a warning to onlookers that these figures are dangerous, much the way a poisonous tropical snake broadcasts its presence.64 Throughout the book readers may notice how often Nahuatl uses numbers to modify terminology in a religious context. For example, the corn spirit is Seven Flower and his twin sister is Five Flower. By listening to conversations during preparations for a ritual, it is clear that people are concerned with producing the correct numbers of adornments, corn bundles, or paper figures. Numbers are significant, and they communicate information to

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the people that complements whatever object or concept they modify. Much to our regret, we were not able to get systematic information on this important facet of costumbre practice. People we talked to seemed uninterested or uninformed about the topic, and many seemed to think that the numbers were simply customary without significance. We noted that the numbers two, four, five, seven, eight, twelve, and twenty-­four come up often in altar construction and the paper-­figure complex, but we are not as yet able to determine their precise meanings for the practitioners of el costumbre religion.65 Gómez Martínez addresses the general paucity of information on the meaning of numbers in ritual contexts and asserts that numbers are associated with deities and elements of nature among Nahuas in Chicontepec. He itemizes the following associations: two indicates duality; four the cosmic directions; five relates to flowers, artistic expression, and the female aspect of maize; six is related to the harvest; seven is associated with maize and magic; nine and thirteen relate to the layers of the celestial and underworld realms and the locations of spirit entities; ten references the hand; twelve involves food; twenty is associated with the moon (with 40, 80, 100, and 200 important multiples of 20); twenty-­four relates to the ancestors; and, finally, fifty-­two is associated with fire and the human life cycle.66 The author goes on to describe a climb to Postectli to appeal for rain—­similar to the pilgrimages we will discuss—­showing how offerings and adornments are counted out by ritual specialists at every point along the way.67 Thus, for example, he writes that food offerings are placed in groups of four, six, and twelve or in multiples of these numbers. Palm and flower adornments are laid out in units of 100, 200, and 400. It is possible that the pilgrimages we participated in were less elaborate than the ritual occasion Gómez Martínez reports on, but we did not detect such a level of precision in the construction of altars and dedication of offerings. Numbers were certainly important to the Amatlán pilgrims, but, with the exception of the paper figures that were counted out and arranged very precisely, offerings and adornments did not appear to reflect such a careful accounting. We would, however, like to mention how often the number seven comes up in Nahua ritual and myth. Ethno­ historian Alfonso Caso writes, “It is curious that in the esoteric language of [Aztec] sorcerers and fortunetellers those calendar names that have the numeral ‘7’ signify seeds. For example, ‘7 Serpent’ is the esoteric name of maize, ‘7 Eagle’ is the name of squash seed, and so on.”68 For the present-­day Nahua there is the aforementioned

maize spirit addressed as Seven Flower or Chicomexochitl in stories and chants. The number can also embody the completion of a cycle; a total set of items or beings; or a state of stability, unity, or masculinity. According to some ritual specialists there are seven classes of wind spirits that cause disease. The number comes up again during the cleansing episode involving a flowered loop, described below, which is designed to remove all seven types of winds. The Pleiades, named chicome citlalin (“seven star”), is an important constellation, which people in Amatlán say predicts the seasons. As mentioned above, their name for the night sky, filled with stars that protect human beings while the sun is gone, is chicome ilhuicactli (“seven sky”). Many Nahua assert that the tonalli soul is segmented and called chicome tonalli, or seven tonalli. While the name Chicomexochitl in Nahua Oral Tradition corresponds to the ancient Aztec day name indicated by an ear of maize, it carries the added connotation among contemporary people of wholeness—­being without defect or lack.69

Conceptions of Divinity We have found the spirit entities that populate the Nahua pantheon to be abstract, innumerable, mutable, and (at least from our perspective) nearly impossible to classify.70 As we have suggested, the spirit entities seem to assume multiple identities and blend into one another in ways that may be disconcerting to analyst-­outsiders like ourselves. Entities addressed in the rituals often have many different identities and are both dangerous and salutary, depending on the situation. For many years we assumed that we were somehow misunderstanding what people were saying or that the religion of el costumbre had undergone some kind of disintegration in confronting the forces of social upheaval and political-­economic change in Mexico. However, researchers examining the religious system of the Aztecs or Mexica have encountered similar problems. As ethnohistorian Guilhem Olivier writes, Both numerous and multifaceted, Mexica gods could take on a variety of forms: elements such as water, air, earth, and fire; places like hills or rivers; phenomena such as lightning or rain; animals, plants, and even objects like musical instruments could be gods or receptacles for divine forces. Some individuals, slaves, or war captives as well as priests or leaders “possessed” by a particular deity could become ixiptla, meaning an “image” or “representative” of that god. At the same time, a god like Quetzalcoatl could manifest himself as a natural element (air) or as a planet (Venus), or

appear as an animal (monkey, possum), a captive slave (his “image” in Cholula), or a political leader (Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl at Tula). . . . Statues of wood, clay, stone, and even copal and rubber were used by the ancient Mexicas to physically represent their gods.71

To the list of materials employed to construct sacred images we would add paper as well. While struggling to better understand Nahua religion, we alone seemed troubled by these apparent inconsistencies—­it all appeared to make perfect sense to our Nahua friends. We have concluded that, for the Nahua, all things and beings—­people, animals, plants, spirit entities—­or ab­stract states of being, such as realms of the cosmos, directionality, and animacy, are aspects of Totiotzin, the universal sacred entity that is coterminous with existence itself. The fundamental Nahua conception of reality is nontheistic in that the sacred entity at its center is not a deity in the Western sense of a supernatural being imbued with consciousness, will, agency, or judgmental powers that takes an interest and intervenes in human affairs. And it is nonanthropomorphic in that it transcends the attributes or characteristics of humans. Yet, paradoxically, its many manifestations or aspects are conceived of precisely as human-­like beings who are attentive to what people do and judge them according to ethical rules of conduct. Although Totiotzin is difficult to describe because nothing exists outside of its all-­encompassing presence, we can affirm that the Nahuas of Amatlán and surrounding communities believe this presence can be disrupted or disturbed by the actions of humans. At the same time it can be calmed and brought into balance through the real work of dedicating ritual offerings. It is comparable to the ecosystem that we inhabit: impersonal, poised in fragile equilibrium, and essential to human welfare. The Nahua regard Totiotzin as power, a kind of energy source that surges throughout the cosmos and constitutes every tiny particle and complex being. As we suggested earlier, it is concentrated, centered, and revealed at certain geographic sites, in springs or lakes, in astral bodies and celestial phenomena, in the words of a chant, in the personality of a charismatic ritual specialist, in a beautifully decorated altar or finely wrought paper cutting, and in the growing maize plant. But appearances are deceiving: what seems to be many is actually one. All of the features structuring the cosmos come down to Totiotzin. The pilgrimages can only be understood as efforts on the part of Nahua people to accommodate and interact with this crucial and overpowering existential force. Totiotzin is everywhere and yet elusive as people attempt to make

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contact with it in everyday life and gain its attention in moments of ritual performance. Cirilo, speaking in Nahuatl, eloquently summarized the relationship of human beings to the convergence of elements making up the cosmos: God is one with the earth, one with the place where we were born in this dawn, where we came to alight in this dawn. Nobody came to be well born or privileged simply by chance on this earth. We always had to offer blood for this earth. So, with that, we also request something fair and just from God. With that we also dedicate an earth offering, so that we will thrive. With that we are given our earth, our roots, to be able to live. And for that reason, the earth and God have given us strength. God watches over us, Our Honored Father–Totahtzin–San José guards us, Our Honored Mother–Tonantzin–Guadalupe cares for us—all of them are witness-guardians in this dawn. It was long ago that the ancestors established the precedent of this ritual practice, and for this reason, the practice will never come to an end. All exists because of the sun—everything is because the sun is alive. Our lord God always wants to have a lighted candle, either on a Sunday or on a Wednesday. Let a candle be lit for our God, for our earth. That is how we live, how we were born, how we are working—as it should be.72

Here an apparent contradiction emerges for which we can offer no fully satisfying resolution. Although Totiotzin can be best understood as a kind of force or energy rather than a sentient being with consciousness and will,73 in his statement Cirilo clearly addresses these spiritual forces or entities as if they can observe people’s actions and be asked for favors. He asserts that each of them (God manifesting Totiotzin, San José as Our Father Totahtzin, and Our Mother Tonantzin, the Virgin of Guadalupe) “watches over us” and “cares for us,” using the Nahuatl construction techmocuitlahuia. Nahua ritual specialists and lay people alike beseech Totiotzin through the spirit entity’s specific manifestations to provide rain, fertility for the crops, and protection from threats. Totiotzin may be indifferent or cooperative but clearly possesses the power to fulfill human needs. This supreme being can be addressed in chants and can enter into exchanges with people. What seems a contradiction to outsiders does not seem to confound the Nahua, who work assiduously to avoid offending Totiotzin and conduct rituals designed to influence this spiritual force in their own favor. Seeming contradictions or inconsistencies lie at the heart of religions throughout

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the world, and it seems to us that such mysteries are an intrinsic source of the power of faith for believers. Although not all experts agree, the solution to comprehending Totiotzin and the Huastecan Nahua pantheon (and likely that of ancient Mesoamerica as well) is to view these religious systems as pantheistic. The idea that the religions of Mesoamerica are a type of pantheism was suggested in 1910 by Hermann Beyer and developed more fully by Eva Hunt in her remarkable study, The Transformation of the Hummingbird: Cultural Roots of a Zinacantecan Mythical Poem (1977).74 In pantheism the creation and the creator are the same, and the universe and every object and being in it are aspects of a single, sacred unity that defines existence. Pantheism is a form of philosophical monism that contrasts with the dualistic thinking that undergirds much of Euro-­American scholarship as well as religious beliefs.75 Theistic religions, including most branches of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, postulate an omniscient and omnipotent anthropomorphic deity that created human beings along with everything in the universe. Such a formulation is monotheistic in that there is one creator deity, but it is based on a metaphysical dualism wherein the creator deity and the creation are distinct, belonging to mutually exclusive realms of reality. Pantheistic religions, by contrast, are based on an ontological monism that postulates that all reality is composed of a single substance and state of being. All apparent diversity that human beings experience derives from transformations of that unity. Outside the Mesoamerican context, world religions typically characterized as pantheistic include varieties of Hinduism, Kabbalistic Judaism, Celtic spirituality, or Sufi mysticism,76 and certain schools of Buddhism, among others. It is our contention that viewing Mesoamerican religion as pantheistic helps to resolve many problems that scholars have had in understanding the nature of deities and ritual observances across the wider culture area and across time. The distinction between dualistic and monistic formulations of the nature of reality has a profound effect on religious belief and practice. One example that distinguishes the systems can be found in the treatment of ritual objects. In a system grounded in philosophical dualism (Catholicism, for instance), a saint’s statue represents or is symbolic of the ideas, values, or example provided by the sacred personage. In a monistic system, a well-­crafted statue shares the same ground of being and substance as the saint and is therefore seen as embodying, revealing, or disclosing the ideas, values, or example provided by the sacred personage. For monists, a strict identity exists between statue and saint.

Mesoamerican deities may seem on the surface to be assembled into a polytheistic hierarchy, that is, a stratified system of gods each controlling different domains of the universe. In writing about the contemporary Nahua in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Alessandro Lupo states that in their pantheon of spirit entities “it is easy to discover vestiges of a polytheistic religion that never totally disappeared.”77 Similar to polytheism, the gods in Mesoamerica may have distinctive names and personalities and play memorable roles in myths. But neither the ancient nor contemporary expression of religious beliefs and practices fits a model of polytheistic plurality very well. The spirit entities change in character, multiply in number, and appear to merge into one another—­features not characteristic of true polytheistic systems. Repeatedly we attempted to encourage the ritual specialists to articulate and clarify what for us seemed a confusing set of beliefs. Cirilo offered a characteristic response in Spanish, which we paraphrase: “There is a government in the sky just as there is a government on the earth. The rituals of el costumbre are aimed at the earth and water, and not so much the sky.” His elusive statement meant that we were on our own when it came to grasping the tenets of el costumbre. In our view, many of these difficulties disappear if we consider that the multitude of spirit entities are simply instances of Totiotzin. The name is a term based on the Nahuatl root teotl, translated as “God” by the sixteenth-­ century friars.78 What the friars failed to appreciate is that teotl was a very different concept compared to their own theistic ideas of God (or their knowledge of Greek and Roman polytheism). As Douglas Sharon writes, “The Central Mexican term teotl conveys the indigenous notion of the sacred essence in all things, animate and inanimate, seen or unseen, fixed and mobile; the equivalent Maya term is itz.”79 The spirit entities are not independent, concrete beings but are essentially embodiments of the great unity in certain phenomena and revealed through ritual action and chanting. Following a ritual performance they devolve back into the great unity and recede from human perception. While stating initially that contemporary Nahua religion in the Sierra Norte de Puebla is polytheistic, Lupo does later conclude that “at the base of the Nahua conception of extra-­ human forces is the idea of an underlying unity of things in God, even though it is subdivided into innumerable beings with the most varied characteristics.”80 Furthermore, Lupo describes an entity called Tierra-­Trinidad (Earth-­Trinity) that seems close to a pantheistic conception.81 The apparent instability of the Nahua pantheon leads Isabel Laack to write that

the best interpretation to make sense of this extremely complex and intricate pantheon characterized by fluidity and polysemy is to understand the deities as realizations and epitomes of particular forces, essences, or qualities moving through the cosmos. As such, the deities were different aspects of the same pantheist metaphysical essence—­teotl, as Maffie argued—­unfolding and manifesting in a kaleidoscope of facets. Particular qualities or specific clusters of energies were merely singled out and imagined as deity personae for ritual, iconographic, analytical, and pedagogical reasons.82

And for Nahua anthropologist Abelardo de  la  Cruz, this conception extends to human beings as well: A Nahua person is just a single piece of the Nahua universe. Each element of nature is connected to all the others. In the Nahua universe, all elements of nature are intertwined, and therefore what exists in nature belongs to a homogeneous whole. Christian elements may also be included in Nahua religion, but what happens in many cases is that at the time they were incorporated, these elements were given a divergent use and meaning from that of their religion of origin.83

In addressing people’s quotidian concerns, the ritual specialists freely create entirely new spirit entities or new configurations of established entities, thereby revealing ever more encompassing aspects of Totiotzin. Likewise, practitioners of el costumbre feel free to create new paper cuttings to give form to their innovations. The fate of the paper creations parallels that of the concepts they embody: once created out of a common medium to meet a specific contingency, they are destroyed or allowed to disintegrate in place, disappearing back into the unity from which they were extracted. People sometimes elaborate on this pervasive spiritual force, calling it ometotiotzin, which can be translated as “two deity.”84 Cirilo agreed that it is the earth and water intertwined and that these two entities are ultimately, as he put it, “in command.” This conception is just another example of the Nahua practice of breaking down the sacred unity into aspects that manifest Totiotzin without implying their permanent status as spirits or deities. We concur with Gómez Martínez, who concludes that contemporary Nahua religion is a kind of “animism,” if by that term he means (as we suppose) a pantheistic system in which objects and animate beings are expressions of Totiotzin.85

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We are fully aware that most historians and ethnographers characterize the key organizing principle of ancient Mesoamerican civilizations (and contemporary Indigenous people) as fundamentally dualist, which would appear to counter our assertion that their philosophical and religious systems are monistic and pantheistic, respectively. For one, Mauricio González González (2019) has published an insightful ethnographic study of a Nahua community about a one-­or two-­hour walk from Amatlán (titled Maseual ojtli in Nahuatl, or “Indigenous trail”) in which he sees the social organization and religious system as decidedly and overwhelmingly dualist. The people of Amatlán also organize their world according to many contrastive binaries: upper village versus lower village, rainy season–­dry season, night-­day, giver-­ receiver, and male-­female, among other distinctions. We concur with McKeever Furst that this form of thinking about duality in Mesoamerica should not and “does not establish rigid categories; instead, it balances opposing and complementary beings, forces, or states in nature, relationships between people and the gods, family members, and neighbors, and elements of an individual’s mind and body.”86 We also think that modern theorists have hardened these classifications of reality into something static that ignores the dynamism of the original conception. The point is that beneath apparent opposites and seeming contradictions lies a bedrock of monism and an identity of substance grounded in the close observation of nature and direct, empirical understanding of reality as humans experience it. We explore more fully in chapter 6 how these competing elements unite at a deeper level. As we proceed to itemize and describe the characteristics of the teeming multitudes of Nahua spirit entities, it may still strike some readers that the religious system should be characterized as polytheism, not pantheism. Ritual specialists dedicate offerings to specific spirits, recite their names in chants, recount myths about them, and create their images out of paper. These practices make it appear that each spirit entity has an independent existence, an individualized appearance, and a particular personality or nature such as one would find in polytheism. The way that the Nahua name their spirit entities, however, provides additional evidence that these beings manifest facets of Totiotzin rather than exist as separate beings in their own right. The names of most spirit entities seem to be nouns referring to ordinary, experienced reality. Examples include tonatiuh (“sun”), tlalli (“earth”), tlaltepactli (literally, “earth’s surface”), tlapetlani

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(“lightning”), tlatomoni (“thunder”), tlahueliloc (“wrath”), miquiliztli (“death”), ehecatl (“wind”), and atl (“water”). Adding to the impression that these designations refer to aspects of the empirical world and not individual beings with separate existences and personalities is the fact that each can be called by numerous names. For example, in addition to apanchaneh or achaneh (“water dweller”), the list of names for this water spirit (herself an aspect of zahhuan, the water owner) includes apixquetl (“owner of the water”), apancihuatl (“water woman”), tonana atl (“our mother water”), amoyahquetl (“distributor of water”), anotzketl (“spokesperson of the water”), atlanahuatihketl (“regent of the water”), sihuamichih (“woman fish”), tlaahcohketl (“keeper of the water”), teatocohketl (“one who floods”), and atlanahuahuihketl (“unrelenting water”).87 The names for the water spirit multiply if we include appellations influenced by Spanish loanwords, such as la sirena or el sireno (“the siren,” in its female or male aspect) and aserenah (“water siren”). Other such designations include apanxinolah or axinolah (“lady of the water”), with the element xinolah derived from the Spanish señora, and thus tonanan xinolah (“our mother lady”), or the name apanquixtianoh (“water being”), with quixtianoh, a borrowing of the Spanish cristiano (“Christian”), another form of address that signifies “lord” (or “lady”), “human being” (or simply “being”). The names reflect a blending of the Huastecan Nahuatl with Spanish, but all refer to the same spirit entity, which on most occasions the Nahua simply call atl, “water.” The diversity of names serves to label multiple aspects of the single element water, just as water itself is but one aspect of the single divinity Totiotzin. Other spirit entities have personal names borrowed from the Spanish, such as zahhuan, a local name for the water owner (whose character in stories and chants—­Zahhuan—­derived from San Juan Bautista and clearly associates the spirit entity in people’s minds with the Christian rite of baptism). The seemingly differentiated personalities may express themselves as characters in myths told about the water. A number of other centrally important spirit entities do indeed have personal names and appear to rise to the status of what might be called “personages” (i.e., figures with proper names and thus capitalized, as we have explained), such as Chicomexochitl–­Seven Flower, and his twin sister, Macuilli Xochitl–­ Five Flower. However, even this all-­ important maize spirit is usually spoken of by the people of Amatlán using the honorific or diminutive pilcintzin, meaning “little maize” (also “beloved”), designating the young maize plant and the tender, sweet ear of maize (elotl in Nahuatl, elote in Spanish), or sometimes cintli, signifying mature maize.88

We are convinced the way the Nahua name their spirit entities traces back to conventions from pre-­Hispanic times. Maffie discusses the misconception, promulgated uncritically by the early chroniclers and by contemporary scholars, that the religion of the Aztecs (as well as other Mesoamerican groups) was polytheistic. The sixteenth-­ century Spanish friars were familiar with the polytheism of the ancient Greeks and Romans and understandably assumed that Aztec religion was similar, and most scholars today have followed the lead of these early writers.89 For Maffie, however, the multitude of named gods and deity pairs are best thought of not as independent entities but as processes or orderly successions of actions affecting human beings: I believe the Aztecs singled out and emphasized specific processes and constellations of processes for ritual, practical, pedagogical, and artistic purposes. The various gods and goddesses of the Aztec pantheon . . . serve as conventional, shorthand handles or tags for specific constellations of processes. The use of these names no more entails that the Aztecs considered their referents to be perduring substantive entities than our calling a hurricane “Sandy” commits us to the view that hurricanes are substantive entities rather than processes. Names, after all, may refer to entities or to processes.90

In sum, the proliferation of these entities’ identities, their various naming conventions, and the way their functions appear to merge into one another convinces us that they are best understood as expressions of Totiotzin that are temporary in nature. These expressions, infinite and context-­specific, in turn, provide the means for us to improve our understanding of how the Nahua see the world and to clarify how their strategies uniquely deal with problems of human existence. When people are experiencing a drought, it makes sense for them to dedicate food, tobacco, and alcohol to apanchaneh because she is that aspect of Totiotzin associated with rain production. In truth, they are not so much petitioning specific spirit entities as they are seeking to correct, through ritual action, an imbalance between the human community and the cosmos as a whole. With some possible minor exceptions, Nahua ritual offerings are always the same, regardless of which spirit entities appear to be the focus, since they all are essentially identical and derive from the same source. Even the dangerous wind spirits capable of wreaking tremendous harm are lavished with food and other gifts.

The main variation that comes into play in a ritual offering is deciding how elaborate the offering is to be. Larger rituals employ a greater range and quality of different adornments and offerings, regardless of the purposes of the event. The Nahua hold rituals for three distinct purposes, but in practice these purposes are sometimes difficult to differentiate: first, to mark a crop-­growth cycle or calendrical obligation; second, to influence spirit entities for people’s general benefit; and, third, to ameliorate a specific crisis.91 In the rituals we have witnessed, it is the overall relationship between human beings and Totiotzin that the ritual specialists’ work addresses. They may invoke specific spirit entities that relate to the purpose of the offering, but these beings embodied in the paper cuttings and named in their orations are often no more than mnemonic devices that, in their multiplicity, underscore the fact that Totiotzin is coterminous with the cosmos. An important consideration is the fact that the Nahua, like people everywhere, vary enormously in their interest in and understanding of their own religious system. Undoubtedly there are many individuals, young and old, who believe in the literal existence of spirit entities as they are named. There are also many people who have a deeper philosophical understanding of the nature of the spirit entities and their relation to Totiotzin. In short, Nahua individuals, like people in all societies, exhibit a range of comprehension and states of awareness relative to their religion and its precepts. Viewed from a different angle, a possible difficulty with pantheistic religious systems in general is their high degree of abstraction, that is, removal from pragmatic, day-­to-­day concerns of people. For that reason, religious practitioners and thinkers break the abstract totality down into tangible, component elements to address particular concerns. How the Nahua accomplish this partitioning of reality and how researchers should interpret their construction of the sacred is something we discuss in chapter 5. We can be certain that these unseen forces or beings that lie at the heart of Nahua belief and ritual do not resemble the culturally loaded, Euro-­American conception of spirits. Over the centuries scholars have used such terms as deities, gods, and spirits interchangeably when referring to the Mesoamerican constructs, but the labels often grossly distort the cultural reality they attempt to describe. These named entities are more like energy centers or focused activity frames—­ concentrations of Totiotzin rather than supernatural beings who take an interest in human affairs.92 In our understanding the named spirit entities in the Nahua pantheon act to concretize or instantiate, that

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is, render in visual form (and thus make comprehensible and tractable) these abstract forces so that people can engage their power to serve real-­life needs. In discussing of these issues in historical context, we must be cautious in distinguishing the conceptions held by people in isolated rural communities such as Amatlán from those promulgated by the Aztec priests who operated in the imperial capitals where state power was on prominent display. It was the beliefs and practices of these urban dwellers, after all, that the Spaniards and Indigenous chroniclers primarily documented. Archae­ ologists in Mesoamerica have only lately turned their attention to the rituals of people other than elites.93 A growing body of work suggests that the state-­level religion in Mesoamerica developed out of the beliefs and practices of people living in small villages who shared a common set of traditions. As Lisa Overholtzer writes, “More recent scholarship has found that many imperial Aztec rituals likely represent widespread pre-­Aztec commoner household rituals that were appropriated and modified for imperial ideological purposes.”94 Religion in Mesoamerica was evolving (as it continues to evolve), and the beliefs of sixteenth-­century urban dwellers may have begun to approximate a more polytheistic system of gods and deities in the Western sense. It is certainly plausible that such conceptions better served the emerging needs of the developing state intent on concentrating power by solidifying its hereditary social hierarchy mirrored in the pantheon.95 Religion as practiced at the village level may well have retained the ancient pantheistic system. Ultimately it is individual acts of disrespect directed at humans or at forces supporting human life, such as the earth itself and its flora and fauna, that interfere with the working of the cosmos and create obstacles, which in turn interrupt the smooth flow of benefits. Disrespect (to reiterate our discussion in chapter 1) is implicated as the root cause of catastrophes both personal and cosmic. The concept is well expressed in the Huastecan Nahuatl construction axtlatlepanitta, indicating that one fails to respect something. Oral narrations recounted by the Nahua are filled with incidents in which people carelessly injure animals or fish for no apparent purpose, or fail to take good advice and act recklessly, breaking rules of conduct or canons of good judgment without regard to consequences. Disturbing the balance of the cosmos always results in disaster for the human community. In this view, impediments to the flow of benefits are what cause droughts or excessive rain, crop and human diseases, infertility, or any sort of misfortune or

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cataclysm. The disrespectful behavior behind such disruptions may come from Nahua people and non-­Nahua alike—­everyone is implicated in upsetting the cosmic equilibrium, from fellow villagers to complete strangers. Interestingly, people sometimes associate these disrespectful actors with Mestizos, particularly Hispanic elites, revealing an element of social class and ethnic group consciousness.96 Rituals to reset the precarious and unstable system are always held in the context of asking for specific results. Thus, an appeal for rain may succeed in removing or neutralizing obstructing acts of disrespect but not ensure that rain is immediately forthcoming. In other words, restoring the balance between human beings and the forces of the cosmos simply makes rain possible, increasing the chance that it will rain. Complementary to the work of Maffie (2014), we aim to establish a coherent framework for understanding Nahua pantheism by presenting empirical evidence for how the Nahua today operate within their pantheistic universe.

Considering Alternatives to Pantheism Nonhuman Agency Coming to grips with religious ideology has been difficult for social scientists and remains largely an unresolved, highly divisive issue in anthropology. Ethnographer Perig Pitrou (2015, 2016, 2017), who has worked among the Mixe of northeastern Oaxaca, proposes that we investigate those concepts of human life and nonhuman agency that he argues are foundational to interpreting Indigenous rituals in Mesoamerica.97 Pitrou is interested in clarifying Mixe understandings of the fundamental components of human beings and specifying the nature of the spirit entities addressed during offerings, particularly as these conceptualizations are revealed in ritual practice. He advocates employing what he calls a “pragmatics-­based” or “general pragmatics” approach to investigate systematically people’s cultural conceptions of life and agency; in doing so, his research strategy focuses on the ways people achieve their goals through ritual performance.98 The argument is complex and not easily summarized, but in brief Pitrou contends that it is not so much people’s actions that hold the key to understanding rituals, or the sacred items themselves employed in ceremonial occasions, but rather the ways that human and nonhuman agents interact to achieve various pragmatic ends. The overall goal of ritual activity (or interactivity), for instance, may be to increase crop yield or to incorporate a

child as a participating member of the culture. Such ends can only be achieved, however, with the active cooperation of all the agents involved, human and nonhuman. This characterization can be applied to the Nahua pilgrimage rituals generally, but in our view it does not go far enough in providing an overall explanation of the ritual process. Pitrou appears sympathetic to the claims of a movement in anthropology that rejects the search for causality or universal processes in culture. He wants to employ “language resources to grasp the bougé [movement] that characterizes the existence of living beings, without attempting to universalize the Aristotelean causality that is so familiar to us,” and he proceeds to deny the possibility of extending his ethnographic data on Mixe ritual to other contexts, stating that “there can be no question of generalizing the specific kind of distribution and coordination of agency observed among the Mixe.”99 The author’s ambivalent attitude toward explanation coupled with his focus on human and nonhuman agency makes him a participant in anthropology’s struggles to transcend the simplistic dichotomies of animate-­inanimate and scientific-­ nonscientific. But in order to clarify this recent approach to personhood and agency, and before we critique it, we first want to illustrate how it has been handled by archaeologists who also focus on “relational personhood” or “other-­than-­human agency”—­a research turn that “considers personhood more broadly to include both human and other than human beings.”100 Archaeologist Sarah Jackson (2019) takes this approach in her analysis of Classic-­period Maya paintings that feature objects with human faces. The basic idea is that the Maya saw the world as inhabited by persons, only some of whom were human. Thus, a painting of an incense brazier with a human face is meant to portray that object as a kind of person that might be addressed or interacted with during a ritual. For the Maya, personhood acts “as an untethered resource that is accessed by entities (human or not) that are able to act in social, relational ways”; accordingly, it is important to examine “how personhood operates between and among multiple entities.”101 Like Pitrou, Jackson advocates directing attention to Maya concepts of human life and nonhuman agency by expanding the definition and purview of personhood in order to unravel the complexities of Mesoamerican religious systems. Both researchers are concerned with establishing relational personhood (and especially nonhuman persons) as an analytical construct and are to be commended for not shying away from the difficult issues that scholars face in clarifying ancient Maya and contemporary Mixe philosophy, art,

and ritual behavior. In our view, however, they overlook a comprehensive framework (articulated at least since the turn of the twentieth century) in which the systems and data they report fit under the conceptual scheme of pantheism. Neither scholar explicitly rejects pantheism as an explanation, but their expositions unfortunately perpetuate some of the Western biases that have hampered comprehension of Mesoamerican religion for 500 years. Pitrou claims, for instance, that certain ritual actions “represent” the distribution of seeds, that rituals are made up of “representations,” and he calls a figurine made from corn dough an “iconic representation.”102 These descriptions rely on the idea that ritual items or actions are symbols or metaphors of the deeper reality that lies behind them and not agents of a single reality. Pitrou (2016) acknowledges the work of Maffie (2014) on Aztec monistic philosophy and seems open to entertaining the possibility that Mesoamerican religions are pantheistic. However, rather than directly addressing the issue in any depth, he concludes that what is important is to study “how rituals coordinate a multiplicity of powers and actions” and the “ways in which humans coordinate their activities with those of nonhuman agents,” regardless of the nature of the religion in question.103 While we fully agree that the so-­called pragmatic method Pitrou advocates is a useful way to approach the problem of how humans coordinate with spirit entities, we feel that he and other scholars have overlooked the key insight that clarifies the compelling field data they present. Pitrou reports that one of the major Mixe spirit entities is called “The One Who Makes Live” and, alternatively, “He Who Makes Being Alive.”104 This entity appears to be a type of animating force closely analogous to Totiotzin for the Nahua. If true, the nature of a group’s religious ideology should have some observable effect on relational personhood and the way that people view themselves as humans and their relations with the wider universe. If the Mixe do have a pantheistic religious system, it ought to be evident in their view of human beings, spirit entities, and what analysts would regard as inanimate objects, and how they understand the interplay between human cooperative action and nonhuman agency during ritual performances. For pantheists, all entities—­humans, spirits, animals, plants, and objects—­share substance. In such a pantheistic system ritual acts and implements are tangible aspects and explicit embodiments of divinity. In analyzing Classic Maya painting, Jackson makes a distinction between supernatural and natural, indicating that she, too, is committed to a Western dualism that would probably seem alien to the Maya. She counsels

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against “Western-­based binaries”; yet her analysis is based on distinctions such as object versus person, representations of bundles versus actual bundles, statues of rulers versus particular rulers, or materials from which things are made versus personhood.105 By acknowledging the pantheistic foundation of Maya philosophy and religion, many of these complexities and confusions disappear: objects, persons, bundles, statues, rulers, and decorated ceramics all reflect the identical ground of existence. By painting a face on an object, the Maya artist facilitates or allows the divinity/deity within to reveal itself. No distinction exists between the stone, clay, paint, or paper that are the artists’ media and the being they bring to life. Stephen Houston and David Stuart (1998) have published a fascinating study of Classic-­era Maya concepts of the self that comes close to embracing pantheism as an explanatory framework for their data. In their study of sculpture they discuss the Maya concept of ch’uj, which is “roughly analogous to the central Mexican notion of teotl.  .  .  , a monist belief about a divine principle that appears in multiple forms.”106 The authors state that the stone images are “more than inert, inanimate objects” in that they “exhibit a capacity for carefully staged interlocution with flesh-­and-­blood actors,” and conclude that “the essential point is that these images communicate with human participants. This takes place not so much through a eucharistic theology of transubstantiation, which converts one substance into another, but rather the engagement rests on shared ontological properties, in which sculpted stone attains a vitality commensurate with that of living actors.”107 Nonetheless, Houston and Stuart skirt a plausible monistic explanation for the glyphs and statues, falling back on the idea that the Maya saw these artistic expressions as persons. They write that statues of rulers and the glyphs that refer to them contained “embodiments or individual presences” of the person depicted,108 and further, “[t]hat stone ‘lives’ or contains vital essence—­that it contains the ‘self’ of something else—­helps explain the ‘animation’ of Mayan hieroglyphic elements.”109 In sum, the Maya interact and enter into exchanges with nonhuman persons through their art and hieroglyphs. In our view, this exemplary research very nearly manages to transcend the dualistic interpretations that regard Mesoamerican art and ritual practice as representational, symbolic, or metaphoric. Allen Christenson (2008) has recorded the words of a Santiago Atitlán K’iche’ Maya nab’eysil, or ritual specialist, on this issue. During one of the most important yearly rituals held in mid-­November

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in the Guatemalan highlands, the nab’eysil makes an appeal to a spirit entity named Martín, “the patron deity of life, maize, and sacred mountains.”110 Dressed in Martín’s garments, the ritual specialist performs a dance to renew the world. During the dance, he seemed to vanish into the darkness. He stated afterward that he had visited the place where the sacred ancestors and gods live, saying, “I was not really here with you. I was in their world. They filled my soul with their presence and guided my steps.” According to Christenson, “[T]he dance was not just a symbol of the rebirth of the world, but a genuine creative act in which time folded back on itself”; the author goes on to state, “It is not that the nab’eysil priest became his ancestors or danced with them. For him, the ancestors are an ever-­present part of who he is because their blood is also his.”111 In sum, by dressing and behaving properly, the ritual specialist became the ancestors with whom he shared an identical essence.112 Finally, we would like to address briefly the so-­called ontological turn in anthropology and philosophy as it relates to our description and analysis of el costumbre pilgrimages. A key text in this theoretical development is Philippe Descola’s Beyond Nature and Culture (2013 [2005]) in which the author critiques anthropology for its culture-­versus-­nature dualism113 and outlines four basic ontologies that characterize the world’s cultures: naturalism, animism, totemism, and analogism. Naturalism is an ontology based on the European scientific tradition, which is largely responsible for the culture-­nature distinction. It is rooted in the Enlightenment, which saw the beginnings of specialized fields of inquiry such as anthropology to investigate the cultural side of things. A student of Claude Lévi-­Strauss, Descola conducted ethnographic field research among the Amazonian Achuar where he found that their animistic ontology does not recognize fundamental differences between nature and culture. He defines animism as “the attribution by humans to nonhumans of an interiority identical to one’s own,” a point of view that he regards as widely shared among Amerindians.114 By “interiority” he seems to mean consciousness or perhaps inner mental life. A third ontology he identifies is totemism, a philosophical system like that found among Aboriginal Australians and others who, like animists, do not recognize the culture-­nature divide. Totemism is a philosophy based on “a moral and physical continuity between groups of humans and groups of non-­ humans.”115 The fourth ontology Descola labels analogism. Cultures aligned with this category base their philosophy

on “identification that divides up . . . existing beings into a multiplicity of essences, forms, and substances” that can be recomposed “into a dense network of analogies.”116 This is the category that apparently includes societies such as the Nahua of our study, and the author specifically discusses the ancient Nahua and makes reference to contemporary Indigenous people of Mesoamerica.117 He argues that members of cultures operating within the analogist ontology perform rituals with the goal of creating harmony or equilibrium between the human community and forces of the cosmos. Another influential figure in the ontological turn is Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro who, like Descola, began conducting ethnographic research in the Amazon during the 1980s. In his subsequent writings, he elaborates on Descola’s idea of animism as an alternative to Western ontological dualism. He has contributed the concept of perspectivism in which human and nonhuman subjects “apprehend reality from distinct points of view.”118 The points of view of animals are to be placed on an equal footing with those of humans, effectively breaking down the division between nature and culture. The basis for and implications of these scholars’ ontologisms has understandably generated vigorous debate among anthropologists and philosophers. The debate is often arcane and difficult for outsiders to follow and is perhaps at least partially fueled by long-­standing national rivalries.119 From our viewpoint the effort to uncover biases such as unconscious dualism in anthropological research can only strengthen the discipline by making its findings all the more objective. However, to the extent that the ontological turn undermines cross-­cultural research based on empirical observation, or calls into question the possibility of accounting for and offering explanations of cultural similarities and differences, we judge its effects will be as negative and disheartening as postmodernist writings that have courted nihilism. We welcome the return of cross-­cultural, broad-­based, big-­picture anthropology represented by the ontological turn. However, scholarly questions can be raised about the wisdom of reframing anthropological inquiry around the type of ontological pluralism suggested by Descola and Viveiros de Castro. For example, Marshall Sahlins has written that Descola’s ontological typology is contradicted by a wealth of evidence for animism in cultures characterized as totemic or analogist as well as animistic ones, to which Sahlins adds examples from naturalist societies such as the United States.120 Animism in and of itself does not seem to

be an adequate criterion for creating a cultural typology. We have found a type of animism does exist among the Nahua, just as it must in virtually all of the world’s cultures, but perhaps because the Nahua are a society with an analo­ gist ontology, we did not find that people interacted with nonhuman beings as if they shared a human “interiority.” And it appears to us that organizing cultural systems into overarching schemes based on philosophical orientation, as opposed to material factors such as ecological adaptation or productive activities, is questionable at best. Our discussion of el costumbre religion centers on ontological monism as it relates to anthropomorphism in the context of a set of pantheistic beliefs and ritual practices. By focusing on monism we hope to better comprehend a complex belief system that is widespread but still little understood, and perhaps also contribute to wider debates over the utility of framing the world’s inventory of cultures in ontological terms. Clearly, we are aware that Nahua religion is based on an ontology different from that ascribed to Euro-­American societies. Understanding Nahua philosophy unfettered by Western assumptions and biases is without doubt a worthy pursuit. But it is insufficient to rely primarily on philosophy or world view (whether of individuals or societies) as an explanatory framework to account for the range of observed behaviors and expressed beliefs, like those that we have tried faithfully to document. Like all social phenomena, Nahua thought and behavior is influenced by people’s actual historical experiences, their relations with power elites, and their productive activities, economic circumstances, ecological relations, technology, communication systems, demography, residence patterns, out-­migration, and a host of other variables. It is the combination of these factors and not simply their presumed ontology that makes Nahua culture distinctive. As our research findings indicate, it is apparent that historical people and other contemporary Mesoamerican groups share features of Nahua religion and philosophy. A holistic approach coupled with firsthand ethnographic methods continues to be the best research strategy for achieving a deep comprehension of complex social reality. In place of directly confronting the theoretical issues raised by anthropology’s recent ontological turn, we pro­­ pose instead to contribute much-­ needed empirical evidence that may help resolve some controversies surrounding this new prospect for the study of culture, and particularly serve to underscore the challenges that analysts and Indigenous peoples themselves face in seeking to verify intersubjectively such shared cultural information.

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Corpomorphosis The Nahua are not the only Indigenous group to occupy the southern Huasteca, which is one of the most ethnically diverse regions of Mexico and Central America. They share not only the territory but also many elements of livelihood, lifestyle, and religious beliefs and practices with Otomí, Tepehua, and Totonac peoples of the Gulf Coast and adjacent foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental. The main population of Totonac speakers lies just to the south of the Huasteca proper, but those communities share cultural features with their northern neighbors. However, even with the increased scholarly attention paid to the complex intermingling of cultures in the region, researchers have had a difficult time in determining which culture traits are specific to any one of the four groups and which partake of a common foundation underlying all of them. It is apparent to anthropologists that a good way to reach a deeper understanding of these cultures and their religious expression would be for a team of ethnographers working in conjunction with one another to undertake a comparative study. Just such a model project was recently carried out by six Mexican ethnographers—­Leopoldo Trejo Barrientos, Arturo Gómez Martínez, Mauricio González González, Claudia Guerrero Robledo, Israel Lazcarro Salgado, and Sylvia Maribel Sosa Fuentes—­who divided up the groups they were to investigate, coordinated their research plans, and produced a monograph on the Indigenous religions of the region titled Sonata ritual: Cuerpo, cosmos y envidia en la Huasteca meridional (2014). In our view, such cooperative ethnological work promises to raise the level of debate not only on the cultures of this important region of Mexico but on all of Mesoamerica. As solitary researchers conducting our ethnographic investigations in one community in the Huasteca over many years, we were gratified that such an effort was undertaken. And as anticipated, the ethnological work has produced new insights into Indigenous religious ideas and practices among these four groups. The team launched their own investigations but relied to a large extent on the publications of earlier ethnographers, including Williams García’s study of the Tepehua (1963), Ichon’s well-­received account of Totonac religion (1973 [1969]), our own work among the Nahua, and Jacques Galinier’s Sierra Otomí investigations (1987, 1990, 2004 [1997]). The comparative analysis is extensive and the argument complex, so it is difficult to summarize neatly. The work has little to say directly on the topic of pilgrimages, but it does help to

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clarify the underlying religious system. The collaborators find, for example, that all four Indigenous groups venerate sacred hills. Regarding these consecrated geological features, the authors state the following: To go to the hills, the seat of government, is an extraordinary event. In the case where the shamans have been instructed by the powers, the visit to the hill would be part of a great ritual. There dwell the Lords, and a pilgrimage to their presidency is obligatory if one is searching for an effective response to one’s requests. It is not advisable to bother these powerful entities and arrive empty handed. Each ascent had better be carefully planned so that one has everything necessary to entertain the Patrón—­the protector hill. Although the Lord of the Nahua is Postectitla, all of the communities have a protector hill and it is enough to visit it to complete and settle all commitments to the government.121

In order to create a more complete picture of the religions of this area, we would like to present the salient findings of this important study and also discuss our disagreements with some of its conclusions. Probably the major question addressed by Sonata ritual is the degree to which the different ethnic groups represent separate cultures or are simply variations on a shared cultural pattern. As a case in point, the pilgrimages that we recorded included both Nahua and Otomí participants. Does this fact imply that Nahua and Otomí cultures are so fundamentally similar that they easily participate in each other’s rituals? The members of the groups covered in Sonata ritual speak different languages; although Totonac and Tepehua are distantly related to each other, Nahuatl, Otomí, and Totonac/Tepehua are not only distinct languages but belong to different language families. This fact, coupled with ethnographic methods that have traditionally emphasized intensive study of a limited number of villages, has led previous researchers to treat them as separate cultures. However, ethnographers have long noted the remarkable similarities among the cultures of this region regardless of language affiliation. We asked Cirilo about the situation during the course of our research, and he stated, “Nahua, Otomí, and Tepehua all have the same costumbres. They all cut paper figures.” He did not seem to know much about the Totonac. It is easy to see why a comparative study is so needed. The authors of Sonata ritual conclude that regardless of cultural and linguistic differences, the four groups share a common body of ritual practice that allows them to participate in each other’s sacred observances.122 They affirm

that a fundamental similarity among the religions in all four groups is the emphasis on the human body. They coin the neologism corpomorfosis (“body forming”) to describe the practices and beliefs surrounding the body. It is in this context that the authors conceptualize the complex of anthropomorphic paper figures that lie at the center of the ritual offerings. Ritual specialists cutting the paper images become, in their view of corpomorphosis, the creators of bodies. Although Totonac and Tepehua communities do not generally cut paper images, they do construct large numbers of small, three-­dimensional figures made from sticks, bark fiber, and a piece of copal incense that resemble the human form. Called talakšin in Totonac, the authors write that they are equivalent to the paper figures.123 According to Trejo Barrientos and his colleagues, members of all the groups commonly organize rituals into four distinctive episodes: preparation, removal of dangerous spirit entities, offering to salutary spirit entities, and the réplica (“reply” or “answer”). The sequence follows closely what we observed in our own research among the Nahua, with the exception of the last part. The réplica is a component that occurs days or weeks after a major ritual, often in the privacy of the ritual specialist’s house or xochicalli shrine. Apparently designed to bid farewell to the spirit entities, it is also an attempt to affirm that they have received their offerings.124 We have never witnessed a réplica and thus are not aware of it ever occurring in Amatlán, or perhaps we simply did not recognize the practice. However, presented with this new information, we now acknowledge that Alan noted in 1973 what may have been a réplica in Amatlán, where, following a ritual appeal for rain, the old altar was again freshened up a few days later and a smaller offering was made. At the time, people explained that the additional offering was needed because the rains had not come. The authors of Sonata ritual further conclude that while ritual practices are widely shared among the four groups, close comparison reveals that two traditions can be discerned: a Totonac-­Tepehua axis and a Nahua-­Otomí axis.125 In the pilgrimages we witnessed the easy social mixing of Nahua and Otomí participants affirms this point. As we mentioned in chapter 1, part of the explanation for this blurring of ethnic boundaries is that the organizer of the pilgrimages, Cirilo, was trained by an Otomí master from a neighboring village. The designs of the sacred paper images that he and his followers favor appear to be heavily influenced by the Otomí aesthetic and differ from the style of Nahua figures cut by other ritual specialists in Amatlán and in surrounding Nahua

communities. In fact, these similarities initially led us to label the sacred journeys recounted here as Nahua-­Otomí pilgrimages. However, we believe it is more accurate to call them Nahua pilgrimages because all of the sacred journeys were organized from a Nahua community and supported predominantly by the Nahua. The Otomí participants constituted no more than a small contingent of the participants. We also have found that style and iconographic variations among paper figures may be more easily attributed to particular teacher-­acolyte lineages (and geographic constraints) than to ethnic identity per se. In any case, regional and temporal distribution of the paper-­ figure complex remains an empirical question worthy of further investigation. While we agree that Nahua and Otomí religions are similar on a number of levels and that borrowing across ethnic groups may be at play, the myths, beliefs, and ritual practices that we documented on the pilgrimages fit well with the Nahua religion overall as it is practiced in Amatlán. A key proposition that Trejo Barrientos and colleagues put forward for all four groups is that there are more beings in the cosmos than there are bodies for them.126 Ritual specialists, in creating the paper figures (or the talakšin, in the case of the Totonac, and similar figures among the Tepehua), enable disembodied entities to take on human form, thereby giving them opportunities to operate in the world of material beings. The images they fashion of winds, seeds, water, and earth thus give these entities the means to exist and interact with their human supplicants. The context in which the spirit entities gain their temporary bodies determines the character of the ritual occasion. For example, they may be summoned as part of a curing ritual or made the focus of ritual attention to ensure crop fertility. The authors link this phenomenon of corpomorphosis to the annual cycle of ritual occasions, with particular emphasis on the local, syncretized equivalents of Carnival (Carnaval) and All Saints’ Day (Todos Santos) observances. During Carnival, people dress up as spirit entities with masks and costumes, thus giving concrete form to amorphous beings. During Todos Santos, the dead return to the world of the living seeking bodies to claim, and the spirit entities must be placated with food offerings and sent back to the underworld or risk becoming a threat to the village. These and numerous other interesting findings presented in this comparative study are worthy of further research and elaboration. Our own long-­term research is more restricted in scope, which makes it difficult for us to address directly the far-­reaching interpretations

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proffered in Sonata ritual. We can only say that much of what the authors claim is congruent with our own understanding of Nahua religion and ritual. Work of any scope covering such a complex subject will of course emphasize some areas and neglect others, and we are disappointed that the authors overlooked or chose to ignore the whole question of whether to characterize the Indigenous religions of this region as polytheism or pantheism. If the religions of the southern Huasteca are indeed pantheistic based on philosophical monism, it would require that the Sonata ritual authors reevaluate their ideas about embodiment, because all the objects and beings of the cosmos would have to be understood as manifestations of one single entity. In short, disease-­causing winds, seed spirits, the sacred mountains, water, sun, and earth would share sacred essence and could only be understood as temporary manifestations of a far more profound reality that is the heart of all existence. If this is true, ritual specialists do not (through the process of corpomorphosis) actually create bodies for individually existing spirit entities but rather, we argue, embody aspects of the seamless sacred totality in their anthropomorphic paper images or stick-­and-­bark figures. They accomplish this transformation in order to solve concrete problems faced by human beings. Corpomorphosis cannot explain one of the distinctive features of the religious complex of el costumbre, namely, that it is impossible to divide spirit entities into categories of good or evil. As discussed in the next section, this is a characteristic of pantheistic religions. Furthermore, it is curious that the authors neglected to analyze the paper figures themselves. They claim that the Otomí cuttings (and, by implication, the figures made by the other groups) are so variable, the result of dreams or whimsical fantasies of the ritual specialists, that they defy classification and cannot serve to reveal information about religious beliefs.127 To the contrary, we have found that the cut-­paper figures of the Nahua (as well as the Otomí and Tepehua) contain significant iconographic information that provides insight into the most abstract underpinnings of the religion. If the ritual specialists interviewed by the Sonata ritual authors are indeed creating bodies for spirit entities to inhabit, it seems that much could be gained by closely examining what kind of bodies they create for them. Missing in the study is a clear conclusion (and hypotheses for further investigation) about how the ritual specialists use design conventions to specify which entities in the spirit pantheon they wish to address and how these embodiments are related to pan-­Mesoamerican conceptions of the sacred. A fuller evaluation of Sonata

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ritual warrants a separate essay, but suffice it to say that this new study is welcome and well conceived, and its research findings and theoretical claims are stimulating. We eagerly look forward to further detailed empirical information and team-­based ethnological analysis and synthesis along these lines.128 In conclusion, it is our contention that the monistic philosophy of pantheism offers a parsimonious explanation and framework for understanding these Mesoamerican systems that is far more fruitful than trying to disentangle the largely unverifiable conceptions of personhood or corpomorphosis. By analyzing the Nahua el costumbre–­pilgrimage complex (with its signature ritual practice of embodying in paper and addressing by name a great range of spirit entities), we intend to establish that monism and pantheism provide a conceptual apparatus that transcends the particularism of the relational-­ personhood or corpomorphosis approaches. We believe that our conception of the problem facilitates comparison of Mesoamerica with other world culture areas to provide clues about how such philosophical systems and religious expressions develop in the first place.

Pantheism and Judeo-­C hristian Conceptions of Good and Evil An important feature of Mesoamerican pantheistic systems that differs radically from theistic religions involves the question of how one ought to regard good and evil. Observers have long remarked that ancient Aztec deities cannot be classified as exclusively good or evil, unlike members of Judeo-­Christian pantheons. The spirit entities seem instead to be composed of a combination of traits that defy facile, dualistic classification as beneficent-­ malevolent or helpful-­harmful.129 In Amatlán the closest equivalent to the English word evil in Nahuatl is axcualli, meaning “not good,” which differs significantly from the absolutist Judeo-­Christian concept. Nahua deities may be simultaneously salutary and dangerous or prone to behaving unpredictably. The friars taught their new charges about the Christian Devil, whom they averred was the manifestation of absolute evil. This figure must have been a complete mystery to the Aztecs who tried to understand it in terms of certain of their deities who were linked to the earth and death. The new converts, however, never seemed to grasp the true significance of Christian ideas about the role of evil in the world, much to the frustration of the friars.130 The Aztecs, of course, were well aware that certain spirit entities were dangerous and to be avoided, but these figures lacked

the intrinsic moral quality that was prevalent in sixteenth-­ century Christian belief and that characterizes many theistic world religions today. In an effort to incorporate the Devil into their system of beliefs, some people in Amatlán say that this spirit entity is the elder brother of Totiotzin.131 The statement seems to imply that forces of disorder and danger have the upper hand and that only though ritual offerings can the imbalance be addressed. The moral ambiguity associated with spirit entities is an important feature of contemporary Nahua religion.132 An excellent example is found in the character of the tzitzimitl in the myth recounted in the previous chapter. Because she was jealous for the attentions of her daughter, she tried to kill Seven Flower when he was a boy. She seems to personify evil in the Judeo-­Christian sense, and yet she gave birth to the mother of maize, which supports human existence. Furthermore, the tzitzimitl became the surface of the earth in her guise as a caiman or alligator floating in the sea.133 We see this moral ambiguity as a leading quality or characteristic of Mesoamerican pantheism. In this system divinity (i.e., Totiotzin) can exist as multiple spirit entities and yet constitutes everything in the living universe, including human beings. Therefore, it is logically inconsistent to view any being or thing as exclusively good or evil. The sun (tonatiuh), the water dweller (apanchaneh), and the earth (tlalli) or its earth mother (tonantzin) manifestation all are entities that make life possible. And yet any one of them, if angered or disrespected, is capable of wiping out humanity.134 For the Nahua, just as for the ancient Aztecs, the fate of the soul after death is determined not by weighing the good or evil deeds of a person but rather by the circumstances of his or her death and whether proper ritual offerings are observed by surviving kinsmen.135 This quality of Nahua religion and ethics can be challenging to grasp for people inculcated in the ethical system of Judeo-­Christian traditions. Yet for the Nahua the absence of absolute good and evil poses no problem for their understanding of the world or in evaluating how humans should interact with one another or with hills, animals, plants, and spirit entities. Simply put, they employ other criteria not based on moral absolutes. The Nahua determine moral and ethical dimensions of human conduct based on principles of reciprocity, balance, and pursuit of the middle way. To anticipate some of our conclusions, the ethnographic data from Amatlán indicate that the Nahua view their universe as a complex yet subtle network of exchanges between the human community and the larger cosmos, very much mirroring the way that

slash-­and-­burn farming puts people in a delicate state of balance with the ecological system of forest, earth, seeds, and rain. People invest their knowledge and labor, and the milpa responds with crops. Even a small perturbation can cause the system to spin out of control. The essential purpose of Nahua rituals, then, is to engage in a special kind of social exchange with elements of the cosmos to keep everything running smoothly, well ordered, and tipped in humans’ favor. When the forces in the universe are aligned properly, humanity is supplied with life-­giving sunlight, abundant rain, fertile earth, and seeds bursting with life. Children are born, people live in harmony with each other, and health and plenty abound. The Nahua dedicate ritual offerings to redress the imbalance that inevitably occurs between far more powerful spirit entities and the precarious human community. But the fragile hope prevails that, in general and over the long term, if people behave with equanimity and perform the rituals in a balanced way, the universe will provide what they need.136 By way of summary, Alice Kehoe warns us not to take the theism in pantheism to mean a theistic deity at all—­neither as God nor “gods all over”—­but to consider the concept of Power or Almighty as closely approximating the way that Native American and First Nation peoples conceive of Totiotzin.137 Pantheism as we use it is based strictly on a monistic philosophy that postulates a single, seamless, and utterly powerful (and thus sacred) totality encompassing every being and thing in the universe. To understand Nahua pantheism, analysts have to develop a new way to think and talk about religious belief and practice. By insisting on seeing ritual practice through dualistic lenses or by interpreting it strictly as a system of symbols or metaphors, we distort beyond recognition the religion we purport to study. The phenomenon of Nahua sacred journeys becomes far more comprehensible if we overcome the reflex to see the world through our historically situated categories of thought.

Challenges to Nahua Costumbre Religion and World View The Nahua religion and world view of el costumbre practice have been challenged over the years but perhaps never more so than by events of recent times. Protestant missionaries entered the southern Huasteca at the turn of the twentieth century. By the mid-­1980s, a new wave of US missionaries entered Mexico illegally and, taking advantage of social disorganization caused by rapid economic changes, began to make converts. As mentioned in chapter

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1, about half the residents of Amatlán had converted by 1998 to some form of fundamentalist Christianity.138 Families in the village are now divided among those calling themselves hermanos (“brothers” and “sisters” who have converted to one or more sects of Protestantism), those who have remained Catholic but are being evangelized anew (and adopting the more urban, orthodox form of Catholicism), and those who steadfastly continue to follow their Indigenous religious practices (but reconcile them within a local system of Catholic beliefs familiar to their parents’ or grandparents’ generation). Even in small villages the situation is extremely dynamic, with religious affiliation cross-­cutting kinship groups and ties created by ritual kinship. The disruption in Amatlán is multifaceted and all-­encompassing. Protestant converts refuse to participate in events organized by the local schoolmasters, and they shun village-­wide observances such as Day of the Dead and winter solstice rituals. Some converts reject government-­run vaccination programs, and for the first time we have witnessed cases of vandalism against traditional shrines and sacred locations. Extended families are split by religious disputes, while at the same time households are broken up by the departure of younger members who quit the community altogether to find employment at the urban frontier. As a result of factors beyond its inhabitants’ control, the small community of Amatlán is at war with itself.139 We asked the ritual specialists to comment on these divisions, and Raymundo, speaking in Spanish, responded with these observations: Yes, sure we are Catholics, but real Catholics. Because others may be Catholics but they no longer want to believe in this [costumbre ritual practice]—­ they do not want to be cured. Anything having to do with the curers they don’t want to know about. That is why there are many evangelists and other [orthodox] Catholics. We are Catholics but we also want to see this costumbre. The other Catholics who do not want to see this and don’t want to be cured, no—­they do not want any of this, they don’t want to see this. They say you no longer have to do this. This is the reason they no longer come. The people no longer believe in it because the priest, the catechists, the evangelists tell them that you no longer have to do this. But, yes, in each region, in each community, they still have this costumbre. They do this, even if it is only one person, or three, or however many people come to hold this costumbre. But anyway, there are those who

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perform this costumbre in each community—­it has not been lost.140

Followers of the old traditions are experiencing serious stress in the face of cultural changes that have overwhelmed nearly everybody in the past thirty years. Evidence can be found in numerous regional revitalization movements that have attempted to reestablish a sense of order to people’s lives. The most notable of these was the appearance in the 1990s of Amalia Bautista, a young Nahua woman from a neighboring community whose series of visions led her to become recognized as the living manifestation of the maize spirit chicomexochitl. She attracted thousands of followers, many of whom are still active in the religious movement. Her message shifted over the years toward a more orthodox Catholicism, and she eventually joined a Catholic religious order. People who were convinced of the authenticity of her message were called “Amalias” and were scattered across many communities throughout the region. Without their leader, however, the movement may be losing adherents. A few people in Amatlán joined the Amalia movement, but most never abandoned their commitment to el costumbre.141 Those who organized and participated in the pilgrimages to Postectli and surrounding sacred mountains continue to follow the traditional religious customs. As far as we know, no Protestants or Catholics influenced by reevangelization took part in the sacred journeys. Christianity influences pilgrimages, but its impact is surprisingly small. The summary of Nahua religion presented here has been focused on the Indigenous interface with Catholic religious practice, which guided virtually every person in Amatlán when Alan first arrived there in 1970. As we describe and analyze the pilgrimage itself, we will highlight those qualities that give the Nahua religion of el costumbre its remarkable resilience in the face of profound culture change.142

A Reflection on Changes in the Village Guadalupe Morales, an elderly woman from Amatlán and mother of our comadre Francisca Hernández Morales, witnessed many of these cultural changes. Speaking in Nahuatl in this statement we recorded in April 1990, she lamented the loss of family traditions from her childhood: Long ago we held the new maize elotl ritual in the village. What all of us saw then, the people of today no longer see. The children went to the milpa for ears

of young maize, and we made flower decorations. We filled baskets with the new maize, placed them outside, and built an arch over them. There was Seven Flower, and we all danced for him. That was long ago, but the children of today no longer see him. They don’t know him. Long ago everybody worked together beautifully to bring Seven Flower here. Now they don’t do it that way anymore. The people have forgotten, and that is why I tell my children, you should know how we worked. How we worked to produce ears of maize and how we made a fiesta for the new maize and invited each other over to see it. It is how maize got into our houses. We would make flower adornments and walk to the distant hill. We would go with the ritual specialist all the way to the hill. He would say, “There is a lot of sun here, but as soon as you return to your house it will rain.” And when we got back it really rained. And we saw that what he said was true. They brought many flowers they gathered and made arches where Seven Flower would come to meet everyone. Many people came from the same village. It was nice how they worked together and the maize always grew. Once many of us went to La Joya [a neighboring community], those of us who had respect for the old traditions. We went, each holding a candle, and when we got there, we stopped where the siren is and lit our candles. I went there and stood there with two lighted candles and my coyol palm adornments. Then I looked and far away I saw a beautiful woman sitting with her hair spread out. She was sitting on a fish. I saw the fish move its tail and there I was, holding my candles. Others just went on as if nothing was happening. They did not see the pretty siren like I did. After we worked in the milpa, after we harvested Seven Flower and the maize crop was brought to the house, people gathered there and they conducted a ritual. They put flowers on the altar, they would light candles, and they piled up all of the maize. The offerings were for Seven Flower. Music was played and people danced. Those who were there saw all that.143

Myth of the Nahua Water Owner Zahhuan (San Juan Bautista) Before embarking on the pilgrimage proper, we present the myth of el dueño del agua, the water owner addressed as Zahhuan, a Nahua spirit entity who plays an eminent role in the drama of the Nahua sacred journeys. The early-­sixteenth-­century friars working in the Huasteca

exposed the Nahua to stories of the Catholic saints, many of whom the local people incorporated into their own pantheon of spirit entities. The missionaries told stories of the prominent figure of San Juan Bautista (Saint John the Baptist) and how San Juan baptized Jesús. To this day people in Amatlán equate the saint with water. The Spanish name San Juan, borrowed into Huastecan Nahuatl (and styled Zahhuan in the stories and chants), is known by myriad other names, including simply Juan and atl, water. This autochthonous water spirit has been of central importance since long before Europeans arrived on the shores of the New World. Closely identified with wild and unpredictable weather events, especially cataclysmic rainstorms hurling wind, thunder, and lightning, the identity of zahhuan (as with many Nahua spirit entities invoked in oral narratives) blends with the identity of other members of the pantheon, notably apanchaneh, and ultimately tonantzin. He also aptly illustrates the morally ambiguous character of virtually all Nahua spirit entities. Crucial for the maintenance of life on earth, zahhuan is the subject of countless ritual entreaties to bring the blessing of rain to the fields. But based on mood, whim, or acts of disrespect, this spirit entity is also capable of inflicting death and destruction on people. For the people of Amatlán what matters is maintaining a balance between an inconstant spirit entity and the human community that so depends on water. The figure of San Juan–­Zahhuan in Nahua Oral Tradi­ tion is an angry troublemaker who had to be restrained during his youth to prevent him from destroying the earth with floods. The spirit entities associated with thunder and lightning had finally had enough with his wild ways, so they devised a plan to deal with the problem, as the storytellers elaborate. Zahhuan now resides in the sea, somewhere off the coastal town of Tamiahua, Veracruz, where he rages against his capture by provoking violent storms. In quieter moments he sends the dew to the fields each morning.144 According to the story:

Zahhuan was born inside a squash. In a milpa long ago, a squash vine grew until it became enormous, but it bore no fruit. Finally, a single squash appeared on the vine. Much to the amazement of the saints, it grew bigger and bigger, and it was covered with bumps. They decided to leave it on the vine until it fully ripened. When the time came to harvest the giant squash, they cut it open and were surprised to see that there was a boy inside.145 The name of the boy was Juan. Juan slowly came to consciousness and opened his eyes. Like other squash growing in the fields,

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the boy was immediately threatened by ants, but the saints sent for the thunder spirits who protected him. The saints took him out and tried to feed him tortillas, but he would not eat or drink anything. Despite his lack of nourishment, the boy continued to grow. As it happened, Juan found himself near a place where a ritual specialist was curing patients. The copal incense drifted over to him and he inhaled it. With only copal smoke as nourishment, Juan grew into a very strong youth. The saints noticed that he would strike and injure the other boys that he played with because of his great strength. He often hurt people and knocked down houses with his power. He went to work in the fields, and at night people would place tortillas and mole, a delectable chili sauce, on the table for him. Still, he ate and drank nothing. Rather than consuming food, he preferred to sit in front of the altar and breath in copal incense. When people irritated him, he would strike them and knock them out, sometimes nearly killing them. Whenever he encountered someone who did not respect him, he disrespected them in return. All the while as these events unfolded, the twelve rain dwarfs, the pilhuehuentzitzin, were observing Juan. They mused, “What will he be like? This is really going to be something.” Juan developed the disturbing habit of screaming at the top of his lungs, causing people and the saints to fear him even more. When he roared, he would knock people to the ground all around him. The twelve ancient ones were annoyed and asked Juan to follow them, but he continued to inflict damage with his loud roaring. The saints then noticed something odd about him. Just like the squash flower, Juan never looked down at the ground, but was always looking up. Because of this habit and because he thrived on copal incense, the saints knew that he was one of them. On his feast day of June 24, the people held lavish celebrations in his honor. But everyone was afraid that if Juan should attend the events, he would inevitably drink too much (for, apparently, he did consume alcohol). Becoming violent, he would injure bystanders and he might even cause a hurricane. The rain would be so intense that a flood might ensue and drown many people. Because he was so unpredictable, everyone was always very careful never to inform Juan about the impending celebration, hoping that he would simply overlook it. Because Juan always looked upward and never toward the ground, he missed seeing the preparations. To this day he has never attended his own observance. Everyone stayed safe so long as Zahhuan was kept in ignorance. Now he lives at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, far from the people who fear his temper and power. Every so often, though, one can hear him agitating and roiling the waters of the sea, sending forth bolts of lightning, loud claps of thunder, dark clouds, and rain. So it is, people say, that the rain does not originate in the sky overhead but comes from the sea and is stored within the earth.

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The myth about Zahhuan is quite fluid, and we have recorded a number of variations. One version begins much in the same fashion as this account, but it is the saints (or sometimes the antiguos or ancestors) who contact Jesús (i.e., the sun, in the guise of Jesus Christ) about the troubles they are having with Zahhuan. As the story goes:

Jesús befriended the misbehaving youth and recognized that he was a powerful spirit entity. Jesús soon realized that part of Juan’s problem was that he has not been properly baptized, so he tricked Juan into entering the water under the pretext of bathing. After they entered the water, Jesús looked around and noticed that Juan was nowhere to be found and wondered if alligators had eaten him. However, Juan soon reappeared and Jesús was able to baptize his companion. Juan told Jesús that he then recognized that his dwelling place lay in the water, where he agreed to stay and become its owner. In yet another story module the myth begins similarly, but in this telling Juan is building a house at the bottom of the sea where he has agreed to stay and control the rain:

Juan was told by the saints, “When the people dedicate music or an offering to you, you should throw up clouds out of the water so that it rains on the milpas.” But a problem developed. The thunder coming from the sea produced clouds that simply stayed in place. They did not yield rain. Juan had to use the wind that came from caves to move the clouds. Once the clouds moved over the land, they were able to moisten the fields. The rain clouds are equated with the twelve little old men who carry the rain from the sea to the cave at the peak of Postectli. The problem of the clouds’ immobility is the focus of another Amatlán storyteller’s narration:

After being sent by Zahhuan, the clouds just sat still, unable to move. The wind came up and said to them, “You clouds are standing still and starting to fall. It doesn’t seem right that no one helps you move along.” The wind threatened to eat them, but the clouds instead implored the wind to help them move. The wind replied, “I will take you wherever you want to go, but first you have to tell me where I was born.” One of the clouds replied, “Do you really want to know? Well, meet me here tomorrow afternoon and I will tell you.” That cloud then went to ask the fire, “Where does the wind come from?” The fire replied, “I don’t know, maybe it appeared together with the earth.” Next the cloud asked the lightning, who responded, “We live today and the wind appeared before we did, so we don’t know where it was born.”

All the time the cloud was asking questions a cricket was hanging around, listening. Finally, it said, “The wind along with its mother and father come from the big hill. If you hide in a nearby ditch, early in the morning, say at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m., you will hear the wind emerge from the hill.” The cloud hid in the ditch, and sure enough, early in the morning it began to hear a huge roar that sounded like a bull. The cloud heard the wind’s mother say, “Don’t trample what people have sown. You must show respect wherever you go.” The cloud met up with the wind after it had come out of its cave home in the hill and asked, “Where were you born and where do you live?” But before the wind could speak, the cloud itself answered, “In the hill. You were told by your mother and father not to trample the fields, to go along with good will.” The wind replied, “Yes, it is true. Now we are going to be friends and we will get along very well.” And from then on, the wind moves the clouds wherever they want to go. Both clouds and the wind respond to offerings made by the people who depend on them to bring rain to the fields. We have collected additional fragments of the myth that demonstrate the range of variations of this important narrative. In some accounts, the saints are angry at Juan’s bad behavior, which leads them to entrap him in order to bring him under control. He rages at being restrained, and in his struggles he causes the frequent, violent storms that sweep over the southern Huasteca from the Gulf of Mexico. We find repeated throughout these stories the theme that people fear that Zahhuan will cause flooding and widespread destruction should he notice the festivities on his feast day of June 24. But we also recorded versions that differed on this point, as in this rendition:

A boy was looking for work but could not find any. He was an orphan alone in the world who did not know his own name or the name of his father. As his search for work proved unsuccessful, he wandered into the forest where he saw an ax cutting wood by itself with no human intervention. “Clearly,” he said to himself, “something is up.” The boy grabbed the ax and was able to hold on to it. He then laid it against a tree, and the ax resumed cutting all by itself. Soon the twelve little old men who served Jesús as helpers high in the sky came to see the miraculous ax. These were the rain dwarfs and they asked him, “Why have you come into the forest?” He told them, “I am an orphan looking for work.” They replied, “We have a task for you. We want you to watch over our house while we are away. But you must be very careful. Inside the house are boxes of our special clothing. Our clothes are particularly delicate and must be scrupulously guarded. We put on these clothes when Jesús sends us to make rain. Above all else, you must not fool around or try on the clothes.”

The twelve little old men departed and left the boy alone in the house. As the hours went by, the boy became curious and eventually opened the chests containing the clothes. He saw that the clothes were brightly colored and strikingly beautiful, sparkling and iridescent, revealing their deep colors in the clear light. He put on the red outfit and the sky immediately turned red. Next he put on the yellow clothing and the sky turned a brilliant yellow. The most beautiful of all the garments [in one version] were the ones made from shining gold. Disregarding the rain dwarfs’ warning, he put on the golden clothing and was immediately lofted into the air, high up above the clouds. He put on the blue clothes and the sky cleared. Finally, when he put on the black clothing, it grew dark, and thunder and lightning appeared. The old men knew something was amiss when they noticed a violent storm suddenly arise. They ran back to their house and saw that some of their clothing was missing. In the meantime, the boy flew among the swirling clouds and swept throughout the countryside, knocking down trees, creating floods, and producing damaging hail. Many people were lost and the destruction was widespread. The twelve little old men started to pursue the boy in order to halt the storm and save the terrified people. They blinded him with a dense screen of clouds, and they struck him with lightning bolts. Still, trees and houses continued to crash down. They finally captured him, dragged him eastward, and chained him to the bottom of the sea, where he resides to this day. The boy became Zahhuan, who is now the water owner. But the twelve little old men could no longer produce the rain without the help of Zahhuan. Their power was reduced—­they created only sound and light. It is for this reason that there is distant thunder and lightning in the days leading up to the rainy season. One has to wait until Zahhuan’s day of celebration on June 24 for the rains to come. Just as in the Chicomexochitl–­Seven Flower myth, the Zahhuan–­San Juan story cycle reveals much about how the Nahua interpret natural phenomena that are critically important to their lives. They link rain and violent storms to the actions of a spiritual being, a person with extraordinary powers who at the same time is deeply flawed. Essential for life on earth but simultaneously disobedient and violent, the water owner zahhuan is neither wholly good nor bad; like all Nahua spirit entities, he is beneficent at times but decidedly dangerous on other occasions, and, above all, powerful. He thinks nothing of destroying houses and people’s lives. There is little that the human community can do but try to placate him. He responds to human entreaties and appreciates the music and offerings dedicated to him during rituals, but the prestations are crucial to keeping on his good side.

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Associated with the water realm (and itself a component of the sacred earth), zahhuan is confined to the sea depths from whence he sends rain over the land. While the Nahua link meteorology and climate factors to his erratic personality and capricious behavior, their beliefs are never far from empirical observations of how these forces actually work. Rainwater does come from the Gulf of Mexico, carried aloft in clouds that move over the land in unpredictable ways, and accompanied by hazardous lightning and thunder. The myth also reveals

a fundamental principle underlying Nahua thought, namely, that out of chaos comes order: although deranged and uncontrollable, zahhuan ultimately releases the fertilizing rain. The sea is viewed by many Nahua as a dangerous place at the disordered periphery, set apart from the ordered, well-­organized center of community life.146 Center and periphery, order and chaos—­ the apparent contradictions present just the sort of problem that threatens to tear the world apart and a conundrum that Nahua religion addresses head on.

Notes 1. Our composite rendition of the mythic time preceding the current era draws mainly on the story told in Amatlán on December 26, 1985, by Jesús Bautista Hernández (no. 111), supplemented by versions recorded in 1990 by Efrén Hernández Hernández (nos. 14, 106); José Nicolás (nos. 48, 98); and Antonia Hernández Hernández (nos.  72, 77), which are preserved in AILLA at https://​ailla​.utexas​.org/; see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986–­98). 2. Accounts recorded by Gómez Martínez (1999a: 18–­22; 1999b; 2002: 59–­62) offer variations and elaborations on this theme among Nahuas of Chicontepec, Veracruz. Hooft (2007: 107–­54) provides a transcription, translation, and symbolic analysis of the creation myth told by Nahuas to the north and west of Amatlán. Hooft and Cerda Zepeda (2003: 81–­99) present similar Nahua and Teenek versions. Taggart (1983: 55–­66) discusses creation stories and their associations among Nahuat of the Sierra Norte de Puebla, and Ichon (1973 [1969]: 52–­56) records Totonac accounts. 3. Tedlock (1985: 125-­28) also reports the theme of plants reappearing mysteriously in the Popol Vuh. 4. The Indigenous people of Mesoamerica see a rabbit in the moon rather than the European imagery of a man in the moon or an old lady bent over a bucket. 5. Abelardo de la Cruz (personal communication, January 17, 2018) suggested the possibility that the monkey may have survived the flood and that Juan Oso represents the next generation of human beings. 6. Bierhorst (1992: 143–­44). 7. Hooft (2007: 107–­54). 8. Heiras Rodríguez (2005) updates ethnographic coverage of Tepehua communities, as does Valderrama Rouy (2005) for the Totonac. 9. Sources providing detailed information on Nahua religion in the Huasteca Veracruzana and the surrounding region include: Williams García (1957); Martínez H. (1960); Reyes García (1960, 1976); Montoya Briones (1964); García de León (1969); Lenz (1973 [1948]: 121–­48; 1984: 357–­413); Provost (1975); Reyes García and Christensen (1976); Boilès (1978: 152–­54); Sandstrom (1978, 1982, 1989, 1991, 1995, 2001a, 2001d, 2003, 2004, 2005b, 2008a, 2008b, 2009 [1998], 2010b [1991], 2017); Medellín Zenil (1979, 1982 [1955]); Cruz Hernández (1982: 75–­88); Hernández Cristóbal et al.

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(1982); Ixmatlahua Montalvo et al. (1982); Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986, 2017, 2021); Báez-­Jorge and Gómez Martínez (1998); Gómez Martínez (1999a, 1999b, 2002, 2004a); Medina Hernández (2008); Stresser-­Péan (2009); Valle Esquivel et al. (2010), Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014); Bassett (2015: 11–­25, 192–­94); Cruz Cruz (2015); Mar-­Olivares (2015); Romero Huerta (2016). 10. Medellín Zenil (1979: 114); translation ours. 11. Broda (2004a: 20; 2004c: 65, 77). 12. García Garagarza (2017: 595) makes a similar point; López Austin (2001) and Jordan (2008), among others, summarize the enduring core elements of the Mesoamerican ritual landscape. 13. See the discussion of concepts (and alternate spellings) concerning the Nahua cosmos in Sandstrom (1991: 240); Lupo (1995: 142); Báez-­Jorge and Gómez Martínez (1998: 23); Gómez Martínez (2002: 60, 61, 93n2). 14. Cosmic elements are discussed by Gómez Martínez (1999a: 8); Nava Vite (2009: 151); Mar-­Olivares (2015: 56). 15. See inclusive lists of Nahua spirit entities in Reyes García (1976: 127–­28) and Sandstrom (1991: 256–­57). 16. Burkhart (1988; 1989: 83). 17. See Sandstrom (1991: 248); also Ichon (1973 [1969]: 104–­ 7); Stresser-­Péan (2009: 515–­16). España Soto (2018: 129–­30, 135) notes similar sun-­God associations among Otomí practitioners in Hidalgo and Veracruz. 18. Sandstrom (1991: 247). 19. Some Nahua say that the surface of the earth is a rectangle floating in the ocean (Lupo 1995: 177n36). 20. Gómez Martínez (2002: 64). 21. Báez-­Jorge and Gómez Martínez (1998: 23). 22. Gómez Martínez (2002: 62–­63). 23. Lupo (1995: 139–­52) reports on similar conceptions of the earth among Nahua of the Sierra Norte de  Puebla. Compare reports by Ichon (1973 [1969]: 146–­49) on the contemporary Totonac and Galinier (1987: 357–­58) on Sierra Otomí ideas about the earth. More about the disease-­causing winds can be found in Sandstrom (1978; 1991: 252–­53, 269–­73); Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986: 81–­100); and Signorini and Lupo (1989: 136–­45). 24. Gómez Martínez (1999a: 11–­12). 25. See Sandstrom (2021: 37–­38, 43). Báez-­Jorge and Gómez Martínez (1998: 23–­38; 2000: 82–­86; 2001: 346–­47) and Gómez

Martínez (2002: 57–­66) outline the layered structure of the Nahua cosmos and the entities inhabiting its various realms, including water. Lorente Fernández (2011) offers a fascinating ethnographic study of beliefs surrounding water and weather among Nahuas of Texcoco, who share many conceptions with the residents of Amatlán. The spirit entities he describes are called ahuaques, but they do not appear to resemble apanchaneh other than in their dual natures: critical in bringing the rain but also potentially dangerous to humans. 26. On cosmic equilibrium in Indigenous Mesoamerica generally and its importance in the religious beliefs and practices in the Huasteca region, see Williams García (1963: 198); Ichon (1973 [1969]: 103); Lupo (1995: 57, 105, 220); Gómez Martínez (1999a: 8; 1999b; 2002: 58); Martínez de  la  Cruz (2000: 38, 41); Lupo (2001: 369, 379–­80); Maffie (2014: 383–­86); Mar-­Olivares (2015); McClung de  Tapia and Martínez de  Yrizar (2017: 182); and Laack (2019: 104–­8, 168–­69). 27. See Lorente Fernández (2015). Lupo (1999) identifies several types of winds among Nahua of the Sierra Norte de Puebla: those associated with the Devil; the owners of specific resources or locations; a figure called the “old man of the forest”; a class of winds that live as bats in caves; the wandering souls of people with unfulfilled promises; souls of those who refuse to go to the place of the dead; or the souls of those who return to earth to exact revenge (like La Llorona, the Weeping Woman, a familiar personage in Mexican folklore). For further elaborations on Indigenous concepts of the malevolent winds, see Ichon (1973 [1969]: 142–­46, 248–­49); Galinier (1987: 441, 445–­47); and Lupo (1995: 114–­15; 2001: 354–­55). Helmke and Nielsen (2009) write about personified diseases among the Maya. 28. We recorded these details in our field notes during an interview that Arturo Gómez Martínez conducted with Cirilo on May 15, 1998, in Amatlán. 29. See Gómez Martínez (2002: 62–­66) and the diagram of El Universo (figura 1, following page 155). Ochoa and Gutiérrez (1996: 98–­101) also describe the structure of the Teenek and Nahua universe. 30. The concept of ahhuechtli, often translated by our bilingual colleagues simply as “rain,” figures prominently throughout the ritual chants and in everyday speech. We use interchangeably the English words “dew,” “dewfall,” “rain,” “rainfall,” or “rain shower” to characterize these forms of moisture. Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz stresses that the quality of rain is more important than the quantity, so the term implies sufficient or adequate rain. The compound word youalauchtli (also spelled yohualahuechtli), meaning “night dew,” appears in Molina (1944 [1571]: pt. 2, col. 1, 42). 31. Ichon (1973 [1969]: 111–­19) discusses star guardians among contemporary Totonacs. 32. See this point in Dow (2003: 28); Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 50, 440); Gómez Martínez (2002: 57). 33. Ichon (1973 [1969]: 45) also notes finding what seemed to him contradictory and confusing information on the meaning of directions among contemporary Totonacs. See Báez-­Jorge and Gómez Martínez (1998: 23–­33); Gómez Martínez (2002:

60–­22); and Cruz Cruz (2015: 139, 141) for further information about the structure of the Nahua cosmos. 34. For more about tlacatecolotl–­hombre búho–­man owl, which we discuss in some detail in chapter 6, see Báez-­Jorge and Gómez Martínez (1998: 39, 45; 2000); Gómez Martínez (2002: 40); Gómez Martínez (2009); Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2021). 35. We discuss the cleansing rituals performed prior to episodes in the pilgrimage proceedings in chapter 3. A comprehensive inventory of Nahua rituals in Amatlán can be found in Sandstrom (1991: 279–­313), and in Gómez Martínez (2002: 107–­31) for neighboring Chicontepec. 36. Nava Vite (2009: 152–­53); translation ours, paraphrasing the author’s Spanish translation of the Nahuatl. 37. Cruz Cruz (2017: 28); translation ours. Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz (personal communication, October  13, 2017) amplified some details of the sequence, as noted in brackets. 38. See also the discussion of similar sequences in agricultural rituals by Gómez Martínez (2002: 108–­20); Martín del  Campo (2006: 61–­64); Nava Vite (2009: 153); Cruz Cruz (2015), and Mar-Olivares (2015: 55–56). 39. See Gómez Martínez (2002: 102–­7) and Sandstrom (2003, 2008b, 2010a) for additional information on this widely discussed topic. García Garagarza (2017) summarizes Aztec conceptions of the sacred landscape, while Ashmore (2008) and Grove and Gillespie (2009) present the Mesoamerican sacred landscape from an archaeological perspective. See also Stone (1992), who links pre-­Hispanic religious architecture to rituals held at significant topographic sites. Among contemporary people, Tiedje (2005) reports on the sacred landscape in the Huasteca as a source of identity and political action, Urquijo (2008) has published on neighboring Teenek conceptions, and Barabas Reyna (2006) writes about the places and pilgrimages among Indigenous people in Oaxaca. Basso (1996) provides an especially compelling study of how the landscape permeates the world view of the Cibique Apache. Finally, landscape has been important in many cultural contexts, including that of the early Christians; Coleman and Elsner (1994) show the importance to the pilgrims’ experience of the physical location and attributes of the sixth-­century monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai. 40. Harvey (1991: 91). 41. Rincón Mautner (2012: 254). 42. Brady and Prufer (2005a: 9). 43. See chapters in Brady and Prufer (2005b), including Sandstrom (2005a), on the significance of caves in Mesoamerican religious ideology. The contributors to Moyes (2012), including Moyes and Brady (2012), examine the ritual use of caves from the paleolithic to the present. Pertinent ethnographic work on sacred caves in Nahua ritual life today include Fierro Alonso (2004) on Morelos; Malbrán Porto and Méndez Torres (2018) on the Zongolica region of central Veracruz; and Velázquez Galindo and Rodríguez González (2019: 81–­ 82) on the Sierra Norte de  Puebla. Ochoa and Gutiérrez (1996: 107–­8) and Hernández (2016) discuss caves in Teenek ritual and cosmology.

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44. Anthropologists who record this fact include Gómez Martínez (2002: 103–­6); Hooft and Cerda Zepeda (2003: 58–­61); Sandstrom (2003); Broda (2004b: 56); González González and Medellín Urquiaga (2007: 22–­23); Stresser-­Péan (2009: 130–­35); and Mar-­ Olivares (2015: 59). Piotrowska-­ Kretkiewicz (2012, 2013) describes about how Nahua in the municipio of Huazalingo, Hidalgo, also in the Huasteca region, connect mountains to rain, crop fertility, and curing. Villela F. (2001) documents hill worship among Nahua in the state of Guerrero; Lorente Fernández (2011: 176) shows that Nahua in Texcoco link the sacred hills and ahuaque water spirits. Stuart (1997) and Scarborough (1998) show the importance of mountains in Maya world view and sacred geography, and Grove (2011) provides a broad archaeological purview on mountains in Mesoamerican ideology. Taube (2004) discusses sacred flower mountains in the context of conceptions of center and periphery among the Classic-­era Maya, and Kapusta (2016) reports that mountains continue to be regarded as sacred by Maya Pentecostals. Yet farther afield, Williams and Nash (2006) describe the religious and political importance of mountains for Indigenous Peruvians, and Pitblado (2017) relates sacred mountain ranges (the Rockies, especially) to the Amerinds peopling of the New World. 45. García Garagarza (2012: 195). 46. García Garagarza (2012: 199). 47. Sandstrom (1991: 243); Villela F. (2001); Martín del Campo (2006: 193); Piotrowska-­Kretkiewicz (2013: 259); and González González (2019: 195). 48. The major sacred hills in the wider Nahua and Otomí region are documented in Sandstrom (1991: 239–­42; 2008b; 2019); note that the map in Sandstrom (1991: 243, fig. 6.1) placed two hills (Xochicualaloya and Xihuiyoh) outside the Nahua region where they correctly belong. Many of these geographic features are named in oral narratives and in chants delivered during the Postectli pilgrimage; in appendix D, we have documented what we know about them. 49. Anticipating our in-­depth discussion and illustration of ritual paper cutting in later chapters (especially chapter 6, where we show the full range of cuttings that Cirilo fashioned specifically for the Postectli pilgrimage), we offer readers a preview by introducing the work of other talented ritual specialists who create these tangible embodiments of the Nahua spirit pantheon. In notes interspersed throughout the book, we introduce paper images pertinent to the discussion at hand (of the sacred landscape, in this instance) that give a glimpse into their creators’ vision of the cosmos. We bring it all together in the final chapter (our coda to the book’s overarching theme of sacred journeys) where we undertake a comparative analysis of the design vocabulary of el costumbre practice in a single Nahua community. We first present an example of a generic sacred hill or mountain portrayed in paper (paper figure X-1, illustrated in table X.1 in the Coda; also Sandstrom 1991: 263, fig. 4). Created by ritual specialist Silveria Hernández Hernández of Amatlán, she called the cutting tepexinolah, a mixed Nahuatl-­Spanish name derived from the Spanish señora, meaning “hill lady” or “lady of the hill.” The cutting has a heart and crown, and

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the body is decorated with pockets and rows of diamond cuts that are part of the blouse and skirt of the mountain. Another distinctive example of a generalized hill or tepetl (paper figure X-2; also Sandstrom 1991: 263, fig. 3) is one cut from white tissue paper (papel de china) by María Dolores Hernández, also an accomplished practitioner of el costumbre in Amatlán. She portrays the sacred hill with an elaborate vegetative headdress and two V-cuts whose meaning was not specified. An important feature of the landscape and a major pilgrimage destination frequently mentioned in interviews and recorded in chants is La Laguna. For another ritual occasion in 1986 Cirilo cut an image of water in the form of La Laguna (paper figure X-3) with a heart, headgear, and three zigzag cuts that invoke water. 50. Taube (2006: 302). 51. See García Garagarza (2012: 199). On the gendered aspects of ritual landscapes, see also Iwaniszewski (2001b) and other contributions to the conference proceedings published in Broda, Iwaniszewski, and Montero García (2001). 52. Reyes García (1976: 127) and Gómez Martínez (2002: 66). 53. The literature on Indigenous Mesoamerican concepts of the human body is truly extensive, but for Nahuas of the Huasteca, see especially Reyes García and Christensen (1976) and Sandstrom (2009 [1998]); Báez Cubero (2015) on Nahuas of the Sierra Norte de  Puebla; and Galinier (1987: 423) on the Sierra Otomí. Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014) offer a comparative study of rituals based on conceptions of the body, which we closely examine later in this chapter. 54. Morante López (2001: 52); translation ours, an orientation that Broda (1991) also affirms. 55. McKeever Furst (1995: 2–­3). 56. See this point in Sandstrom (2005a: 37). 57. The tonalli soul of a child envisioned by Nahua ritual specialist Silveria Hernández Hernández was cut from paper as a simple figure with a heart and a head of hair (see paper figure X-4 in table X.1); each of the cuttings introduced in the notes is illustrated in the Coda. The image Silveria created of an adult male’s tonalli soul (paper figure X-5) is also simple in design, with a heart and two oblong shapes resembling life-­giving corn cut from the body. Her portrayal of the tonalli of an adult female (paper figure X-6) has a crown, heart, and a row of diamond decorations on her dress. Another tonalli design that the ritual specialist might create in dealing with a client’s marital problems can be seen in the double-­figure cutting (paper figure X-7) that pairs a relatively unadorned male figure (left) with that of the decorated female figure (right), each with a crown and a heart. For additional background on the concept of the tonalli soul, see Hooft (2007: 238–­46), who examines the concept and beliefs among Nahua people in Xochiatipan, Veracruz. In nearby Chicontepec, Gómez Martínez (2002: 77) reports on Nahua beliefs in three animistic entities: tonalli, yolcayotl, and ihyotl, the last a kind of breath soul; see also Nahua soul concepts in the same area recorded by Martín del  Campo (2006: 64–­66, 147–­56). According to López Austin (1988 [1980]: vol. 1, 203–­36), similar beliefs were held among sixteenth-­century Aztecs, but Olko and Madajczak (2019) dispute López Austin’s

conception of the teyolia heart soul among the Aztecs. Lorente Fernández (2011: 95–­96) documents the belief in espírítus (“spirit souls”) and a heart soul among Nahua in Texcoco. Stresser-­ Péan (2009: 485–­87) records beliefs in three souls among Nahua of the Sierra Norte de  Puebla; but compare Chamoux (1989); Signorini and Lupo (1989: 47–­55, 55–­79, 79–­80); Lupo (1995: 113); and Lorente Fernández (2020). Dow (1982; 1984) examines soul concepts among the Sierra Otomí. 58. See Sandstrom (1991: 257–­60). Ochoa and Gutiérrez (1996: 114) also describe the role of water carriers (called mam in Teenek, the Huastec Maya language) in San Luis Potosí. 59. Statement 6, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 00:00:00–­00:01:04 (AILLA resource ID: 284722). 60. Cirilo is heard to utter an expression a few lines later, monahuatia, which our Nahuatl language consultants puzzled over, to describe how the great hill of Chicontepec is somehow coordinated with, oriented to, or rests beneath Postectli. We are not certain of the ritual specialist’s meaning, but the contiguous chain of sacred prominences in the region reinforces people’s understanding that the governor, Postectli, communicates with lesser mountains within its compass. See nahuatia (“to give orders to someone” or “to greet someone”) in Online Nahuatl Dictionary (n.d.) at https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/​node ​/​204645 and https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​172741. 61. Ichon (1973 [1969]: 161–­62, 233–­34) also reports the idiomatic use of standing-­sitting expressions with similar meanings among the Totonac. The action of being seated or situated and ready to be presented with offerings that are laid out is also con­veyed in chanting by constructions of the verb mana and re­flexive momana, meaning “to put out or lay down flat things,” particularly things patted or flattened out on a surface, including lands, in the sense of founding a town or settlement; see the entries in Online Nahuatl Dictionary (n.d.) at https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/node/172392,https://nahuatl .wired-humanities.org/node/172440, and https://​nahuatl.wired -humanities.org/node/203811. 62. The sisal bags themselves are decorated with colorful stamped designs (García Valencia 2008). It is notable that these quadripartite designs resemble pre-­Hispanic motifs embodying olin, one of three basic types of motion change among the Aztecs; see Maffie (2014: 185–­260). 63. See Gómez Martínez (2002: 61). Additional sources on color meanings among the Nahua include Williams García (1963); Báez-­Jorge and Gómez Martínez (1998: 23; 2000: 94); Gómez Martínez (2013: 182); Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 92–­93, 115); and González González (2019: 174–­75). Ichon (1973 [1969]: 42–­43) remarks on the ambiguous nature of color meanings (from his perspective) among the contemporary Totonac. Mikulska (2019b: 68–­69) cites a Maya text collected by William Brito Sansores in 1933, in which winds are linked to both color and direction. 64. Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 93). 65. Ichon (1973 [1969]) writes at length about the significance of numbers in Totonac religion, and Lipp (1991: 81–­82, 84–­86) shows the significance of numbers in Mixe ritual. 66. Gómez Martínez (2013: 184).

67. Gómez Martínez (2013: 185–94). 68. Caso (1958: 45). 69. Sandstrom (1991: 245) elaborates on the salience of this aspect of the tonalli soul. For more on the number 7 in Nahua thought, see discussions by Lupo (1995: 146, 165–­ 66, 274); Gómez Martínez and Hooft (2012: 11); and Cruz Cruz (2015: 141). Mikulska (2015: 481) also discusses the significance of the numbers 5 and 7 for ancient Mesoamericans. 70. Following Hunt (1977), we use the term “pantheon” to refer to the array of Nahua spirit entities, fully cognizant that they are indeed but transient aspects of the sacred cosmos at large. 71. Olivier (2017: 575–­76). 72. Statement 5, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 00:02:43–­00:03:57 (AILLA resource ID: 284722). 73. Following Maffie (2014: 33–35). 74. See Beyer (1965 [1910]: 398). While León-­Portilla (1963: 90–­103) formulates a view that some might see as contradictory to the arguments in favor of pantheism, other scholars make claims that seem nonetheless compatible with it; for instance, Gillespie and Joyce (1998) reject the static classification of Maya deities and advocate looking at them relationally instead. The developing evidence for pantheism (and monism) is laid out in Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986); Sandstrom (1991); Monaghan (2000); Maffie (2014); and Laack (2019), among other sources, and we are on the lookout for seeming points of congruity in our review of the ethnographic literature. Kapusta (2016: 33–­34, 36), for example, describes the contemporary Maya religious system as essentially monistic but does not explicitly adopt the terminology. Lara González (2019: 10–­11, 32, 191–­207) in his analysis of ontological parallels between human beings and maize in Nahua and Teenek thinking does characterize the system as one of pantheism. 75. Although it does not concern us here, Levine (1994: 84–­93, 25) finds that there are philosophical distinctions between pantheism and monism. 76. See Mander (2020). 77. Lupo (1995: 101); translation ours. See also Olivier (2008) on Mesoamerican polytheism. 78. Molina (1944 [1571]: pt. 2, col. 4, 101); see also teōtl in Karttunen (1983: 228), which gives a variant spelling, tiōtl, the same as attested for Huastecan Nahuatl in Sullivan et al. (2016: 454). 79. Sharon (2003: 2). 80. Lupo (2001: 345–­66); translation ours. 81. Lupo (1995: 264–­65). 82. Laack (2019: 312). 83. Cruz (2017: 272). 84. The term was elicited in an interview with Cirilo in Amatlán in 1998, conducted by Arturo Gómez Martínez, who provides more information about the fascinating ometotiotzin in his discussion of Nahua religion in Chicontepec (Gómez Martínez 2002: 80–­81). 85. Gómez Martínez (2002: 77); see also Harvey (2014) for a recent discussion of the concept of animism in anthropology and religious studies. Tiedje (2008) discusses animistic beliefs among the northern Huastecan Nahua of San Luis Potosí. An

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interesting alternative view of animism is presented by Florescano (1997), who interprets Mesoamerican deities as interacting social units following the sociological theories of Emile Durkheim. Levine (1994) presents a fine general discussion of pantheism, but the most penetrating, comprehensive application of the concept to the ancient Aztecs is found in Maffie (1999; 2014: 79–­136). It should be emphasized that Maffie (2014: 114–­16) makes extensive use of ethnographers’ work, including our own, in developing his idea that Mesoamerican religions share a pantheistic philosophy and also concurs that many features of religion recorded for the Aztecs persist among Indigenous cultures today. Jansen (1988: 92) recommends more extensive reliance on ethnography to correct Eurocentric distortions of historical sources and inform interpretation of “the meaning and function of both material items and religious concepts” from the past. In the same vein, Loo (1988: 51) sees an ethnographic perspective as offering a valuable tool for interpreting the ancient documents. 86. McKeever Furst (2001: 344). 87. Gómez Martínez (1999a: 11; 2002: 85–­ 87); Martínez de la Cruz (2000: 22). 88. In a footnote to an illuminating analysis of water conceptions in multiple Nahua communities in the Sierra Norte de  Puebla, Velázquez Galindo and Rodríguez González (2019: 79n1; translation ours) recorded the following statement about how the Nahua divine principle splits into different spirit entities: it is “just as the hand divides into fingers.” 89. See Maffie (2014: 81); Pohl and Lyons (2010: 13–­21); Olivier (2016). 90. Maffie (2014: 88). 91. According to Titiev (1960), the distinction between critical and calendrical rituals is found in all religions. 92. Maffie (2014: 21–­35). 93. Prime examples of efforts to understand the lives of the common people in the Aztec empire include Smith (2002); Gonlin and Lohse (2007); and Brumfiel and Overholtzer (2009), among others. 94. Overholtzer (2017: 625). 95. Conrad and Demarest (1984) trace the development of the state in ancient Mexico and Peru to changes in religious conceptions. 96. Sandstrom (2008a). 97. We examine Pitrou’s views on miniaturization in the section titled “Scaling Up and Down,” in chapter 7. 98. Pitrou (2015; 2016: 466; 2017: 361). 99. Pitrou (2017: 370). 100. Harrison-­Buck and Hendon (2018: 3). See also Hendon (2018), who discusses relational ontologies and the concept of personhood in the archaeological context of craft production in Mesoamerica. Monaghan (1998) explores Mesoamerican concepts of relational personhood linking it to soul concepts, destiny, co-­essence (e.g., animal doubles), and the way that individuals are placed in time. In his study of Ojibwa culture Hallowell (1960) provides the classic discussion of nonhuman persons in religious belief and world view.

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101. Jackson (2019: 33). 102. Pitrou (2017: 362, 364). 103. Pitrou (2016: 479). 104. Pitrou (2016: 467; 2017: 362). 105. Jackson (2019: 41). 106. Houston and Stuart (1998: 92). 107. Houston and Stuart (1998: 88). 108. Houston and Stuart (1998: 90). 109. Houston and Stuart (1998: 88). 110. Christenson (2008: 96). 111. Christenson (2008: 96, 97); emphasis in the original. 112. See our discussion of the Aztec-­Mexica ixiptla in chapter 5. 113. Descola (2013 [2005]: 85–­88). 114. Descola (2013 [2005]: 129). 115. Descola (2013 [2005]: 165-­66). 116. Descola (2013 [2005]: 201). 117. Descola (2013 [2005]: 207–­21). 118. Viveiros de Castro (1998: 469). 119. See, for instance, Ingold (2016a, 2016b) and Descola (2016). 120. Sahlins (2014: 282). 121. Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 102); emphasis and capitalization as in the original, translation ours. 122. Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 26). 123. Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 55). Trejo Barrientos (2008) illustrates rare examples of Totonac paper cutting and discusses the relationship between the three-­dimensional talakšin and the two-­dimensional cutouts in paper. Stresser-­Péan (2009: 220–­21) describes in detail how the talakšin are constructed. 124. Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 52). 125. Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 190–­96). This conclusion is confirmed by Pacheco (2014: 3, 177–­78). 126. Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 210–­11). 127. Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 119–­20). 128. See Sandstrom (forthcoming). An abbreviated version of Sonata ritual by a different team of contributors appeared in Trejo Barrientos et al. (2016), while some of the same arguments framed in a cognitive psychology perspective are offered in Trejo et al. (2009). 129. See Burkhart (1989: 34), who writes, “Nahua and Christian alike dwelt at the center of a vibrant universe where struggles of cosmic scale acted themselves out. For Nahuas the basic struggle was between order and chaos, for Christians between good and evil. . . . But only in Christianity was it conceived as a struggle between moral absolutes.” Levine (1994: 196–­218) discusses pantheism, theism, and the problem of evil as well as ethical behavior (1994: 218–­39) within such a system of thought. He does not appear to find concepts of absolute good and evil incompatible with pantheistic beliefs per se, and so this feature of the Mesoamerican system may not apply to other world religions. Signorini and Lupo (1992) and Lupo (1995: 90, 269–­70) also offer insightful discussions of the ambiguity of evil among contemporary Nahua of the Sierra Norte de Puebla. Interestingly, the beliefs of peasants in sixteenth-­century in Spain apparently contradicted Church orthodoxy and offended the

clergy by holding that the saints could cause disasters and misfortune as well as bring good things and beneficence to people (Christian 1981: 35). While it is unlikely that such rural beliefs had any impact on the orthodox teachings of Christianity that were presented to the people of the New World, it does point out that the disconnection between elite and commoner beliefs was not restricted to the New World. 130. Burkhart (1989: 39–­45). 131. Sandstrom (1991: 186). 132. Lupo (2001: 353). 133. See Klein (2000), who argues that, just as among the Nahua today, the tzitzimitl in pre-­Hispanic Aztec religion was an ambivalent female figure associated with fertility. Gómez Martínez and Hooft (2012: 11–­12) document Nahuas visiting a rocky hollow at the base of Postectli to dedicate offerings to the tzitzimitl, whom they describe at once as the mother of dangerous underworld spirits and the one who made maize available to human beings. Pacheco (2014: 133, 165–­66) observed and recorded that same offering. Gómez Martínez (2009) describes in some detail the ambiguous nature of this particular spirit entity. 134. Martínez de la Cruz (2000: 27–­28). 135. For further information on the soul’s fate, see Burkhart (1989: 79) and Sandstrom and Tsai (1996). 136. See Gómez Martínez (2002: 66) and Sandstrom (2008a: 164). 137. Alice Kehoe (personal communication, October 6, 2019). 138. Sandstrom (1991: 351–­55; 2001a). 139. Cruz (2017) writes a firsthand account of religious conflict and accommodation in a small Nahua village in Chicontepec, Veracruz. 140. Statement 7, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 01:04:15–­01:05:23 (AILLA resource ID: 283722). 141. For a fuller account, see Gómez Martínez (2002: 147–­48) and the study by Quiroz Uría (2008) based on her 2003 licenciatura thesis.

142. Jesús Ruvalcaba Mercado (personal communication, April  20, 2021) points out that the impact of missionary and reevangelization efforts throughout the Huasteca has been far from uniform. There is an active liberation-­theology movement in the region, for example, that incorporates Indigenous ritual elements, although we did not see evidence of its influence around Amatlán. 143. The account told by Guadalupe Morales titled “Historia de  Chicomexochitl” (recording no.  69, AILLA resource ID: 132842) is available at http://​ailla​.utexas​.org; see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986–­98). 144. Our template for this composite rendition of the San Juan–­Zahhuan myth is the version we recorded on December 26, 1985, by Jesús Bautista Hernández of Amatlán (no. 110), preserved in AILLA at https://​ailla​.utexas​.org/; see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986–­98). The story incorporates smaller modules recounted in 1990 by others in the village including Efrén Hernández Hernández (no.  15); Domingo Lagos Hernández (nos.  24, 87); Silveria Hernández Hernández (no.  41); Bartolo Hernández Hernández (no.  49); Juvencio Hernández Hernández (no. 63); and Encarnación (Cirilo) Téllez Hernández (no. 84). For other versions, see Martínez de  la  Cruz (2000: 52); Lupo (2001: 350–­ 51); González González and Medellín Urquiaga (2007: 15); Stresser-­Péan (2009: 428–­31, 531–­34, 569). Hooft (2007) presents a fine, comprehensive compendium of oral narrations concerning water that are recounted in Nahua communities in San Luis Potosí. Piotrowska-­Kretkiewicz (2012, 2013) records similar beliefs among Nahua in Huazalingo, Hidalgo, as does Ichon (1973 [1969]: 123–­34) in Totonac communities south of the Huasteca. 145. In some versions the spirit entities—­the saints—­were said to have stolen the squash; still others say the boy cracked opened the squash with his shoulder. 146. Sandstrom (1996).

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3 The Postectli Pilgrimage Begins Preparations for the Undertaking We trekked to Postectli to reset cosmic equilibrium and encourage the blessing of rainfall for the crops. It will be recalled that our plan is to treat the 1998 and 2001 pilgrimages as one and to develop a model that incorporates the 2007 journeys we undertook to three additional sacred mountains. We highlight all five cases when it serves to compare and contrast distinctive episodes for analytical purposes. We have partitioned the Postectli pilgrimage into seven discrete stages by primary focus of ritual activity and location. While not necessarily what the Nahua themselves would recognize as the organizing structure, it furnishes both temporal and spatial dimensions of the pilgrimage trek and offers a way to present the ethnographic data. In this chapter and the next, we document the proceedings through photographs, following the action as people made a series of elaborate altars and ritual offerings in this sequence: 1 . the days of preparations and multiple offerings in Amatlán; 2. the day-­long trek to the sacred mountain with small offerings along the way; 3. the offering and vigil in Ichcacuatitla at the base of Postectli; 4. the offering at tepexitzintlan, “beneath the precipice,” as people begin the ascent; 5. the offering during the ascent at tlahcopoztectli, “middle of Postectli,” and offerings at the cave homes of water and lightning and thunder; 6. the multiple offerings at tzonteconpoztectli, the summit or “head of Postectli”; 7. the return home to Amatlán or villages elsewhere at the journey’s finish.

We discuss these enumerated locations, specific ritual episodes, and the sets of paper cuttings created for each altar offering (or mezah) in detail in chapters 5 and 6. Here we begin by setting the stage for the events as they unfold to convey an understanding of what leads people to undertake the journey to Postectli. We then describe the complex set of ritual offerings dedicated in Amatlán prior to departure.1 Pilgrimage preparations begin weeks in advance of the actual event. Cirilo, the lead organizer on all five sacred journeys, recruited several of his colleagues and began the process of notifying potential participants in other communities. He suggested a propitious date for the event and expressed the wish that people show up a day or two early to help with preparations. Because of religious changes in Amatlán the pool of local people interested in participating had diminished and Cirilo was obliged to reach out to neighboring

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villages in order to attract a sufficient following. We did not get the impression that Cirilo was aiming at specific numbers of people; rather, he wished to reach a critical mass of participants who could manage to complete the preparatory work and construct the complex altars along the pilgrimage trail. An aura of ambiguity surrounded the timing of both the 1998 and 2001 pilgrimages, which occurred on June  1–­­June  5 and June  13–­­17, respectively. The sacred journey to Postectli is commonly held in late May or early June prior to the onset of the rainy season, which normally commences around the end of June. This is the time of year that people harvest the dry-­season planting or tonalmilli (“hot cultivated fields”), and it is often a period of drought or ahuakistli.2 It is a time of high activity as men prepare milpas for planting and everyone eagerly anticipates the coming rains. The sacred journeys may be held as late as June 24, the day set aside in the Catholic liturgical calendar to celebrate San Juan Bautista, an observance associated with the nourishing rains. In addition to seasonal and calendrical motivations, the timing of pilgrimages may also be in response to specific crises faced by people throughout the region. The year 1998 coincided with an extreme El Niño climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean, and the Mexican Gulf Coast was one of the world’s regions most affected, producing the severest drought in living memory. The lack of rain that winter and spring was devastating. The tropical forest turned brown, and normally moist soils were reduced to dust. The crops were in terrible shape, and people were seriously worried that there would be no harvest. In the end, the year’s dry-­season planting of maize, which is normally the least reliable crop, yielded barely enough to support the village until the rainy-­season planting (xopanmilli) was ready to harvest around November. The heat was unbearable, even for people accustomed to the hot and humid conditions. Adding to the misery there were literally hundreds of forest fires throughout Mexico during the period, and a thick blanket of smoke traveled northeast directly over the southern Huasteca. It was dense, choking smoke that blotted out the sun, making breathing very difficult. In 2001 the weather was again more variable than usual, causing widespread worry that the harvest would be insufficient or ruined. Rain seemed to come in erratic, violent storms that threatened the milpas rather than in steady, predictable downpours more common in the tropical environment. On that morning in 2001 as we set off to climb Postectli, there was a prodigious rainstorm that

flooded the dirt streets of the town of Ichcacuatitla. But we are getting ahead of the story. We had been in residence in Amatlán since September 1998 when, following a brief absence from the village, we received confirmation from Cirilo that he would be leading a pilgrimage to Postectli. Everything proceeds at a measured pace in a Nahua community, and so we had several weeks to make arrangements and to observe how things would unfold. With permission from Cirilo, we asked several professional colleagues from Mexico to join us in documenting the event: Hugo García Valencia, a British-­ trained Mexican anthropologist; Sofía Larios León, an anthropologist who later served as head of the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Veracruz, in Xalapa; and Nahua anthropologist Arturo Gómez Martínez of the National Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico City. We also invited a professional videographer, Benjamín Marín López, from the University of Veracruz, along with a graduate student in anthropology, Isabel Romero. Our idea was to film as much of the pilgrimage as possible to free us to observe the proceedings. With our son, Michael Sandstrom, we were eight outsiders scheduled to participate in the event. In 2001, just before the second journey to Postectli, we were working at our university back in the US when we received word that people in Amatlán were again worried about their crops and were planning to undertake another journey to Postectli. We applied immediately for an emergency research grant from the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI), which responded promptly with the funds that we needed to travel to Mexico and participate in the trek.3 With scarcely three days’ notice, we gathered the necessary equipment and boarded a flight to Mexico. We were accompanied on this second pilgrimage by our son Michael along with Arturo and a graduate-­student colleague of his. We were five outsiders who participated in the second trek to Postectli. As is often the case in ethnographic enterprises, things did not turn out as planned. In the days leading up to the 1998 pilgrimage, Hugo García had to leave before the actual trek got underway. The videographer worked diligently over the long days of preparations, but he, too, had to depart early because of university labor rules. In 1998 Arturo, Isabel, Michael, and Alan were the only outsiders to reach the summit with the Nahua and Otomí pilgrims. Sofía and Pamela made it to the level just below the summit, but due to the extreme heat, exhaustion,

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and dehydration they refrained from climbing further. In 2001, despite the rains and slippery conditions, all five of us were able to observe the final offerings at the summit of Postectli. Providing this background information will help us simplify our description and clarify much of the action that occurred during the sacred journeys to Postectli. The pilgrimages in 1998 and 2001 were both initiated by Cirilo’s dreams, which he regarded as portents of potential disaster for the crops. Most Nahua are convinced that important information from the spirit entities is conveyed to people while they sleep.4 When a respected master like Cirilo dreams that certain spirit entities require an extraordinary offering, people are often willing to donate time, money, and goods to hold a major ritual—­an engagement termed “cooperation” (cooperación in Spanish). Prior to both pilgrimages in 1998 and 2001, Cirilo dreamed that apanchaneh, the seeds, and the earth were calling out for special attention. He was convinced that people in Mexico City (i.e., the Hispanic elites) were guilty of abusing the earth and filling the air with pollution and that these acts of disrespect were disrupting the normal flow of benefits from Totiotzin. There was only one thing to be done, and that was to organize a pilgrimage to Postectli to make amends.5 Raymundo, speaking in Spanish, offered his understanding of the warrant for such an undertaking: Well, right now she [apanchaneh] is very angry, and that’s why she doesn’t want to give us water. That’s why right now, yes—­right now we need to hold el costumbre in all of the regions, in all of the communities. They have to hold a costumbre so the siren will see, that yes, we do want water. Because already many people no longer want it [the ritual], they don’t respect it. That is why the siren has said, “Now I am going to punish them. Now they really are not going to search for me. Now we will see if it is true that they are no longer going to need me.” Now that is why she has given this punishment.6

Cirilo first contacted other ritual specialists from Amatlán and neighboring communities to inform them of his plans. They in turn conveyed the message by word of mouth, usually meeting others who would spread the news at one of the weekly regional markets within several hours’ walk of the village. As noted above, Cirilo customarily invited other Nahua as well as members of Otomí communities to join in.7 We never heard our Nahua friends call the sacred journey to Postectli by the Nahuatl word for “pilgrimage,” nehnemiliztli, although it would be an

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appropriate use of the term. Rather, they called this particular trek atlatlacualtiliztli (“feeding the water”) after the major ritual offering associated with it, the main purpose of which is to petition apanchaneh for rain to nourish the crops. The water dweller clearly occupies a central place in people’s minds. One of the high points of the pilgrimage was the visit to her cave home where an altar offering was dedicated to apanchaneh and her male aspect, zahhuan. The very name of this ritual, “feeding the water,” and the elaborate mezah it entailed reveals the entity’s importance to the pilgrimage event.8 Citing the evident lack of interest in the pilgrimages by a majority of Amatlán residents, Raymundo remarked: That is why my compadre Cirilo has invited people from various places, because here in this community they no longer want this [el costumbre]. Well, if few people come, only a few others, it is because there are many evangelists, many Catholics, and they don’t want to see this costumbre. Because of this, he has invited people from various places so that they will come and help out, both with the work and with their knowledge of what to do. He has invited them to come help him. They are going to come from Sasatitlan, from Guayabo, people from Cacahuatengo, and a man from Siete Palmas, and other places, they will come from Tizal, and Huexotitlan. All have been invited to come and help. Because, well, that’s how we bring more people together. Because where we hold the costumbre a few people [always] come . . . because the costumbres haven’t been lost. But each community gathers just a few people, so for this reason, they have to invite them from various places.9

A visitor from another village near Amatlán (a longtime supporter of el costumbre rituals who we knew only by his nickname, Lucas) made the following statement in Spanish during the 1998 pilgrimage: The little god, el diosito, is punishing us because antigüita, the little ancient one, has already been abandoned. The catechists are to blame, they no longer want us to hold this costumbre. Yes, that gentleman Cirilo does it on his own account, with his own money, with his cash. We always come here to hold this costumbre with Cirilo’s money. The people here do not help him, the people of Amatlán do not help him. Yes, they are doing nothing more than waiting for rain. Like a bird when it is born, when a worm comes, it just opens its mouth. The people of Amatlán

Left to Right Photo 3.1. Encarnación Téllez Hernández (seated right), known to all as Cirilo, is the lead ritual specialist or tlamatiquetl (“person of knowledge”) for the pilgrimages documented in this study. He is assisted by a helper folding sheets of paper preparatory to cutting the thousands of figures of the spirit entities deployed during the pilgrimage rituals. In the background is the unadorned altar with the wooden box containing dressed paper images of seed spirits. Photo 3.2. The ritual specialist Silveria Hernández Hernández and an assistant count out the folded paper packets into bundles of twenty each. The paper will be cut with scissors into images of spirit entities for use during the pilgrimage. The supplies and cut-­paper images are kept on a woven-­palm sleeping mat (petlatl in Nahuatl, petate in Spanish), which will be used to bundle them safely for the pilgrimage trek.

also just open their mouths waiting for rain. When it is going to rain, then they can plant. Yes, I have been coming here for a long time to work with Cirilo.10

Once a sufficient number of participants agreed to participate, Cirilo traveled to Ixhuatlán de  Madero (the cabecera or head town of the municipality) to request permission from the elected leader of the municipality, the presidente municipal, for the participants to leave their respective communities, gather at Amatlán, and travel en masse to Postectli. Carlos Garma Navarro (1994) writes that the law in Mexico permits the state to regulate religion whenever its proceedings spill outside of a church building. In Ixhuatlán it is testimony to the anxious relations between local authorities and the Indigenous population in the region that any large movement of people must be monitored. If the organizers from Amatlán had failed to secure official permission for the pilgrimage, most likely they would be confronted by members of the local police or armed militia attached to the municipality. As it was, in

Photo 3.3. Silveria (left) unfolds paper figures as a man and a woman holding an incense brazier dance before the unadorned altar. Participants have left offerings of soft drinks and beer on the palm mat where the paper cuttings are being prepared. A violinist and guitarist seated out of view to the right provide a continuous stream of sacred music.

the aftermath of a killing that had occurred years earlier in Amatlán, authorities in Ixhuatlán had confiscated all of the guns owned by villagers, and many still felt angry. In fact, Cirilo himself had been caught up in the affair and was captured by the local militia and nearly lost his life.11 In order to conform to these local strictures, Cirilo had the local schoolmaster compose the letter that he delivered to the presidente municipal. Translated from the Spanish, the text read: “The community of Amatlán, municipality of Ixhuatlán de  Madero, Ver., makes a great devotional vow to mother earth [tonantzin], the siren [apanchaneh]. Among those who have donated to it are the following persons: —­—­.” Cirilo appended a list of the participants’ names along with the amount of money each donated to the offering. We counted seventeen people, although the list was compiled early on in the preparations and was

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Top to Bottom Photo 3.4. Ritual specialist Teófilo Jiménez Hernández from Cacahuatengo, Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz, begins to cut sacred figures from folded paper. Assistants carefully unfold the cut images and stack them neatly. In the foreground is a pile of the folded paper packets before they are cut into figures. Photo 3.5. A helper on the right unfolds cut-­paper figures while the violinist and guitarist perform the sacred melodies. The eyes, mouth flaps, and other iconographic features, when folded open, serve to join each pair of paper images.

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incomplete. The amounts ranged from 5 pesos to 1,300 pesos, which we had donated. Cirilo himself gave 1,000 pesos, a considerable sum given the economic circumstances of the village. The average donation was 25 pesos.12 Local political authorities routinely grant permission for such religious events, and they issued an official letter that Cirilo carried with him on the pilgrimages. As part of their official duties, the agente municipal in Ichcacuatitla, along with his suplente or assistant, accompanied the pilgrims to the summit of Postectli on both occasions. They came along to guide the pilgrims so that they did not stray from the trail or get injured on the dangerous ascent. However, as monitors they proceeded far ahead of the pilgrims and did not engage in the rituals. For several weeks prior to the event, participants began to accumulate valued items, including turkeys, chickens, copal incense, and various store-­bought goods that they carried to Amatlán as contributions. Before assembling the altar in the small shrine attached to Cirilo’s house, participants gathered great numbers of marigolds and other seasonal flowers from their milpas. They went to the forest as well, returning with bundles of leaves from the coyol palm (coyolli in Nahuatl). They delivered the items a day or two before the first offering. From a distant market Cirilo bought a thick block of large sheets of commercially manufactured, newsprint-­grade paper to be used for cutting the thousands of required paper figures. In preparing for the 1998 pilgrimage, Cirilo engaged the services of several pairs of musicians to play sacred melodies on the guitar and violin. From the beginning, musicians played continuously day and night as helpers assembled flower adornments and ritual specialists cut the paper figures. Trejo Barrientos and his coauthors observed that “[w]ithout music there is no ritual.”13 Nahuas in Ichcacuatitla explain that music announces to Postectli that the ritual offering is about to begin.14 This initial preparatory phase lasted for several days and nights of activity. As mentioned, for the 2001 pilgrimage Cirilo not only engaged the guitarist and violinist to play the sacred music but had enough funds on hand to hire a small brass band. The music seemed to us in jarring conflict with the solemn and heartfelt ritual offerings, but the people were pleased to have the additional musical accompaniment. The sacred guitar and violin music and the secular music played simultaneously as the band members, in death-­defying feats of agility, accompanied the pilgrims to the very summit of Postectli. Three or four days before the main offering in Amatlán, people slowly began to drift in singly or in pairs. Each carried some kind of offering that would be employed over the course of the pilgrimage. Cirilo greeted each person

and accepted the offerings, placing them to one side of the yet-­to-­be decorated altar table. Each newly arriving guest would customarily take an offered seat and speak for about ten minutes, recounting recent events or telling about his or her trip to Amatlán, and sometimes reminiscing about previous pilgrimages. People who were gathered responded enthusiastically, laughing at the humorous episodes. The newcomer would then take up one of the many preparatory tasks at hand and settle in quietly among the others. As the musicians played the sacred melodies on guitar and violin, people continued to arrive. Approximately seventy individuals contributed to the Postectli pilgrimages in addition to those of us there to help and observe. Cirilo laid out a new palm sleeping mat on the floor of the shrine and placed the paper supplies on top. We wanted to calculate the magnitude of the ritual preparations, so in 2001 we managed to count the number of large sheets of newsprint that Cirilo had purchased for the paper figures. There were 250 sheets, and we watched as his assistants proceeded to fold and cut each sheet into eight more or less uniform rectangles. Each rectangle was

Left to Right Photo 3.6. Cirilo stands as visiting Otomí ritual specialists fold some of the thousands of papers that are used to portray key spirit entities. Seated at the right is Evaristo de la Cruz, considered by many local people to be the most powerful ritual specialist in the southern Huasteca region. Photo 3.7. Participants and musicians circumambulate the palm mat where the papers are being prepared. The woman at right carries a pot of water on her head and a lighted candle to indicate the central importance of the water realm in the ritual activity. Ethnographers Pamela and Alan Sandstrom are at left. Photo 3.8. In the foreground and to the right are the paper petates containing twenty figures carefully laid out side by side in two overlapping rows. The beds are stacked to form a bundle that, when completed, resembles a thick book. Helpers carefully gather all scraps of paper from the cutting to deposit on the sacred mountain. Photo 3.9. Paper figures of the cross laid out on the paper petate (lower left, and the lone figure) embody a spirit entity that the Nahua associate with Jesús and the sun. The other paper bed, tied with a strip of palm fiber, holds images of the altar whose construction reflects the layered cosmos.

then doubled over four more times to produce a narrow, folded-­paper packet that measured 2.5–­3 × 17–­18 centimeters (about 1 × 7 inches). As these packets accumulated, The Postectli Pilgrimage Begins  :  87

Top to Bottom Photo 3.10. Large paper figure of apanchaneh, the water dweller, before helpers dress her in a cloth garment. Women have folded paper into narrow rods and tied the figure onto this skeletal framework. The stiff armature is said to be the figure’s huesitos (“little bones”), and it allows the women to dress and stand the figure upright. Photo 3.11. Two newly cut, large paper figures of male (left) and female (right) aspects of tlalli, the earth. Also visible are the accumulated scraps along with folded paper bones that serve as the figures’ skeletons. An identical pair of figures dressed in gender-­specific clothing and seated together in a tiny chair are kept beneath the altar in the shrine.

helpers counted them out into units of twenty and tied them into small bundles using a piece of fiber (photos 3.1–­3.3). Each packet was composed of sixteen layers, about the maximum thickness that a skilled paper cutter could manage to cut cleanly with scissors. By cutting each image in profile at the fold, the ritual specialists produced eight identical paper figures. Each packet thus yielded four double-­layered figures (that is, a two-­ply figure pair). With the layers opened to reveal the front-­facing anthropomorphic form, they measured 5–­6 × 17–­18 centimeters

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in size (roughly 2 × 7 inches). By repeating the process of cutting the same design from five packets of folded paper, the ritual specialists produced twenty paper-­figure pairs, the number required for one petate. In the end, we estimated that they created approximately 8,000 paper cutouts, or 4,000 paired figures. The laborious assembly work of producing the correct number and types of salutary spirit entities for the pilgrimage altars was amplified by the numbers of cuttings required for the cleansing rituals. Cirilo created from sheets of white newsprint and colored tissue paper (again, everything precisely layered and folded into packets) more than seventy images of the dangerous winds for each cleansing array. In all, he cut a sufficient number for at least three cleansings, adding an estimated 225 paired paper figures to the total. As the skilled paper cutters arrived, they pulled up a seat around the mat, retrieved a pair of scissors from their carrying bag, and picked up a packet of paper. It took Cirilo and his colleagues little time to fashion each image from the folded-­paper packet. While the ritual specialists did all actual cutting of the intricate figures, helpers assisted them by preparing the paper sheets and carefully counting out the finished products. The assistants would take a pair of identical anthropomorphic paper cutouts in hand, fold open the V-shaped cuts that formed the eyes, the mouth, and other iconographic elements of the body, and thus join two figures together as one (photos 3.4 and 3.5). A curious incident occurred during the initial days of preparation for the 1998 pilgrimage. As we were sitting before the undecorated altar, we noticed a large toad hiding beneath the table. Toads were sacred to the Olmec and have been associated with water and fertility for thousands of years in Mesoamerica.15 On closer examination we found that there were in fact two toads under the table, and we asked Cirilo about them. He did not appear to be concerned or curious about the toads and continued to fold paper. At this point Raymundo, the aspiring young ritual specialist, arrived with an armload of offerings. He sat and spoke to everyone for a few minutes before joining us by the altar table. He, too, noticed the toads and began to poke them with a stick until one of them puffed up and made a hissing noise. Cirilo seemed mildly upset and Raymundo desisted, moving away to another part of the shrine. In the myth of Seven Flower it was the toad who carried the ashes of the tzitzimitl to the water. We were told that many Nahua believe the toad is the amo (Spanish for “master” or “owner”) of zahhuan, who in turn is the owner of water. The only possible explanation for the toads’ presence is

that Cirilo placed them under the table so that they could be part of the ritual to zahhuan and apanchaneh. Later on during the preparations, Cirilo opened the wooden box containing the clothed paper images of the sacred seeds, and helpers proceeded to undress them. For the first time we noticed that the sides of each figure’s face featured highly exaggerated, jowl-­like bulges. We asked Cirilo to explain, and he said that the images personify the toad, which he confirmed is associated with life-­giving water and moisture and thus the vitality of the seeds. It seemed that Cirilo and his acolyte Raymundo were not getting along and their master-­student relationship was about to end. During the preparations, Cirilo complained that Raymundo had neglected to cut paper images of the deer, “the ancestor of us all.” Perhaps he referred to the belief that the deer is father to the maize that supports us. This is an interesting point as we have never encountered the deer figure elsewhere and did not discover it among the Postectli paper cuttings that Cirilo prepared for us. Everybody worked methodically, concentrating on their particular task. As the hours went by, the stacked pile of completed petates gradually grew. The shrine was a hubbub of activity, but at the same time a calm center of purpose and resolve. One way that people show respect during rituals is to move slowly, deliberately, and keep their voices muted. To sit respectfully with one’s feet on the ground and arms held in was obviously the proper etiquette. Nobody laboring on the ritual preparations lounged casually with their legs splayed out, made broad gesticulations, engaged in boisterous conversation, or otherwise drew attention to themselves. While the ritual specialists and their helpers were busy fashioning the spirit entities in paper, women began to remove dozens of clothed seed figures contained in the wooden box (called “seed box” or caxah xinachtli, a mixed Nahuatl-­Spanish phrase). This box, made of tropical cedar (teocuahuitl, “sacred wood”), was prominently displayed on the altar in Cirilo’s xochicalli shrine.16 At this point the Otomí participants arrived, including Evaristo de la Cruz, the renowned ritual specialist. After greeting everyone and relating some incidents of their travel, they immediately began to help with the cutting and folding of paper figures (photo 3.6). Every so often throughout the night and over the next several days the musicians would stand and lead everyone in attendance in a counterclockwise procession around the palm mat that held all of the paper. For the Nahua, space is expressed by four points arranged in a square or rectangle. Thus, people think of a milpa with reference to its four corners; a house and the patch of earth it occupies

Top to Bottom Photo 3.12. Close-­up of the two dressed figures of grandfather earth and grandmother earth seated beneath the altar table. Photo 3.13. Women undress the seed spirits prior to washing and drying their clothes. Nahuas of Amatlán identify the statue of the Virgin Mary (foreground) with tonantzin, “Our Honored Mother.”

is defined by its quadrilateral shape. By circumambulating the palm mat, participants gathered in the space it occupied and consolidated it as a focus of ritually significant activity (photo 3.7). In the meantime, the important

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work of folding and cutting paper continued without interruption (photos 3.8–­3.11). The pile of paper scraps grew in tandem. Once the cutting was finished, helpers gathered up these bits of paper and collected them on the palm mat. The scraps themselves retain some of the power—­that is, the chicahualiztli—­contained in the paper figures. To leave the debris lying around needlessly would be disrespectful and could also invite trouble into Amatlán if a sorcerer were to activate the scraps and undermine the goals of the pilgrimage. Helpers gathered up each set of cuttings as they were completed, neatly arranging them on the petates in two overlapping rows of ten pairs of images, each pair folded together by the eyes, the mouth, and the various iconic cuts so as to present twenty alert-­looking figures. They stacked the finished beds on the wooden altar table, forming what looked like a thick book. At this point, the altar remained undecorated, save for the assorted statues from the Catholic tradition that Cirilo kept there, including a bronze figurine of the Virgin Mary that we had given him. He had expressly asked us to find such a statue, and we were happy to oblige his request. He immediately began addressing the statue using the possessive-­honorific form of address Tonantzin, who, it will be remembered, is the mother of maize in the story of Seven Flower. Pictures of saints and scenes from the Bible hung on the wall behind the altar, each understood according to the Nahua world view.17 It is a common belief among the Nahua that images of spirit entities are embodiments of those entities. Regarding the statues and saints’ images kept by the Totonac on household altars, Ichon suggests that the Totonac also possess a monistic philosophy that equates signifier with signified.18 He writes: The indigenous person says with pride that they are images of his or her gods. In reality they are much more than that. They contain the soul, the spirit of those gods. They are, therefore, gods in themselves and not simply intermediaries. Possession of the idols is a guarantee for the individual and for the community that keeps them. It means that the divinity is present and watching over their domain.19

Helpers proceeded to bend and tie a sapling to the front of the table, forming a rough arch. They drove two stakes into the ground in front of the altar table and affixed a horizontal board on which they placed lighted candles that were renewed throughout the proceedings. In chapter 5 we discuss the different kinds of candles used in Nahua rituals and their significance.

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In the shrine assistants reverently leaned two walking sticks against the wall at the back of the table. These sacred implements are equivalent to the staffs carried by the rain dwarfs, the pilhuehuentzitzin, who haul water to the summit of Postectli. The rod itself resembles a scepter-­like baton called tlanahuatilcuatopilli in Nahuatl, which we translate as “walking stick of command” (in Spanish, bastón de manda, or simply bastón). The walking stick manifests the authority of the ritual specialist, sacralizes his or her actions, and conveys ancestral power.20 Cirilo handled the staff (and a smaller one he possessed) with the greatest care and respect. Like the sacred mountains, Nahua walking sticks are ranked and take on the titles of government officials. Cirilo’s larger one (about a meter long), called the presidente, is carried in front of the pilgrims as they walk, while the shorter of the two, the juez (“judge”), brings up the rear. Both walking sticks were decorated with colorful ribbons to invoke the morning rays of the sun.21 Helpers decorated the walking sticks by tying new white handkerchiefs just below their tops. Meanwhile, beneath the table and positioned on a miniature wooden chair were two infant-­sized, fully clothed figures embodying the male and female aspects of the earth. These figures are sometimes called grandfather earth and grandmother earth and are referred to as the altar’s owners or duenos (photo 3.12).22 Helpers placed clay copal-incense braziers on the floor nearby and leaned candles against the seated figures as a show of respect. While helpers tidied up and rearranged the objects on the altar table, people periodically picked up a smoking brazier and danced slowly and rhythmically to the music, spreading the aromatic copal smoke throughout the xochicalli.23 Burning copal bark has a very pleasant odor reminiscent of pine, and for the Nahua it acts as a sacralizing and cleansing agent. According to Maffie, the spiraling smoke of incense serves to connect the terrestrial with the celestial realms, linking human and spiritual worlds.24 The ritual specialist María Dolores Hernández and another woman began to undress the figures they had removed from the sacred cedar box (photo 3.13). They positioned the statue of tonantzin, mother of the seeds, close by. The women worked slowly and deliberately, handling the paper figures reverently. As they removed the clothing from several dozen figures, we estimated that the majority of them wore women’s dresses and far fewer were outfitted in men’s pants and shirts. We also noted that a number were simply wrapped in colorful cotton bandanas, not dressed in gender-­ specific clothing. Based on Nahua dressing conventions, the figures are the crops at various stages of development, from infants and small children to adults.

After they had been undressed, the seed figures were placed upright into two fresh sisal carrying bags and positioned beneath the arch over the altar. At the same time, people finished the job of bundling together the completed beds of paper figures and stacking them on the altar table (photo 3.14). Women and girls took the seed figures’ clothing to the arroyo to wash and dry each item (photo 3.15). Washing the clothes serves as an act of cleansing that will later be reinforced by a ritual cleansing held prior to the main offering in Amatlán. We surmise that the belief expressed in these activities, based on myths that people recount, is that they must make the lives of the seeds as pleasant as possible to ensure they will stay in the village and not be tempted to leave for their cave home on Postectli. As activities intensified, we lost track of the dressed figures of grandmother earth and grandfather earth that we first saw seated together beneath the main altar in Amatlán. They, too, had been undressed and their clothing washed as part of the preparations for the first major offering. We understood that after being replaced with newly cut images, the older pair was taken along on the pilgrimage. People told us that they were carried part way up Postectli to tlahcopoztectli (“middle of Postectli”) and left there beneath the altar dedicated to apanchaneh and thunder and lightning. We did not actually observe what happened to them but note that these particular cuttings do not appear in photographs of the journey. On subsequent pilgrimages we did find examples of such figures left beneath the altar to disintegrate in place. The preparations for the pilgrimage continued as individuals periodically gathered up some of the ritual implements and danced or stood before the altar chanting silently to themselves. One person rang a small bell to get the attention of the spirit entities (photo 3.16). At other times someone would stand before the altar and blow a small clay whistle to achieve the same effect.25 Such impromptu performances occurred periodically throughout all of the pilgrimages. While some people were busy folding and cutting paper and others washing the clothes of the seed figures, another group that included some of the ethnographers sat in an adjacent room constructing the coyol palm and marigold-­blossom adornments. Like the paper figures, these adornments are manufactured in great number. They are counted out, tied into bundles of twenty, and hung from a vine strung up inside the shrine. As workers continued making adornments, women brought in the tiny outfits, now dry, and asked if Pamela would press them with an electric iron on an ironing board, wholly novel equipment brought back by relatives

Top to Bottom Photo 3.14. The altar tabletop in the xochicalli in Amatlán before it is adorned. To the left is the statue of the Virgin Mary–­Tonantzin. Flanking the statue are walking sticks that the Nahua associate with lightning and thunder spirits and the authority of the ritual specialists. Behind the tied bundle of paper figures are sisal carrying bags holding large paper images of seed spirits. The figures are stored in the sisal bags until the clothes are washed, dried, and ready to be put back on. Photo 3.15. Nahua women washing the clothing of the seed spirits. One purpose of the pilgrimage and associated rituals is to make sure that the seeds find life in Amatlán comfortable and free from strife. Having clean clothes encourages them to stay in the community rather than return to their cave home at the peak of Postectli, leaving the people to starve.

visiting from the city. Helpers carefully placed the clothing on the seed paper figures afterward. The process took several hours, and like so many tasks engaged in by the Nahua, it was done with respect and a sense of humor. Raymundo often had to ask the woman helping him whether a particular item of dress was appropriate for a specific figure. His repeated questions became the subject of amusement as they finished dressing the dozens

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Left to Right Photo 3.16. An Otomí ritual specialist and visitor to Amatlán during the pilgrimage stands before the altar table holding ritual items. He rings a bell to rouse the spirits while holding a sacred walking stick associated with thunder spirits. The large white candle was a gift of the ethnographers. The colorful ribbons tied to the handle of the walking stick reproduce the colors of the sunrise, the rainbow, or the variety of seeds. Photo 3.17. A young Nahua man, a novice ritual specialist named Raymundo (right) visiting from a neighboring community, shares a laugh with a helper as they dress the paper figures of the seeds in freshly laundered clothing. The seed figures still to be clothed are stacked on the table in the foreground. Photo 3.18. A woman helps arrange the seed figures’ clothing.

of paper figures. They dressed the seed figures with great care and attended as well to the paper cutouts of grandfather and grandmother earth and the water dweller, apanchaneh (photos 3.17–­3.19). A major ritual occasion like this is also an opportunity to create and clothe new images of the seeds and other significant spirit entities. These oversized cuttings are permanently preserved and made more durable by fashioning a skeleton-­like armature of arms and legs in the form of a rough stick figure, its so-­called huesitos (“little

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bones”) made of tightly folded paper (photo 3.20).26 As others finished the task of dressing the figures, Raymundo proceeded to pour a few drops of Albatros perfume on the clothing and on white handkerchiefs he had tied to the walking sticks. He also tied a ballpoint pen onto the largest walking stick, explaining that he did so “because it is the president,” signifying that it had the highest status. Just as an official has a pen for signing documents, so

does the chief walking stick. Speaking in Nahuatl, Cirilo stopped for a moment to explain what was going on: Here we begin in Nahuatl, we people of the Huasteca. We dress the earth, we dress the siren, so that she might be content. For all those there we make an offering to God and to the siren so that she might give us water, and all together, at the same time [cempahcan] bathe the children of God. And bathe all the sown seed, too, so that the plantings—their covering of leaves and stems [itlaquen]—will not go disarranged or strewn about. May their garb always be beautifully cared for, so that when the siren comes to bathe it all with this sacred water [zanta agüitah], she will be bathing beloved Chicomexochitl—she will wash them beautifully. They will grow like a young girl when her mother bathes her. In the same way, the plants will develop and grow.27

Because Amatlán is an ejido, scrupulous records are kept of every member’s contribution to the running of the wider community. Using ejido governance as a model, Cirilo took care to update the detailed record of each person’s contribution to the pilgrimage. Although participants say that the pilgrimage and associated ritual

Left to Right Photo 3.19. Dressed paper figures of the water dweller, apanchaneh (in the dark green dress), and the female aspect of the earth, tlalli (dressed in white). The paper figures are laid in the basket before being incorporated into the altar. Photo 3.20. Helpers tie folded paper bones to the image of apanchaneh. The skeleton-­like framework is visible on the back of the figure. Photo 3.21. Cirilo (right) directs Nahua anthropologist Arturo Gómez Martínez, who is writing a list of the names of people who contributed money, gifts, and time to the pilgrimage. The list will be left at the summit of Postectli.

offerings are held to benefit everyone, it is also important that individuals feel recognized for their contributions. The list is left at the cave near the top of Postectli so that apanchaneh can distribute water to the fields, perhaps rewarding the supplicants differentially (photo 3.21). During the evening the level of activity and excitement grew as the musicians played the sacred melodies, copal smoke filled the shrine, and people bustled about making final arrangements. Cirilo took out his divination bundle and moved to a corner of the shrine. The official beginning of the pilgrimage is marked by a divination performed by

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Left to Right Photo 3.22. Helpers place lighted candles around a display of paper figures of disease-­causing spirits and offerings. In this photograph the ritual specialists have already poured soft drinks, aguardiente, and beer directly on the paper figures. The cleansing ritual called ochpantli (“sweeping”) is designed to remove dangerous spirit entities from the area.

about 40 centimeters (15 inches) square, which the ritual specialist places over a small, overturned wooden cuartillo box normally used to measure quantities of maize kernels; in effect, the box is transformed into a tiny altar. Cirilo’s divination array was composed of crystals, coins, and small archaeological pieces (including a pre-­Hispanic copper ax and broken clay figurines commonly found after a rain in milpas and along trails). These items he laid out in rows at the top of the cloth. Ritual specialists can divine by gazing into crystals, but most rely on the maize-­ kernel method. Cirilo began by first laying out fourteen kernels of maize in a pattern and then gathering them up, breathing on them, and tossing them down. Most of the kernels fell on the cloth, but some always ended up on the ground near the cuartillo box. After some deep thought as he read the lay of the kernels, Cirilo determined that the time was appropriate to begin the initial offerings. Cirilo conducted a similar divination ritual preliminary to each pilgrimage that we witnessed.28

Photo 3.23. Participants in the pilgrimage to Postectli gather around the display during the cleansing ritual. The display is laid outside the xochicalli directly on the ground.

The Preliminary Cleansing and Ritual Chanting

Photo 3.24. Cirilo (seated, right) dedicates offerings to the disease-­causing wind spirits. Ritual items such as the sacred walking sticks (held by the man in background and woman on the left) and the paper figures of seed spirits (carried in the basket and the sisal bag, partially obscured, at left) are brought forward to remove any lingering dangerous winds.

the lead ritual specialist, and so Cirilo’s gesture was seen by everyone as a signal that he was ready to initiate the proceedings. The purpose of the divination was to determine whether the time was auspicious for the pilgrimage or whether it might be better to wait another day. Divinations like this are done on an embroidered cloth

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As helpers began arranging items on the main altar in the shrine, Cirilo gathered up a stack of colorful paper figures and headed outside into the darkness accompanied by the musicians and most of the participants. Ritual specialists consider nighttime to be appropriate for dealing with the dangerous winds and other figures that emerge from the dark, gloomy underworld—­the very entities embodied in the cut-­paper images he now held in his hands. As part of the preparations, Cirilo had prepared three complete sets of paper cuttings of these malevolent winds, essentially the same array used in his standard curing rituals. He selected one set for the preliminary cleansing in Amatlán

and reserved two others for use later during the pilgrimage. Curing specialists assisting Cirilo sometimes bring along their own prepared sets of paper figures to employ during cleansings at crucial times during the pilgrimage. The number of cleansing episodes seems to vary considerably from pilgrimage to pilgrimage, as we illustrate more fully in chapter 6. For the Nahua, ritual practices focused on curing and cleansing are closely related. As noted earlier, the Nahuatl word for a curing ritual is ochpantli, meaning “sweeping.” When speaking Spanish, people call the procedure barrida (“sweeping”) or limpia (“cleaning”).29 The idea is that the ritual specialist effects a cure by cleansing a patient of polluting, disease-­causing entities that have infected the body. In executing his ritual cleansing prior to the first offering of the pilgrimage, Cirilo laid out cut-­paper figures in a precise, grid-­like pattern on the ground, just as he would do to address a patient’s affliction (photos 3.22–­3.24).30 The Nahua associate the malignant entities with disruption, pollution, and death, and Cirilo hoped to control them through his ritual offering. The procedure is designed to first attract and then remove the aggressive underworld beings from the area so that they will not disrupt the major offering that the people are about to make inside the shrine. The prominent figures of man owl and man owl woman are typically cut from white paper and blackened using charcoal from the fireplace to associate them with disease-­ causing pollution and disorder. Also present is miquiliztli (“death”), appearing as a skeleton cut from white paper. Cirilo also produced a set of colorful, diminutive paper figures he called tlacotontli (“something cut smaller”), which are used to counteract envy or sorcery. The strong colors of the cuttings indicate their extreme power. The Nahua tetlachihuihquetl or sorcerer is poised to do harm whenever the opportunity arises, and his agents must be prevented from ruining the offering. People repeatedly said that these paper images constitute a class of wind spirits with the power to destroy everything in their path. Despite their small size, they are associated with the destructive wind gusts of violent storms that pass through the region.31 Cirilo performed the cleansing outside the shrine to draw these aggressive beings away from the altar, which would soon be transformed into an attractive showcase of the finest food, drink, and tobacco. He placed the counter-­ sorcery tlacotontli figures in small piles around the central display. Several ritual specialists squatted or sat around the display and chanted for a long period of time. While chanting, they lit numerous candles and placed them on the ground surrounding the display. As is standard

Photo 3.25. Helpers pass a vine-­and-­marigold loop over participants, many of whom carry sacred items that will be used in ritual offerings. The cleansing procedure is to remove disease-­causing wind spirits from their bodies and from the adornments they carry.

practice during such occasions, no one attempted to coordinate or synchronize the chanting. Each ritual specialist intoned his or her own individual prayer, creating a great murmuring that was both powerful and ominous. So that all of the ritual paraphernalia could be cleansed as well, participants emerged from the shrine carrying the bundles of coyol palm adornments, sacred walking sticks, clay pots filled with water that call forth the realm of apanchaneh, and the seed figures in baskets.32 The ritual specialists placed lighted cigarettes in the mouths of the larger paper images as a tobacco offering.33 They then poured all of the offerings—­aguardiente (a strong, locally made cane alcohol), soft drinks, cornmeal, raw egg, and other items—­directly on the paper figures so that each spirit entity would get its share. A helper repeatedly rang a bell to summon the dangerous spirit entities to partake in their offerings. Before returning to the shrine, participants underwent a final cleansing episode to make certain that there were no polluting, disease-­ causing spirit entities clinging to their bodies and clothing (photo 3.25). Helpers earlier had constructed a large loop from a vine and affixed to it marigold blossoms at regular intervals.34 They laid this garland of flowers on the ground, and everyone in attendance divided into groups of about a dozen people and stepped into the loop in unison. As the powerful guitar and violin music filled the night air, helpers lifted the loop up and over the heads of the people gathered within and placed it back onto the ground. Everyone stepped back into the loop, and once more it was raised up over their heads. This process was repeated seven times. Helpers then took hold of the loop, raised it up over

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people’s heads, and then lowered it around them back to the ground. Everyone stepped outside of the loop, and this reverse process was repeated seven times. Each person in attendance thus passed through the loop fourteen times in total, including the musicians and people carrying the ritual implements, the seed figures, and the walking sticks. At the conclusion of the cleansing, helpers cut the flowered loop into four pieces and placed them along with the remaining offerings on the remnants of the array. They folded the entire display into a sodden bundle that was afterward taken into the forest and hidden where no one would come upon it accidently.35 The ritual specialist had invoked the malevolent spirit entities and attracted them in swarms through the medium of the paper images and the offerings. In this context the discarded material posed a significant danger to anyone who might encounter it inadvertently. The cleansing procedure had removed disruptive winds from the area so that the major offering in the shrine could proceed smoothly. The identical sequence 1. Pan ni tlatlanextli, pan ni mundo, pan ni ley, pan ni tlaltepacpan, 2. nochin iuhquinon quiihyecolteuhqui toteuco Dios nicanin campa, 3. yohual quiihcuiloa tlananquilia nochin nicanin ni toidioma. 4. Nicanin yoli para axnopeca ce tlahtolli, axnopeca ce yacatzompilli, axnopeca ce tlatlaciztli, axnopeca ce totonicayotl, axnopeca ce tecamac, axnopeca ce tecamayoli. 5. Nochin nicanin no na nicamati, nochi pan ni [Amatlan] ranchoh, pan ni ehecahuil, ni altepantzin, 6. campa nemiz, campa moquetzaz, 7. nicanin inin, inin Martín Alonso Téllez, nicanin campa yohual, 8. campa moquetztinemiz nicanin—­ axnopeca ce huitztli, axnopeca ce motlalhuatanihquetl, 9. nochin nicanin quitlahtlacoltizceh, quitlachpanizceh—­

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of events (minus the cleansing with the flower loop) was repeated at other stages during the 1998 and 2001 Postectli pilgrimages, as we will show.36

Cirilo Speaks (Chant 1) In the middle of the night, on June  2, 1998, Cirilo delivered a compelling oration in Nahuatl as part of the cleansing ritual he performed prior to the trek to Ichcacuatitla. Tlanohnotzcayotl, the Nahuatl word for chant, oration, or invocation, is essentially a conversation, interaction, or dialogue with someone.37 Cirilo’s delivery was recorded on videotape, along with the words spoken by the other ritual specialists who had come to assist him. In order to convey something of the power of the ritual events as they unfolded, we present in this chapter and the next a selection of their chants followed by our brief commentary. The spoken Nahuatl in the left column is aligned with the English translation on the right.38 1. In this dawn, in this world, in this law, on this earth, 2. our lord God taught everything in this manner [and left for us these costumbre practices], 3. he [our lord God] records everything here and responds in our language. 4. Here, in this vicinity, may there be no envious words, no colds or flu, no cough, no fever, no mocking words, no gossip. 5. On behalf of all of us here I also speak, everyone in this village of Amatlán, in this refuge, in this community, 6. where [this one] will go about, where he will stand up, 7. this one here, this Martín Alonso Téllez [Cirilo’s son or Cirilo himself], where he, here, 8. where he will go standing up—­ may there be no thorns, may there be no serpent, 9. everyone around here will point out his faults, they will cleanse him—­

10. nicanin huetztoc, ipan nicamati. 11. Ipan ni 1998 nicanin titetlahpaloah nicanin, 12. no nicnequi nicanin ce cuaoholiztli, ce iztayahualtzin, ce comitl, 13. nochin nicanin nochi nicamati cehce ipan ni noehecahuil, payantipantzin, 14. nochin nicanin ma no tlachiyaliztli ipan ni yohual, ipan ni nahnahui ezquinoh, 15. ehecahuil nicanin campa itztoc, campa tiitztoqueh nicanin, 16. ica nahuatl ipan nicamati Dios Tonantzin—­ nicanin nicamati. 17. Ay, María purísima, santísima. 18. Nochin nicanin, —ce Dios iconehuan—­ campa momantihuallohuih, 19. nochin nicanin, —yohual—­ nicanin moquetztihuallohuih . . .39

10. here he is seated, before him I speak. 11. Here, in this year 1998, we exchange a greeting, 12. I also want a good path, a way forward, a salted tortilla [some food], a pot [filled with water], 13. I speak for all who are here, for each one, in this my refuge, in this blessed place, 14. for everything here, may there also be life in this night [addressing God], in these four corners, 15. in this refuge here where [God] is, here, where we are, 16. I speak in Nahuatl before God Tonantzin, our Mother God—­ here I speak. 17. Oh, purest María, most holy. 18. Everyone here, —­the children of one God—­ where [the spirit entities] come to be seated [and receive offerings], 19. everyone here, —­[our Father God–­our Mother God]—­ here [the people] come to stand up [and present offerings] . . .

At this moment Cirilo was interrupted by an assistant, who handed him a lighted candle and the sacred walking stick, saying, “¿Ticnequi ni bazton?” (“Do you want this bastón?”). Cirilo took it up and continued without pause: 20. . . . yohual no niyehyeco, nicanin no atli, para nicamati pan ni tlahtlanicapan. 21. Ay, Dios santísimo. 22. Nicanin santoh bazton nechmacaz cualli, cualli notlachiyaliz—­ 23. bazton nicanin quihtoa nicanin. 24. Nimechcamantihuallauh nouhquiya, nicanin ni tecamayoli, tecamaehecayoh—­ 25. nochin ta tictlalanaz, nochi nicanin ta tiquihcueniz, nochin nicanin, yohual nicanin.

20. . . . [addressing God,] I try to intercede here [because they need] water to drink, that is why I speak in this place of petition. 21. Oh, most holy God. 22. Here, the sacred walking stick will introduce me properly, it will give me good vision—­ 23. it is the walking stick that speaks here. 24. I come speaking to all of you as well, these words are born here, wise words given breath—­ 25. all of you [spirit entities] will raise it up, here, you will move it all, everything here, all of it, here tonight.

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26. Nicanin campa yohual campa momanah, campa moquetza ni Dios iconehuan—­ 27. tlen yohual nicanin, para yohual nicanin, 28.    ni Dios iconehuan tlen nopa ni horah.

The foregoing is an abbreviated cleansing chant to rid an area of dangerous wind spirits—­something very similar to what a ritual specialist might deliver to cure a patient. Like all Nahua chants, it is explicit and direct, making a clear statement of what is expected of the spirit entities.40 Cirilo locates the ritual in time and place, crediting God (conceived as Totiotzin but addressed in Spanish as “Dios”) with creating everything in the world and asserting that God responds in Nahuatl (lines 1–­3).41 He cautions against gossip that generates social disorder and lists the kinds of trouble that idle talk or malicious rumors can lead to (line 4). He identifies himself as the ritual specialist who represents those gathered in Amatlán (line 5) and announces that he comes to the ritual “to stand up” (ambiguously speaking about himself in the third person, or possibly his son, Martín, who was present at the ritual that night)—­that is, to be actively engaged, present himself formally, and lay out offerings before the spirit entities (lines 6–­7 and repeated later). By the rules of reciprocity, this passage suggests that he expects these powerful beings to be present and engaged likewise, and thus signal their readiness to respond to people’s entreaties by accepting the ritual offerings that people present to them. He banishes injurious spines as well as poisonous snakes (line 8), which are serious threats in the Huasteca, and then calls for a blessing and cleansing of the ritual participants (lines 9–­10).42 Cirilo names the date and setting of the pilgrimage (a “greeting” directed to the spirit entities) and calls for provisions for the journey ahead (and, by analogy, what he expects in return) (lines 11–­12). With especially evocative words, he creates a peaceful atmosphere and a space in which to conduct the rituals (lines 13–­15). He uses the Nahuatl term ehecahuil, meaning “refuge” (literally, a “wind-­shaded place,” thus protected from dangerous winds), and juxtaposes it with payantipantzin (which means, as we understand it, “a blessed place for living,”

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26. Here, where they [the spirit entities] are seated [ready to receive offerings], where these children of God are standing up [ready to present them]—­ 27. all of them here, all through the night, 28.    these children of God are here at this hour.

described euphemistically in terms of grinding maize) and altepantzin (earlier, in line 5, an altepetl or “community,” literally, “a settlement blessed with fresh mountain spring water”). He reasserts that he speaks to God in Nahuatl (line 16). Addressing the Virgin Mary as Tonantzin, Our Honored Mother, Cirilo states that God’s children, his Nahua and Otomí congregants, come to make an altar offering or mezah (in the specialized meaning of this borrowed term), and the spirit entities appear receptive (lines 17–­19).43 Following the brief interruption he resumes chanting, proclaiming that he makes his petition because everyone needs water to drink (line 20). Again addressing God-­ Tonantzin and the assembled entities as one (switching his point of reference as commonly occurs in the chants), the ritual specialist says that the bastón or ritual walking stick he holds provides the vision to see clearly and speak authoritatively (lines 21–­23). He concludes by exhorting everyone to rise up with renewed words and breath, to make their offering with determination and energy (lines 24–­25). Cirilo closes by reasserting that the people in attendance are God’s devout children and the assembled spirit entities should accept what they have to offer (lines 26–­28).

Another Ritual Specialist Speaks (Chant 2) One of the ritual specialists assisting Cirilo delivered his own oration over the cleansing array. His words were spoken simultaneously with the others, and it was very hard, in the darkness of the night, for the videographer to focus and isolate individual speakers’ voices. Nonetheless, the following portion of the man’s chant was successfully transcribed by our colleagues Abe and Bety, who are native speakers of the language. We learned that they had to employ lipreading to confirm some words that they could barely make out.

1. Amo ce toconeuh, amo ce tocolhuan, nopayoh amo ce tlaiztlacatihquetl. 2. Inihhuantin xiquintlachcuenih, xiquintlachpanah pan ohtli, pan ni [Amatlan], calihtic para canica yazceh, 3. para quennopa ahcitih yehyectzin pan ni xochicalli, pan ni tomezah. 4. No xiquintlapopolhui tlan nopeca techcahcayahuah, tlan techiztlacahuiah—­ 5. tlen miac tlamantli zaniltihuatilhuallauh cuezomacatihuallohuih. 6. Mechmacatoqueh ce cerveza, ce huei ofrenda—­ no xicahcican, no xiccelican, 7. no xictlalanacan—­ [pan] ni tlahuizcatl, ni totonquetl. 8. Xiquintlachpanacan pan mizmo ni izolar, pan mizmo ni ichan, pan mizmo ni mezah, 9. no cualli quizati ni coztumbre, no cualli quizati ni promezah, 10. no cualli ticcencahuatih—­ ticcualtlalitih. 11. Ni ranchoh campa ya nemiz amo ce arma, amo ce piztolah, amo ce cuchillo, amo ce tetl, amo ce tlachixquetl, amo ce macheteroh, amo ce tecamac, amo ce ehecatl. 12. Nochi buenoz, nochi amigoz, por eso nican mechmacatoqueh ce cervezah, ce huinoh, ce refrezcoh, 13. no xiccelican no xicahcican ce ofrenda, 14. yani ticpenzaroah, yani ticcencahuah—­ xiccelican!

1. None among our children, none among our grandparents, there is no liar among them. 2. You [spirit entities], take away from them [harmful things], cleanse [the people] on the road, in this [village of Amatlán], indoors, wherever they may go, 3. so that they arrive beautifully in this our xochicalli, our flower house, at this our mezah, our altar offering. 4. Forgive them as well if they deceive us, if they lie to us—­ 5. for the many things they come saying, bringing worry, sadness to others. 6. They have given all of you a beer, a great offering—­ grab it, receive it, 7. take it, too—­ [in] this dawn, this our morning star. 8. Cleanse them right here in their residence, right here in their house, right here in their mezah, 9. this costumbre, too, will go well, this vow, too, will end well, 10. you [spirit entities] will do a good job, too—­ you will fix it. 11. In this community where [people] go about there is no weapon, no pistol, no knife, no stone, no [false] diviner, no machete wielder, no envy, no dangerous wind, 12. All are good people, all are friends, for this reason they have given you all a beer, some aguardiente, a soft drink, 13. all of you accept it, too, take the offering, too, 14. this is what we think, this is what we deliver—­ accept it!

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15. Naman ticcencahuah ni mayoh, ni junioh, ni tonatiuh, ni cahuitl, 16. ni caztigoh tlen oncah, pan chamancaohtli—­ pero puez axacah hueli tictlahtlacoltiah.44

The chant clearly illustrates the intent of the cleansing, namely, to remove the forces of disorder from the ritual proceedings. As an ardent supporter of the pilgrimage, the speaker expresses his desire to distance the human family from these destructive forces when he states that liars and other negative elements have been banished (lines 1–­2) and that people are free to enter the xochicalli and take part in the offerings (line 3).45 The speaker urges people to forgive the transgressors and to raise up those who are saddened by the drought by dedicating offerings (lines 4–­7). The cleansing, he notes, should be extended to peoples’ own dwellings as well as the altar offering (mezah) they have prepared (line 8). The hope is expressed (lines 9–­10) that the offering will be well received, and the speaker asserts (line 11) that the community of Amatlán is free from weapons and other instruments of negative or disruptive behavior (such as those who gossip or give false advice). In his oration the man affirms that local people are friendly and generous (line 12), and he instructs the spirit entities to receive their due (lines 13–­14). The power of the ritual and the words spoken serve to keep the negative forces at bay, and the speaker instructs everyone listening to forgive rather cast blame (lines 15–­16). At this moment in the proceedings two male ritual specialists from neighboring communities chanted in earnest before the cleansing array, taking turns brushing Cirilo with one of the broom-­like adornments made of coyol palm leaves and marigold flowers. Following their performance, the ritual specialist Catarina chanted, invoking Santo Vacián (likely a local version of the Catholic figure San Sebastián, a martyred Roman soldier). Like the men, she pleaded with the spirit entities to protect Cirilo in his efforts to preserve the vitality of the old religion. The videographer was able to record only fragments of the pronouncements of these several speakers as they moved in and out of microphone range.46

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15. Now we finish this month of May, this month of June, on this day, at this time, 16. this suffering that is present, where the paths begin—­ but we cannot blame anyone.

The Altar Offering to the Seeds, Earth, and Water at Amatlán Once cleansed of malevolent winds, the participants returned to the shrine, where they were greeted by Cirilo standing in the doorway. They entered the small building and immediately set to work decorating the main altar (photos 3.26 and 3.27). As initial preparations for the Amatlán altar offering (mezah) wrapped up, we reached the part of the ritual in which the offerings were finally dedicated, including the offering of animal blood. This episode, called la entregada in Spanish, means “the delivery.” There was a slight difference between 1998 and 2001 in its timing, but as far as we could discern the variation had no significance. In 1998 people danced for some time holding the palm adornments and other sacred items in their arms, before and during the entregada, while in 2001 they picked up these adornments only as the offerings and blood sacrifice were about to be dedicated. Another variation we noted was that the arch over the altar table in 1998 remained unfinished, while in the 2001 observance it already had been embellished with lush green fronds and flowering plants from the tropical forest. We inquired about the missing decorations, and several people told us that they had decided to forego that component because, owing to the severe drought, there were insufficient leaves and flowers to adorn the altar properly. We can confirm that, in the scores of rituals we have attended over the years, never had we seen the arch left undecorated. Another anomaly struck us as well in 2001: customarily the arch would be arrayed with pinwheel-­like star adornments constructed from palm leaves and marigold blossoms. When we inquired about their absence, people simply acknowledged that no one had made the stars that year. We have observed many such variations that do not seem to change the meaning or structure of Nahua rituals. We should note here that we see no evidence that the rituals are deteriorating or collapsing in the face of the radical economic shifts and climate devastation gripping the southern Huasteca. To the contrary, followers of the Native American religion seem defiant in the face

of change and committed to maintaining the vigor and integrity of their ritual practices.47 Nahua altars are layered to reveal the four realms of the cosmos.48 The top of the table is the surface of the earth (tlaltepactli), defined by its four corners. The display beneath the table is interior earth (tlalli, or more precisely tlaltzintlan, “below the earth”), embodied by the seated figures of grandmother earth and grandfather earth. Over the table is the arch normally decorated with palm and flower stars that depicts the sky or celestial realm, ilhuicactli. As Nahua of Chicontepec describe the altar, “up for God, down for the earth.”49 The water realm (apan) is present in the pots of water that are carried by the women or placed by the table on the floor of the shrine. As we will explain further, the water realm is also addressed in several ritual episodes when participants visit a nearby spring to dedicate offerings directly to apanchaneh. Nahua altars convey the idea that the offering is of cosmic scope, explicitly directed at a seeming diversity of spirit entities incorporated into the one unity—­Totiotzin—­that describes the living cosmos. Nahua altar design is a telling example of scaling large and small, a projection of culturally perceived realities that is characteristic of Mesoamerican cultures, which we examine further in chapter 7. In 1998, as helpers completed decorating the altar, the musicians abruptly changed the melody and tempo of the ritual music, and a sense of tension and excitement grew among participants. People gathered before the candle-­lit altar holding sheaves of coyol palm adornments in their arms. On their heads women balanced clay water pots from which protruded palm adornments and lighted candles. The basket of dressed paper figures was passed from person to person throughout this part of the ritual:

Left to Right Photo 3.26. Cirilo (in back, facing camera) greets people as they return to the xochicalli from the cleansing ritual. Photo 3.27. Ritual participants gather in the xochicalli as they begin the process of decorating the altar in this 2001 photograph.

a woman would carry the basket on her head, swaying gently, or a man would dance with it in his arms. The seed figures and their close association with crop fertility are important components of the entire pilgrimage. The participants’ arms were loaded with the palm adornments as Cirilo knelt before the altar and chanted while he held the stack of paper figures. In his dramatic prayer he named the sacred hills, listed the offerings being dedicated, addressed Seven Flower, and pleaded with the powers of the cosmos to bring fertility to the milpas. All during the 1998 proceedings, ritual specialist Evaristo sat in the middle of the shrine ringing a bell to ensure that the proper spirit entities were fully aware of the offering. It is no coincidence that, as the room swelled with people swaying to the sacred music and grasping the green palm leaves, they bore a striking resemblance to maize plants in a milpa rustled by the breeze. Unambiguously, the coyol palm adornments expressed the fertility of the maize plant in this ritual enactment. Photos 3.28–­3.31 illustrate this entragada sequence prior to the blood offering. At this point during the delivery of the offering, it was late at night, and an assortment of paper figures had been laid out on the altar table and on the ground beneath it. Helpers brought in the sacrificial turkeys and chickens and presented them to the ritual specialists. The candle-­lit shrine was jammed with people, and the air filled with billowing clouds of copal incense and the sacred melodies of

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Left to Right Photo 3.28. Participants crowd into the xochicalli as a ritual specialist begins to arrange paper figures on the main altar table. A woman (in foreground, left) balances on her head a basket containing dressed paper figures of seed spirits while two women standing close to the altar (partly obscured in the photograph) carry pots filled with water to disclose the water realm. People hold bundles of coyol palm and flower adornments in their arms, preparing for the entregada (“delivery”). Photo 3.29. Ritual specialist Silveria carries on her head a pot filled with water and ritual items. The man directly in front of her carries a basket filled with dressed paper figures of seed spirits. Photo 3.30. Women stand before the altar, each carrying a pot of water on her head. The woman on the left holds a lighted candle, and the one closest to the altar has a lighted candle sticking out of the water pot. The water evokes the water realm and apanchaneh. Photo 3.31. Otomí ritual specialist Evaristo (seated, center) rings a bell to rouse the spirit entities as Cirilo (kneeling before the altar) arranges paper figures. The open wooden box on the altar contains a sisal carrying bag holding dressed paper figures of seed spirits.

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Photo 3.32. Helpers pour an offering of a soft drink down the throat of a turkey about to be sacrificed. The action conveys respect.

the guitar and violin. A sense of anticipation pervaded the space as the ritual specialists prepared each bird by pouring some of the soft drink down its throat. Feeding the birds in this way is a demonstration of respect. The helpers held the turkeys and chickens high in the air and thrust them at one another in mock combat, the object of which was to make the birds squawk.50 The ritual specialists swiftly cut the throat of each bird with a pair of scissors. The same scissors used to cut the paper figures were used to draw the sacrificial blood, but we were unable to elicit any commentary on this practice. The specialists collected some of the blood in a small bowl and placed it beneath the altar table, and then suspended each bird over the paper figures and sprinkled their blood evenly over the array, making sure that each figure got its share of the precious liquid. The ritual specialists and their helpers dispatched several birds in this manner, and the altar soon became saturated with blood. Helpers took the dead birds out of the shrine and delivered them to the women standing by to prepare them for cooking. After the final bird was sacrificed, a ritual specialist took a feather, dipped it in the bowl of blood, and distributed the blood on any remaining paper figure that had not received its share of the offering (photo 3.32). Nahuas who follow the religion of el costumbre view blood as the primary medium through which the power of life is conveyed. In sharing this vital fluid, the practitioners are providing the figures with the life force necessary to act for the good of the community. Behind the apparent diversity manifested in the multitude of paper figures stands the sacred unity of Totiotzin, and so the blood offering effectively powers the cosmos. Blood is the ultimate gift that creates the special bond uniting human beings to the forces that surround them. Nahua

linguist Victoriano de  la  Cruz Cruz, in describing the Chicomexochitl ritual complex operating in Chicontepec, records the Nahuatl terms tlaezhuiah (“to cast blood on something”) and tlaezpoloah (“to smear something with blood”) to describe the act of making a blood offering on the ritual paper figures.51 In addition to blood, the ritual specialists dedicate a wealth of other items that people appreciate as well: aguardiente, tobacco, chocolate, cornmeal, egg, cooked meat, prepared dishes such as succulent tamales or mole, and store-­bought products like soft drinks, beer, crackers, and cookies.52 Cirilo repeatedly warned that if people cease holding el costumbre rituals, the cosmos will be depleted of energy and “the sun will stop and stand still in the sky.” The exchange of sacrificial blood restores energy to Totiotzin, which in its guise as the sun transfers energy to plant life (maize, preeminently), which in turn provides the energy carried in the blood that courses through the bodies of living beings. As can readily be seen in the photographs, rituals like this are designed to be beautiful events with incense, music, offerings of fine food and drink, and a spectacularly decorated altar, the sacralized place where the exchange with the spirit entities occurs. Following the blood offering, ritual specialists and helpers began the process of decorating the altar by laying out palm adornments and other offerings over the spattered paper figures (photo 3.33). Participants continued to dance before the altar, chanting quietly (photo 3.34). In 1998 we contributed six oversized white candles purchased from a church-­supply shop that we thought people would appreciate, and we were delighted to see the candles featured prominently in the altar decorations (photo 3.35). As decorating was underway, women brought in bowls of the cooked meat of the sacrificed fowl (served in a clear broth) and placed

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Left to Right Photo 3.33. Photograph of the altar as helpers are beginning to decorate it. The blood-­spattered paper figures are overlain by coyol palm and flower adornments. Helpers place bottles of soft drinks and beer on the altar table. The sisal carrying bag contains some of the dressed paper figures of seed spirits. Two decorated walking sticks are leaning against the wall. Photo 3.34. Women chant quietly over the partially adorned altar. Photo 3.35. Cirilo, standing to the side of the altar, has watched as helpers distribute food and drink offerings. They have dipped a feather into the small bowl of blood on the earthen floor (at left) and painted the precious substance on the paper figures. Photo 3.36. The initial offering continues throughout the night in the Amatlán xochicalli. The photograph previously appeared in Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2017: 113, fig. 4.1; reprinted with the permission of the University of Arizona Press). Photo 3.37. Close-up of offerings beneath the altar table. A blood-spattered petate of paper figures is visible (in the foreground, left). The altar table partially obscures the dressed figures of grandmother earth and grandfather earth seated in a miniature chair (background, center). The small statue wrapped in turquoise-blue cloth (seated, left) is unidentified, but its color suggests an association with the water.

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this valued food upon and beneath the altar table. Helpers poured out drinks in cups and opened bottles of soft drinks and packages of cookies and crackers. All of these items were artfully arranged as part of the mezah (photos 3.36 and 3.37). Ritual specialists dedicated the array to the spirit entities in their chants, leaving the food and drink on the altar for a while to allow time for their essence to be consumed. Afterward the participants ate and drank what was left behind, and nothing was wasted. In confirming that the offering had been accepted, people commented that the food was flat and tasteless after the spirit entities had finished enjoying it.53 1. Campa ichan Chicomexochitl, 2. campa itztoqueh cuahcualli coyomeh, cuahcualli xinolameh, cuahcualli ehecatinih, cuahcualli tlapitzanih, cuahcualli tlahuitequinih, cuahcualli tlayecachihuanih, cuahcualli tlatzotzonanih—­ 3. nochin tlananquilizceh. 4. San Jerónimo, palacio de gobierno, 5. las cuevas campa ichan xillin, campa eltoc chilornoh, campa eltoc coztic tomin. 6. Haztah pan rramal, ma poca rramal, 7. ma popocha huehhueyi tlamimilli—­ huehhueyi tepexitl, huahhueyi cuapilolli, huehhueyi amelli, 8. ma huallauh xinolah—­ huanya ehecatl, totatah hueyi ehecatl, 9. ma quimama ce mixtli, ma quimama ce [inaudible], 10. ma quitlaliqui ce bueltah campa mochiuhqui coztumbreh, 11. pan ni [Amatlan] ranchoh, pan ni Ilimon ranchoh, 12. yamaxtic nochin miac paizez, axcanah zan nican. 13. Mejor ma tlacehui, 14. ma huallauh ce poxtah, ma huallauh ce acamayah, ma huallauh ce tecoxihtli, ma huallauh ce chompetla, haztah lagarto no huallaz,

Lino Speaks (Chant 3) After concluding the main offering in the xochicalli, individuals approached the shrine’s altar and stood silently or slowly swayed to the music. Many delivered a heartfelt chant or prayer of their own. In the following poignant, mesmerizing words, Juan Antonio (Lino) Hernández, a ritual specialist from the neighboring village of El Limón, proceeded to call forth the power of the sacred landscape. We recorded fragments of several of Lino’s deliveries over the days of preparations in Amatlán. Here are excerpted portions of the longest, most complete version. 1. Where the house of Seven Flower is, 2. where the good-­hearted gentlemen are, the good-­hearted women, the good winds, the good brass musicians, the good thunderers, the good life guides, the good musicians—­ 3. all of them will respond. 4. San Jerónimo, palace of the governor, 5. the caves where the house of the crayfish is, where the chili oven is, where the gold is. 6. Up to the seven branches, the birthplace of the hills, may it smoke [mists emerge, arise], 7. may the massive landforms rise up—­ the enormous ravine, the great hanging crag, the grand wellspring, 8. may the lady [of the water] come—­ together with the wind, our father the great wind, 9. may she carry a cloud, may she carry [inaudible], 10. may she come around here where el costumbre ritual was held, 11. in this village of Amatlán, in this village of El Limón, 12. in all the countries, not just here. 13. Better that the earth be rain-­cooled, 14. let the charal come, let the tropical crayfish come, let the guabina come, let the mojarra come, all types of fish, even the caiman will come, too, The Postectli Pilgrimage Begins  :  105

15. haztah quicuiti ce cuahuitl—­ ma tlapahpaca pan carreterah pan atlauhtli, 16. huan tlazolli ma quihuicah xinolah huanya ehecatl. 17. Mezatlaltoqueh Chicomexochitl—­ 18. huehhuei chipahuac, pilchipahuac, huehhueyi yahuitl, pilyahuitl, huehhueyi coztic, pilcoztzin, 19. chichimecaetl, emecatl, epatlach, tecomitl, ayohtli, cuaxilotl, aquexilotl, tlalcamohtli, cuacamohtli, colantoh, xonacatl, ceboyaz, ahoz, alahhuenon, apazotl, ce tomatl, ce pitzahchilli, ce atecayochilli, ce cuachilli, 20. ce pitzotzin, ce piyotzin, ce totoltzin, ce patoxtzin, ce torohtzin, ce cahuayohtzin, ce borrohtzin—­ 21. nochin ticamatih, nochin tiquelehuiah. 22. Ma tlapetlani, ma tlatomoni, 23. para tlachamaniz, para tlaceliaz, para tlacatiz ce pilocuiltzin, para ce piltototzin tlacuaz. 24. Ay, María purísima, xinechtlapopolhui Tateh, 25. nizaniloa zantequitl nican quiahuatl nican eltoc mezah, 26. quihuicazceh notlahtol inin señorez tlen itztoqueh nican, tlen huallohuih México, tlen huallohuih Xalapan. 27. Ay, María purísima, xinechtlapopolhui, 28. ome eyi niquihtohqui—­ quihuelittazceh tequichihuanih o axquihuelittazceh? —xinechtlapopolhuican. 29. Señorez, naman nican initztoqueh—­ nican mochihuaz ce hueyi juntah, nican mocencahuaz inin cualantli, inin cuezolli, inin tequipacholli. 30. Mochiuhqui ce tlaezotilli, ni tlaezotilli mochiuhqui para ce ahhuechtli,

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15. bringing a wooden staff—­ may it cleanse the roads and rivers, 16. may the lady [of the water] along with the wind take away trash and disorder. 17. Seven Flower altar offering to the earth—­ 18. great kernels of white maize, beloved white, great black maize, beloved black, great yellow maize, beloved yellow, 19. dog beans, vine beans, flat beans, gourds, squash, banana, aquexilotl [a tuber], sweet potato, cassava yuca, cilantro, xonacatl [an allium], onion, garlic, mint, epazote herb, tomato, bird chili, green chili, tree chili 20. a little pig, a little chicken, a little turkey, a little duck, a little bull, a little horse, a little donkey—­ 21. all these we cherish, all these we wish for. 22. May lightning flash, may thunder resound, 23. so that everything sprouts, so that it refreshes the earth, so that the beloved worm is born, so that a beloved bird can eat it. 24. Oh, purest María, forgive me, Father, 25. I speak for no reason [other than to say that] here, outside, is the mezah, altar offering, 26. these people who are here they will carry my words, those who come from Mexico, those who come from Xalapa. 27. Oh, purest María, forgive me, 28. I said a few words—­ will the helpers approve of them or will they not? —­you all must forgive me. 29. People, now you all are here—­ here there will be a great meeting, here this problem will be resolved, this sadness, worry, this affliction. 30. A pact was made with blood, this blood signature was done for the gentle rain, for the dew,

para axoncaz cuezolli, para axoncaz tequipacholli, axoncaz choquiliztli. 31. Oncaz tlachiyaliztli—­ tlacualiztli, oniliztli, nemiliztli, nochin miac paizez—­ axcanah zan nican. 32. Millonario asesino ma yohui campa hualqui tonatiuh, campa yahqui tonatiuh, campa huallahqui ehecatl, campa yahqui ehecatl. 33. Gobiernoh tlen huallauh voluntarioh—­ tlen cenquiztoc macehualli. 34. Ma quiceli imezah nochin miac paizez—­ Xalapan, México, Veracruz, Estados Unidos Mexicanos—­ nochin miac paizez. 35. Tlanqui.54 Ritual specialist Lino Hernández chanted at a leisured pace, reciting completely from memory an astonishing number of places of importance in the sacred geography of the Huasteca Veracruzana.55 In the excerpt presented here (which we begin as line 1) Lino associates the mountains and home of Seven Flower with all the types of decent people and beings responsive to human needs (lines 2–­3). He includes among them coyomeh (literally, “coyotes”)—­ the Nahuatl-­English loanword for the wild canine—­that in this context signifies “gentlemen,” referring to any non-­Indigenous person, male or female. He further specifies the musicians who play wind and percussion instruments, the winds and thunderers themselves, and all those who lead good lives. He describes several prominent features in the sacred landscape as places of treasure and home to mythic creatures (lines 4–­5). The ritual specialist asks for moisture to envelop features of the Huastecan landscape (lines 6–­7), using the term “smoke” euphemistically to refer to the water vapor or mists that materialize in the form of rain clouds, much as smoke rises when kindling is lit. He addresses xinolah (“lady,” from the Spanish señora), equating this generalized, honorific title with that of axinolah, “lady of the water,” in her guise as the water dweller apanchaneh, and he asks her to make her presence known (lines 8–­10) by means of the good winds that blow the clouds. In order to emphasize the Nahua religion’s

so there will be no sorrow, so there will be no worry, so there will be no weeping. 31. There will be a new dawn—­ eating, drinking, living, in many countries [in the world]—­ not only here. 32. May the murderous rich go to where the sun came from, to where the sun went down, to where the wind came out, to where the wind goes. 33. The governing body [of spirit entities] that comes voluntarily, comes willingly—­ it remains, despite everything, entirely Indigenous. 34. May all the many [places on the earth] receive their mezah—­ Xalapa, Mexico, Veracruz, the United States of Mexico—­ all the many [places everywhere]. 35. I am done, I have finished. universal appeal, Lino names Cirilo’s community and his own, admonishing the water dweller to come to the entire world, “not just here” (lines 11–­12). Lino implores apanchaneh to cool the earth with rain (line 13). Invoking her children (the different types of water creatures) and the powers inherent in the staff of authority (lines 14–­15), he beseeches the siren to banish polluting tlazolli—­the refuse and disordered matter that litters people’s lives (line 16). Using the word mezatlaltoqueh (literally, “altar-­earth-­planting”) to signify the altar offering (line 17), Lino itemizes the many crops and farm animals that will thrive when the rain comes as a consequence of the Chicomexochitl ceremony (lines 18–­21). He petitions thunder and lightning to bring refreshing rain so that crops will grow and nourish all the earth’s denizens (lines 22–­23). The speaker focuses with humility on his own efforts (lines 24–­29) and that of people who have come to help with the work entailed in the pilgrimage. He addresses those who have gathered to resolve the problem of insufficient rain, telling the spirit entities that people have made a blood vow (i.e., a formal petition) for rain (line 30). He calls for “a new dawn” with plentiful food, drink, and the good life everywhere (line 31). Lino then articulates the arresting message that the wealthy (i.e., the dominant Hispanic group, characterized as assassins) be banished to the place where the sun disappears and the dangerous

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winds emerge (line 32). By contrast, the ritual specialist invokes the power of a “willing government”—­the pantheon of powerful spirit entities—­that can be convinced to help humanity, implying that only the world’s Indigenous peoples can summon (or merit) such a gathering (line 33).56 The preparations for a pilgrimage and its successful realization require just such cooperation and offers proof of how people value their ethnic identity. The Nahua are keenly aware when others ascribe to them second-­class status as Mexican citizens, and ritual oratory frequently vocalizes their strained dealings with political elites. Lino names the places in need of attention and closes with the matter-­of-­fact “I am done” (lines 34–­35).

Offerings to the Fire, Spring, and Outside Cross Most elaborate mezah altar offerings, such as the previous one dedicated specifically to the seeds, earth, and water, are accompanied by a sequence of minor offerings at additional locales: at the cooking fire where food is prepared, at a nearby freshwater spring, and at a small altar dedicated to the outside cross (la cruz afuera) located in the patio adjacent to the xochicalli. In these episodes, one or two ritual specialists, the musicians, and a handful of the participants gathered to walk in a procession to each site, where they dedicated offerings and chanted to the spirit entities associated with the place. The three offerings are abbreviated but carried out as a unit, and thus appear to form an invariant ritual cluster. We noticed, however, that the order and timing of visits to the fire, spring, and outside cross may vary. During the pilgrimages we witnessed, the minor offerings occurred early in the morning on the day in which the major mezah took place, while other times they occurred just prior to the entregada episode, or even the next morning on the day of the pilgrimage trek itself. During the proceedings, the ritual specialists visited the hearth in Cirilo’s kitchen (sometimes more than once) to leave an offering where the food for the ritual and for feeding the participants is cooked. From beneath the main altar they retrieved a stack of the petates of blood-­ spattered paper images of fire, tlixihuantzin. They laid the stack of paper figures on the floor to the side of the raised fire table, covered them with coyol palm adornments, and placed some food nearby (photo 3.38).57 The hearth spirit tlixihuantzin watches over and protects the members of the household and derives its power from the sun (tonatiuh). The spirit entity’s name combines the Huastecan

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Top to Bottom Photo 3.38. Helpers have placed palm and flower adornments on top of the paper figures of the fire spirit. An offering to the fire is part of all major ritual events. Photo 3.39. Musicians and women carrying adorned pots of water assemble before heading for a nearby spring. The spring is one of many locations where apanchaneh lives.

Nahuatl word tlitl (“fire”), plus the verb xahuāni (“to ignite or kindle”), and by adding the honorific ending -­tzin, the name means “honored fire.” It is also the fire that people ignite to burn dried brush and timber during the preparation of the milpa, killing weeds and producing the ashes that return nutrients to the soil that are crucial to slash-­and-­burn horticulture. Following the visit to the hearth, the ritual specialists, participants, and musicians walked to a nearby freshwater spring to dedicate a special offering to apanchaneh (photos 3.39–3.40). This part of the offering is called ameltlacualtiliztli, “feed the spring.”58 The spring they visited is the water source for numerous households in Amatlán,

3.42). The top layer contained twenty paper figures of the water dweller, apanchaneh, who inhabits springs, lakes, and other bodies of water. Like the fire offering, these petates had received their blood offering the night before when they lay beneath the altar in the shrine. Cirilo immediately covered the bloodied paper figures with four bundles of coyol palm and flower adornments. Helpers then proceeded to set some of the plates of food around the edge and poured a small amount of the drink directly into the water. Cirilo lit candles and placed them all around the spring, and leaned the walking sticks against the rock overhang. Women also laid down their sisal bags of dressed paper seed spirits near the water (photos 3.43–3.45). In other rituals we have witnessed, a small offering was left upstream from the spring, dedicated to the helpers of apanchaneh—­namely, the winds and clouds. The musicians played the sacred melodies without pause

Top to Bottom Photo 3.40. A contingent of participants heads to a nearby spring to dedicate offerings to the water spirit. Ethnographer Alan Sandstrom can be seen in the background. Photo 3.41. Participants gather above the spring inhabited by the water dweller, apanchaneh.

and it therefore holds a special significance. Situated above the arroyo that flows along the perimeter of the village, the spring lies directly beneath the roots of a gigantic ceiba tree and is a somewhat difficult place to access.59 Several women carried the water pots on their heads, and one of the ritual specialists carried the sacred walking sticks while others hauled offerings in bags. Upon arriving, men climbed down the steep bank to the arroyo to clear away the brush growing up around the spring. Participants handed down offerings of food and drink to be placed near the spring (photo 3.41). Cirilo also received and carefully placed at the opening of the spring a bundle of four petates tied together (photo

Photo 3.42. Cirilo places lighted candles near the offerings dedicated to the water spirit. Although not visible in the photograph, just behind Cirilo’s head lie blood-­spattered paper figures of apanchaneh, altar, cross, and earth, covered up by the coyol palm adornments. Many people in Amatlán obtain household drinking water from this spring.

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Left to Right Photo 3.43. The ritual specialists have placed sacred walking sticks, associated with thunder spirits and rain, in front of the spring inhabited by apanchaneh. Dressed paper figures of seed spirits can be seen in the sisal carrying bag to the left of the spring. Photo 3.44. Cirilo chants before the spring, imploring the water spirit to accept the offerings of food and drink. Photo 3.45. Ritual participants gather before the spring as offerings are dedicated to the water spirit. The man holds a copal incense brazier.

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Photo 3.46. Three ritual specialists chant before the spring where apanchaneh lives. The woman at left rings a bell to rouse the water spirit, and the woman in the middle holds a carrying bag filled with dressed paper figures of seed spirits. Photo 3.47. Musicians play as a man shakes a rattle during offerings to the water spirit.

Left to Right Photo 3.48. The spring inhabited by apanchaneh surrounded by offerings dedicated to her. Photo 3.49. Pilgrims returning to the xochicalli in Amatlán following the offering at the spring.

as participants offered copal incense and items of food and drink. Because apanchaneh is associated with girls and women, the female ritual specialists played a prominent role in addressing and dedicating offerings to her. Following the offering at the spring, participants walked back to the xochicalli (photos 3.46–­3.49). While the foregoing ritual activity was underway, Cirilo crouched on a narrow outcropping near the water’s edge 1. Ahhuechtli, Aserenah, yehyectzin ma tlaahhuetzi—­ pero tohuantin ticnequih ce ahhuechtli nochi ma huallauh. 2. Ce cualli chocolatl, ce cualli cantelah, ce cuaxilotl, ce papayah, ce sandiah, ce melon, ce cacahuatl, ce alaxox, ce ohuatl—­ 3. Yehyectzin ma huallauh ahhuechtli, para nochi huallaz. 4. Ay, María purísima, no timitzillamiquih—­ 5. ce cualli sones yani tlanamictihuallauh. 6. Ay, María purísima, 7. yehyectzin huallaz ahhuechtli tlapoyahcan, yehyectzin huallaz ahhuechtli.61

from which vantage he delivered a long, passionate chant to the water dweller. Again, hours later, Cirilo returned to deliver another brief chant at the spring that expressed the Nahuas’ critical valuation of water, not only in the form of rain for the crops but as a signal that cosmic relations are in balance.60

Three Women Speak (Chant 4) Meanwhile, three ritual specialists (Silveria Hernández Hernández, María Dolores Hernández, and the practitioner we knew as Catarina) were recorded chanting simultaneously as they knelt before the spring (seen in photo 3.46). They held sacred items, including sisal carrying bags 1. Rain, Water Siren, may it rain well—­ but we want a good, adequate rain, may it all come. 2. A good chocolate, a good candle, banana, papaya, watermelon, melon, peanuts, orange, sugarcane—­ 3. May a good rain come, may it come for everyone. 4. Oh, purest María, we remember you too—­ 5. some good sones, sacred music, this is what comes in unison. 6. Oh, purest María, 7. a good rain, a downpour will come at dusk, sufficient rain will come.

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filled with the dressed seed figures. We include one fragment here of the women’s words (but cannot determine the speaker) to illustrate the pleading tone they take with apanchaneh when asking for rain. The first lines express in the sparest terms what the women want from apanchaneh, namely, moisture in its most beneficial form, as the night-­rising dew or the regular, steady shower of rain—­just the right amount—­neither so little that the crops dry out nor so much as to destroy the plantings (line 1).62 One of the ritual specialists lists some of the offerings being dedicated to water dweller (line 2) in hopes of influencing her to bring a shower to the parched fields. A common theme in these orations is that the beautiful fertilizing rain is for all people (line 3), not only the supplicants. The speaker states (line 4) that the people are in compliance with the wishes of the Virgin Mary–­Tonantzin 1. Nican no tihuallohuih, timayanah, tiamiquih—­ yeca huerzah nican tihuallohuih ica ni coztumbre. 2. Tiquillizceh—­ nican tihualmoquetzah. 3. Axcanah miac tlahtolli, tiamiquih, timayanah, tichocatihuallohuih, ica nican tihuallohuih.63

and directs attention again to the ritual offerings, especially the ritual music (sones) and dancing, which correspond to the sequence of ritual activities (line 5). An affirmation of the beauty of the rain completes the chant (lines 6–­7).

Two Men Speak (Chant 5) The sentiments spoken by the women are mirrored by several men who had come to participate in the pilgrimage and help with preparations. They spoke, one after the other, in quiet voices barely audible above the music and ambient sounds. The words they conveyed to apanchaneh before the spring seemed to reinforce both a sense of urgency or foreboding and a vision of sublime beauty. We include brief portions of their orations in lines consecutively numbered. 1. We, too, come here, we are hungry, we are dying of thirst—­ so, here we come, forced [to offer] this costumbre. 2. We will say it—­here we come to stand up, to present ourselves. 3. There is little to say, not many words—­ we are thirsty, we are hungry, we come weeping, through here, in this way, we come.

The following fragment, uttered by the next speaker, continues in the same vein: 4. Ticnequih ce cuaxilotl, ticnequih ce santiah, ce melon, ce ayohtli, ce pipián, ce atolito, ce cacahuate. 5. Timotlahtlaniah ica favor—­ ticnequih ce ahhuechtli para tictlalizceh tozemilla. 6. Aserena—­ xitechmaca tlen ica tiatlizceh! 7. Nican axcanah oncah atl, ya mero titlatlazceh ica ni tonatiuh, nican timitztlahtlaniah perdón ica ta Aserena. 8. Xitechmaca ahhuechtli, xitechmaca ce favor tlen ica tipanozceh—­ nican timomailliah ica favor.

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4. We want a banana, we want a watermelon, a melon, a squash, some pumpkin seeds, a little atole, some peanuts. 5. We ask a favor—­ we want an adequate rainfall so we can plant our seeds. 6. Water Siren—­ give us water to drink! 7. Here there is no water, we are nearly burning from the sun, here we beg forgiveness from you, Water Siren. 8. Give us a good, sufficient rain, grant us a favor so we will pass through life, and live—­ here we are praying for a favor.

9. Nican titlatzicuiniah ica ce refrezcoh, ica ce pan, ica ce galletah—­ tictlaliah nochi nicanin. 10. Ca ce xochitl nicanin ticmaitzquihtihuallohuih, nican tictlaliah, para ta, Aserenah—­ ce hueyi favor nicanin. 11. Nicanin titeztigoz, nouhquiya nicanin tiamiquih, timayanah, ticnequih tictemoah—­ tlen ica timaltizceh. 12. Ica ta tihuallohuih—­ axcanah xitechtlahuelcahua! A clear statement of purpose begins the plea delivered by one of Cirilo’s followers: people go on pilgrimage to ameliorate their hunger and thirst in such dire circumstances (line 1). They have no alternative but to engage the spirit entities and try to present their case (line 2). While the speaker states humbly that he may be ineloquent, he asserts emphatically that people are desperate for the water they need to live (line 3). The next speaker can be heard to name some of the crops that people desire (lines 4–­5). Addressing apanchaneh in her guise as water siren–­aserenah, the provider of precious water, he complains how people are suffering (lines 6–­7). After pleading for forgiveness for their acts of disrespect, the man asks the spirit entity to do them a favor and send rain so people can survive (lines 7–­8). He 1. Nican titlahpalotoh atl, 2. ticmacatoh ce chocolatl, ce huahcalli atolli, ce refrezcoh ticmacatoh, ce cantelah ticmacatoh, ce xochitl ticmacatoh, 3. nochi tictlahpalotoh pan ni Amatlan ranchoh, pampa quitl amiquih Amatlan, 4. ticcelitoh [Cirilo Téllez]—­ ya quitl amicqui. 5. Nican tihualtoqueh, no timotlahtlanilicoh tlen ica tipanozceh, 6. no timotlahtlanilicoh ce ahhuechtli, 7. campa eltoc ioficina Aserenah,

9. Here we toast you with a soft drink, with some bread, with a cookie—­ all of this we offer you. 10. With a flower here we come offering [these things] to you, we place them here before you, for you, Water Siren—­ a great favor here. 11. Here we are witnesses, here, too, we are thirsty, we are hungry, we want that which we seek—­ we will bathe with it. 12. We come to you—­ do not abandon us! highlights the offerings they make, to obligate the siren to send some response (lines 9–­10). Then, more bluntly, he demands that the siren quench human thirst, banish hunger, and provide cleansing baths, ending with a proclamation of solidarity and a heartfelt plea that apanchaneh not abandon these petitioners, her witnesses (lines 11–­12).

Catarina Also Speaks of the Water Siren (Chant 6) Back in the shrine a short time later, the anthropologists asked the ritual specialist Catarina to explain about the offering that was made at the spring to the water dweller, apanchaneh. She delivered the following chant in lieu of an explanation. 1. We went to greet the water [at the spring], 2. we went to offer it some chocolate, a calabash gourd of atole, we went to offer it a soft drink, we went to offer it a candle, we went to offer it a flower, 3. we all greeted the water in this village of Amatlán, because they are thirsty in Amatlán, 4. we went to receive [Cirilo Téllez]—­ he was dying of thirst as well. 5. Here we have come, we came to ask for that with which we can live our lives, to pass through life, 6. we also came to ask for a good rain, 7. where the residence of Water Siren is—­

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8.  Aserenah para Laguna, Aserenah para Tecoroz, Aserenah para Poztectli, Aserenah para Tres Pozitos—­ 9. para huallaz ahhuechyo. 10. Motlalanaz—­nochi popocatihuallaz tepemecatl. 11. Huallaz Aserenah para Motoltepec, para Pachtli, para Tres Pozitos, para Tecoroz, para Agua Linda, para La Cueva, para Xihuiyoh, para Pachtlan, 12. nochi huallaz, para Ateyohual, para Apailan, para nochi tepetl. 13. Tlatoctli Chicomexochitl ayohtli, Chicomexochitl—­ce pitzahetzin, Chicomexochitl—­ce pilcuaxilotzin, ce piltamaltzin, piapazotzin, ce pilalahuenohtzin, ce papas, 14. nochi oncah, tlatoctli nochi, huallaz ahhuechtli, 15. ipan chicome rramal motlalanaz, yehyectzin hualtihuallaz. 16. Nochi huallaz, para San Jerónimo, para la Mesa Cacahuatenco, para México Chiquito, nochi huallaz, para Estados Unidos, nochi hualtihuallaz. 17. Ahhuechtli motlalanaz, ipan chicome rramal, 18. yehyectzin tlapetlantihuallaz, yehyectzin tlatomontihuallaz. 19. Yehyectzin como huallaz—­ cihuapilChicomexochitzin, oquichpilChicomexochitzin, 20. yehyectzin campa huicatihuallaz—­ huallaz Antihuatl Totatah, Antihuatl Tonanan, Ahuelito-­Ahuelita, 21. nochi tlatomontihuallaz, nochi tlapetlantihuallaz. 22. Campa eltoc Chicomexochitzin—­ popocatihuallaz, ahhuechtli —­nochi huallaz—­ 114  : The Postectli Pilgrimage Begins

8.  Water Siren at Laguna, Water Siren at Tecoroz, Water Siren at Postectli, Water Siren at Tres Pozitos—­ 9. so that the dewfall will come. 10. It all will rise up—­the entire mountain range will come smoking, misting with rain. 11. Water Siren will come to Motoltepec, to Pachtli, to Tres Pozitos, to Tecoroz, to Agua Linda, to La Cueva, to Xihuiyoh, to Pachtlan, 12. she will come to them all, to Ateyohual, to Apailan, to all the hills. 13. Seven Flower [revealed in] [plantings of] squash, a beloved narrow bean—­Seven Flower, a beloved banana—­Seven Flower, a beloved tamale, beloved epazote herb, some beloved mint, some potatoes, 14. everything in abundance, for all the plantings, the rain will come, 15. in the seven branches [birthplace of the hills] it [the rain-­moisture-­dew] will rise, it will come continuously, beautifully. 16. It will come to all of the communities, to San Jerónimo, to la Mesa Cacahuatengo, to México Chiquito [sacred cave], all will come, to the United States, all will come this way. 17. The rain-­moisture-­dew will rise up, up to the seven branches, 18. lightning will come, splendidly, thunder will come, magnificently. 19. Beautifully, how they will come—­ beloved Seven Flower girl, beloved Seven Flower boy, 20. beautiful, where they will come singing—­ Our Father, the Ancient One, will come, Our Mother, the Ancient One, Grandfather-­Grandmother 21. all will come with thunder, all will come with lightning. 22. Where beloved Seven Flower is—­ smoke, misty fog will come, the rain, the dewfall —­all will come—­

23. pan tepemecatl, tlen mexicano, tlen la sierra —­nochi huallaz—­ 24. tlen nochi ipan México Tlalli Chiquito —­nochi hualtihuallaz—­ 25. pan Tres Pozitos —­nochi huallaz. 26. Nochi pan teztigoz pan ni tlaixpamitl—­ huallohuih antihuameh —­huallohuih nican—­ 27. tezcatlapetlanianih, tezcatlatomonianih, tezcatlatomonianih Santo Vacian nican 28. —­quihualtepehuaqui ahhuechtli. 29. Nicanin teztigoz para San Jerónimo, para Laguna, para La Cueva, para Ichcacuatitlan, para Tres Pozitos, para Xihuiyoh, para Ateyohual, para Temazolintlan, para Tecajete, para Xochipahpatlan, para San Juan tepetl, 30. para nochi tlananquiliti —­cemanahuac—­ nochi tlatomontihuallaz, tlapetlantihuallaz, 31. para motlalanaz ahhuechtli, para popocaz tepemecatl. 32. No ticnequih timaltizceh, no ticnequih timoahhuechozceh, —­no ticnequih ta, no quinequih nochi—­ ma mopahpaca nochi ni tlaltepactli, 33. nicanin melahuac ya tlatlacca —­ya tlicuicca Chicomexochitzin. 34. Naman quena tiquillamiquih— ni tocoztumbre,­ ticmacaz ce refrezcoh, ticmacaz ce chocolatl, ticmacaz ce pantzin, ce cigarro, ce guajolote, ce gallina —­zan tlen oncah pan tlalli—­ ce dulce,

23. on the magnificent mountain range, Mexico’s cordillera, the Sierra —­all will come—­ 24. to México Chiquito [the earth’s sacred lands] —­all will come continuously—­ 25. to the top of Tres Pozitos, everywhere —­all [rain-­moisture-­dew] will come. 26. All of the witnesses to this great altar—­ the ancient ones, the ancestors are coming —­they are coming this way—­ 27. the mirror–­sacred lightning entities, the mirror–­sacred thunder entities, the sacred thunderer Santo Vacián here 28. —­they will bring the rain. 29. Around here are the witnesses for San Jerónimo, for Laguna, for La Cueva, for Ichcacuatitla, for Tres Pozitos, for Xihuiyoh, for Ateyohual, for Temazotintlan, for Tecajete, for Xochipahpatlan, for San Juan hill, 30. so that everything will work —­in the entire world, in the cosmos—­ all will come with thunder, all will come with lightning, 31. so that the rain will emerge and rise up, so that the mountain range will smoke. 32. We also want to bathe, we want rain to soak us —­you also want this, all of them want it, too—­ may this earth be washed, 33. truly, everything has already burned here —­beloved Seven Flower is furious. 34. Now we remember— this our costumbre,­ you will give them a soft drink, you will give them some chocolate, you will give them bread, a cigarette, a turkey, a hen —­all that there is on earth—­ a sweet,

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ce paletas —­nochi ticmacah—­ ce chocolatzin —­nochi ticmacah. 35. Melahuac ya nican timocuezoah, ya nican ticchocatihuallohuih—­ 36. huicatihuallauh Antihuatl huicatihuallauh, chocatihuallauh, para huallaz nicanin para tlanqui tlatla toChicomexochiuh. 37. Naman quena oncah mezah, oncah juntah pan Ichcacuatitlan, 38. Poztectli nochi tiahcitih nopeca in caltencuatipan, in calaxochpan —­timoquetzatih— 39. yehyectzin campa Antihuatl tlananquilitih pan Ichcacuatitlan 40. —­timoquetzatih— caltencuatipan ipan calaxochpan. 41. Santo Vacian ­yani huicaz, Santa Rosa blanca ya quiyecanaz, nochi tlayecanazceh ayacachmihtonianih, huicanih, antihuameh, tequichihuanih, nochi yazceh. 42. Ay, María purísima, ay santísima, 43. Tonanan Aserenah, Totatah Aserenah, nochi hualpopocaz tepemecatl, nochi hualpopocaz pan chicome rramal, yehyectzin hualtihuallaz, ahhuechtli huicatihuallaz, huicatihuallaz Antihua Totatah. 44. Ay, María purísima, 45. pan ni junio, pan ni julio, pan ni agosto, campa Dios iconehuan quitepahuazceh tetzintlan, cuatzintlan Chicomexochitl—­ 116  : The Postectli Pilgrimage Begins

a lollipop —­we give everything—­ a little beloved chocolate —­we give everything. 35. Truly, we are sad here, we come along here weeping—­ 36. the ancient ones, the ancestors come singing, come singing, come weeping, they will come here because our Seven Flower, burning without end, has finished. 37. Now there is an altar offering, a mezah, a gathering at Ichcacuatitla, 38. we will arrive at Postectli­ outside the house, at the entrance, in the passage —­we will stand up— 39. where the Ancient One responds, splendidly, at Ichcacuatitla mountain place­ 40. —­we will present ourselves— at the house on its doorstep. 41. This Santo Vacián, he will sing, white Santa Rosa will guide him, everyone will lead the rattle dancers, the singers, the ancient ones, the workers, everyone is going [to join in]. 42. Oh, purest María, oh holiest one, 43. our Mother Water Siren, our Father Water Siren, everything is going to smoke the entire mountain range, everything is going to mist at the seven branches, it will come, magnificently, the rain will come singing, our Father, the Ancient One will come singing. 44. Oh, purest María, 45. in this June, in this July, in this August, beneath a stone, beneath a tree, where the children of God are going to sow Seven Flower—­

46. para mozcaltiz, para yehyectzin mahmaltiz, para mozcaltiz Chicomexochitl. 47. Yehyectzin campa huallaz Chicomexochitl, 48. cihuapiltzin Chicomexochitl ayohtzin, Chicomexochicuaxilotzin, Chicomexochipapatzin, Chicomexochitzinpitzachilli, ce apazotl, ce alahhuenoh, —­nochi huallaz—­ ce ayohtli, —­zan tlen oncah—­ ce tlapiyaltzin, ce cuacuahtzin, mazatzin, ce gallina, ce puerco, nochi hualtihuallazceh—­ 49. para no maltizceh, no atlizceh, no moezzocuizceh. 50. Ay, María purísima, 51. pan ni tonatiuh, pan ni junio, pan ni julio, pan ni agosto, pan octubre, hasta pan enero, pan marzo, 52. melahuac nochi timahuiztilizceh toChicomexochiuh. 53. Timahuiztilizceh Aserenah, timahuiztilizceh campa quipiya ioficina, campa quipiya imezah, campa quipiya ecahuiltzin, campa quipiya ioficina, nochi hualtihuallazceh, 54. nican tlatomoniz-­tlapetlaniz. 55. Ay, María purísima, nochi hualtihuallazceh. 56. Ay, María purísima, Santo Vacian ya quihualtepehuati ahhuechtli pan chicome rramal, 57. yehyectzin hualtihuallaz ahhuechtli popocatihuallaz. 58. Ay, María purísima.

46. so that it will grow, so that it will be well bathed, so that Seven Flower will grow. 47. Where, beautifully, Seven Flower will come, 48. little girl Seven Flower [revealed in] a beloved squash, Seven Flower—­a beloved banana, Seven Flower—­a beloved potato, Seven Flower—­a beloved chili, some epazote herb, some mint, —­everything [abundantly] will come—­ a squash, —­all that there is—­ a beloved animal, a beloved cow, beloved deer, a hen, a pig, all are going to come—­ 49. they, too, will bathe, they, too, will drink water, they, too, will produce blood [to live]. 50. Oh, purest María, 51. on this day, in this June, in this July, in this August, in October, up to January, up to March, 52. truly let all of us honor our Seven Flower. 53. We will honor Water Siren, let us honor where she has her residence, where she has her mezah, where she has her blessed refuge, where she has her home, everybody will come, 54. here it will produce thunder-­lightning. 55. Oh, purest María, all of them will come. 56. Oh, purest María, Santo Vacián will bring the rain up to the seven branches, 57. splendidly, continuously, the rain will come smoking, giving off vapor. 58. Oh, purest María.

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59. Naman quena mochiuhtoc mezah, mochiuhtoc huei juntah, 60. nochi hualtoqueh, hasta pan Estados Unidos, hasta mexicanos, nochi para Cruz Blanca, para Cacahuatenco, para Guayabo, para La Pita, 61. para nochi hualtoqueh hasta Sasaltitlan, 62. nicanin nochi hualtoqueh Dios iconehuan, hasta ipampa Guayabo ranchoh, hasta nicanin Tizah ranchoh, nochi hualtoqueh hasta pan Cruz Blanca, hasta pan Estados Unidos, 63. nochi hualtoqueh Dios iconehuan campa hualtoqueh—­ toamigoz, toamigaz. 64. Ay, María purísima, Dios santísima.64 The ritual specialist Catarina begins her chant forcefully, with little ambiguity. She greets the water, lists the offerings, situates the ritual in Amatlán, and states that the organizer, Cirilo Téllez, like everyone in his community, is thirsty—­mortally so (lines 1–­4). In asking for rain so that life can go on (lines 5–­6), she affirms that people are going to present themselves at the “office” of Water Siren–­Apanchaneh, meaning her residence, the sacred hills (line 7–­9). She describes how dew and the clouds will arise at these revered places (lines 9–­12), invoking an image that reflects the copious copal smoke spiraling around her as she chants.65 After naming the cultivated plants that will benefit from rain, Catarina lists more hills where the water dweller reveals herself and, notably, the “seven branches” where the hills are said to be born (lines 13–­18).66 Catarina describes how the coming rainstorms will veritably sing with thunder and lightning, and she links the Seven Flower–­Five Flower twins with the ancient mother-­father pair, associated by the Nahua with the earth (lines 19–­21). She again describes how smoke, conflated with water vapor and mist, reveals rain clouds forming across Mexico’s mountainous landscape (lines 22–­25). Catarina twice mentions México Chiquito (lines 16 and 24), a distant cave site held sacred by Nahua and Otomí practitioners of el costumbre rituals, as well as Tres Pozitos (lines 25 and 29).67 She invokes once again

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59. Now a mezah has taken place, a large gathering has occurred, 60. all of them have come, even from the [USA], even from the [United States of] Mexico, everyone from Cruz Blanca, from Cacahuatengo, from Guayabo, from La Pita, 61. all of them have come even from Sasaltitla, 62. here all of God’s children have approached [the altar], even from the village of El Guaybo, from the village of Tizal, they all have come from Cruz Blanca, from the United States, 63. all of God’s children have come to this place they have come—­ our friends. 64. Oh, purest María, most holy God. the witnesses (i.e., the ancient ones related to the earth, to lightning and thunder, and Santo Vacián, likely San Sebastián), whom she implores to observe the ritual offerings and distribute the rain in exchange (lines 26–­28). She describes these phenomena as “mirror-­ lightning” and “mirror-­thunder” (line 27).68 The ritual specialist continues in the same vein, repeatedly invoking the sacred hills to respond as witnesses and bringers of rain on behalf of all existence (lines 29–­31), which she expresses as cemanahuac, the sacred cosmos. She extols the beneficial mists, clouds, and rain that bathe people and wash the earth (lines 32–­33). But, as she remarks, Seven Flower is already burned by the sun (line 33), so only by observing the costumbres and dedicating offerings to apanchaneh can people urge her to reciprocate and send the much-­needed rain (line 34). Everyone may be saddened by the drought, but they express the belief that through concerted action, singing/chanting, and weeping, the spirit entities and the people themselves can save “our Seven Flower,” styled “toChicomexochiuh” (lines 35–­36). She anticipates the gathering of people in Ichcacuatitla and draws an analogy between Postectli and a dwelling to describe the water gutter where the rain falls around the base of a house, and the mountain as a threshold (between earthly and celestial realms) where people present themselves and their offerings (lines 37–­40). She

again names Santo Vacián along with white Santa Rosa, who, respectively, sing and direct the entourage and all those who have come to do the work of the ritual (line 41).69 At the about midpoint of her chant the ritual specialist begins all over again. She invokes the Virgin Mary– ­Tonantzin, female and male aspects of apanchaneh, and smoking mists and clouds, describing how the spirit entities will bring rain (lines 42–­43). She names the months of the main growing season in the Huasteca and invokes the image of men planting Seven Flower, the all-­important maize crop. Because Seven Flower is associated with seeds in general, she juxtaposes the appellation with the names of specific plants (e.g., “beloved banana” Seven Flower) and names in endearing terms the animals that people raise. She adds to the list, interestingly, the deer (lines 47–­48). After reiterating that they need water for bathing and drinking, she observes (line 49) that water provides people with their blood (i.e., water produces the crops, which, by transferring the sun’s energy, animates them). After invoking the Virgin Mary–­Tonantzin again and repeating the months of the year (extending the calendar this time to incorporate the secondary growing season), the ritual specialist also asks people to honor Water Siren–­Apanchaneh (lines 50–­54). She ends with a long, exuberant acknowledgment (lines 55–­64) of those who attend to the rituals (calling them “our friends”), as if to counteract the declining numbers of active followers of el costumbre.70 The final destination during this ritual sequence is the outside cross (cruz afuera) altar, erected in an area just outside the door of the xochicalli. There participants assembled around a small, shoulder-­high platform (cuatlapechtli) made from poles surmounted by a cross and an arch. Because the Christian cross for the Nahua is a manifestation of tonatiuh, the sun, it is associated with the radiant heat and light that animates the whole cosmos. As we have mentioned,

Left to Right Photo 3.50. Smoke from copal incense sacralizes the area as helpers arrange the offerings at the cruz afuera (“outside cross”) altar. The man facing the camera shakes a rattle as musicians play sacred melodies. Photo 3.51. Participants continue to assemble as they form a circle around the altar. Photo 3.52. Led by the musicians, participants circumambulate the outside cross altar as an act of respect directed to the sun. For the Nahua, the sun is the prime exemplar of the sacred principle that permeates all reality, which they call Totiotzin, Our Honored Divinity.

when people invoke the sun they tend to address it as “Jesús” when speaking Spanish (although, just as often, they say “Totiotzin” in Nahuatl), and so it is in this cross-­ sun association that Totiotzin reveals itself more clearly than in the other forms it takes. Helpers skewered marigold blossoms at regular intervals on a long vine to make a ritual implement called mecaxochitl (“flowered vine”). The flower-­decorated vine was strung from the arch erected over the cruz afuera altar to the arch over the altar inside the xochicalli. In an interesting appropriation of modern

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technology people told us that it is “like a telegraph wire,” serving to connect the two altars. We also learned that the outside cross altar attracts spirit entities and directs them to the interior of the shrine, and thus the vine works as an antenna. We asked ritual specialist María Dolores Hernández about this device she called simply mecatl (and in Spanish, rosario or “rosary”). Speaking in Nahuatl, she confirmed that it transmits the chants to the spirit entities: “Right now, it’s like you were conversing over this mecatl connecting heaven and earth, yes. All that you talk about— whatever we want, how we live, what we are doing—all of the hill lords [tepexocomeh zeñorez] there are going to talk it over; they are going to speak, they will respond.”71 While the musicians played the sacred music, participants adorned the cruz afuera platform by laying out a tied bundle of bloodied paper figures topped by a petate of cross cuttings, coyol palm adornments, bouquets of flowers, and food and drink. The musicians then gathered everybody and circumambulated the installation four times counterclockwise and again four times clockwise

1. Tictlalicoh piyo para Dios, 2. tictlalicoh ce cerveza, ce pecsi cola para Dios, 3. tictlalicoh ce veladora para Dios, 4. tictlalicoh ce cruz para señor santo salud. 5. Tictlahpaloah para ma techtlapopolhui, pampa ya titonalmicqueh pan ni tlatlanextli, pan ni mundo, pan ni iley, pan ni tlaltepacpan. 6. Yeca ticnequih ma techaltih quentzin inin la Serenah huan Antihuatl, 7. ma techaltican huan ma quialti nochin campa titequititoqueh para titocazcehya, para tiquintemazceh tlatoctzin, 8. no ceceztoc tlaltepactli, no nopano eltoz cualli. 9. Yehyectzin campa cahuanitih, moxochiquetzati ipan nopa tlamayantlalli, ipan ce tlaalahuantlalli, pan ce tlalixtli, pan ce tlacomolli.

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(photos 3.50–­3.52). A participant told us that circling the cruz afuera “presents the four directions and the sun.” The practice draws together or centers the four corners of the platform in order to contain it and bring it within a well-­ ordered space. Plausibly, the movement of musicians and participants counterclockwise and clockwise also serves to center the proceedings by bringing them into balance as well as order. In an act called atoyahualiztli (or sometimes atoyahualiatli, both terms meaning “sprinkling of water”), Cirilo and helpers cast water into the air to enact the phenomenon of the precious falling rain.72

Cirilo Speaks at the Outside Cross (Chant 7) The videographer recorded this oration by Cirilo as he stood before the altar dedicated to the cruz afuera, the outside cross altar. In it the ritual specialist spoke at length about people’s planting activities and daily needs while pleading with the spirit entities—­exactly as a supplicant might present a case before a judicial panel.

1. We came to offer a chicken for God, 2. we came to place a beer, a Pepsi-­Cola for God, 3. we came to offer a votive candle for God, 4. we came to place a cross for the holy lord of health. 5. We greet him so that he forgives us, because already we are dying of the heat in this dawn, in this world, in this law, on this earth. 6. That is why we want to bathe us a bit ­ this Siren and Ancient One, 7. let them bathe us and bathe everything where we have worked to sow, now to plant, so that where we put in the blessed maize 8. the earth, too, will be cooled, refreshed, there, too, it will be fine. 9. Beautifully, where it will go growing, it will flower there on fertile earth, in the moist earth, on the earth’s face, in a valley.

10. Yehyectzin campa mopanquetzati, yehyectzin quehcatzan moceliltiz, axnopeca ce ventarrol, axnopeca ce quitlaquepazoltiquizati tlatoctli, 11. inin tlen nenticah nepa huahcapan tohhuantin yeca ticchihuah, yeca timocuatotoniah ica ni tlen iley de Dios. 12. Quitlalqui Totatah para queniuhcatzan tiitztozceh pan ni campo, campa titequitizceh para yehyectzin tiitztozceh. 13. Ce conetl mozcaltiz para tlen ica—­ tiqueleliltiah ce etl, ce chilli, ce pilcintzin, ce coztic, ce yatzin, 14. tictocazceh nochi ma eli—­ o ce chichimequetzin, ce cuaxilotzin, ce ohuatzin, o ce alahhuenon, o ce apazotl para toconehuan, 15. nochin yanopa ca paxalozceh tianquiztlalitih ne tianquiz quincohuilizceh. 16. Yehyectzin tlatezcapan campa yohual campa eltoz—­ 17. nochin yehyectzin tlacahuanpan campa eltoz. 18. Na yeca yanopa nicnequi yanopa ca nimocuatiltih, 19. yanopa ca niquinnohnotztoc, huan yanopa ca nimechnotztoc nouhquiya. 20. Nicanin iuhquinon titeicneltzitzin, titontohtzitzin, tihuihuitzitzin, 21. axticmatih campa tinehnentinemih, 22. pero ahciz orah, technemiltiz toteucco Dios. 23. Nochin tiquixnamiquizceh totlatohhui, nochin tiquixnamiquitih tomezah, 24. yon vangelio huan yon catequizta, nican axacah tlanahuatia, 25. maz tlanahuatia toteucco Dios huan Antihuatl. 26. Ce pastor tlanahuatia—­ ya quinequi quinnahuatiz ipionez

10. Beautifully, where it will go stand itself up, beautifully, how it will germinate, may there be no damaging wind, may no one pass by to injure the tender plantings, 11. those who are out there, up high. for whom we hold [this ceremony], we are concerned, for this reason, about the law of God. 12. Our Father–­God determines how we will make a living on this land, where we will work in order to live well. 13. So that a child grows—­ we cultivate some beans, some chilies, beloved little maize, beloved yellow maize, beloved black maize, 14. we will sow everything—­ a beloved dog bean, a beloved banana, a beloved sugarcane, or some mint, or some epazote herb for our children, 15. with all that they will go to the market where others will buy [things] from them. 16. A beautifully clear, mirror-­like space is where [God], where [things] will be—­ 17. everything is beautifully gleaming where they will be. 18. That is why I want this—­this very thing—­ why I have tired myself out with this work, 19. why I have spoken to [the spirit entities], and why—­with this—­I have invoked you all. 20. Around here, we are poor, humble ones, we are a little foolish, a little slow, 21. we do not know where we are wandering, 22. but the time will come, our lord God will guide us. 23. All of us will take care of our crops, all of us will take care of our mezah, 24. neither the evangelist nor the catechist, no one commands here, 25. only our lord God and Ancient One commands. 26. A pastor commands—­ he wants to tell his followers

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ya que axnelli, ya que axma quichihuacan ni tlamantli, 27. ma catequizta por igual nouhquiya quihtoa para axcualli, nouhquiya mococozceh—­ 28. huacca techcuiliah hueltah pampa quimahuiliah ni tlamantli. 29. Pero na haztah nicuecuetzin nimozcaltih para ica ya ni niixtlapanqui, ni no nimotlacachihuato, 30. no ya niviejoh huan nican nihuallauh, nican niitztoc pan ni horah, nitequiti ica yainin. 31. Iuhquinon na niprobeh nieltoya, naman nopa eltoc nochan tlen nechmacatoc toteucco Dios, tlen nitequititoc, nochin nopano eltoc—­ 32. tlan ninequizquia niquincohua tlapiyalmeh no nieltozquia niricoh, pero na axcanah nozquero—­ nochan nicquetzaz. 33. Para ce tlapiyaltzin no tlacua, teicneltzin 34. no mayantoz quennaman tlahuactoc, axticmatih canin tlacuazceh, axnelli quicuazceh tlalli ce piltlapiyaltzin, 35. huan yeca siempre mochihua ce la campeca—­ 36. para ma tlachamani pan ni tlalli, para tlacuazceh tlapiyaltzin, 37. nouhquiya atli ce tlapiyaltzin—­ para quimacaz fuerza, quimacaz nochi cualli ezzo. 38. Iuhquinon na niquihtoa iuhquinon itlanahuatil toteuco Dios, 39. iuhquinon quichiuhqui, iuhquinon quihtoa eltoc ley 40.—­ley 110, 125 quiformahroah artículo—­ iuhquinin quihtoa ni Antihuatl, iuhquinin quiihtohqui. 41. Toteuco Dios huan Tonatzin, señor de santo salud tictlahpaloah, 42. tictlahpaloqueh pan ni ratoh, ipan nopeca tlahcotona. 43. Ticpaxalotih nepa apixquetl, para nopano ticcuitih fuerza—­

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that [our religion] is not true, that they may not do certain things, 27. in the same way, the catechist also says that [el costumbre] is not good, [but those people] will also fall ill—­ 28. then they avoid us because they are afraid of these things. 29. But I grew up with this [costumbre practice], I was born into it, I have also become a man with it, 30. now, too, I am old and yet here I come, here I am at this time, I am working with this [belief]. 31. So, in this way, once I was poor, and now, there is my house that our lord God has given me, everything I have worked for, all that there is—­ 32. if I had wanted to buy livestock I might also have been rich too, but I do not want that—­ I built my house [instead]. 33. For a little animal also eats, poor little thing, 34. it will also be hungry now that there is drought, we do not know where they will eat, I do not think that a little animal eats dirt, 35. and that is why this ritual is always held—­ 36. so that plants germinate on this earth, so that the beloved animals will eat, 37. a beloved animal also drinks water—­ so that it will have strength, it will have good blood. 38. Thus, in this way, I pronounce, this way it is mandated by our lord God, 39. this is how he made it, this is how it was said, this law 40.—­law 110, 125 that forms the article—­ thus, the Ancient One says, in this way they said it. 41. Our lord God and Tonantzin, holy lord of health, we are greeting you, 42. we have gone to greet you at this moment, over there in the middle of the day. 43. We are going to visit the water owner over there, to bring back strength—­

para nicanin timoquetzaquih yehyectzin canin timoquetzaquih. 44. Iuhquinon haber tlan technanquiliz toteuco Dios, tlan techagradeceroz techmacaz ce achi ayahuitl—­ ¡que bien! 45. Huan tlan quiihtoz techtlatzacuiltiz pampa ayicanah quitlepanitta ni toteuco Dios—­ pampa tohhuantin axcanah titlanahuatianimeh. 46. Quenque tlaxtle tiquixtlapoah ce libroh —­pero nopa libroh, nopa axcanah yanopa—­ 47. nopa nouhquiya quichiuhtoc ce . . . ce criztianoh quiorientarohtiyahtoc nochi nopa tlahcuilolli 48. para ma quineltoquilican catequiztah o ce curah tlen quichihuaz nopano. 49. Nochin quiorientarohtoc para obizpoh para quinamacatih Dios iconehuan—­ ca yanopa quincahcayahua. 50. Libroh quinamaca para no quennopa no tlacuahtih—­ 51. no nopano monamaquiltiz ce tlenhueli para yehyectzin no quioniz ce refrezcoh, no quicuaz nopano ce comidah—­ 52. para monamaquia nopa libroh para quinorientaroah Dios iconehuan—­ iuhquinon quincahcayahua. 53. Huanquinon tlen ixtlamati ixtlamati cualli—­ 54. entoncez quincahcayahuaz ce cequin, quinillia para axmelahuac, 55. titlacahcayahuah ni tohhuantin—­ quienzabeh acquiya tlacahcayahua? 56. Nicanin tohhuantin tictlaliah ce ofrenditah para señor de santo salud titlahpalozceh 57.  para ma ayoccanah techtlatihtihuallauh. 58. Nicanin no timotlahtlaniah perdon ipan ni tlaltepactli campa timoquetzah ca nochin tlen tlatoctli tlen ticuahticateh, 59. porque tlatoctli tlan axeliz nopano, nopano techtlatzacuiltizceh. 60. Yon huei yon cuecuetzin, yonque quenihcatzan nochin, nochin techtlatzacuiltiz,

we are going to present ourselves, here, where, beautifully, we go standing up. 44. In that way, we will see if our lord God has to answer us, acknowledge us, [and] if he shows appreciation he will grant us a misting rain—­ how good! 45. And if he is going to oppose us, hinder us, [it is] because no one any longer respects our lord God—­ because we are not the ones who command. 46. Even if we open a book —­that book there, it is not the solution—­ 47. that was made by [someone], a . . . a [mere] human being has directed all of that writing, that scripture 48. so others may believe in what the catechist or a priest is doing there. 49. All of it is done for the bishop for him to sell to the children of God—­ that is how he deceives them. 50. [The bishop] sells the book so that [all of them] can go on eating—­ 51. whatever they can, like this, will also be sold so they can enjoy a nice soft drink, so they can eat a meal there, too—­ 52. by selling that book they are guiding the children of God—­ with that he deceives them. 53. Then there are some who through study appear wise and well educated—­ 54. but then they will deceive other people, saying something untrue, 55. even we may deceive others—­ who knows who is the deceiver? 56. Here we dedicate an offering to greet the holy lord of health 57.  so that he no longer comes burning us. 58. Here we also ask forgiveness on this earth where we live, where we stand up, with all the crops, which we eat, 59. because if the planting does not grow there, there they will hinder us, punish us. 60. Both the big and the small one, that is how it is for us all, all of us will be blocked, all will suffer,

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61. primeroh tlencanazceh totlapiyalhuan, después tohhuantin tiyazceh inintepotzcoh totlapiyalhuan. 62. Quinon na nicamati, quinon na nitlahtoa—­ nicanin ipan ni, ipan ni tlatlanextli, pan ni [Amatlan] ranchoh, pan ni [Amatlan] tlaltepactli, huei tlaltenantzin, nicanin tlen [amatlacomeh], nicanin tlen itztoqueh. 63. Vangelioz ayoctlen quineltoqueh—­ ayocquinequih quitlatizceh ce cerah, ayocquinequih mopahtizceh, 64. ma catolico por igual nouhquiya nicanin—­ quitlatiah zan foco o ce veladorah, zan yanopa para rezaroah para Dios, 65. pero Dios axcanah quineltoquilia—­ Dios axcanah quicahcayahuazceh. 66. Nican quihtoa toteuco Dios zan ce tlahtolli yohui, zan ce iley de Dios, iarticulo toteucco Dios, 67. nochin yanopa quihuicatih huan axquemman quiyacapanozceh, toteuco Dios, 68. tlan quemman quiyacapanotih vamonoz para nochin, 69. techpoloz de una vez—­ iuhquinin quihtoa ya iuhquinin tlahtoa nouhquiya toteucco Dios. 70. Ce tlanahuatilquixtihquetl quena nopano itztoc compadre Evaristo, 71. —­San Agustin Melgoz nopa no teicneltzin—­ 72. yanopa quinanquilia inin Antihuatl. 73. La Serenah, cacanican huallauh? —­tlan huallaz [nopeca, campeca] huallauh toteucco Dios—­ 74. o huallaz nicanin para Poztectli? o huallaz ca San Jerónimo? o huallaz ca Xochiatipan? 75. Bueno—­nochin cuatro ezquinaz tlen ni tlaltepactli para huallauh ni mixtli, ni ayahuitl, 76. pampa nouhquiya, nouhquiya yohui ca pamitl nochin yahtiuh ca pamitl, axcanah yohui matzacahtic—­ yohui parez. 124  : The Postectli Pilgrimage Begins

61. our beloved animals will go first, then we will go following behind our beloved animals. 62. I like to talk, in that way, in that way, I am speaking about it—­ here in this [ceremony], in this dawn, in this village of Amatlán, in this Amatlán patch of earth, the great mother earth, the people of Amatlán, those who are here. 63. Evangelists no longer believe in anything—­ they no longer want to light a candle, they no longer want to receive a cleansing, 64. the same for the Catholics around here, too—­ they light only a bulb or a votive candle, solely with that do they pray to God, 65. but God does not believe them—­ God will not be deceived. 66. Here our lord God says only one word goes, only one law of God, the article of our lord God, 67. all of it [el costumbre] leads [its followers] never to disrespect or cross our lord God, 68. for if someone disrespects or crosses him all of us will suffer, 69. he will destroy us, eliminate us all at once—­ thus, he proclaims, so, too, says our lord God. 70. My compadre Evaristo is there, like myself, a master ritual specialist, 71. —­San Agustín Melgos is also a poor humble one—­ 72. so the Ancient One answers him. 73. The Siren, from whence does she come? —­perhaps she will come [there, to the ritual] where our lord God comes—­ 74. or will she come around here via Postectli hill? or San Jerónimo? or Xochiatipan? 75. Well, then—­from the four corners of the earth, from whence come these clouds, this misting rain, this vapor, this fog, 76. because they, too, go also in rows, like furrows all going in orderly lines, [the cloud–­mist] does not go twisted—­ it goes in pairs.

77. Iuhquinon na niquihtoa, iuhquinon na nitlahtoa nicanin pan ni santoh arcoh, campa nimoquetzaco, campa nitlahtoco, 78. campa nicamatico iixpantzin toteucco—­ quicacticah tlan queniuhqui niquihtoa toteucco Dios. 79. Nican eltoc ce veladorah, pero nicanin axcanah yon ayotitlaixpano, 80. zolamente Dios ticahuilizceh pampa nochi ya techmocuitlahuia ipan ni tlatlanextli, ipan ni mundo, 81. iuhquinon na nicamati—­ iuhquinon tiitztoqueh huan iuhquinon timomanah pan ni tlaltipan. 82. Nican nochi titlatlacazolohuanih, nochin nican titepeuhqueh pan ni tlalli, yonque anque moquentia ipantalon cuahcualli, calzado de zapatoz, 83.   pero nochin titepehuih pan tlalli, nochin nican titlaezzotitoqueh ni tlaltepactli, 84. huan yeca ziempreh no ce cerah ticmacazceh, ce cerah ni tlaltepactli para mocontentaroz. 85. Yehyectzin no techpixtoz, huan yehyectzin quimocuitlahuiz tlatoctli, 86. huan yeca primeroh nican tiofrendaroah, huan zampa Dios, Dios tlananquilia, 87. para quemman tlananquilia para quena—­ oncah niman huetzi achi atl. 88. Iuhquinon na nihuallauh, iuhquinon na nicamatihtihuallauh nicanin ipan ni, ipan ni campa itztoc toteucco Dios canin inquitlachiltoqueh nicanin. 89. Iuhquinon tlanahuatihtoc toteucco Dios—­ axcanah tohhuantin titlanahuatianimeh, 90. yon axcanah tohhuantin tigobiernoz, axcanah tohhuantin tigobernadorez, 91. nochin zan ce gobernador, zan ce o ce gobierno—­

77. In this way I say it, in this way I speak here in this sacred arch, where I came to stand up, where I came to speak, 78. where I came to talk, in the presence of our lord—­ our lord God listens to what I have to say, how I say it. 79. Here is a votive candle, but here we do not disrespect or cross him, 80. only to God do we make offerings because he cares for us in this dawn, in this world, 81. in this way I speak—­ we are like this and in this way we are seated on this earth. 82. Here, all of us were born, we all fell here on this earth, even those [rich ones] who put on their fine clothes their good shoes, 83.   we all fell here on earth, all around here we have sprinkled our blood in this world, on this earth, 84. and that is why always we will give it a candle, a candle to the earth so that it, too, will be content. 85. Beautiful, too, will be our harvest, and the plantings will be well cared for, 86. and here, first we make an offering, and afterward God, God responds, 87. for when [God] does respond, yes—­ right away a little rain falls. 88. In this way I come, in this way I come speaking here, in this place here where our lord God is, where you are seeing him, here. 89. In this way our lord God has mandated it—­ we are not the ones who command it, 90. neither are we the government, nor are we the governors, 91. in all, there is only one governor, there is just one government—­ The Postectli Pilgrimage Begins  :  125

92. solamente gobierno Dios pampa yohual technahuatia pan ni tlatlanextli, nochin la República, Estados Unidos, 93. nochin ya quinahuatia. 94. Pampa quemman quiihtoz techpoloz—­ zanzampa tlatlicuiltiz nopa titlamih para nochin. 95. Cequinoc huallazceh tlan quihuelittaz huan yeca axtechpoloa ni Dios—­ pampa tlan techpoloz, ya tlami. 96. Huan ohuih para quineliltih —­ohuih para queniuhcatzan quinchihchiuhtiyahqui—­ 97. quehcatzan para cuahuacayoh mocuayaya? —­naman ayoccanah mocua. 98. Huahcahquiya tlatlacualtiyayah quenne —­axquihuelittac toteuco Dios—­ 99. quiformarohtiyahqui nochin ni tlahtolli huanquinon naman mocahuato—­ 100. ica ce piyotzin titlaezotizceh, ica ce piyotzin tiquezotizceh tlaltepactli —­iuhquinon yohui ni cuenta. 101. Axcanah zan tohhuantin ni tlanahuatilli, 102. no technahuatia toteucco Dios, huan technahuatia Tlaltepactli Antihuatl, —­nochin yani pan ticuitoqueh cuentah—­ 103. yani nochin pampa tlatectli yohui cada dios tlalli, 104. ma nochin nicanin tlen cerros nochin quipiya itocah, yohui tlatehtectli, yohui tlatlaquentilli. 105. Yeca queniuhcatzan tiquihtozceh para axnelli—­ tlen huei ixtlamatiquetl o tlen hueyi rico, 106. nochin zancehco timoquetzah—­ yon rico yon pobreh pero zancehco tihuallohuih, zancehco titepehuih.

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92. God alone is the authority because it is he who commands us in this dawn, all the Republic [Mexico], the United States, 93. he commands everything. 94. Because when he choses he will eliminate us—­ he will burn us all at once [and] thereby terminate all of us. 95. Others will come and, if he approves, then this God will not eliminate us—­ because if he is going to eliminate us, everything ends. 96. And it was difficult for [God] to create [people] —­so difficult it was for him to go about making them—­ 97. how was it possible [in the past] that they consumed people [their skulls]? —­no longer are they eaten. 98. Long ago they made rain offerings like that —­but our lord God did not approve of them—­ 99. he went on creating this word, this language, and this is how it remains today—­ 100. with a beloved chicken let us offer blood, by means of a chicken let us offer blood to the earth —­this is how the ceremony is done. 101. It is not solely us who has created this mandate, 102. our lord God also commands us, and the Ancient Earth commands us, too —­in all of this comes our mandate—­ 103. all of this because the sacred paper cuttings go to each earth entity, 104. all of the hills around here, each one has its name, each goes with its paper image, each goes with its vestment. 105. For that reason we will say it is untrue—­ neither the great wise scholar nor the very rich [are better off], 106. we all stand up together, we are equals—­ neither rich nor poor, we all come together, together we spill out upon the earth.

107. Iquihquinon nicanin iuhquinon nicamati nicanin pan ni noranchoh, 108. na no nicnequizquia ipan ce ratoh ma huetziqui atl, 109. pero panoz tan zolo tlananquiliz la Serenah—­ 110. tlan tlananquiliz huan tlananquiliz la Antihuatl ezo cualtitoc. 111. Iuhquinon na nicamati, iuhquinon na niihtihtihuallauh, 112. no niquincentiliz ce ome pionez para quichihuacan ce xochitl, 113. no niquincentiliz ce ome pionez para ma nechpalehuiqui. 114. Quniuhcatzan titequitizceh? —­para no niquintlahtlanahuatiz? 115. Pampa na no niciauhquiya tlen ni carrerah 116. nichuica—­ tlen ni pamitl nichuica. 117. Iuhquinon no nicyaltoc ce quezqui tomin ihuan tlen nechpalehuihtoqueh nopan 118. nouhquiya ce pezoh o ce diez pezoz, ce 20 pezoz o ce 25 pezoz 119. —­nopano eltoc inintomin, axcanah niquitzquitoc. 120. Iuhquinon na niquihtoa, Dios primero—­ Dios Totatah huan Dios padre, el hijo, y el espiritu santo, amen —primero Dios.73 In this long, eloquent chant the ritual specialist first situates his position in el costumbre belief and practice (lines 1–­3). He greets the “holy lord of health” with a cross (line 4) that reveals the sun’s power to provide heat and energy (chicahualiztli), which are taken up by the maize plant and consumed by humans. He laments the fact (line 5) that the sun’s heat causes death and suffering when inadequate rain fails to cool the earth (lines 6–­8). Having declared his intentions and extolled the earth’s beauty using the poetic construction tlalixtli, “the earth’s face” (lines 9–­10), Cirilo vows to uphold the costumbres and protect the Nahua way of life (lines 11–­12). The “law” invoked earlier (line 5) and “the law of God” (line 11 and again later) can be read as the established cosmic order, within which the costumbre complex is its most important expression. He lists some of the crops grown in Amatlán, relating the cultivation

107. Here, in this way, I speak about it here in my village, 108. I would like it, too, if in a little while it rains, 109. but it will happen only if the Siren responds—­ 110. if she responds and the Ancient One responds ­that would be really good. 111. In this way I speak, in this way I come saying, 112. I will also gather some helpers to make flower adornments, 113. I will also gather some helpers so that they may assist me in this work. 114. How can we work? —­how can I ask them to do these tasks? 115. Because I, too, am tired out from this career, this path, this ceremony, 116. which I am doing [at such a pace]—­ this work, this standard that I bear. 117. In this way I have saved a little money and from those who have helped me, too, 118. I received one peso or some ten pesos, 20 pesos or 25 pesos 119. —­there is their money, I have not taken it. 120. In this way I say, if God above all be willing—­ our Father-­God and God the father, the son, and the holy spirit, amen­ —may it be God’s will. of plants to the care and growth of children (lines 13–­14), making the correspondence explicit by mentioning the regional market where people sell their surplus, purchase goods and supplies, and thus support their families (line 15). Cirilo observes the sky’s clarity, a reflection of the world’s radiant, mirror-­like beauty that reveals God-­Totiotzin (lines 16–­17). He describes in the adjacent passage its brightness in more quotidian terms (and reinforces the idea of the obligation people have to cultivate the land as well as raise their children).74 In facing increased opposition to costumbre practice (lines 18–­22) Cirilo makes the revealing statement (line 18, repeated later at lines 115–­16) that he exhausts himself with the responsibility of maintaining his traditions by engaging the spirit entities. He states clearly that the evangelists, catechists, and priests have no authority,

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that only God rules (lines 24–­28); he thus perseveres and expresses gratitude to God for what he has been given (lines 29–­32). And again drawing on an analogy between cultivating crops and raising offspring, he argues (lines 33–­37) that just as people are obligated to provide the necessities of life for those in their charge, so the spirit entities must do the same for human beings and the entire world. Cirilo repeats the idea that the law of God prevails (lines 38–­40), which is presumably codified the same as human law, using language that invokes Mexican constitutional or church authority. Cirilo attributes the uncertainty of God’s response and possible noncompliance to people’s prestations to the lack of respect shown el costumbre practices by Protestants and recently reevangelized Catholics (lines 41–­45). He criticizes religion based upon “that book,” presumably the Bible, and says that it was written by people, sold for profit, and used to deceive people into denying the validity of his own and his followers’ religion—­all bold statements (lines 46–­52). Regardless of deceptions from all quarters, some people understand and are not fooled (lines 53–­55). Cirilo pleads with God to forgive everyone and supply the much-­needed rain (lines 56–­62) so that people (and all creatures) can live. He resumes his criticism of the evangelists and reformed Catholics (lines 63–­67) and brings up the idea that God could destroy everything if people are not careful (lines 68–­69). He again draws attention to his own poverty and that of his mentor, Evaristo, and the other ritual practitioners (lines 70–­72). In using the expression tlanahuatilquixtihquetl, he acknowledges that the role of the master ritual specialist is to speak commandingly and fulfill one’s obligations, which together lead to a successful outcome. He wonders whether the siren, apanchaneh, will listen and come deliver rain (lines 73–­78). He uses the word pamitl (line 76) to describe how the clouds proceed in orderly lines (like the planted rows he wants the water dweller to drench), saying that they go in pairs, not twisted—­an expressive image of the Nahua dynamic of orderliness. Cirilo asserts once more that the people of Amatlán never disrespect or cross God (lines 79–­81), using the word ayotitlaixpano, literally meaning “to cross someone’s eye or face”; he earlier used (in lines 67–­68) the words quiyacapanozceh and quiyacapanotih, which suggest “crossing someone’s nose.” He reiterates the idea that rich people are not better off in God’s eyes (lines 82–­84) and affirms that people who participate in the pilgrimage will receive a hoped-­for sign that God acknowledges their offering (lines 85–­87). In the sort of shift of perspective that is

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prevalent throughout the chants (line 88), Cirilo initially affirms that he is the spokesman who leads the ritual (using the first person, “I”), but ends by declaring that the ritual offering is what enables the pilgrims to see God (using the second person, “you all”). In other words, the ritual serves to reveal divinity at a specific time and place. Establishing God’s authority, Cirilo asserts that people are not the true government and that only one being commands (lines 89–­93). He reiterates that God could destroy humanity but chooses not to because right-­ thinking people show respect, even though others may disparage their practices (lines 94–­95). Cirilo confirms that followers of the true religion have long overcome difficulties and offered blood to the earth (lines 96–­100). The reference to consuming people (or their skulls, cuahuacayoh, or perhaps the fruit of the avocado, ahuacayoh, in a nearly inaudible passage) alludes to an earlier mythic time of cannibalism (or banishment from a paradisiacal realm) as well as human sacrifices of the imperial states’ ascendancy. He condemns these gruesome practices of “long ago” (line 98) as being disapproved by God and contrasts the contemporary ceremonial offering of the blood of fowl as a corrective (lines 99–­100). He further asserts that it is God’s mandate to cut, outfit, and arrange the paper figures so that each one belongs to its named hill—­the hills being the concrete expressions of the abstract spirit entities (lines 101–­4).75 He asserts again that the rich and the poor are equal (lines 105–­6) and that people everywhere await a response from apanchaneh (lines 107–­10). He has gathered the devout to do the required work (lines 111–­13) but declares once more (lines 114–­16) his weariness in shouldering a master practitioner’s duties, repeating the word pamitl, a complex concept along with pantli or panitl, meaning a “flag,” “banner,” or “standard” in Classical Nahuatl, but in contemporary Huastecan Nahuatl, a “row,” “furrow,” or “line.” He pairs it with the Spanish loanword carrerah, meaning “career” or “path,” emphasizing his life’s work and responsibility to carry on the traditions. Cirilo acknowledges that many others have given what they can to keep costumbre practices alive (lines 116–­17) and avers that their money has not been misused or wasted (lines 117–­19). He ends with a slight variation on the customary Spanish Catholic blessing, pairing “our father” with “the father” (line 120). At this point in the ritual proceedings the participants enjoyed a break of several hours before they loaded up and embarked on the trek to Postectli. The hiatus provided us an opportunity to pause and reflect and to check with our companions to be sure that we were prepared for the arduous journey ahead.

Myth of the Nahua Fire Spirit Tlixihuantzin To set the stage for understanding the mythic basis of elements of the pilgrimage proceedings, this juncture seems a good place to recount the Nahua story of the fire spirit. The cooking hearth features prominently in the sequence of locations receiving offerings, and it is a focus of ritual attention on other occasions as well. In Amatlán the people clearly enjoy telling variants of the story of the fire spirit Tlixihuantzin, who occupies a place of prominence in the Nahua pantheon. When speaking Spanish, people call him Juan Flojo (Lazy John) or Juan Ceniza (John Ash) for reasons that will become clear as the story unfolds. We regard this character as a contemporary version of the ancient hearth spirit found throughout pre-­Hispanic Mesoamerica. The ancient Aztecs had a deity called Huehueteotl (often translated as Old God) who was portrayed as an old man with long ears and a face heavily creased with age. Nahua ritual specialists today create paper figures of the hearth spirit (as we will illustrate), sometimes cutting a series of parallel lines in the face to portray wrinkles and extended ears adorned with earrings. We puzzled over the meaning of the earrings because in the stories tlixihuantzin is clearly a masculine character. But in speaking about his paper image of fire, Cirilo said, “It is a woman,” leading us to regard the figure as possibly fire’s female aspect. Arturo Gómez Martínez commented to us that he believes the earrings connect the spirit entity tlixihuantzin to the domestic arena, mainly the kitchen, which is typically the realm of women and girls. Just as fire transforms the forest into a milpa, fire transforms raw crops into consumable food, so the earrings may be a device to stress the importance of females in producing food for the household. The story unfolds this way:76

Juan married a woman with two brothers, but neither his wife nor his brothers-­in-­law knew who he really was. None of them realized that he was the powerful spirit of fire. Every morning his brothers-­in-­law rose early and went to their milpas to spend the day preparing the fields for burning. They returned early in the evening exhausted from the hard labor of cutting and piling the brush. Both men were anxious to get the work done because it was already May and the planting had to be completed before the rainy season began around the end of June. The men were initially perplexed by their brother-­in-­law, who clearly did not share their anxiety about the impending rainy season. But then they grew increasingly angry as Juan rose early

in the morning but did not go to his milpa. Instead, he spent each day sitting by the house fire warming himself. He never left the hearth even though it got to be very hot outside. The brothers came to resent Juan because he did not contribute to the work of growing maize. They began to grumble and called him Juan Flojo or Juan Ceniza, presumably because he stayed near the embers. Clearly, a crisis was brewing. One day, Juan said to his wife, “Your brothers do not like me. It would be better if I left here, if I went away.” His wife replied, “Why don’t you go to your milpa and work? Can’t you see that my brothers go every day to prepare their milpas? They see that you spend your days by the fire and do not work your own fields. You don’t like to labor. Go and work like them.” Juan responded cryptically, “I will do more work on my milpa in one day than both of them have accomplished in these last weeks.” Juan’s wife went on, “If you don’t go and work on your milpa, what are we going to eat? My brothers are working themselves to death, and they have cleared only a small area on the side of the mountain. You haven’t even started your milpa. You just sit by the fire every day. It is already the end of May and we plant in June.” Juan said, “Don’t complain to me. When I decide, I will go and labor in my milpa. I will go and I will do more work than both of them put together.” Juan then addressed his wife’s brothers, “You have spent all of your time cutting brush, but you haven’t burned it yet. Instead you have tried to shame me into working like you. You say that I sit by the fire all day and will not work, but I will do more work than you.” The men replied, “It is because you don’t work, brother-­in-­law. Just like right now, you don’t move, but instead sit by the fire warming yourself. We don’t want to see you again if you only just sit by the fire.” Juan then turned to his wife and said, “All right, I am going to work. Your brothers have measured out a large area with high brush for me to clear and burn. I will get to it right now.” He then left the house and went to the parcel that his brothers-­in-­law had laid out for him. It was a tangled thicket of vegetation and trees that would require a great deal of work to tame and turn into a proper milpa. In the meantime, the two men returned to the areas where they had been working and prepared to burn the large piles of brush that they had cut over the previous weeks. They gazed over at Juan and shook their heads, saying, “Here we are ready to burn off our fields. Juan hasn’t even started to cut his brush, much less waited for it to dry.” The brothers then tried to light a fire and burn the great piles of scrub they had so laboriously cut from the tropical forest. They tried repeatedly but could not ignite the dried vegetation no matter what they did. At every attempt, the feeble flame went out. In frustration they looked over at their sister’s do-­nothing husband standing by his parcel. Without warning, Juan began to

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urinate in the form of a cross at the base of the towering thicket. He lit a match and instantly the flames swept through the tropical greenery, creating an enormous conflagration. Towering trees were engulfed and fell to the ground, reduced to ashes. In short order, Juan’s parcel was covered with a uniform layer of ash (cuauhnextli) ready for planting. The brothers looked on in astonishment. They called out, “Brother-­in-­law, come over here. Burn our fields for us! Do for us what you did for your parcel. The flames came from who knows where—­you didn’t even cut the brush before you burned it. You are a human being, so where did the fire come from?” Juan responded, “You shamed me, saying that I do not want to work as much as you two. You called me Lazy John and John Ash. You spent a lot of time preparing the fields, but you haven’t really done anything. And now you haven’t even burned your fields. You treat me badly, you despise me, and still you want me to work for you? No! I was attacked by my own wife’s brothers and now we shall see. You said that I have no value, that I am not a good worker.” Juan then called forth animals such as porcupines and badgers who served as his helpers, his peones. They prepared and planted the fields in a very short time. When Juan’s wife brought him his lunch, she saw all of the animals and said to her husband, “But I only brought enough mole and tortillas for you. I did not know that you had so many helpers.” Juan replied, “Don’t worry, I will make more food.” He then served the food that his wife brought to his animal helpers. Miraculously, there was plenty to go around. There was even food left over after they had eaten. Juan returned to his house and spoke to his wife, “You stay here. It is better that I leave. Your brothers call me Lazy John and John Ash. I am going to take the fire with me, but you will be able to eat cooked tortillas.” The wife responded, “How can I cook food if you take the fire?” Juan said, “Grind the maize on the metate and make the dough. Then pat out the tortilla and place it in your armpit. The raw dough will cook if you place it there.” His wife looked doubtful. Juan said, “After I leave, they will come looking for me. They will search for me before long.” Then Juan departed. He left his wife and went to stay in the mountains, far from the village. Soon people realized that they were in trouble. No matter how hard they tried, they could not light a fire. Matches did not work and the wood would not catch. They learned the hard way that it is not good to live without fire, and so they went to search for Juan. At the same time, people noticed that Juan’s wife did not seem to be suffering from the lack of fire. She continued to make tortillas in the traditional way and simply cooked them in her armpit. She seemed perfectly content and did not suffer because of her husband’s absence.

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But the woman’s brothers were dying from hunger. They were forced to eat raw dough and were very unhappy. They approached her, saying, “Sister, how come you are not suffering?” She said to them, “Am I not suffering?” They replied, “Why is it that you are eating well-­cooked tortillas, when we don’t have anything to eat?” “Well,” she said, “you are getting what you deserve. You despised Juan and were jealous of him. You called him Lazy John because he warmed himself by the fire. He was ashamed and saddened, and then grew annoyed. It is better that he left.” But she added, “After four days, on the mountain you will see some flames, and you can go try to bring it back to the village.” As predicted, four days later the brothers spotted the fire far off in the distance. The fire was brought there by the partridge. It brought fire to the mountain on its thighs. The fire could be seen from far away. Even people in the village saw it. Everyone was starving, so they went to the mountain to try to bring the flames back with them. Every time they succeeded in catching sticks on fire, the fire went out when they attempted to return to the village. The partridge brought the fire to the mountain, but no one could take it back with them. Out of desperation, they asked the opossum to bring fire to them. But this lowly animal only managed to singe the hair off its tail, and was unable to bring fire to the people. They endeavored many times to bring back the fire but failed on each try. And why couldn’t they come away with the fire? Because Juan stayed behind on the mountain. But the people from long ago, the ancient ones, figured out how to lure Juan from the distance back into the village. People organized an elaborate ritual offering and took it to Juan, pleading with him to return. Juan’s wife agreed to accompany the entourage, and she helped convince him to come back with her. It was little girls who actually carried the fire back with them. The ancients said that only girls can bring the fire back because they are the ones who use it every day. However, they warned, girls who mistreat the fire will be abducted by a snorting bull and be struck dumb. The people promised that they would never again insult Tlixihuantzin and would make him part of every offering ritual. They took many beautiful flowers to him on the mountain, just as they leave flowers by the fire table today. The basic outline of the story of the fire spirit follows that of many other Nahua myths and reveals core elements of their world view.77 Disrespect shown by Juan’s brothers-­in-­ law represents an insidious kind of disorder that disrupts the family and the entire human community. The fire spirit exacts revenge, and people soon come to realize how important fire is to their lives. The story highlights the Nahua conviction that life is precarious: something as

critical and defining of human survival as fire can be withdrawn at any time. The narrative justifies the strategy of employing ritual action to establish and maintain respectful relations between people, the spirit entities, and the essential elements on which life depends. The fire spirit goes into exile on the mountain, and the disorganized periphery threatens to encroach on the village center. It is through people’s moderate behavior and the effectiveness of their ritual offerings that they reap benefits from the

potentially dangerous periphery. Expressing that tension, Juan transforms the disorder of the tangled forest into the ordered milpa with its fertile layer of ash. The myth also establishes the precarious relationship between husbands and wives by emphasizing the often-­fraught interaction with one’s in-­laws. Girls and women play important roles in resolving the story’s conflicts, and as we illustrate in chapter 6, the paper cutters do in fact model the female domestic center by portraying tlixihuantzin with earrings.

Notes 1. Barnes and Branfoot (2006) divided up pilgrimage stages into departure, the journey, sacred space, the central shrine, and return in an exhibit on pilgrimage at Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum. Based on research in Ichcacuatitla, Pacheco (2014: 133, 152, 159) records a somewhat different set of stages and spirit entities associated with offerings at Postectli. 2. Gómez Martínez (2002: 108). 3. Sandstrom (2001d). 4. Dreams in Nahua culture are discussed by Ixmatlahua Montalvo et al. (1982: 89); Gómez Martínez (2002: 73); González González and Medellín Urquiaga (2007: 44, 55); and Lupo (2022). 5. Martínez de la Cruz (2000: 76) also discusses dreams and notes that the decision to hold a ritual event sometimes originates with laypeople who then contract with a ritual specialist to conduct the event. 6. Statement 8, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 01:26:52–­01:27:28 (AILLA resource ID: 284722). 7. Hernández Cristóbal et al. (1982: 51); Martínez de la Cruz (2000: 32); and Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 193–­96) note the interethnic participation in major rituals like this. 8. For Nahua observers’ summaries of this ritual complex, see Hernández Cuellar (1982: 80–­83); Martínez de  la  Cruz (2000: 75–­97); Gómez Martínez (2002: 80–­81, 84–­86, 89, 108– ­20); and Gómez Martínez and Hooft (2012); also see Sandstrom (2001d; 2004; 2005a; 2008: 169–­79; 2012b; 2019: 343–­56). 9. Statement 17, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 01:03:02–­01:04:15 (AILLA resource ID: 284722). 10. Statement 9, VHS Tape 3, MP4 counter 01:12:39–­01:13:25 (AILLA resource ID: 284726). 11. Sandstrom (1991: 23–­31, 80–­100) describes such incidences of violence that threaten people’s lives and livelihoods in small communities like Amatlán. 12. These cash donations ranged from less than a dollar to the equivalent of about US$150.00 at 1998 exchange rates. 13. Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 52); translation ours. 14. Pacheco (2014: 110). A sample of the sacred guitar and violin music from Amatlán recorded by Provost and Sandstrom (1977) is publicly available. 15. In her comprehensive review of Olmec iconography and toad physiology and behavior, Kennedy (1982: 281) writes that

“in shedding its skin [the toad] periodically reenacts the cosmic drama of transformation and renewal.” 16. See Hernández Cristóbal et al. (1982: 62) for a similar description. 17. Gómez Martínez (2002: 145). 18. See especially Ichon (1973 [1969]: 227–­29). 19. Ichon (1973 [1969]: 221). 20. Gómez Martínez (2002: 109); Martel and Terreros (2016: 35–­41). For more on the role of the walking stick among contemporary Nahua, see Gómez Martínez (2013: 186n9); Gómez Martínez and Hooft (2012: 4); and González González (2019: 171). Barrera Rivera, Gallardo Parrodi, and Montúfor López (2001) discuss archaeological finds of sacred walking sticks, and Ichon (1973 [1969]: 426–­29) and Ochoa and Gutiérrez (1996: 121) mention their use, respectively, in Totonac and Teenek communities. Among the Huichol, Gutiérrez del Ángel (2002: 156) notes that walking sticks represent power. Martel and Terreros (2016) present an in-­depth ethnohistorical analysis of the use of bastónes and related ritual implements in pre-­Hispanic cultures. 21. Alternately, the colors of the ribbons may invoke the rainbow, according to Nava Vite (2009: 155; 2012: 13), or the variously colored seed crops, as reported by González González and Medellín Urquiaga (2007: 18; 2008: 110) and Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 103–­4). 22. Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 327–­28). 23. The Nahuatl verb tlacopaluiya means “to cense [something] with copal” (Cruz Hernández 1982: 87); in Sullivan et al. (2016: 121–­22) the verb form is spelled copalhuiā or copalhuiliā. Copal has come into English from the Nahuatl copalli (“incense”), and people regularly gather the bark of the copalli tree for use in rituals. Someone who dances with the copal brazier is a copalmihtotihquetl (Sandstrom 1991: 283). See also Poole (1991) for a description of the complex role of dance during pilgrimages among Indigenous people in the Peruvian Andes. 24. Maffie (2014: 295). 25. Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 91). 26. Compare Gómez Martínez (2002: 83). 27. Statement 10, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 00:01:38–00:02:35 (AILLA resource ID: 284722). Cirilo equates child rearing and caring for the tender shoots once the maize has sprouted, describing the plantings’ covering of leaves, stems, or stalks as their

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itlaquen, a term derived from tlaquemitl, “blanket” or “garment, clothing”; see Online Nahuatl Dictionary (n.d.) at https://​nahuatl​ .wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​204905 and https://​nahuatl​.wired​ -humanities​.org​/node​/​176505. The morpheme quemitl derives from quēmi, “to put on clothes,” which in Huastecan Nahuatl point to the related concepts tlachiuhtli or tlachihualli, “creation, accomplishment, offspring” (Karttunen 1983: 254); also see https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​176455 and https://​ nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​172699. In borrowing the Spanish “zanta agüitah,” using the diminutive appellation for sacred or holy water, Cirilo expresses his deep personal concern about sharing this precious substance to meet all of humanity’s needs—everything, cempahcan, “all together and at the same time”; see https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​204797. 28. See the discussion of crystal gazing in Ichon (1973 [1969]: 256–­59) and Sandstrom (1991: 235, plate 13). A maize-­kernel divination is called tlachixcahuilli, and paper figures are not used during the procedure. Sandstrom (1991: 235–­37, fig.  6.1) provides a description of how ritual specialists interpret the kernels once they have been tossed. See also Sandstrom (2001b); Gómez Martínez (2002: 99–­100), Hooft (2007: 244); and Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 88). 29. Cleansing-­curing rituals in Amatlán are analyzed in Sandstrom (1978, 1989, 1991: 301–­13). The sequence of steps for a typical cleansing is detailed in Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 85–­87). 30. Gómez Martínez and Hooft (2012: 7) write that the paper figures are laid on the ground because these spirit entities have no fixed abode and thus wander ceaselessly in search of victims. González González (2019: 175) notes that wind figures used in a cleansing are laid directly on the earth to differentiate them from more salutary spirit entities. In chapter 7 we discuss how the careful arrangement of the paper figures creates an ordered center that counteracts the destructive, disordering chaos of these agents of disease. 31. See Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2021) and chapter 6 for more on the damaging winds. 32. Ichon (1973 [1969]: 113) observes among the neighboring Totonac that clay pots are associated with the earth, and so it is likely that the Nahua also use clay water pots in their rituals to demonstrate rain’s connection to the interior of the earth. Schaafsma and Taube (2006: 248–­56) discuss the links between water containers and rain in the American Southwest and Mesoamerica. 33. Gutiérrez del  Ángel (2002: 121) states that the Huichol also use lighted cigarettes as tobacco offerings. 34. This flower-­and-­vine “flowered necklace” (xochicoztli) is discussed in chapter 5. 35. Compare similar descriptions in Gómez Martínez (2002: 111); González González and Medellín Urquiaga (2007: 49). 36. Photos A.46–­A.­59 in appendix A illustrate these cleansing procedures in greater detail. 37. See Hernández Cuellar (1982: 46–­47, 141). 38. The ritual specialists’ chants captured on video have been transcribed in Nahuatl and translated into Spanish by bilingual Nahua investigators Abelardo de la Cruz, Alberta Martínez

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Cruz, and Eduardo de  la  Cruz Cruz. The MP3 audio files derived from MP4 digital copies of the 1998 VHS video recordings, along with the annotated transcripts and translations in draft form, with minimal punctuation and formatting, are preserved in the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA). As we have noted, these materials are available for download after free registration at https://​ailla​.utexas​ .org/; see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1998) for more information about the collection. We have versified the orations and translated them into colloquial English to improve readability. Our understanding of the Nahuatl has been greatly aided by the review by Brisa Sánchez Zavala of our English translations and by Eduardo’s and Abelardo’s generous feedback on the most challenging glosses. The interpretation of the speakers’ poetic expressions, sometimes ambiguous, is our own. 39. Chant 1, VHS Tape 4, MP4 counter 00:56:21–­00:59:52 (AILLA resource ID: 284728), recorded by videographer Benjamín Marín López, transcribed and translated into Spanish by Abelardo de la Cruz and Alberta Martínez Cruz. 40. Lupo (1995: 89) affirms the blunt way that the Nahua address their spirit entities. It is intriguing that this practice contrasts with the way Nahua interact with each other, which is far more circumspect and indirect, as direct questions can be considered rude. 41. The Nahuatl term yohual in line 3 serves as a pronoun in this context, referring to toteuco Dios, “our lord God.” With some reservation, we translate it as “he,” although the term itself does not specify gender. Its usage throughout this oration (in nine places altogether and elsewhere in the chants and daily conversation) may be understood to mean “night” in other contexts. The word yohualli is more commonly used in Amatlán to refer to nighttime, so the short form that appears here is ambiguous and remains open to interpretation. Compare yohua and yohualli in Online Nahuatl Dictionary (n.d.); see https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/​node ​/​176623 and https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​172286, but see https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​201674. 42. The expression quitlahtlacoltizceh (which Cirilo pronounced quitlahtlacolizceh, minus the letter t) is problematic. We take it to suggest fault-­finding, blame, or misdeeds that are remedied through cleansings or ritual sweeping, although the meaning of this entire passage remains ambiguous. 43. In a subsequent segment of his longer chant 1 oration, truncated here but preserved on VHS Tape 4, MP4 counter 00:59:26–­01:00:36 (AILLA resource ID: 284728), Cirilo can be heard to address “Dios Totatah, Dios Tonantzin,” unambiguously conflating male-­female aspects of the supreme being. 44. Chant 2, VHS Tape 4, MP4 counter 00:56:21–­00:59:26 (AILLA resource ID: 284728); the transcribers could just barely make out this portion of the audio, spoken by several men simultaneously with Cirilo’s words in chant 1. 45. The speaker invokes the spirit entities generally, without identifying which aspect of Totiotzin he is addressing. It is not uncommon for ritual specialists to speak of these powers in the plural and switch to singular forms of address; here the verb conjugations are pluralized for consistency.

46. The audible portions of three ritual specialists’ chants can be heard on VHS Tape 4, MP4 counter 01:05:31–­01:17:28 (AILLA resource ID: 284728). 47. Martínez de la Cruz (2000: 32) affirms that Nahua ritual practitioners throughout the region never repeat exactly their repertoire from one occasion to the next and that every enactment integrates new elements. This preference for variability in ritual performance was apparently characteristic of Aztec ceremonies as well (DiCesare 2009: 13). 48. See especially Gómez Martínez (2013: 180), who writes about the Nahua altar as a microcosm. 49. Pacheco (2014: 129). 50. Maffie (2014: 13, 137–­48) explains that a sort of opposition or antagonism—­what he terms “agonistic inamic unity”—­ characterizes such an encounter, which is staged as a demonstration of the vitality of the sacrificial victims. We examine more closely in chapter 6 the nature of such opposites or dualities implied by Nahua inamic pairing. 51. Cruz Cruz (2015: 137). 52. Gómez Martínez (2013: 176) remarks that people very clearly believe that spirit entities have the same tastes as humans. 53. Good Eshelman (2004a) examines the meanings of different foods among Nahuas in Guerrero. 54. Chant 3, VHS Tape 3, MP4 counter 00:54:29–­01:01:32 (AILLA resource ID: 284726). The videographer also recorded two additional (apparently less complete) versions of ritual specialist Juan Antonio (Lino) Hernández’s oration on VHS Tape 2, counter 00:57:22–­01:03:02 (AILLA resource ID: 284724) and VHS Tape 3, MP4 counter 01:39:46–­01:43:17 (AILLA resource ID: 284726). Tape 2 was transcribed and translated by Abelardo de la Cruz and Alberta Martínez Cruz; Tape 3 was done by Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz. 55. We omitted Lino’s long beginning here and a shorter verse following line 5, skipping over his measured invocation of more than a hundred localities and geographic features. To document the breadth of the Huastecan sacred landscape conceptualized by the Nahua tlamatinimeh or people of knowledge, we compiled all of the place-­names uttered in chants we recorded, along with the names of spirit entities manifested in paper and invoked in stories. Our inventory appears in appendix D; see additional compilations in Gómez Martínez (2002: 102–­7) and Cruz Cruz (2017: 44). 56. Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz and Brisa Sánchez Zavala helped us to understand this complex domain (personal communication, July 25 and August 4, 2021) and generously shared their knowledge of the language on numerous other occasions. The Nahuatl verb cēnquīza (conjugated cenquiztoc in past-­perfect and stative present tenses) derives from cēn, “entirely,” “wholly” (from cē, “one,” “all together, at the same time”) + quīza, “to come out, to emerge, to conclude or finish” (among other meanings). The meaning of Lino’s expression tlen cenquiztoc macehualli, translated as “to remain entirely Indigenous,” fits the idea of ethnic identity or remaining steadfast (in one’s identity), despite everything. The verb cēnquīza also conveys the idea of coming together “to finish a task in one sitting,” that is, to achieve

something that is wholly complete (despite obstacles); see Karttunen (1983: 213) and Online Nahuatl Dictionary (n.d.) entries at https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​203365 and https://​ nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​172619. In this sense, cenquiztoc means “for everything to be together”; see https://​nahuatl​ .wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​205473 and https://​nahuatl​.wired​ -humanities​.org​/node​/​174998. 57. Compare similar descriptions of a fire offering in Hernández Cristóbal et al. (1982: 57); also Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 101). 58. See the descriptions of Gómez Martínez (2002: 112); Gómez Martínez and Hooft (2012: 10); and Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 101–­2). Tufiño (2017) presents archaeological evidence for the ritual recovered from a sacred spring in San Luis Potosí. 59. Ichon (1973 [1969]: 299) writes that among the Totonac a tall tree by a water source is a particularly sacred place. 60. Additional chants delivered by Cirilo at the spring are preserved on VHS Tape 3, MP4 counter 01:43:28–­ 01:56:55 (AILLA resource ID: 284726) and VHS Tape 5, MP4 counter 00:09:17–­00:09:56 (AILLA resource ID: 284730). 61. Chant 4, VHS Tape 5, MP4 counter 00:10:50–­00:14:55 (AILLA resource ID: 284730). 62. Nahuatl terms for rain phenomena are sometimes loosely translated and used interchangeably throughout the chants. Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz explained (personal communication, July 13, 2021) that although ahuechtli can refer to dewfall, here it means rain. The word connotes an adequate amount of rain, referring more to its quantity than its intensity. 63. Chant 5, VHS Tape 5, MP4 counter 00:15:39–­00:21:19 (AILLA resource ID: 284730). 64. Chant 6, VHS Tape 5, MP4 counter 00:39:36–­00:44:50 (AILLA resource ID: 284730). 65. Eduardo de la Cruz pointed out (personal communication, July  20, 2021) that the name Ateyohual signifies a stone well (like those at the pilgrimage destination of Tres Pozitos, described in appendix B). Apailan, another unidentified locale, may be a feature of a body of water visited during rain-­petition ceremonies. Nahuas in the region understand this word to mean a whirlpool (probably a Spanish loanword derived from paila, a large metal cauldron). It is said that a person can be sucked into these whirlpools, which some believe are connected to the ocean. The belief underscores the temperamental nature of the water spirit when neglected or abused by people, as the stories of apanchaneh and zahhuan relate. 66. The mixed Nahuatl-­Spanish phrase chicome rramal, literally “seven branch or branches” is spelled with an added letter r by the Nahuatl transcribers to clarify that it is a loanword from the Spanish ramal. Careful bilingual readers may spot other borrowings (for instance, substituting z for s or adding h as an ending aspiration) conforming to IDIEZ orthographic convention, following Sullivan et al. (2016). The geographic term describes the branching structure of mountain ranges that give rise to separately named formations; combined with the qualifier “seven,” it suggests the birthplace of the hills according to Abelardo de la Cruz (personal communication, June 11, 2019).

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67. The caves of México Chiquito (“Lesser Mexico”), or Mayónníjä (in Otomí, “Old Church” or “Place of Two Sanctuaries”), and Mexico Grande (“Greater Mexico”) are remarkable pilgrimage destinations for el costumbre practitioners, documented in detail by Pérez González (2011: 156–­92). The archaeological site of Tres Pozitos is the destination of the 2007 pilgrimage documented in appendix B. 68. Nahuatl-­language expert John Sullivan (personal communication, May 8, 2019) glosses compound words containing the morpheme tēzca-­ (marking the long vowel, meaning “mirror”) using the adjective “sacred” (or adverb “sacredly”), rendering an accurate, mellifluous-­sounding interpretation of these terms as Nahua listeners understand them. 69. The mention here of Santa Rosa, discussed in chapters 4 and 6, suggests that ritual chanting or singing is the means through which the water spirit conveys her response to the participants. The speech of the ritual specialist while in a trance was song-­like, mimicking the melody of the sacred guitar and violin music. 70. We are not certain whether the mention here and elsewhere of “Estados Unidos” assumes “Mexicanos” if left unstated, or refers to the United States of America. People commonly referred to us as “norteamericanos,” although Catarina may have chosen this wording to acknowledge our presence. 71. Statement 21, VHS Tape 5, MP5 counter 00:38:55–­00:39:30 (AILLA resource ID: 284730). For analyses of altars connected by the mecaxochitl flowered vine, see Gómez Martínez (2002: 65; 2013: 186n10); Gómez Martínez and Hooft (2012: 4); and Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 101, 117). In France, Belgium, Portugal, and parts of Spain churches often feature a small monumental crucifix built outside the main building. Called crucero in Spanish (calvaire in French), it portrays the crucifixion and is thus associated with Jesus Christ. Additional research will determine to what extent the cruz afuera altar of the contemporary Nahua derives from this Christian practice. 72. This enactment is described in Gómez Martínez (2002: 112); also Gómez Martínez and Hooft (2012: 11). 73. Chant 7, VHS Tape 3, MP4 counter 00:29:49–­00:41:04 (AILLA resource ID: 284726). 74. Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz and Brisa Sánchez Zavala (personal communication, July  14 and July  26, 2021) point out that

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tlatezcapan appears in ritual contexts but that in daily use it is more common to hear tlayeccan to describe the sky (from the verb tlayēccāntiya, “for the sky to clear”); see Online Nahuatl Dictionary (n.d.), https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​208256. In the passage this celestial brilliance is juxtaposed with another word, tlacahuanpan (from the verbs cahuāni, “to catch fire,” and tla­ cahuāni, meaning for it to be light because a fire has been kindled or a light turned on); see https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​ /node​/​198285 and https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​ /​206016. It seems plausible, given his previous admonition, that Cirilo might attach to this expression the idea of raising children to be strong (to grow and mature) by virtue of the wordplay in tlacahuapahua (combining tlācatl + huāpan); see https://​nahuatl​ .wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​190586. 75. The paper figures—­not only those that are obviously dressed in cloth garments but also the undressed ones laid out in sets of twenty on petates—­are all conceived by Cirilo and his colleagues as being outfitted with clothing, as revealed by their rectangular design. The iconography reveals their raiment, from pockets to pants to elaborate headgear, embroidered blouses, fringed rebozos, jorongos, and so forth. 76. Like the other myths we present, this one about the fire spirit also combines multiple storytellers’ accounts recorded in Amatlán in 1990 that we have preserved in AILLA at https://​ ailla​.utexas​.org/; see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986–­ 98). The main outline relies on the version told by Efrén Hernández Hernández (no.  103), with additional elements supplied by Juvencio Hernández Hernández (nos.  60, 100), Antonia Hernández Hernández (nos.  71, 76), and Domingo Lagos Hernández (no.  86). Hooft and Cerda Zepeda (2003: 127–­50) also collected stories of the fire spirit in Teenek and Nahua communities. Ichon (1973 [1969]: 149–­52) records contemporary Totonac beliefs regarding fire, and Galinier (1987: 104, 303) comments on the place of fire in Otomí (N’hũyũ) thought. 77. Abelardo de  la  Cruz (personal communication, June  11 and July 4, 2019) talked to us about the complex domain of fire and explained that the elusive flames described in the story are called tlixihuitl (literally, “leaves of fire”), the same word used to describe a comet or shooting star in some parts of the Huasteca.

4 Trek to the Sacred Mountain Summit Along the Pilgrims’ Path Following the blood sacrifice in the Amatlán xochicalli, participants engaged in an all-­night vigil. The musicians continued to play as people rested but did not sleep. The altar was the shrine’s colorful centerpiece, gleaming with lighted candles. On occasion, individuals stood to face the altar or moved in a graceful, swaying dance holding a smoking copal incense brazier. Others paraded the ritual items in front of the laden table or murmured in quiet prayer as others sat nearby. Multitudes of spirit entities were the target of activities inside the shrine, but according to the ritual specialists, this initial round of offerings was dedicated primarily to the seeds, earth, and water. The preparatory phase of the pilgrimage was nearing an end. Ritual specialists were still busy cutting paper figures, but the neat stack of petates had grown and their task was nearly completed. The requisite floral adornments and assembled offerings were ready. Early in the morning the sky lightened as people stirred into action. They began to gather up the ritual items and place them into carrying bags and baskets. The pilgrims went about their tasks in a quiet mood, preparing for what lay ahead. As people readied themselves, one of Cirilo’s assistants who had come to help danced with a plate containing a small bag of Santa Rosa leaves, a saint associated both with water and the marijuana plant.1 Cirilo remarked that “Santa Rosa really stirs up the wind when she feels annoyed, but she lets you speak with la sirena. She is a gentle creature who is both meek and humble.” Santa Rosa is regarded as the saint of water, a watcher over the watery realm, and the lord of the fish. She helps fishermen in particular and can be solicited to cure certain diseases. At the same time, if one goes to a strange place and uses the water without asking her permission, people say she will make the transgressor sick with scabies.2 The identity of Santa Rosa apparently blends easily with that of apanchaneh and in some cases appears isomorphic. We were curious to see what people would do with a jar of seawater that we brought from the Gulf as a gift to Cirilo. We noticed the jar previously had been removed from the altar table, but it reappeared, held by Cirilo’s granddaughter, who danced with it. The water had been dyed red from the blood of sacrificial fowl added to it as an offering. There was a mounting air of excitement as people checked their loads and helped each other make adjustments to their packs. The weather was already hot and muggy for what promised to be a long, arduous day on the trail. A ritual specialist carrying the larger walking stick, the presidente, led the way, and another man carrying the smaller, less-­powerful juez implement

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Left to Right Photo 4.1. After a ritual offering that lasted through the night, the participants begin the pilgrimage from the village of Amatlán to Postectli. The musicians continue to play as people carry with them the required ritual paraphernalia and offerings. Photo 4.2. The pilgrims walk up the steep trails crossing the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental. Photo 4.3. A ritual specialist holds a sacred walking stick with palm and flower adornments and candles as the pilgrims pass by.

followed behind the group of pilgrims. The walking sticks served as boundaries to the moving sacred space as the entourage made its way across the countryside. The pilgrims left Amatlán heading northward, following trails through the remote and rugged outback of the southern Huasteca (photos 4.1–­4.12). For most of the day Postectli was not visible, hidden behind hills and the thick vegetation. Inside baskets carried by tumpline and bags hung over their shoulders, the participants hauled the adornments and offerings that would be needed for the rituals on the mountain. Among their burdens were

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a dozen or more live fowl to be used for the blood offerings, and one of the participants carried the thousands of cut-­paper figures safely wrapped in a palm sleeping mat. Dozens of dressed seed figures carried in new sisal bags accompanied the pilgrims throughout the entire journey, and eventually they were returned to the box on Cirilo’s altar. People explained that they brought along the seeds so that they could witness firsthand and appreciate the lavish offerings made on their behalf. By looking at maps after the trek was over, we estimated that the sacred mountain lay about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the village, but as the trail twisted and turned, rose and fell through the hilly countryside, the distance covered on foot was probably exceeded 30 kilometers (perhaps 18 miles or more). The pilgrims passed through remote sections of cattle ranches and isolated Native American villages with thatch-­roofed houses. As they crossed through the more populated areas, they set off rockets that created thunderous reverberations against the hills. Participants informed us that the booming noise anticipated the sound of thunder that comes before the rain.

Left to Right Photo 4.4. The pilgrims pass by Indigenous communities on the trek to Postectli. Photo 4.5. The pilgrims stop at a stream to leave offerings to the water spirit. The woman to the left is sacralizing the area with copal incense smoke. Photo 4.6. People cross a nearly dry stream bed as they draw closer to Postectli. Photo 4.7. Everyone takes a much-­needed rest at a shady spot in the trail. Photo 4.8. Postectli (Broken Mountain) comes into view.

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Left to Right Photo 4.9. The participants slowly make their way to Postectli, traversing rugged country in extreme heat. Photo 4.10. The pilgrims await the return of a small group that has gone to dedicate an offering at a nearby spring. Photo 4.11. Ritual specialist Timoteo from a neighboring village blesses individuals with a sacred walking stick just before arriving at Postectli. Photo 4.12. Postectli looms as the pilgrims approach the base of the mountain.

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On several occasions, as we passed these isolated villages, people would emerge from their houses and donate offerings to the pilgrims to carry to the sacred mountain. Pilgrimages of this sort have significant emotional value throughout the region, and individuals sometimes had tears streaming down their faces as they presented items for Seven Flower and apanchaneh. At the first fork in the trail—­an example of a liminal space that embodies nepantlah, a basic form of motion change in the Nahua universe—­helpers left an offering of a few flower adornments.3 The pilgrims generally walked single file, and the line wended its way up steep hills and down into valleys. We passed by the Nahua communities of Guaybo, Cacahuatengo, Pitzacali, El Limón, and several smaller settlements. Once every few hours at various locations the leaders stopped the procession and instructed helpers to extract a few petates of paper figures from among the hundreds wrapped in the palm-­mat bundle. These paper cuttings very likely embodied the water dweller apanchaneh, although we did not manage to photograph them. Helpers took these images, along with some coyol

palm adornments and a few items of food, and swiftly disappeared off the trail into the forest to leave them as an offering by a spring or cleft in the rock. For the Nahua, the landscape is dotted with special places where sacredness—­Totiotzin—­reveals itself to those able to recognize its presence. When these springs were close by, the pilgrims would always pause to drink from them before proceeding on. To recapitulate, Alan alone accompanied the pilgrims as they walked along during the 1998 devastating drought and heat wave. The other ethnographers either met us at the destination in Ichcacuatitla or traveled with Pamela and Michael in our four-­wheel-­drive vehicle, along with the aged ritual specialist Evaristo and his daughter. In 2001 Alan again walked with the pilgrims while Pamela and Michael drove and Arturo Gómez Martínez and his student colleague arrived separately at the base of Postectli. The arrangement in 1998 was advantageous because it enabled Evaristo to travel to the mountain. In addition, by driving we helped reduce the pilgrims’ burden during both treks by transporting many of the heavier, awkward items, including some of the numerous live chickens and turkeys. The pilgrims who walked and those in vehicles traveled separate routes, joining up again at Ichcacuatitla. At that time there were no paved roads in the region, and the going was difficult for pedestrians and passengers alike. On the first pilgrimage, the heat wave was so intense that Pamela had to idle our vehicle several times along the way when the transmission overheated; the air temperature gauge read in excess of 125 degrees. In 2001, after a torrential downpour the night before, Pamela and Michael left Amatlán before the others set off, with Michael driving. The roads and trails were dangerous and the car slid uncontrollably, in danger of getting mired far from any possibility of rescue. In place of dirt roads the rains had left opaque lakes of mud, making passage treacherous as it was impossible to detect the sharp rocks and deep holes. Travel was frustratingly slow. Those walking from Amatlán to Postectli found the pursuit no easier. The heat and humidity were devastating as we followed the narrow trail that wound through the steep foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental. Even though people presumably were accustomed to the climate, many felt faint and were nearly overcome by the adverse conditions. One Otomí ritual specialist accompanying the group suffered from a respiratory ailment, and the pilgrims stopped frequently so that he and others could rest. Three hours before reaching their destination, Alan ran out of water (it was impossible to carry enough) and showed signs of

heat prostration. During one of the frequent rest stops he realized he was having trouble seeing and his heart was pounding. He fell asleep involuntarily, started to feel nauseated, and feared that he would not make it to the sacred mountain. Over more than eleven hours spent on the trail, the pilgrimage leaders occasionally directed everyone to rest in a shaded spot. The breaks were brief, however, because they wanted us to reach Postectli before darkness fell. The heat, dust, and smoke from distant forest fires were the main impediments faced by the pilgrims in 1998, while in 2001 it was the slippery trails, muddy quagmires, and deep-­ standing water. Throughout the difficult hours the musicians nevertheless played tirelessly and people remained in high spirits. Normally, there is a great deal of talking and laughing on a Nahua journey along the trails, but during the pilgrimage trek people were quiet as they concentrated on the footpath. They interacted with each other politely and no one lost his or her temper. Everyone bore down, intent on keeping pace with the group, and despite the heavy loads carried by both men and women, all managed to maintain their equanimity. The only evidence of discord came about three hours into the 1998 pilgrimage when one of the women who had come from another village asked loudly, with pique in her voice, why a coyotl (“stranger”) was being allowed to accompany the party to Postectli. Immediately a man, also from a village other than Amatlán, responded just as loudly that the stranger (namely, Alan) had donated money and worked hard on the preparations for the pilgrimage; in short, having done his part, he had earned the right to be there. It was the only question posed concerning our role and purpose during any of the five pilgrimages in which we participated. After we saw how difficult our first journey to Postectli was, we became curious to know how important hardship was to the success of Nahua pilgrimages. We concluded that although people were proud of their ability to overcome adversity in making the trek to the sacred mountain, the difficulties did not in themselves seem critical to their appraisal of the endeavor. Most undertakings in the Huasteca are fraught with problems anyway, and the people who live there have come to expect adversity in all forms. The region at large is well known throughout Mexico for its lack of roads, communication systems, and most public amenities. The climate can be extreme, and serious dangers lurk in all quarters—­exposure, injury, insects, poisonous snakes, military patrols, bandits, and desperados, with armed narcotraficantes a prevalent scourge in recent years.

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According to the people we spoke with, reducing the difficulty of the journey would not have reduced the effectiveness of the ritual offerings. In brief, one has to be willing to suffer for the pilgrimage, but suffering is not a requirement for the sacred journey to be a success. Huichol pilgrims who participate in the famous peyote hunt are equally unconcerned about whether pilgrims suffer, although some say that walking “is more beautiful.”4

The Altar Offering to the Seeds and Hills at Ichcacuatitla The immediate destination for the day-­long trek was the xochicalli at the base of the sacred mountain in the Nahua town of Ichcacuatitla, Chicontepec. The weary pilgrims reached the xochicalli sometime after 3:00 p.m., and after resting for only about a half hour, the group resumed ritual preparations. Ichcacuatitla has been a pilgrimage destination since pre-­Hispanic days and, thanks to the remarkable Postectli mountain that towers over it, the town continues to uphold that tradition as a gathering place for devotees.5 The people who lived there were building a new structure out of cinder blocks to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims who came to visit each year. They had already constructed outhouses for the convenience of visitors, and they provided a guide to lead people along the harrowing route to the summit. There is no need for sleeping accommodations because the pilgrims who visit the mountain pursue their goals without rest. Many of the pilgrims from Amatlán had already gone without sleep for days. In addition, the town provided fresh food to pilgrims cooked by local women for each arriving group. In exchange, local inhabitants benefitted when visitors donated money and food to the town or purchased items at local cantinas. The townspeople were notably friendly and welcoming, even though it appeared to us that no one stood to earn much money from the nearly constant stream of visitors to the community. In both 1998 and 2001 those traveling by vehicle took the more circuitous route and arrived in Ichcacuatitla at about the same time as those who walked from Amatlán. After their brief respite outside the xochicalli in Ichcacuatitla, the ritual specialists immediately began cutting more paper figures. They opened the palm-­mat bundle containing the cuttings that had been produced in Amatlán and stacked them in two piles. The ritual specialists worked diligently for hours, cutting more figures, counting them out in units of twenty. After briefly resting, the musicians resumed playing the sacred music to accompany

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the activity. In addition to the sets of figures arranged on their paper beds, ritual specialists also cut some more large-­scale seed figures from colorful paper. Helpers tied the figures to their folded-­paper armatures, dressed them in hand-­sewn cloth outfits prepared before the trek, and distributed them to participants to take on the pilgrimage and preserve later in the box on their home altar. They were in fact tangible souvenirs of the pilgrimage, proof that a devotee had attended the event. In the meantime, the pilgrims from Amatlán unloaded the supplies they had carried, forming a pile in the middle of the floor of the shrine. They stood in a circle around the mound and danced for the next several hours. A loud dissonance grew as several groups of musicians, perhaps hired in Ichcacuatitla or even attached to pilgrimages from other communities, played simultaneously and the dancers stamped their feet as they swirled around the offerings. Thick, billowing clouds of copal incense filled the air, and flickering candles provided an eerie light in the shrine. A long altar table was placed against a wall beneath a rectangular arch. On the arch, helpers attached pinwheel-­like stars made from palm leaves and flowers (called coyolcitlalin, singular, or tiocitlalin, meaning “sacred star”). Atop the altar were two large, wooden boxes that contained the dressed seed figures belonging to the local community, along with other ritual paraphernalia. A few participants from Amatlán danced in front of the altar before beginning to decorate it for their major offering (photos 4.13–­4.17). Similar to the procedure in Amatlán, ritual specialists conducted a cleansing ritual on the ground outside the shrine before completing work on the altar inside. The cleansing involved creating a mezah from cut-­paper figures of polluting winds and underworld spirit entities. The specialists placed offerings on the display and chanted over it, imploring the dangerous forces to accept the gifts. Just as for the cleansing the day before in Amatlán, the idea was to keep these negative entities at bay. We were not certain if offerings were left at a fire table or spring in the vicinity of Ichcacuatitla, as they were in Amatlán. If so, we did not observe the event. Soon afterward, women began to decorate the shrine’s altar in much the same way as in Amatlán. The goal, as before, was to create an attractive space, a miniature version of the larger cosmos that is appealing to the spirit entities (photo 4.18). The altar in Ichcacuatitla was dedicated both to the seeds and to the sacred hill Postectli where the seeds are said to have originated. While preparations were underway, Arturo Gómez Martínez noticed a pre-­Hispanic clay figurine with a walking stick had been carefully dressed and placed by the altar.6

Left to Right Photo 4.13. The sacred mountain Postectli, obscured by smoke from forest fires, looms over the town of Ichcacuatitla, Chicontepec, Veracruz. Photo 4.14. Exhausted pilgrims from Amatlán rest at the xochicalli shrine at the base of Postectli. Seated at center is Evaristo, the visiting Otomí ritual specialist. Photo 4.15. Ritual specialists continue to fold and cut paper outside the xochicalli at the base of Postectli. Photo 4.16. Close-­up of the counted and stacked paper figures outside the xochicalli at Ichcacuatitla. Figures of earth and cross, among other entities, are visible. The photograph previously appeared in Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2017: 114, fig. 4.3); reprinted with the permission of the University of Arizona Press. Photo 4.17. Some pilgrims from Amatlán inside the xochicalli in Ichcacuatitla. The load of offerings carried by the people is piled around the central column.

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As the time neared to begin the dedication of offerings, people gathered before the altar and stood or kneeled as helpers worked to complete the decorations (photo 4.19). Cirilo, who had just conducted the cleansing outside the shrine, knelt before the partially decorated altar, chanting while holding a stack of paper figures in his outstretched arms (photo 4.20). Helpers took some of the figures from Cirilo and began to arrange them in layers on the tabletop. Cirilo stood before the altar holding a walking stick and ringing a bell as he chanted. Just as in Amatlán, helpers brought in chickens, fed them aguardiente, engaged them in mock combat, and after cutting their throats, carefully sprinkled their blood over each of the paper figures laid

Left to Right Photo 4.18. The altar in the xochicalli at Ichcacuatitla. The circular constructions of coyol palm and marigold blossoms on the arch over the altar table are formed in the shape of stars. Photo 4.19. Pilgrims from Amatlán gather in the shrine as helpers arrange offerings and paper figures of seed spirits on the altar table. Photo 4.20. Pilgrims kneel and stand facing the altar as Cirilo (center right), leaning forward and holding beds of cut paper

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figures, chants to the spirit entities, imploring them to accept the offerings. Photo 4.21. Musicians play the sacred melodies until dawn in the xochicalli at Ichcacuatitla. Photo 4.22. Following the all-­night vigil, a man and a woman pose by the altar in Ichcacuatitla. The woman holds a copal incense brazier and a sacred walking stick.

out neatly on their beds. As the musicians continued playing the sacred melodies, women extracted items from the pack and placed plates of food on top of and beneath the altar. Following the offering, the people resumed their all-­night vigil in the shrine. Occasionally, someone would stand before the altar, sacralizing the space with a smoking brazier as they executed a quiet, rhythmic dance. It was a welcomed time when everyone could rest and gather strength for the climb to the summit the following day. Throughout the night and into the next day, the musicians played while people occasionally posed for photographs (photos 4.21 and 4.22), and Cirilo’s work continued apace. He cut another complete array of paper figures for a cleansing that he held outside the shrine. The purpose of the additional cleansing was to ameliorate the symptoms of the Otomí ritual specialist with the lung condition who experienced such a difficult time on the trail. At sunrise, everyone gathered before the main altar and gracefully danced as a ritual specialist blessed them, gently touching each person with a sacred walking stick. Across from the shrine’s entrance stood the cruz afuera (“outside cross”) platform dedicated to tonatiuh, the sun. Over it was the familiar arch decorated with green leaves and star ornaments woven from palm leaves and marigolds. And just as in Amatlán, a vine-­and-­flower “telegraph wire” was tied to the arch to connect it to the main altar inside, illustrating how the cruz afuera serves as an antenna to attract spirit entities to the main offering (photo 4.23). In the early morning, people added palm and marigold adornments and placed food and drink on the altar top. Following the offering in 2001, the ritual specialists conducted yet another cleansing to neutralize disease-­causing winds that may have been attracted to the ritual activity. Holding a cleansing at this point in the

Left to Right Photo 4.23. The cruz afuera (“outside cross”) altar in 1998, dedicated to the sun near the entrance to the Ichcacuatitla xochicalli. A blood-­spattered bed of paper figures lies on the altar table. The vine, to which people have tied marigold blossoms, connects the outside altar to the main altar inside. Photo 4.24. Men lay out the cut-­paper figures of disease-­causing winds and related underworld spirits of the dead for use in a cleansing ritual. Photo 4.25. Cut-­paper figures for a cleansing ritual. Embodying the spirit entities associated with death and the underworld, the figures to the right have been blackened with charcoal.

pilgrimage did not strike us as usual practice, but it may have been done that year in response to some contingency of which we were not aware, such as a disease or other threat afflicting the local community. The ritual specialists laid the white and colorful paper figures of the winds on their beds and precisely lined up the large, charcoal-­ blackened cuttings of man owl and man owl woman along with the leaders of dead souls and their underlings in mictlan (photos 4.24 and 4.25).

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Left to Right Photo 4.26. The ritual specialist pours out aguardiente on cut-­paper figures as an offering. Photo 4.27. The completed cleansing display, viewed from the top. The ritual specialist has placed various food offerings directly on the cut-­paper figures in order to prevent these malevolent spirit entities from interfering with the pilgrimage to Postectli. The cups contain coffee and bread, and the lighted cigarettes in the blackened figures’ mouths are a tobacco offering.

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Photo 4.28. Women approach the cleansing display carrying cut-­paper figures of seed spirits, maize bundles, and a sacred walking stick. The photograph previously appeared in Sandstrom (2008: 174, fig. 6.10); reprinted with the permission of the University of Utah Press. Photo 4.29. Ritual specialist Timoteo chants over the cleansing display while holding a sacred maize bundle. Catalina, kneeling next to him, holds a sisal carrying bag containing cut-­paper figures of seed spirits. Additional seed spirits are in the basket held by the woman standing nearby.

Photo 4.30. The imposing basaltic monolith of Postectli looms above the Ichcacuatitla xochicalli.

A ritual specialist holding a sacred walking stick squatted down over the cleansing array and began to chant, imploring the spirit entities to accept the offerings of the mezah and not to interfere in the remainder of the pilgrimage rituals. He instructed helpers to arrange the offerings on the array, which is considered to be attractive to the dangerous wind spirits. During the episode the women crowded around to benefit from the cleansing’s power to remove the adhesions of these destructive entities. They tightly grasped their walking sticks, the sacred bundles made from ears of maize wrapped in bandanas, and the basket of seed figures and other paraphernalia; we explain more about the meaning of maize bundles shortly. Men poured out the food and drink offerings directly over the paper images as several ritual specialists squatted before

the display and simultaneously chanted in quiet voices (photos 4.26–­4.29). As a final act, they gathered up the entire cleansing array, rolling everything into a compact bundle to hide in an inaccessible spot in the forest. The huge profile of Postectli loomed in the background, overlooking the ritual activities (photo 4.30). The six-member brass band hired for the 2001 pilgrimage had been playing almost continuously since they arrived in Amatlán days before. Returning to the crowded shrine, people gathered up the remaining offerings, ritual implements, and adornments, and everyone emerged into the bright sunlight. Except for brief catnaps (sometimes taken while standing upright), people had not slept for several days, and many showed signs of exhaustion. However, tempers remained even, and the excitement in

Photo 4.31. Ritual specialist Silveria (left) and fellow pilgrims carry lighted candles as they prepare to walk to the base of Postectli.

Photo 4.32. The trek to the summit begins as people line up with Cirilo at the lead.

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Photo 4.33. The pilgrims follow the trail leading to Postectli.

the air was palpable as we approached the final leg of the journey. People carried lighted candles as they departed, showing they were on a sacred mission. Once outside, the pilgrims shouldered their own packs and helped others to adjust theirs. Cirilo checked his carrying bag and steeled himself for the trail ahead as the pilgrims set off for their final destination (photos 4.31–­4.33).

The Altar Offering to the Earth and Clouds beneath the Precipice The procession of pilgrims made its way through the streets of Ichcacuatitla and then skirted about a mile around the mountain to the trailhead. The pilgrims stopped at the community water tank to leave some paper images of apanchaneh, along with a modest offering of coyol flower adornments for the water spirit. The trail followed a dirt road leading out of town before deviating, crossing cattle pastures and leading directly to the base of Postectli. Several people helped Evaristo along to this point, but

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he was far too infirm to go farther. The pilgrims traveled along the trail as it became steeper and more difficult to traverse. After several hundred yards and just before the grade changed abruptly, Cirilo announced that if anyone had to relieve themselves they should do so at that time as it was strictly forbidden to defile the sacred mountain in any way. More than half of the pilgrims scattered into the surrounding brush, returning a few minutes later. We proceeded forward and entered a small patch of shaded tropical forest before encountering the precipitous trail that rose up directly ahead. The vertical climb at this point was exceedingly challenging. With people in front and behind and everyone struggling under heavy loads, the danger of falling and knocking others off their feet was a real threat, imperiling those who followed behind. In 2001 the near-­ vertical trail had been transformed into a treacherous mudslide after the heavy rains of the previous evening. Several climbers, including some of us, would suddenly slip and lose their footing before managing to break their fall. Many more dangers lay ahead throughout the long day’s climb, and it was truly a miracle that no one was injured on either trek (photos 4.34–­4.36). Sometime after the 2001 pilgrimage, an anthropologist from CIESAS in Mexico City was seriously injured in a fall from the same trail. About one-­third of the way to the summit and roughly three hours into the climb, the ritual specialists called for us to gather at a small flat place on the trail called tepexitzintlan, meaning “beneath the precipice,” named for the steep rock wall that towered above the site.7 Everyone seemed relieved to take a break from the difficult trail. Already installed at a spot on the mountain was a small platform altar made from poles lashed to a frame. An arch had been erected over the platform, which held dried-­up coyol palm and flower adornments apparently left behind by previous pilgrims. People unloaded their carrying bags and were soon busy cleaning up the area. They swept away the tangled brush, gathered up the desiccated adornments and offerings that were scattered about, and stuffed the ritual debris into crevices in the rock face behind the altar platform.8 When the area was finally put in order, people began decorating the altar in preparation for dedicating it to the earth and clouds. As mentioned earlier, in keeping with ancient Mesoamerican world view, many Nahua believe that clouds and rain are formed inside mountains—­ within the volume of the sacred earth—­from moisture transported and stored there from the distant sea. A source of rain in this region is said to be the cave of apanchaneh, a rock cleft hidden higher up the

slope, which is why the sacred place below the precipice is such an important pilgrimage destination. The rain god of the ancient Aztecs was Tlaloc, a name related to tlalli, the word for “earth.”9 Helpers perched perilously close to the mountain’s edge as they unfolded the palm-­mat bundle containing the paper cuttings and selected the desired ones (photos 4.37–­4.40).10 At the same time, Cirilo and ritual specialist Catarina began to lay out another cleansing array on a nearby rock (photos 4.41 and 4.42). This was the third such cleansing we documented during the 1998 pilgrimage proceedings. Cirilo laid out the dangerous wind spirits and the blackened figures of man owl and man owl woman. He decorated the altar with abundant coyol palm and flower adornments and placed offerings on the display. Following a long chant in which he implored the dangerous spirit entities not to interfere with the pilgrimage, he tore up the paper figures and gathered them up to hide in the overgrowth some distance from the trail. Because ritual specialists continually deal with

Left to Right Photo 4.34. The violinist and guitarist walk along playing the sacred melodies all the way to the summit. Photo 4.35. The people approach the base of Postectli. Photo 4.36. The trail passes through dense semi-­tropical vegetation at the base of Postectli.

dangerous spirit entities, they must be extra careful to avoid being contaminated by them. For this reason, Catarina took a handful of the coyol palm and flower adornments and brushed Cirilo with full determination. The action served to sweep away the polluting winds that pose a relentless threat to human welfare. During the 2001 pilgrimage several ritual specialists accompanying Cirilo’s entourage conducted yet another abbreviated cleansing at tepexitzintlan near the altar, still incomplete. Additional cleansings to address specific concerns are probably common, an example of the flexible structure of Nahua pilgrimages. A man held a ritual walking stick while others were busy constructing the altar to the earth and clouds. After

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Left to Right Photo 4.37. The pilgrims stop to rest at tepexitzintlan (“beneath the precipice”), where they create an elaborate altar to dedicate offerings to the earth and clouds. Photo 4.38. Helpers unpack cut-­paper figures that will be placed on the altar. The paper petate on top contains figures of cualli ehecatl (“good wind”). The white chicken (left) is an offering to the clouds. Photo 4.39. Close-­up of paper cuttings showing how they are organized and identified. The label on the tied bundle in the center reads la mesa de medio cerro (“the altar at the middle of the hill”), indicating it belongs to the location of the next offering farther up Postectli. On close inspection, one can see that the top petate holds figures of San Bartolo hill. Photo 4.40. A bundle of cuttings labeled viento (“wind”), with visible figures of the good wind, cualli ejecatl, with its characteristic headdress and three V-cuts in the body.

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covering the old platform with one of the large, decoratively cut paper sheets and placing another on the ground beneath it, helpers reverently laid out several dozen petates of paper figures upon them (photos 4.43 and 4.44). Off to one side of the platform they placed the beds of paper figures labeled viento (“wind”) in Spanish. Unlike disease-­ causing winds that required ritual cleansing, the winds in this context are designated cualli ehecatl (“good wind”)—­ the helpful kind that bring rain and life. Women slowly danced while parading the basket of seed figures, walking sticks, and other ritual items as the ritual specialists arranged the altar. A helper handed out the bundled coyol palm adornments to people in preparation for the entregada, the offering dedication (photo 4.45). Just as in previous rituals, the interior earth defined by the space beneath the altar platform also received its offering. From the start of preparations in Amatlán, people had been carefully gathering up every last one of the copious scraps of paper left over from cutting the figures. We observed that someone deposited a portion of them on the ground beneath the altar to protect the pilgrimage

Left to Right Photo 4.41. In the 1998 pilgrimage ritual specialists Cirilo and Catarina lay out cut-­paper images of disease-­causing wind spirits and spirits of the dead near tepexitzintlan on Postectli. Photo 4.42. Cirilo and Catarina distribute offerings on the array of cut-­paper figures at the conclusion of their cleansing ritual. The photograph previously appeared in Sandstrom (2008: 175, fig. 6.12; reprinted with the permission of the University of Utah Press).

Photo 4.43. The large sheet of paper on the altar serves as a tablecloth, upon which helpers will arrange cut-­paper figures, adornments, and offerings. The design cut in the paper reproduces the actual altar with a cross beneath the arch and floral decorations. Photo 4.44. As ritual specialist Lino Hernández (back to camera) and others rest, helpers lay out cut-paper figures during the first stop at tepexitzintlan on the way to the summit of Postectli.

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Left to Right Photo 4.45. Some women kneel as helpers arrange items beneath the first altar on the mountain. Photo 4.46. One man holds a sacred walking stick as another finishes arranging cut-­paper figures on the tepexitzintlan altar on Postectli in this 1998 photograph. Photo 4.47. Cirilo signs his name in blood using a feather of one of the sacrificial chickens. Nahua anthropologist Arturo Gómez Martínez (holding camera) looks on.

participants from dangerous winds and those who might attempt to employ the power they contained. Additional petates of paper figures were laid over the scraps and on the altar table itself (photo 4.46). Before sacrificing the chickens, the ritual specialists fed them a liquid offering and afterward sprinkled their blood on each paper figure. In a remarkable sequence that we had not witnessed before, Cirilo dipped a feather in blood and signed his name across the paper figures arrayed on the altar (photo 4.47). In the Nahua world where everyone must deal with local political officials at some time or other, a signature on a piece of paper is a mark of authority and power. In his ethnographic work in Chicontepec, Veracruz, García Garagarza confirmed that the Spanish word people used for the blood offering is la firma, “the signature,” and he writes that Nahuas saw “for centuries that a written contract has power only when signatures are finally inscribed” and that this “memory is written in blood.”11 By signing the display of sacred paper cuttings Cirilo took responsibility for the altar offering (mezah)—­that is, the entire ritual performance. He also inscribed a series of crosses and zigzags on the paper figures with the blood-­dipped feather. Their meaning was transparent: the cross invokes the sun and the zigzag lines link the altar with water.12

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The pilgrims now danced for several minutes before the partially decorated altar, after which they covered over the bloodied paper figures with a layer of coyol palm adornments. Assistants placed the offerings of food and drink as two men demarcated a sacred space by holding the sacred walking sticks and flanking the altar. As the offering sequence came to a conclusion, Cirilo stood facing the altar holding candles and chanted to the earth and clouds to bring life to the fields (photos 4.48–­4.50). Several days after the pilgrimage he told us about another purpose of his chant. He said he was asking permission of the hill guardians to allow the pilgrims to continue their climb to the summit. In effect, this first stop was a kind of gateway to the top. During the chant, participants placed offerings on the display of paper figures beneath the altar and then lighted candles on the ground near the table (photo 4.51). All the while women grasping the sacred maize bundles danced before the altar as one rang a bell to summon the spirit entities (photo 4.52). Helpers also placed a clay

Left to Right Photo 4.48. People crowd around the blood-­spattered papers before decorating the altar with coyol palm and flower adornments, along with offerings of food and drink.

water jar at the base of the altar containing candles and a dressed paper image of apanchaneh (photo 4.53). The maize bundles that had been transported with such care over the long distance were made of perfect, select ears (mazorcas in Spanish), still enveloped in their dried husks and tied together. The helpers inserted coyol palm adornments and candles between the maize ears, wrapped the entire arrangement in a new bandana, and fastened it with plant fiber. The bundles embodied eloconetl, literally, the “maize child.” Bundles made with three ears of maize are called “five flower,” macuilli xochitl, the female aspect, while those made of four ears are the male aspect “seven flower,” chicomexochitl. Abelardo de  la  Cruz (personal communication, July 4, 2019) remarked that people in the Chicontepec area address the bundles by the general terms of respect reserved for objects made of maize, Chicomexochitzin (“honored Seven Flower” or “beloved Seven Flower”) and Chicomexochiconetzin (connoting “honored Seven Flower maize child”).13 Julia Guernsey

Photo 4.49. Helpers arrange adornments and offerings of food and drink on the tepexitzintlan altar on Postectli. Ritual specialist Lino Hernández chants (center, back) holding candles and a sacred walking stick. Photo 4.50. Cirilo holds candles as he fervently chants before the altar at tepexitzintlan.

and F. Kent Reilly, in their introduction to a wide-­ranging study of bundle construction among Indigenous cultures in Mesoamerica, state that “[u]ndoubtedly, wrapping was also a marker or framing mechanism that identified the contents not only as animated, but as the means through which the sacred could be made manifest in the earthly realm.”14 Not surprisingly, maize bundles featured prominently among the instrumental adornments befitting such a significant religious undertaking. One of the most arresting events of the entire pilgrimage occurred just after this episode. As people stood by swaying rhythmically before the altar, two ritual

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Left to Right Photo 4.51. Women dance before the completed altar. Helpers light candles to indicate that the spirit entities are consuming the offerings. Photo 4.52. Ritual specialists Maria Dolores (left) and Silveria (third from left), holding sacred maize bundles, and Catalina (right, with bell) dance before the altar. Photo 4.53. Water pot containing cut-­paper image of apanchaneh, the water dweller.

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Photo 4.54. Helpers block the entrance to a small opening in the rock into which they have placed a white chicken as an offering to the clouds. Photo 4.55. Food and drink are among the items in the offering to the clouds.

specialists produced a white chicken and climbed a short way up the precipice behind the decorated altar. The men excavated an earth-­filled hole in a crevice in the rock face and placed within it a bundle of coyol palm adornments and candles wrapped in a new bandana. They then put the living bird inside the crevice, along with a handful of paper figures of cualli ehecatl, the good wind. They blocked the opening with a piece of white cloth affixed by wooden stakes driven through the cloth. The opening is called tlacoyoctli, meaning “cavity” or simply “hole.”15 On the cloth held taut over the opening the men laid out bread, soft drinks, and cigarettes, and the white chicken—­a ritual offering to the cloud—­was left there in its makeshift sepulcher (photos 4.54 and 4.55). The now-­ rested pilgrims packed up their items and resumed the climb. We were told that the sacrificial victim occasionally escapes its fate in its burial chamber, and in fact we spied more than one white chicken foraging in the litter among the trees as we ascended. Once a bird managed to free itself, people would leave it to make its way on the sacred

1. Ya tanto trabajo, todos estos días, nochih ticpiyah tlahtlacolli, 2. Nanen–­Tateh Antihuatl—­ campa motlaltoc toteucco Dios 3. ya ma huallauh Apanchaneh—­ ayauhtli, 4. que venga Apanchaneh—­ la lluvia para pan atl, nopa ma motlalana ce atl—­ ce aguacero para ce milli, 5. tlen quichiuhtoqueh ce la lucha—­ ne santo Vaciano, campa nentihuallohuih. 6. Espíritu santo tlananquilizceh pan ni la loma tepemeh, pan Ichcacuatitlan, para Temapache, 7. nicanin María purísima, yehyectzin campa yazceh yeca nicanin pan ni la mezah San Hipólito.16

mountain. Before continuing our climb, Cirilo pointed to the paper figures on the altar and announced that hill figures were testigos (Spanish for “witnesses” or “advocates”) of Postectli, charged with bringing some portion of the offerings to the other surrounding sacred hills. The sharing of bounty is a key feature of the ideology of el costumbre religion.

Catarina and Another Woman Speak (Chant 8) Preserved in the audio recordings were some fragments of prayers delivered quietly but with great emotion by people who stepped up and faced the altar at tepexitzintlan, the first stop on Postectli mountain. After the offering, as helpers finished covering the blood-­ spattered petates of paper figures with a layer of coyol and flower adornments, ritual specialist Catarina blessed the pilgrims as they uttered their individual pleas in Spanish or Nahuatl. Catarina’s own words were just barely audible as she brushed each person with a bundle of candles grasped in one hand.

1. Already it has been so much work, all these days, all of us have faults, we all have sins, 2. Mother–­Father Ancient One—­ where our lord God is settled 3. may Apanchaneh come—­ the foggy rain, the drizzle, 4. may Apanchaneh come—­ the rain in the rivers, may the water rise up—­ a downpour for the milpa, 5. for all those who have struggled—­ that holy Santo Vaciano, where the spirit entities are coming. 6. The holy spirit entities are going to respond in these hills, in Ichcacuatitla, in Temapache, 7. around here, purest Mary, it is very beautiful where they will go around here, for that reason, in this mezah, this altar offering [for] San Hipólito.

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The next segment continues the line numbering and records an unidentified woman standing before the altar pleading with the ancient one, exhorting this “poor little grandfather” to respond: 8. Ma techcaquican, huei mocamahuihqueh—­ xicmocuitlahuican ihuanya ni pobrez, 9. techhuallica ni pobreh hermano—­ ma quicui juerzah, xijuerzamacacan! 10. pobrehcito ahuelito, por tohhuantin, tlaihyohuiticah por tohhuantin. 11. Tihuahcahuah tihuallohuih para ticnequih ya ma techmaquixti, 12. tichocatihuallohuih pampa tlanqui tlahuaqui, huan yeca timotlahtlantihuallohuih, 13. pobrehcito ahuelito, ticnezquiah zan ma techmaquixtilican—­ xitechmacacan ce pilahhuechtli. 14. Na nihuallauh nepa Sasaltitlan, na hueliz nocelti nimayana, hueliz nocelti niamiqui—­ yeca nitlaihyohuia nocelti, 15. ayocacah quitlepanitta pan ni noranchoh, ayocacah quitlepanitta—­ xiquinhueitlapopolhui. 16. Axquimatih queniuhqui tlamachtizceh pampa namantzin ixhuitoqueh, namantzin cafenonitoqueh, 17. huan yeca quipiyah juerzah queniuhcatzan camatih—­ pero xiquinhueitlapopolhui. 18. A ver tlen suerte huallauh, a ver queniuhcatzan tiyauhtiyazceh pan ni tiempoh, 19. huallayaya tiempoh para totlatochui pero naman mocalactoc ni cuezolli, 20.  para nochi ni moconehuan—­ xicmaca juerzah, ne pobreh hermana Irene . . .

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8. May they listen to us, there has been much dialogue—­ take care of him [Cirilo] along with these poor people, 9. this poor brother [Cirilo] gathers us—­ may he have strength, give him force! 10. poor little grandfather [Cirilo], because of us, he is suffering for us. 11. We are late in coming because we want him to save us, 12. we come weeping because everything is dried out, and for this reason we come asking, 13. poor little grandfather, we would like them just to save us—­ give us a little rain. 14. I [alone] come from Sasaltitla, perhaps I alone am hungry, perhaps I alone am thirsty—­ for this reason I am the only one suffering, 15. [but] nobody respects you in my village, no longer does anybody respect you—­ forgive them. 16. They don’t know how to teach others because right now they are satisfied, right now they have drunk coffee, 17. and for this reason they are valorous in how they speak—­ but forgive them. 18. Let’s see what luck comes, let’s see how we will go along in these times, 19. a good season for our sowing was coming but now this sadness has intervened, 20.  for all your children—­ give them strength, that poor sister Irene . . .

In the brief portion of her cleansing chant captured in the recording, Catarina comments on the amount of work accomplished for the ritual. She confesses that people have committed sins and then proceeds to ask the water dweller apanchaneh to deliver rain (lines 1–­4). She invokes the spirit entities explicitly (the ancestral mother-­ father pair and water dweller apanchaneh) alongside San Sebastián, whom she addresses as “Santo Vaciano” but elsewhere as “Vacián” (line 5), and she goes on to reference local sacred hills and settlements (lines 6–­7). A number of the chants we recorded speak of this particular saint. Some Nahuas may identify their own suffering with that of Spanish Catholic martyrs who are celebrated in texts and images.17 In the second fragment, the woman speaking expresses the belief held by many Nahua that the spirit entities have difficulty hearing or are ignoring their pleas (line 8). She celebrates Cirilo as head ritual specialist, asking the ancestral powers to give him the strength to work on others’ behalf (line 9). The theme of the people’s suffering due to drought is repeated along with the heartfelt request for rain (lines 11–­13). Blame for the lack of rain is placed squarely at the feet of those nonbelievers who—­as she puts it—­are satisfied to drink coffee and no longer respect the spirit entities or the sacred order that has always provided for Nahua people (lines 14–­17). We are not certain whether the woman identifies herself or references Saint Irene in her final admonition (lines 18–­20). The pilgrims packed up their loads and proceeded past the altar to resume their places on the steep trail as it wound upward. For the next few hours we faced the most difficult part of the ascent. At one point where the trail ascended

Left to Right Photo 4.56. Ritual participants resume their climb following the the dedication of offerings at the tepexitzintlan altar on Postectli. Photo 4.57. Women negotiate the steep trail up the side of the sacred mountain. Photo 4.58. View of the surrounding countryside from about halfway to the summit of Postectli.

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nearly vertically, the town authorities in Ichcacuatitla had installed a thick rope secured from above so that pilgrims could pull themselves up, while finding toeholds along the path hugging the rock wall. At another part of the trail we edged along a narrow ledge (no more than a foot wide in places) that curved around the side of the mountain. Below us was a drop of more than 300 meters (1,000 feet) and everyone held on to whatever small cracks they could find in the rock face. Occasionally tropical centipedes would crawl over their hands as people grabbed on. After several hours of such death-­defying exertion, the pilgrims’ energy was seriously depleted due to not only the taxing climb but also lack of sleep. But as before, throughout these difficulties people remained upbeat, and some even joked as the climbing became more and more arduous. A woman carried a smoking incense brazier, and as remarkable as it seemed to us, the musicians played on whenever their hands were free (photos 4.56–­4.58).

The Altar Offering and Cave Offerings to Water Dweller and Lightning and Thunder at the Middle of Postectli During the climb toward the next altar location on Postectli, the pilgrims gained altitude and were treated to spectacular views of the surrounding countryside (photos 4.59 and 4.60). At a flat spot on the trail they unloaded their packs and rested for about a half hour before beginning construction of another mezah or altar offering. This is the site that the Nahua call tlahcopoztectli, literally the “middle of Postectli,” although we estimated that it lay only a short distance below the summit. The altar erected there would be dedicated to apanchaneh along with thunder and lightning. Just as at the previous stop, men with machetes began to clear away the debris left from previous pilgrimages. They set about assembling yet another altar on the old platform located there constructed from poles lashed to a frame. Women began to unload cups and dishes to hold the food and drink offerings (photo 4.61). Helpers tied fresh leaves to the arch over the table while ritual specialists, holding the paper figures and candles, chanted before the altar. With the help of several assistants, they laid out beds of paper figures neatly on top of and beneath the platform. A portion of the considerable pile of scraps that had been saved from the previous cutting of paper figures can be observed beneath the offerings (photos 4.62 and 4.63). The activities at this point, overseen by ritual specialists, were similar to those

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Top to Bottom Photo 4.59. The pilgrims continue on their trek to the summit of Postectli. Photo 4.60. A view from the trail up the sacred mountain. Photo 4.61. Helpers construct an altar on the mountain in a small clearing at a level area called tlahcopoztectli (“middle of Postectli”), about a thirty-­minute climb from the summit.

followed in the construction of the other altars. However, we noted a deviation from the usual pattern when during the 1998 pilgrimage the chickens and turkey were dispatched by breaking their necks and not by cutting their throats, after which their bodies were simply tossed aside. No offering of blood was connected to the sacrifice. We were unable to elicit an explanation for this anomalous episode, which we had never seen before in any Nahua ritual. During the 2001 pilgrimage participants did in fact make a blood offering at this location, although we noted that they nearly failed to do so (see below). Helpers next placed the walking sticks, the sisal bags of dressed seed figures, and the sacred maize bundles upright beneath the altar arch. At this point Cirilo took a few minutes to create ties of ritual kinship among several people whom he instructed to kneel before the altar. Women began to dance before the completed altar, some carrying offerings in baskets on their heads, others clutching walking sticks or candles. Later they took up the maize bundles and sisal bags of seed figures and continued to dance to the sacred music. As the final altar preparations were completed, Cirilo sat down, his energy

Left to Right Photo 4.62. The altar just before it is completed. Some of the scraps of paper produced by the ritual specialists can be seen on the ground beneath the altar. Photo 4.63. The tlahcopoztectli altar, dedicated to apanchaneh and to thunder and lightning spirit entities.

almost completely spent. He began to cut yet more large figures of the seeds from the sheaf of shiny colored paper that he produced from his carrying bag. As before, these would be fitted with the folded-­paper skeleton of arms and legs, dressed in cloth outfits and jewelry, paraded before the altar, and carried back home by the devotees. Throughout this interval as women prepared the folded-­ paper bones that served as skeletons for the dressed seed spirits, other women continued to dance (photo 4.64). At this point during the 2001 pilgrimage, the ritual specialists realized that a blood offering had mistakenly been left out of the ritual sequence. The normal procedure would be to kill the birds first, distribute their blood on the paper figures, and layer the flower adornments

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Left to Right Photo 4.64. Women dancing before the altar hold the sacred walking stick, maize bundles, and carrying bags containing dressed paper figures of seed spirits. Photo 4.65. The altar laden with food offerings, ritual objects, and blood spread on paper figures arranged on the earth.

Left to Right Photo 4.66. Musicians pose by the tlahcopoztectli altar on Postectli. The photograph previously appeared in Sandstrom (2008: 177, fig. 6.14); reprinted with the permission of the University of Utah Press. Photo 4.67. An Otomí ritual specialist cuts paper figures preparatory to resuming the climb to the summit. He cuts images of farm animals that he hopes to acquire during the upcoming year.

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over them. However, the altar had been completely decorated before any blood had been applied (photo 4.65). Helpers realized their mistake and immediately brought forth a turkey and several chickens, fed them their liquid offerings, cut their throats with scissors, and sprinkled the blood over the top of the adornments and offerings. We believe the omission was simply an oversight due to exhaustion, not an important deviation. All throughout these ritual episodes, the musicians continued playing the sacred melodies (photo 4.66). At this point in the pilgrimage we recognized another departure from the usual procedures when we witnessed the Otomí ritual specialists sitting near the altar and cutting paper images of farm animals (photo 4.67). They saw the ritual occasion organized by Cirilo as an opportunity by which they might increase their wealth, although we had not previously observed (and did not subsequently observe) Nahuas engage figures of animals in the rituals. A similar occurrence was recorded in Ichcacuatitla, where a ritual specialist cut images of chickens, pigs, cattle, and even cars and houses on behalf of supplicants.18 On the ground 1. Tihuallohuih nochi nicanin—­ para Tepeyacapan, hasta nicanin para Motoltepetl, 2. nochi nican campa huallauh, para Tecoroz—­ campa huallaz. 3. Ni tlahtolli—­ xiccamatican! 4. inmohhuantin intlamahuizoah, no in zan moquetzahya—­ tlamiz zanilli [switching to Spanish], va a terminar ya el tiempo de hablar.19

close to the altar was the clay water pot containing the dressed image of apanchaneh. People picked up the pot, danced before the altar, and at the end of their performance dropped coins into it to encourage the blessings of rain for the milpas.

Two Helpers Speak alongside Cirilo (Chant 9) As people crowded around the laden altar of the second mezah on Postectli, this one dedicated to water, lightning, and thunder, the simultaneous utterances of a number of people, including Raymundo and several unidentified men and women, can be heard on the videotape. Three of their statements are excerpted and presented here in sequence. We are not clear why some of the speakers switched back and forth between Nahuatl and Spanish (and in the previous chant as well), but they may have done so out of deference to the Otomí practitioners that Cirilo invited to participate or in consideration of those of us who were outsiders. The first audible portion was spoken by Cirilo’s assistant, Raymundo. 1. We all come from around here—­ from Tepeyacapan, even from Motoltepetl, 2. where all here come, from Tecoroz—­ from where they will come. 3. These words—­ express them! 4. you all come here to be entertained, you are also just standing there—­ now the conversation is about to end, the time for talking is over.

Another man whose words could be heard above the others, spoke the following in a clear, loud voice: 5. Chiconeros, tlen tinecesitaroah, 6. huan zan tentoqueh—­ xichuallican nicanin! 7. axcanah tihuallohuih para titlamahuizoquih—­ nosotros queremos agua, queremos bañar, queremos lavar con agua limpia, no con basura queremos, no con lodo.

5. The people of Chicontepec, we are in need, 6. and those who are just sitting around—­ come over here! 7. we did not come to amuse ourselves—­ we want water, we want to bathe, we want to wash with clean water, not with trash, not with mud.

While the others continued with their own orations, Cirilo could be heard to proclaim:

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8. Nican yonce [amatlacomeh] axcanah tomincuilihtoc, no quieren ni cinco centavos, 9. dicen que no es cierto, dicen porque queremos tomar, porque queremos tomar una cerveza, 10. por eso nicanin na nictlaltoc nomezah nochi tlen notrabajoh, 11. tlen nican nicchiuhtoc, nochi tlen campa nictlaltoc. 12. Quena chocazceh, quipiya para chocazceh, 13. nicanin yon hueyi yon cuecuetzin quipiya para nochi chocaz—­ 14. para timitztlahtlaniliah ce tlacualli ica toyollo huan toezzo. 15. Na nicnequi ce pilcintzin, na nicnequi ce coztic, ce yatzin, ce chipahuac. 16. Nican campa nicamati ne tlatzintlan, nicanin xochicuatecos no hualtoqueh—­ madrinas, padrinos, 17. nican campa moquetzacoh nouhquiya quicauhtihualtiyohuih ce xochitl—­ huan yeca ticnequih ni pilcintzin. 18. Cencah tohermanos, cencah toezzo, cencah toyollo, cencah Dios, cencah Tonanan, cencah Totatah. 19. Perdóname, te pido perdón, un gran favor—­ todo aquí, lo que se viene pudiendo, te pedimos—­ 20. que todo avance en nuestro trabajo, nochi ma quicuacan, nochi ma quitlalanacan, campa inmohhuantin initztoqueh—­ 21. nochi nican [amatlacomeh], tequichihuanih, gobiernos, los gobernadores,

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8. Not one person [here from Amatlán] has taken money, they do not want even five cents, 9. some say [this ceremony] is not true, that it’s false, they say it is because we want to drink, because we want to drink a beer, 10. so, for this reason, I have placed here my mezah, all my work, my contributions, 11. that which I have done here, I have placed it all [before you]. 12. They will weep, they must weep, 13. whether old or young, around here they must all weep—­ 14. we ask you for some food with our heart and our blood. 15. I myself want some beloved little maize, I want some yellow maize, some black maize, some white maize. 16. Here where I speak on this ground beneath [my feet], the people of Xochicuateco have come—­ godmothers, godfathers, 17. here, where they have come to stand up, from time to time they have come leaving some flowers—­ and that is why we want this beloved young maize. 18. We are equal brothers, our blood is the same, our hearts are the same, the same God, our same Mother, our same Father. 19. Forgive me, I beg your forgiveness, a great favor—­ all of us, for which we come asking, we beg of you—­ 20. may all move forward in our work, may everyone have something to eat, may everyone take it, wherever all of you are—­ 21. all the people of Amatlán here, the workers, the governments, the governors,

los secretarios, escritores, abogados—­ 22. pero no siempre tienen va a levantar para el ranchoh de [Amatlán]. Raymundo begins his oration by listing the places far and wide from which people have come to help, and explains (just as his words are muffled) that the time for making proclamations is over (lines 1–­4). The man who is heard to speak next assures the spirit entities that people do not come merely to amuse themselves but that they truly need rain—­fresh, clean water, not filth (lines 5–­7). In the longer oration that followed these short fragments, ritual specialist Cirilo confirms that those engaged in the pilgrimage are neither thieves nor drunkards (lines 8–­9), and he shoulders the responsibility for assembling the offering (lines 10–­11). Cirilo reiterates the message of his other chants, saying that he and his followers come begging for food and the all-­important maize, weeping “with our heart and our blood” (lines 12–­15). He names some of the locales from which he has drawn pilgrimage participants, asserting that all come as equals (lines 16–­18). Begging forgiveness, Cirilo petitions the spirit entities to

1. Ay, Dios nicanin—­ nican tlananquilizceh yehyectzin, 2. campa timitzcahuilicoh ce xochitl, ticamaticoh, titetlahpalocoh—­ 3. yehyectzin melahuac nican nouhquiya. 4. Teicneltzin ica ni Dios iconehuan—­ 5. tlen tictlepanittah, tlan axquitlepanittah—­ 6. pero nicanin ya tlaihyohuihtihuallauh, tlamacehuihtihuallauh, 7. tlen pantlatzquihqueh, Dios iconehuan, tlen tlatzquihqueh—­ Dios ichopilohuan nicanin. 8. Quenque? Pampa amiquih. Quenque? Pampa mayanah. Quenque? pampa nouhquiya quinequih ce tlatoctli.

the secretaries, writers, lawyers—­ 22. but they are not always going to lift up the village of Amatlán. advance people’s work so that everyone is able to eat, even if the authorities fail to come to their aid (lines 18–­22). At this point in the proceedings Cirilo delivered another chant at tlahcopoztectli as he performed a ritual sweeping of his colleague Silveria Hernández Hernández. As ardent practitioners of el costumbre, ritual specialists are vulnerable to the dangers connected with their profession and so routinely exchange cleansings with one another. Along with several members of her immediate family, Silveria accompanied Cirilo on both pilgrimages to Postectli.20

Silveria Cleanses Cirilo (Chant 10) Ritual specialist Silveria Hernández Hernández delivered an elegant, long oration as she performed a cleansing on Cirilo’s behalf. She directed those of us with cameras to “make an image of me” (“xinechixcopinacan”) before she began, indicating she wished her statement to be recorded.21

1. Oh, God here—­ [the spirit entities] will respond beautifully, here, 2. where we came to leave you a flower, we came to speak to you, we came to greet you—­ 3. beautifully, [the greeting] here is also true. 4. A worthy humble one [Cirilo is] with these children of God—­ 5. those who respect, [even] those who do not respect—­ 6. but here now [Cirilo] comes suffering, comes placating, 7. those who followed him, the children of God, those who followed him—­ they are God’s own children here. 8. Why? Because they are thirsty. Why? Because they are hungry. Why? Because they also want something planted.

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9. Ica ni Encarnación Téllez, nouhquiya tecneltzin nicanin tlen quinyecancaqui ni Dios iconehuan yehyectzin—­ 10. tlen quitlepanittaqueh, nicanin melahuac, 11. nouhquiya camatitihuallauh nicanin—­ nochi tlanquilizceh, 12. nochi motlahtlanihtihuallauh—­ tohhuantin tiamiquih, tohhuantin tlanquehya ticuahuaquih. 13. Quenque? ToChicomexochiuh ya huacqui nicanin. 14. Huan nican ni maestro quiillamicqui, nicanin pues nouhquiya nican ahcic horah—­ 15. quitlalico ce cualli xochitl, ce cualli tetlahpaloco nicanin. 16. Quemman tezcatlapetlanqui, tezcatlatomonqui—­ hasta yehyectzin tlananquilitoh hasta pan hueyi mar, 17. campa camatih, campa campa tlaavisaroh, 18. nican nochi yahtiyahqui, 19. tlatzalantiyahqui, tlachipauhtiyahqui 20. yehyectzin melahuac nicanin ahcicoh pan inincometah. 21. Nicanin ahcicoh, yehyectzin bazton quihuallicah, yehyectzin bazton tlen ica tetlahpalocoh nicanin—­ 22. axcanah nopeca ce ehecatl quinamiquiti, axnopeca tecamachihuanih—­ nopeca quiachihuazceh nicanin. 23. Inin probeh Dios iconeuh, ya tlayecanquetl, ica nochi yehyectzin, tlananquiliti hasta para tezcatepetl. 24. Nicanin no quinconantihuallauh—­ nicanin yehyectzin nicanin tlapohtoc puertah, tlapohtoc ventana, camatico nican, 25. yehyectzin quicelih, yehyectzin tlahtolli nicanin, cuahcualli telefono cuahcualli telefono.

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9. With Encarnación [Cirilo] Téllez, too, this humble one here who guided them, beautifully, these children of God—­ 10. those who looked upon others respectfully, truly, here [showing respect], 11. he comes speaking for them here—­ all [the spirit entities] will answer, 12. he comes petitioning all of them—­ we are dying of thirst, we are sickened by dehydration. 13. Why? Our Seven Flower has already dried up here. 14. And here this master [Cirilo] remembered it, here, too, the hour arrived—­ 15. he came to offer a good flower, to give a good greeting here. 16. When mirror–­lightning sacredly flashes, mirror-­thunder sacredly strikes—­ they responded beautifully as far as the great sea, 17. where [lightning and thunder] spoke, where it called—­ 18. here everything went away, 19. the opening cleared, it became cleansed 20. beautifully, here, truly they came, arriving with this comet. 21. Here [lightning and thunder] arrived, they brought a magnificent walking stick, a magnificent walking stick with which they greeted here—­ 22. let there be no bad wind brought along, let there be no gossipmongers—­ no harm will be done here. 23. This poor child of God, he is the leader, he is a good person to all, he goes to respond up to the mirror-­mountain. 24. Here they are coming to ask something—­ beautifully, here the door is open, the window is open, they came to speak here, 25. they were received beautifully, here, with beautiful words, very good telephone [words conveyed across the distance].

26. Moahcic horah, ahcic tonatiuh ipan 4 de junio, pan ni 4 de junio 27. nican moquetzacoh, nicanin tlayehyectzin nochi tlananquilizceh. 28. Yanopa timotlahtlaniliah atl, ni atl nicanin—­ nicanin tiAxinolah, ta tiAquixtianah, tiAserenah, timocauhqui nicanin. 29. Timitztlacaquiliah, Señora—­ tiparejoz, para hasta pan mar campa huetziti ni laSerenah amo xitechtlahuelcahua—­ ta nicanin timocauhqui, nican timocauhqui. 30. Nouhquiya toconehuan, xiquinmaca ce cualli apamitl, ce cualli aguaceroh, 31. ce yehyectzin ticcuazceh elotl, nopa ayohuitl, 32. yeca timitzmacacoh ce cualli ome pantzin—­ timitzmacacoh nochi, 33. timitztlachicuenicoh. 34. Nochi tlananquilizceh hasta para, hasta pan mar, ta nican timocauhtoc. 35. Nicanin nochi Zahhuan nouhquiya xitechmaca ce ahhuechtli, 36. eltoc para titechmacaz, eltoc para tihuallaz, 37. ce yehyectzin nicanin. 38. TiAserenah, nochi timahcauhtihuallaz—­ ce cualli nochi, 39. nican eltoc mosuerteh nicanin, ahciqui para [Amatlan] ranchoh. 40. Amo ce cualantli, ce tlahtolli quinamiquiz, Encarnación nicanin quiillamicqui ni xochitl, ni coztumbre.22 Silveria begins confidently predicting that the spirit entities will respond to her entreaties (line 1). This simple opening statement reflects the Nahua anxiety that the spirits often fail to hear or deliberately ignore human

26. The hour has arrived, the fourth of June has arrived, on this fourth of June 27. here, they came to stand up, here, in this beautiful place all [the entities] are going to respond. 28. Water, that is what we ask for, this water here—­ here, you Lady of the Water, you, you Water Being, you, Water Siren, you stayed here. 29. We heeded your call, Lady [of the Water]—­ we are all equal, even at sea where [water] is going to fall this Siren does not forsake us—­ you, you stayed around here, here you stayed. 30. Also for our children, give them a good flow of water, a good rain shower, 31. let us eat beautiful, tender ears of maize, with those waters, 32. for this reason we came to give you good breads—­ we came to give you all of it, 33. we came to wash your clothes. 34. All are going to respond, even [from afar], even upon the sea, you remained here. 35. Here, Zahhuan, you must also give us sufficient rain, 36. it is certain you will give it to us, it is certain you will come, 37. a beautiful [rain] here. 38. You, Water Siren, you will arrive casting [water]—­ a good [drenching rain], 39. here is your chance, your duty, [rain] will arrive in the village of Amatlán. 40. May there be no anger, not one problem, not a word in opposition, Encarnación [Cirilo] here remembered this flower, this costumbre. concerns. She sets the stage for her cleansing of Cirilo by commenting on the beauty of the surroundings and people’s respectful behavior (lines 2–­3). She acknowledges that Cirilo, with humility (line 4), deals with people who

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respect the religion of el costumbre as well as those who may not (i.e., orthodox Catholics and Protestants), making it clear that he is capable of forgiving them (lines 5–­7). He and his followers acknowledge their obligation to dedicate offerings to the spirit entities in order to survive, and Silveria asserts that they, in turn, will respond to Cirilo’s petitions on people’s behalf (lines 8–­13). Cirilo has determined that the time is right to petition the spirit entities (lines 14–­15), and Silveria anticipates that the sacred mirror-­thunder and mirror-­lightning will signal their arrival from the Gulf of Mexico (the “great sea”) accompanied by a comet, using a Nahuatl-­Spanish loan word, inincometah (lines 16–­20). As a sign of Cirilo’s authority (and hers, in this context), she invokes the power of the thunderers’ walking stick (bastón) to cleanse (lines 21–­22). Interestingly, she describes lightning and thunder as both one and separate spirit entities who use the power of this ritual implement to clear away (line 18) and cleanse (line 19) the area of dangerous, destructive winds that wreak havoc, equating the bad winds with those who spread gossip (line 22). Silveria reasserts that Cirilo is a genuine and generous leader who goes to the “mirror-­mountain” (tezcatepetl) to seek rain in that sacred place (line 23) and, by implication, puts himself out to organize the pilgrimage.23 She likens the altar offerings to an edifice whose open doors and windows receive and transmit the words of supplicants and spirit entities, as if by telephone (lines 24–­25).24 Citing the date, Silveria places the ritual in time and pleads with apanchaneh using the appellations Lady of the Water and Water Being to remain in the human community where she is well cared for (lines 26–33). Silveria also implores the male aspect of apanchaneh, San Juan Bautista–­zahhuan, for rain (lines 34–­37), and speaks again of the beauty of her environs when it rains. She addresses apanchaneh in a challenging tone (“you, Water Siren,” “here is your chance”; lines 38–­39) and declares that her cleansing of Cirilo will garner success (line 40). The pilgrims approached the limit of their endurance as they continued to climb to the summit of Postectli (photo 4.68) but paused before negotiating the final ascent. At a short distance above the second altar on the mountain, they stopped to visit the cave of apanchaneh and that of her thunder and lightning companions. Off to the side of the trail, perilously close to mountain’s edge and now at a height of at least 450 meters (nearly 1,500 feet) above the surrounding countryside, the ritual specialists paused at the entrance to a deep cleft in the rock. This well-­hidden cave is the original home of the seeds that sustain human life, where apanchaneh and her alter ego tonantzin are sequestered, and the place from which the 164  : Trek to the Sacred Mountain Summit

rain is dispersed to the milpas. Ritual specialists squatted close together and unpacked the offerings they wished to leave for apanchaneh (photo 4.69). The narrow opening to this mysterious, damp fissure in the rock was awkwardly located, and a man lying on his back could barely squeeze into it. All throughout Mesoamerica, such caves, seemingly as insignificant as this one, are the subject of offerings.25 Leading from the mouth of the cave down the side of the mountain lay a very large swath of previous offerings, including broken pottery, bones of sacrificial fowl, dried flower adornments, and other items deposited by previous pilgrims. Because such a pile of rubble must have taken years to accumulate, it was evident that this particular place had been ritually significant for a long time. Arturo Gómez Martínez (personal communication) said that Mexican archaeologists investigating the area had found a Toltec statuette in the debris beneath the cave. While the finding is not evidence that actual Toltecs visited the site, it does suggest that people have come to Postectli for countless years.26 Meanwhile, as the ritual specialists prepared the offerings, the other pilgrims waited patiently, occupying what little space they could find along the trail. Everyone who could manage it pitched in and cleared the area of basura, the forest litter. Cirilo positioned himself at the opening of the cave and began to arrange the offerings to apanchaneh, while helpers opened the bundle of paper cuttings and selected several petates of figures to place in the cave (photos 4.70–­4.72). Cirilo wrapped a new bandana around the clay pot containing the dressed paper image of apanchaneh, along with a few candles, and he carefully arranged these items as helpers handed him additional offerings (photo 4.73). Another ritual specialist lay on his back to squeeze farther into the recesses of the rock cleft and place offerings deep within as everyone struggled to maintain their insecure footing (photo 4.74). Upon entering the opening, the ritual specialist listened closely for messages from the water dweller, who informs him about what she requires before providing water to the fields.27 The helpers handed candles and a chicken to Cirilo (photo 4.75), who proceeded to cut its throat and sprinkle the blood on the offerings and paper figures inside the cave. He solicited coins from those waiting nearby and put them into the pot. The ritual specialist finished his chant to apanchaneh and left behind in the cave a lighted candle, the dressed water spirit in the clay pot, the body of the chicken, beds of bloodied paper figures, and the coyol palm adornments and other offerings (photo 4.76). The participants danced as the offering ended and approached, one by one, to bow twice before the cave entrance.

Left to Right Photo 4.68. The pilgrims continue their climb to the summit of the sacred mountain. Photo 4.69. The pilgrims make a stop at a narrow cleft in the rock where ritual specialists leave offerings. It is from this cave that apanchaneh delivers rainwater to the milpas.

Photo 4.70. Cirilo kneels and chants at the cave home of apanchaneh. Before him is a water pot containing candles and the dressed paper figure of the water spirit. Photo 4.71. Helpers select cut-­paper figures to be placed with food offerings in the cave.

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Left to Right Photo 4.72. Cirilo arranges offerings while a man packs up the remaining cut-­paper figures for the climb to the summit of Postectli. Photo 4.73. Cirilo (right) and a helper place offerings inside the cave. In addition to the water spirit, the cave is the original home of seed spirits. Photo 4.74. A ritual specialist squeezes into the opening in the rock to listen for any messages that apanchaneh may want to convey. Two bundles of petates lie on the ground holding paper images of water and other spirit entities. Photo 4.75. Cirilo, seated before water dweller’s cave, takes lighted candles from a helper while another man hands him a live chicken. Photo 4.76. Ritual offerings placed in the cleft of the apanchaneh cave.

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One more ritual obligation remained to be fulfilled before heading to the summit of Postectli. Cirilo, struggling to maintain his footing through the dense tropical foliage, cleared away the brush as he proceeded to a spot on the side of the mountain about 15 meters (50 feet) away, where he came to a halt. This well-­concealed cave is the dwelling place of lightning and thunder from whence they emerge to aid apanchaneh in delivering rain to the milpas. The participants stayed where they were, but a few helpers passed additional ornaments and offerings to him. Cirilo arranged the items along with some petates of paper figures as best he could in the rock cleft just beyond his reach. He then killed a chicken and reverently spread its blood on the ritual offerings as he delivered a heartfelt chant imploring these hard-­to-­reach spirit entities to send the precious liquid to the milpas of Amatlán. He then turned, tossed a few coins into the opening, and moved away, leaving everything in place (photos 4.77 and 4.78). Only a short, thirty-­minute climb remained before the pilgrims reached the summit of Postectli. They resumed their position on the trail (photo 4.79) as Cirilo finished his ministrations at the lightning-­thunder cave.

The Altar Offering to Water Owner, Cross, Moon, and Sun at the Summit Left to Right Photo 4.77. Cirilo places cut-­paper figures and other offerings in the nearby cave of lightning and thunder spirits. Photo 4.78. Offerings left at the cave. A corner of the bloodied paper figures of thunder can be glimpsed beneath the coyol palm adornments. Photo 4.79. The pilgrims continuing on their ascent to the peak of Postectli.

People regard tzonteconpoztectli, the summit of Postectli, as the sacred monolith’s head. As we drew closer to it late in the afternoon, the scene around us grew ever more awesome, offering a spectacular view of the town of Ichcacuatitla where the ascent to the top had begun early that morning. Upon arriving at the summit, the pilgrims rested before beginning preparations for the final set of offerings (photo 4.80). Cirilo said that the assembly would only stay for an hour or so because of the danger that “the

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Left to Right Photo 4.80. The exhausted pilgrims rest at tzonteconpoztectli, the “head” of the sacred mountain, or summit. The climb took ten and a half hours. Photo 4.81. The concrete cross at the peak of Postectli.

saints will assemble,” meaning that clouds and the wind will gather and deliver rain, stranding the pilgrims. The very peak of the mountain is a constricted space strewn with immense boulders and utterly exposed to the elements. According to Cirilo, the rocks there embody all of the other sacred mountains throughout the region. To one side, an altar-­like construction and an imposing cross made of concrete had been erected by the Catholic Church (photo 4.81).28 As mentioned, many Nahua have reinterpreted the Christian cross as an embodiment of the sacred sun tonatiuh, merging the cross and sun with their conception of Jesus Christ. A few people from the pilgrimage briefly visited the cross as other participants began unloading the remaining ritual items. We learned that it is customary to build four altars at the top of Postectli—­one each to the cross, sun, moon, and water owner zahhuan. In practice, during both 1998 and 2001 journeys, the pilgrims constructed the altar to the sun but settled on a combined altar to zahhuan and the cross. No one laid out items into a proper mezah for the moon, perhaps because it has lost religious importance over the years.29 It had been the custom to lay out a separate mezah for the cross on the concrete platform, but it, too, was overlooked during both pilgrimages; perhaps the permanent cross obviated the need for a separate altar offering. What is interesting is that petates of paper figures were prepared for both the moon and cross, but as we will see, they were simply piled up and not arranged into proper arrays. We speculated that one possible factor

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leading the pilgrims to abbreviate the ritual offerings in this way is that people were fast approaching the point of collapse from the exertion of the trek. The helpers first assembled the mezah devoted to zahhuan and the cross, making use of a small wooden platform already erected at the edge of the mountain that undoubtedly had served previous pilgrimages. After they tied green leaves to the arch, helpers laid out a full-­sized, decoratively cut paper sheet on the altar top. They meticulously began to arrange the paper figures, bed upon bed, until the surface was completely covered (photos 4.82 and 4.83). They also laid out a cut-­paper sheet on the ground beneath the altar, placing on it additional petates of paper figures as part of the offering to the earth. In the area behind the altar, helpers began to dump the remaining scraps of paper left over from cutting the images. At this point in the 1998 ritual, chickens were killed by breaking their necks and were then tossed over the side of the mountain behind the main altar; no blood offering was made at the summit. In the 2001 pilgrimage, however, Cirilo danced with a sacrificial chicken as another man rang a bell to awaken the spirit entities. In that year’s

ritual he cut the bird’s throat with a pair of scissors, sprinkled its blood over the hundreds of paper figures, and finally signed his name in blood (photo 4.84). Helpers laid out the coyol palm adornments, leaned the sacred walking sticks against the arch, deposited the remaining paper scraps on the ground, and loaded offerings of food and drink onto the paper figure arrays (photos 4.85 and 4.86). Musicians played the sacred music continuously while people worked. All the participants gathered around the zahhuan-­cross altar as Cirilo dedicated the offerings. Several of the ritual specialists sacralized people by chanting softly and rubbing them with candles (photo 4.87). Everyone faced the decorated altar while the ritual specialists chanted to implore zahhuan to bring water to their milpas. People unloaded the bulk of the remaining items they had carried such a distance and proceeded to incorporate them into the altar offering. On the opposite side of the mountaintop Cirilo’s helpers constructed a small structure from a flexible branch that had been cut, bent into a circle, and lashed perpendicularly onto a tall pole that they drove into the ground.

Left to Right Photo 4.82. Cirilo carefully selects and lays out paper figures on the major altar dedicated to the water owner zahhuan and the cross. On close inspection, the figure of the key can be made out on the top-­right petate. Photo 4.83. Helpers light candles and prepare to decorate the major altar at the peak of Postectli. Paper figures of the water dweller apanchaneh are visible on the corner of the altar (foreground), and the flat headdress of the figure of the bean can be discerned on another petate (far corner, in the front). Photo 4.84. Cirilo signs his name in blood on the major altar to the water owner zahhuan and the cross.

To the side of this structure was the platform reserved for the moon (photo 4.88), where participants simply deposited ritual items without creating a proper altar (photo 4.89). On the circular altar helpers tied fibers crisscrossing the hoop from one side to the other and laid several petates of paper figures on it. Close inspection revealed that the paper figures were images of bandera (Spanish for “flag,” which we discuss in chapter 6). The ritual specialists arranged coyol palm adornments into a cross shape on the circular altar to associate the array with the sun (photo 4.90). The men placed offerings on top of the adornments

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Left to Right Photo 4.85. Helpers put the finishing touches on the major altar constructed at the summit. The paper scraps can be seen discarded behind the altar. Photo 4.86. Participants lean a sacred walking stick against the arch over the altar. This altar is dedicated to the water owner zahhuan and the cross, associated with the sun and Jesús.

(photo 4.91) and dressed the altar pole by tying some coyol palm and flower adornments to it with a strip of white cloth (photo 4.92). The altar was now essentially completed, and participants affirmed that it was dedicated to tonatiuh, the sun (photo 4.93). The sun in Nahua belief usually remains aloof from the everyday affairs of humans and thus is rarely the central figure of ritual offerings in other contexts. It is testimony to the importance of Postectli in Nahua sacred geography that it is the site where people most clearly engaged the sun in their ritual strategies. Of course water is of paramount importance, and water is featured equally on Postectli as well. In the analysis of the pilgrimage in chapter 5 we show that this grand monolith reproduces in abbreviated form the entire cosmos, wherein sun and

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water appear at the apex as the supreme expression of the pantheistic unity underlying Nahua religion. Perhaps equally significant, the design of the circular sun altar reaching up to the sky magnifies the pilgrims’ efforts to reconnect Postectli with the celestial realm, a link long ago severed during the cataclysmic events recounted in the Nahua myth of Seven Flower. In the 1998 pilgrimage participants added a third dimension to the sun altar by running colored paper streamers from the circular platform in all directions to disclose the solar light rays that transmit heat and thus life to the cosmos (photo 4.94).30 The concrete platform visible in the foreground of the photo holds the paper cuttings and coyol adornments intended for an offering to the cross, but like the never-­ completed offering to the moon, the ritual specialists simply deposited the items there without ceremony in both the 1998 and 2001 pilgrimages. The exhausted pilgrims had completed their mission to travel to the periphery of their world where the spirit entities live to deliver offerings of food, music, incense,

Left to Right Photo 4.87. Timoteo blesses and cleanses a participant by rubbing him with candles. The photograph previously appeared in Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2017: 114, fig. 4.4); reprinted with the permission of the University of Arizona Press.

Photo 4.89. The altar dedicated to the moon. The pilgrimage participants left the paper figures and food offerings stacked on the platform but did not lay them out, as on previous altars. Photo 4.90. Helpers lay offerings of food and drink on the circular sun altar.

Photo 4.88. Another altar table (center right) on Postectli is dedicated to the moon, but it was never fully decorated by the pilgrims. They did proceed to decorate a small circular altar (center left).

Photo 4.91. The sun altar, laden with coyol and palm adornments and food offerings, is framed by a spectacular view from the summit of Postectli.

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Left to Right Photo 4.92. Men dress the post holding the sun altar by wrapping it in white cloth. Photo 4.93. The fully decorated circular sun altar. Photo 4.94. As a final step in the pilgrimage to Postectli, participants have affixed paper streamers to the sun altar, evoking the sun’s rays.

drink, and beautiful altars—­all evidence of the work and respect they employed as currency in the endless cycle of exchanges with the spirit realm. The intrepid leader Cirilo, having mustered all of his energy to bring the pilgrimage to a successful conclusion, was blessed at this point in the proceedings by ritual specialist Timoteo, who chanted as he held candles to Cirilo’s head (photo 4.95). The blessing was not simply a reward for a job well done but recognition for the precarious role of ritual specialists as warriors, risking their lives in the daily encounter with unpredictable spirit entities on behalf of clients and the entire community. The tireless musicians paused before they began to play again for the trek down the mountain and back to Amatlán. They and other participants wanted to have their photographs taken as a souvenir of having

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completed the pilgrimage. The mood of the group was happy yet subdued as everyone began to prepare for the long journey back down the mountain.31 Cirilo returned to the site of the altar offering at tlahcopoztectli, where several people who lacked the endurance to continue to the summit had remained behind. There he cleansed everyone in turn, paying special attention to the other ritual specialists. As the people began their descent,

their loads were lighter and their concerns about the future were much allayed now that their mission to visit Postectli was fulfilled. Many stopped to admire the spectacular scenery surrounding the sacred mountain as they followed the steep path down. The countryside far below was dotted with strangely shaped hills, undoubtedly the remnants of ancient volcanic activity, but not difficult to imagine being the aftermath of zahhuan breaking open the mountain so long ago (photo 4.96). Some men passed around a bottle of aguardiente as they maneuvered along the treacherous trail skirting the edge of the mountain. We had nearly reached the foot of the trail when a loud thunderclap came from literally out of the blue, startling everybody. In the excited discussion that followed, people decided that it should be taken as an excellent sign that the pilgrimage had had some impact. As they arrived at the base, evening fell and shadows began to shroud the monolith (photo 4.97). At the conclusion of that 1998 pilgrimage, the sun slipped over the horizon and cast a strange light across the sky. As we looked back toward Postectli, the apparition seemed to affirm that the sacred mountain is indeed the abode of cosmic forces and mystery (photo 4.98). We walked away from the mountain dirty and dehydrated but with a sense of exhilaration that the pilgrimage was successfully completed without injury or incident. Knowing that people would be exhausted, their energy reserve spent, Cirilo had arranged to have market trucks waiting in Ichcacuatitla at the base of Postectli to return the pilgrims to their home communities. This was a wise and compassionate plan on his part because without transportation people would have had to walk all night to retrace the trail we traversed the day before. We waited around while everyone settled into the trucks, and then we negotiated the dirt roads back to Amatlán, driving slowly through the pitch dark. Shortly after we arrived

Left to Right Photo 4.95. Ritual specialist Timoteo blesses and cleanses Cirilo with candles following the final offering at the peak of Postectli. Photo 4.96. A bird’s-eye view of the volcanic land forms surrounding Postectli. Photo 4.97. Postectli at dusk in 2001 as the pilgrims leave the area to return home. Photo 4.98. The remarkable pattern of light rays seen emanating from Postectli as the pilgrims left the sacred mountain precinct in 1998.

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back in the village, we heard one of the vehicles approaching. The subdued voices of people could be heard as they made their way back to their houses. When Cirilo returned, he was greeted by his wife and family members who had stayed up late, anticipating the pilgrims’ return. He had one more act to perform before rolling out his petate and lying down for a much-­deserved rest on the earthen floor. Upon entering his small xochicalli where the pilgrimage had started many days before, Cirilo took out his divination bundle and set up its contents on the embroidered cloth that he spread out on the overturned cuartillo box. He proceeded to cast kernels of maize to determine whether the pilgrimage had been a success. Closely studying the lay of the kernels, he then gathered them up and cast the handful a second time. After a few minutes of continued study, he smiled broadly and declared that the offerings had been accepted. For a while, at least, the cosmos was brought back into balance and the stage set for adequate rainfall and an abundant harvest. The ills that plagued human beings were momentarily kept at bay and an impermanent order reestablished. The next morning Cirilo was up early. He seemed very satisfied at what he had accomplished and exuded a renewed self-­confidence and sense of purpose. The pilgrimage and the offerings demonstrated to all who cared to notice the respect that must be shown to the forces that make life possible and worth living. He had demarcated a clear line between those who had chosen to forsake their own religion and replace it with the alien ideology and practices of Protestantism or the more urban form of Catholicism and Nahuas who continue to follow el costumbre rituals, expressive of their system of beliefs, faith, and worship. He affirmed that the ancient rituals are still being observed and that they are powerful enough to continue to attract people from the wider region. He returned from each of these two successful pilgrimages renewed and demonstrably in charge of the village faction that refused to abandon enduring traditions in the face of accelerating culture change. Throughout the description of the pilgrimage we have scarcely mentioned the maize spirit Seven Flower or its female aspect, Five Flower. The twins chicomexochitl and macuilli xochitl were present throughout the entire ritual proceedings, plainly evident in the form of the dried maize bundles wrapped securely in new bandanas and in the dressed figures of the seeds carried in fresh sisal bags and positioned prominently on every altar. Maize recedes into the background because it is ubiquitous. We know that Postectli is Seven Flower’s place of birth and

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also retreat from the world, which caused humankind to search for him in desperation. We also know that the water owner zahhuan violently smashed open Postectli to free Seven Flower, leaving the monolith with a truncated top that truly looked as if some great force had broken it off. It is possible that the manifestation of maize is so pervading, so overwhelming in importance, that its portrayal in paper need not be emphasized. Instead of drawing attention directly to the sacred maize pair, the strategy of the ritual specialist seems to focus on the critical elements of earth, sun, rain clouds, and water that must conjoin in order for maize to grow. In chapter 6 we discuss the large, clothed paper figures that pilgrims transported to and from the summit of Postectli. These dramatic embodiments of maize, typically bundled with other oversized figures of the seed crops, form the assembly of paper images preserved permanently on the altars of people who remain devoted to el costumbre ritual practice.32 The ritual specialists frequently address the maize spirit directly in the chants. Abelardo de  la  Cruz writes that some Nahua influenced by Christianity have adopted the practice of praying to their dead; he makes a key point, however, that “Nahuas do not pray to their deities, perhaps because they do not consider them dead entities, and thus the Nahua prefer to hold a dialogue with them as living ones.”33 As we hope we have demonstrated, chanting is a form of oratory in which speakers direct their words to the spirit entities and often vehemently exhort them to take action on behalf of not only their community but the entire earth. Martínez de la Cruz asserts that Nahua of the region have fused apanchaneh and chicomexochitl in their religious conceptions.34 Likewise, people from Amatlán blend apanchaneh and tonantzin, the mother of maize, so it is unsurprising that water owner–­water dweller–­chicomexochitl can be personified as one. The identities of the Nahua spirit entities are indeed as fluid as the water theme that courses through the pilgrimage proceedings.

Myth of the Nahua Water Dweller Apanchaneh (La Sirena) We summarize one final myth that illustrates the central role that apanchaneh plays in Nahua religion and world view, with the goal of illuminating what motivates people to undertake the journey to water dweller’s cave.35 The Nahua of Amatlán tell a number of stories about apanchaneh that constitute a mythic cycle, that is, a series of narrations linked closely together. As we have seen, men

and women also relate a number of separate story elements about zahhuan, possibly suggesting that at one time this figure was completely distinct from apanchaneh. In our current understanding, zahhuan is regarded as the dueño or owner of water, particularly the roiling waters of the Gulf of Mexico and, as previously mentioned, is associated with storms, damaging winds, and thunder and lightning. The water dweller apanchaneh is linked to calm bodies of water and streams, as one of many manifestations or aspects of zahhuan. According to the way that people in Amatlán tell the story:36

There was once a man and his wife living alone, without children.37 Every day, the man would go to his milpa to work, and his wife would stay at home to attend to her duties. When he arrived home after a long day in the field, his wife would serve him a delicious fish stew she had prepared. She cleaned the fish in water, and either made stew or salted and fried big pieces of the fish and served them to him in maize leaves. The man was very pleased to be served such wonderful food every day. One evening he asked her, “Where do you find all of these large fish?” She replied, “Over there in the arroyo. When I go to bathe, I find mojarras and freshwater shrimp.” He said, “But you have so many large fish.” She answered him, “True. Now you eat, the tortillas are ready. There is also fish stew if you want. Over in the arroyo are many fish, so now you eat them.” Well, he ate and ate. He consumed the stew and all of the fried and salted fish. He ate a whole basket full of mojarras and guavinas, big fat ones. In his mind, he wondered where all of those fish came from. How could his wife have caught so many? The next day he again went to work in the milpa, but when he returned there were no fish to eat. His wife told him that he had eaten all of them. So that evening he said to her, “Tomorrow I will go to work in the milpa again. What will you do?” She replied, “So you are going again? Well, if you are, go ahead and go.” He asked again, “What are you going to do today?” She said, “Not much, I’m going to bathe. I’m going to bathe, and again if I can, I will catch more fish.” He then said, “Good, go fishing and see if you can catch some more.” After the man left, the woman went to carry water from the arroyo back to her house. She made many trips carrying the water and finally proceeded to bathe.38 She washed and combed her hair. As she moved the comb through her hair, several very large fish fell out and she placed them in a basket. After a short while she filled the basket with mojarras. When her husband returned that evening, she had prepared a delicious fish stew along with salted and fried fish. He said in admiration, “You went fishing again and look how much you brought back. Look how many fish there are here.” She replied, “Yes, I went fishing again over there at the arroyo

and caught them all.” He said to himself, “Well, how in the world does she manage to catch so many fish? I can never catch any, but she seems to be able to.” Then he pondered, “Maybe someone is giving her the fish and then she gives them to me so that I can eat them. Maybe it is not true that she catches them.” As it was, they ate and ate fish for a whole week. They ate only fish. After eating all of that fish, he said to her, “Tomorrow I have to go help my compadre in his fields. I won’t be back until late.” She asked, “You’re not going to the milpa today?” And he replied, “No, today I am going to help my compadre.” He pretended to leave the house and was soon out of sight. He thought to himself, “I’ll watch her now and I will see where she catches those fish.” He turned back, went behind the house, and climbed up into the loft to observe his wife. The woman again carried water from the arroyo, making many trips back and forth. Then she undressed and began to wash her hair with soap. As she combed through her hair, the fish dropped out and fell into a container of water. At this point the man revealed himself and said to her, “Aha! I have discovered what you have been doing. You are feeding me filth from your body. You should not have done that. You have done me a great wrong. It is filth that you fed me so many times! It is not true that you gave me fish that you caught.” “No,” she exclaimed, “these really are fish. What you have been eating is nothing but fish.” The man, furious, said, “It is not fish, you are dirty! Because you did this to me, I don’t ever want to see you again. You gave me your filth to eat. For a long time I have been eating filth.” She objected, saying, “That is not true, they really are fish.” The man persisted, “I don’t want to see you again.” His wife said, “All right, then you really don’t want to see me again around here. You are fed up with me.” The man answered, “Yes, it is so, because you gave me filth to eat.” “All right,” she said, “you know best if you don’t want me here.” She then became sad because she did not have any children to keep her company. Those fish were her children, the ones that she gave to her husband. In the meantime, other women came to her and asked her to go to the arroyo with them. They knew that she produced fish in abundance. So the woman said that she would go with them. As they arrived, she undressed and jumped into the water. She had tied her hair in a ribbon and dove underwater and swam a distance away. She was not really a person. She was a fish that transformed into Apanchaneh, the water dweller. The women became afraid as she began jumping out of the water. Shortly she swam to a big pool and there she floated. She laughed, and the other women really got scared. The siren’s husband was now watching, and as the siren began to sing, he too grew sad. She had become half person, half fish—­a

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woman-­fish, cihuamichin. Her legs were a fishtail. Then, as everyone was listening to her and watching her float in the pool, all kinds of fish surrounded her—­mojarra, xolotes, and robalos. They all came to see the siren. In the end, her husband’s suspicions and the great distrust and fear that people felt toward the water dweller are what caused apanchaneh to withhold her bounty from humankind. She subsequently went to live on Postectli, and people today are obliged to visit her cave home and dedicate offerings to her so that she will encourage her helpers, thunder and lightning, to provide rain for the milpas. Martínez de  la  Cruz recorded a variant of the myth told by Nahua in nearby Chicontepec, here summarized:39

The men were upset and suspicious when a woman they did not recognize as Apanchaneh produced from the water and distributed to people an excessive amount of crustaceans, fish, and salt. One night, a group of men hid themselves in the undergrowth by the spring where the woman bathed. They were astonished to see that all kinds of water creatures and salt fell from her hair while she was combing her tresses with a shell comb. She gathered all of this food into a basket to take and distribute to the people. They were even more astonished a few minutes later to see that her body from the waist to the feet had transformed into the tail of a fish. As she finished Apanchaneh shook herself, and salt and freshwater shrimp fell from her body. As she bathed, she spoke with some frogs who accompanied her. When she left the water, her legs reappeared, and she dried herself. The men were disgusted to see that the food the Lady of the Water was giving to people was filth from her body. They reported her to the local authorities who refused to do anything, so the men became angry and took matters into their own hands. A group of them again hid by the spring where Apanchaneh bathed, and in the moonlight, they were dumbfounded to see great amounts of salt dropping from her skin and freshwater creatures emerging from her armpits. The men rose up, yelling that she was dirty and perverted, and they struck her with stones and sticks. At this point, Apanchaneh informed her tormentors that she was no ordinary woman but one with powers to control the water and its denizens. The men were at first enraged and then became frightened as a huge freshwater shrimp, hueyi chacali, appeared and shielded the water dweller from her attackers. Thunder and lightning also came and swept the Lady of the Water away to Tuxpan in the north and left her there, safe in the sea. The giant shrimp told the men they had committed a grave error and from then on people suffered drought and floods. The water being instructed them to offer Apanchaneh great banquets and to make regular visits to the sacred hills so that she would forgive them.

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According to the people of Chicontepec, these events, which took place long ago, are the reason that they continue to hold the atlatlacualtiliztli ritual today. Abelardo de la Cruz told us that in his Chicontepec community the observance includes a sequence in which people wash statues of San Juan and San Isidro and then imbibe the water.40 This custom counteracts the disrespect shown to apanchaneh by her husband and neighbors who accused her of serving them what they took as her filth. We recorded additional variations on this same theme from several different narrators in Amatlán. One story tells of a man who was catching fish but then gave the catch to two women instead of one—­in other words, he gave fish to his wife and to another woman. From the Nahua perspective, the giving of food to another is an act of intimacy. By giving fish to two women the man committed a grave wrongdoing.41 The man was also described as injuring many of the fish rather than being satisfied to take only what he needed. In one version he used dynamite to stun the fish, so the story goes:

The injured animals went to Apanchaneh and told her what the man was doing, and she became very angry. Finally, the man speared a large fish and as he went to grab it, he was dragged underwater and far away to the place where Apanchaneh lay hiding. The water dweller told him that because he had injured her children, she was going to punish him. She then said to him that she would let him go, but that he had to deliver to her the first one who greeted him as he entered his house.42 The man was relieved because he knew that his dogs were the first to greet him when he returned home and a dog would be a relatively small price to pay Apanchaneh for his freedom. He walked the great distance back to his house and as he entered it, one of his sons rushed up to greet him. This anguished him when he realized that he would have to offer Apanchaneh the boy to atone for his bad behavior. That night, the man discussed the matter with his wife, who was devastated, but they agreed that the boy must be delivered to Apanchaneh to avoid future problems with her. As they were talking over the matter, the boy’s younger sister overheard and went to warn him about what was to transpire. That same evening at midnight, he awakened his sister. He asked her to make some tortillas to take with him and to fill his water gourd. He wanted to avoid being taken to Apanchaneh, and planned to escape and go far away. The boy left his house and, as he walked along, he saw vultures fighting over food. He passed them by and kept going for a long time. Then he passed by some jaguars, fearsome tecuanimeh who were fighting over meat. He said to them, “You should not fight,” and he took out his knife and divided the meat among them. One

of the jaguars asked where he was going and offered his pelt to protect him, instructing him to say, “Come, my jaguar,” whenever he needed help. He then passed an eagle quarreling with vultures over a piece of meat and he again stopped the fight by cutting up the food. The eagle gave him one of his feathers, and told him to say, “Come, my eagle,” if he should get into trouble. The boy then approached the dwelling of a rich king who was very distressed because government representatives told him that it was his turn to sacrifice his daughter to a giant snake that lived in the sea. This water serpent was a particularly dangerous manifestation of Apanchaneh. The people had tied the girl to a stake on the shoreline so that the serpent could come and take her away. The boy saw all of these developments, untied the girl, and put the chains around himself in order to take her place. After a short while he saw in the distance a great wave of water coming ashore. He prepared himself, and as the giant snake approached to carry him away, he invoked the animals whom he had helped earlier. He was able to turn into an eagle, fly up and catch the snake, and strike it on the head with his beak until he killed it. Then (through a series of complex events), the boy ended up marrying the girl whom he had saved, and they were given a large feast by her father. About a month later, the boy decided that he had to take the girl back with him to visit his family. They walked a great distance and ended up near the sea. He told the girl that he was thirsty. As he bent over a nearby spring to take a drink, all of a sudden Apanchaneh grabbed him and took him into the sea, saying, “Now I am going to eat you. The first time you escaped but now I will finish you off.” The boy responded, “All right, but first I would like to gaze upon the brilliance of the day. I want to be able to see God before you take me.” The water dweller asked him if he had ever seen God. He replied that he had not. She let him approach the shore until the water washed up around his knees. He kept saying that he was too deep in the water to see God, and pretty soon the water covered only his feet. Then, all of a sudden, he called out to the eagle and was able to fly away to safety, away from the clutches of Apanchaneh. The girl and all the soldiers who were guarding her saw Apanchaneh grab the boy, and they waited to see what would happen next. Eventually, they became sad at the thought that he had been lost and they turned back to go to the king’s house. They were completely surprised to find the boy there. He had flown all the way back and had gotten there before them. In yet another storyteller’s version, the boy met an ant, an eagle, and a jaguar, and just barely escaped the clutches of apanchaneh. And in an alternate telling of the story, the snake possessed seven heads, and after transforming

himself into an eagle the boy had to kill all of them. Clearly, narrators of this particular tale find much room for innovation. In this final example, the narrator makes a compelling statement about the relationship between human beings and the powerful water dweller in combining several themes:

A man was fishing in the river and he took his catch to his wife. The wife, however, gave some of the fish to another man, and this was a transgression that made Apanchaneh furious. The man was fishing from a reed thicket in the river, which turned out not to be a reed thicket at all but was actually a huge lizard. The lizard, a manifestation of the water dweller, had reeds growing out of its shoulders.43 After a while, the man noticed that the thicket was slowly submerging. It went down and down, little by little, until the lizard swung around and grabbed the man in his jaws and began to swallow him. The man implored Apanchaneh, “Why are you doing this? I am only fishing.” She replied, “Because you are not the only one eating the fish.” “But,” he responded, “I just gave the catch to my wife.” She said, “Yes, but your wife gave some of the fish to another man, and it is you who are going to suffer.” At that point the lizard swallowed the man, who ended up in its stomach. The man carried a knife with him and cut through the lizard’s belly, punched a hole through its shoulder, and escaped. But as he extricated himself, he got some of the lizard’s blood on his skin. He returned to his house but soon began to itch where the blood had stained him. Pretty soon his whole body itched in an excruciating way. He threw himself into the fire to relieve the itching, and there he died. This storyteller ended with an ambiguous statement that suggested the man had been eating the blood of the lizard all along, which explained why he died. The many narrations dealing with water dweller (or her alter egos the siren and the water owner zahhuan), and those stories of women who gave fish to their husbands and others in their communities, reveal the Nahua vision of a kind of golden age when the spirit entities willingly supplied human beings with all the food from the water they could eat. That halcyon time of plenty ended when people ceased to respect in a number of circumstances: when the husband became jealous of his wife’s fish-­producing prowess; when those whom the siren supported accused her of passing off as food filth from her body; when married couples failed to be faithful to one another; and when greedy people abused water dweller’s children, the fish.

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In each of these narrations, apanchaneh is characterized as a vengeful enforcer of a moral code controlling human interaction and relations with the environment. There is even a Biblical Job-­like sequence in which a presumably innocent man is punished for the misdeeds of his wife (although not completely innocent himself, as he may have partaken of the lizard’s blood). In these narrations the siren is a cruel taskmistress who does not mind forcing innocent children to pay for their parents’ crimes. She is frightening and demanding yet totally necessary for life. The mythic tales exemplify the fraught relationship between human needs and wants and the often harsh reality of maintaining life under highly variable climatic conditions. Like apanchaneh herself, the uncertain rainfall of the southern Huasteca brings either prosperity and plenty or starvation and disaster, without regard to the human costs and consequences. The water dweller expects feasts in her honor and extravagant pilgrimages to her home atop Postectli. Throughout all, she remains aloof, an ambivalent figure who feels no need to supply life’s necessities or satisfy human desires.

Little detailed in this particular cycle of stories from Amatlán is an alternative conception of the water spirit as an overseer of a paradisaical realm where the souls of people who are struck by lightning, who drown, or die from certain water-­related diseases experience a glorious afterlife.44 In that afterlife people enjoy sunny skies, birds, butterflies, lush vegetation, musicians playing, and an abundance of flowers and all the best foods. In a real sense, the atlatlacualtiliztli ritual at the heart of the Postectli pilgrimage is an attempt to reproduce the conditions of such a paradise so that apanchaneh will enjoy staying here on the earth’s surface. The seemingly contradictory and inconstant nature of the Nahua water spirits reminds people to be respectful, cautious, and obedient to the rules of social conduct. Abelardo de  la  Cruz (personal communication) avers that the apanchaneh-­zahhuan complex teaches Nahua macehualmeh and Indigenous people everywhere that the world we inhabit is indeed malhuilli, something sacred or hallowed.45

Notes 1. Santa Rosa, or Saint Rose of Lima, Peru, was a sixteenth-­ century ascetic and healer renowned for her visions. Báez Cubero (2012), in an ethnological comparison focused on practitioners in one Otomí community in Hidalgo, reviews the extant literature on the ritual use of marijuana (and also datura) by different categories of practitioners who ingest psychotropic substances to establish communication with spirit entities. We discuss this association further in chapter 6 in describing the paper images of Santa Rosa. 2. Abelardo de  la  Cruz (personal communication, June  11, 2019) made this interesting point. 3. See the chapter that examines “teotl as nepantla” in Maffie (2014: 355–­418). 4. Myerhoff (1974: 123–­24). Aguilar Ros (2009) discusses the role of suffering on a pilgrimage to the site of La Virgen de Talpa from the Nahua-­Mestizo community of San Agustín, Tlajomulco, Jalisco. 5. See Williams García (1957). 6. Compare the similar artifacts in photographs in Medellín Zenil (1979: following page 121), and (1982 [1955]: 96). 7. The etymology of tepexitl that yields the morpheme tepexi-­ is complicated. Spelled tepehxitl, it is translated by Karttunen (1983: 230) as “precipice, large rock, cliff, ravine.” Abelardo de  la  Cruz (personal communication, May  1, 2019) translates tepexi-­ as “precipice,” plus the morpheme -­tzintlan as “beneath” or “just below,” but adds that it also refers to the landform that has come into English as “barranca.” However, “barranca” can mean both “a deep gully or arroyo with steep sides” and “a steep

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bank or bluff”; likewise, the word “precipice” is defined as “a very steep, perpendicular, or overhanging place” (as the face of a cliff), “an abrupt declivity,” or “a sheer cliff,” according to Merriam-­Webster Unabridged (n.d.)—­definitions that may seem contradictory to some English speakers. Given that the site itself and the trail leading up to it and beyond was indeed steep and hazardous, surrounded by vertigo-­inspiring drops as well as towering crags, we imagine that the site for the first altar and offering at the lower reaches of Postectli takes its name from any one of these natural features. 8. In chapter 7 we discuss the importance in Nahua metaphysical thought of the concept of tlazolli, signifying “trash,” “refuse,” or generally, “disorder.” 9. Karttunen (1983: 276). Nicholson (1971: 414) provides details about this earth-­rain deity cluster. 10. The enveloped figures and their wrapping constitute the palm-­mat bundle called petlaquimilli (alternately petlakimilli) in Nahuatl, described by Gómez Martínez (2002: 73) and Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 90–­91). 11. García Garagarza (2012: 196). Compare similar accounts presented by Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 51, 97) and España Soto (2018: 134). 12. Arturo Gómez Martínez, who observed Cirilo’s act in 2001, also affirmed this interpretation. 13. See Ixmatlahua Montalvo et al. (1982: 97–­99) and Sandstrom (2009 [1998]) on the iconography of Nahua maize bundles; photos A.29–­A.­34 in appendix A detail their construction. Regarding ancient Aztec practices, Megged (2010: 174) writes,

“I suggest that the Nahuas conceived of sacred bundles as containing the godly spirit (teotl),” and links the assemblages to concepts of transcendence and commemoration. Bassett (2015: 163–­91), in her extensive analysis of the sacred bundles (tlaquimilolli), concludes that the Aztec effigies were material, tangible, and physical embodiments of deity—­the “gods’ bodies” (2015: 191). Laack (2019: 121–­22, 195–­96) analyzes depictions of such bundles in Mexica and colonial-­era texts. 14. Guernsey and Reilly (2006: v). 15. The Nahuatl word tlacoyoctli, amplified with the prefix teo-­ (“sacred”), refers to the cave or rock cleft where water dweller or lightning and thunder spirit entities reside, discussed below. In the local dialect such a formation is commonly called simply “cave” or cueva, using the Spanish loanword (see Sandstrom 2005a: 37). González González (2019: 185–­86) describes the burial of a live white turkey among Nahua of Huexotitla, Ixhuatlán de  Madero, Veracruz, during a ritual pilgrimage. Lupo (1995: 168–­69) records that Nahua in the Sierra Norte de Puebla offer only parts of the chicken (not its entirety) in a similar ritual, as people say that to offer the whole bird authorizes the earth to devour other farm animals. Dow (2005: 246) comments similarly, that among the Sierra Otomí the suffering of the chicken is said to be part of the payment to prevent the devouring earth from withholding good harvests. 16. Chant 8, VHS Tape 5, MP4 counter 00:47:40–­00:53:07 (AILLA resource ID: 284730). 17. Saint Sebastián is widely known for his infamous trials (being pierced with arrows but healed by Saint Irene and eventually clubbed to death), and Saint Hippolytus, whose gruesome end (being dragged by wild horses or drowned in a deep well) is also a subject of some debate. 18. Pacheco (2014: 165). 19. Chant 9, VHS Tape 5, MP4 counter 00:53:08–­00:59:16 (AILLA resource ID: 284730). 20. Cirilo’s cleansing of Silveria at tlahcopoztectli on VHS Tape 5, MP4 counter 01:03:28–­01:06:08 (AILLA resource 284730) provides this audio recording, along with the Nahuatl transcript and draft translations in Spanish and English. 21. Silveria is pictured performing a maize-­kernel divination in the photograph in plate 11 and on the cover of Corn Is Our Blood (Sandstrom 1991). Soft-­spoken and gentle, Silveria is someone who has passionately dedicated her life to the religion of el costumbre. She graciously cooperated with our ethnographic enterprise over the decades and, like Cirilo, fostered efforts by ourselves and Mexican investigators to document Nahua religion and culture. 22. Chant 10, VHS Tape 5, MP4 counter 01:08:09–­01:15:30 (AILLA resource ID: 284730), preserves the entirety of Silveria’s chant. 23. In another long chant addressed to the maize spirit that we recorded in April 1990, the ritual specialist named several places she called tezcatepetl. The MP3 audio file, interlineal Nahuatl transcription, and draft Spanish translation of the chant by Silveria Hernández Hernández titled “Promesa para Chicomexochitl” (recording no. 40, AILLA resource ID: 132835)

is available at https://​ailla​.utexas​.org/; see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986–­98), also Sandstrom and Gómez Martínez (2004). 24. When we recorded Silveria’s chant in June 1998, electrical service in Amatlán was intermittent, a solar-­powered telephone system was a new development, and cell-­phone towers were nonexistent. A few dozen households in the village’s newly constituted “urban center” had opted for land lines, and a single entrepreneur offered public telephone service for a fee. We believe that Silveria (a monolingual Nahuatl speaker) chose the analogy to characterize the difficulty of communicating across the vast distance separating human and spirit realms. 25. James Brady (personal communication, 2002) suggests that most such consecrated caves are more like portals to another world than magnificent caverns in their own right. 26. Gómez Martínez (2002: 37–­56; 2004b: 260–­61) outlines the religious history of the municipio of Chicontepec, Veracruz. 27. Martínez de  la  Cruz (2000: 94) and Gómez Martínez (2002: 86) describe how apanchaneh speaks to ritual specialists who visit her cave. 28. See descriptions in Martínez de  la  Cruz (2000: 96); Quiroz Uría (2003: 42); Gómez Martínez (2004b: 261); and Pacheco (2014: 55–­56). 29. Ichon (1973 [1969]: 108–­9) writes that many contemporary Totonacs do not consider the moon to be sacred. 30. González González and Medellín Urquiaga (2007: 18; 2008: 110) and Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 103–­4, fig. 9) report that six of the streamers’ colors embody the seed crops (white, yellow, and purple for the varieties of maize, red for tomatoes, black for beans, and green for chilies), while the seventh streamer’s blue color calls forth the clouds. 31. Following the pilgrimage treks, we took great pains to provide printed copies of photographs to the members of families who participated; these mementos could been seen years later on display in people’s houses. 32. Nahua ritual specialists occasionally cut paper figures of maize for household rituals designed to increase the fertility of the family milpa. The image of Seven Flower (see paper figure X-8 in table X.1; also Sandstrom 1991: 264, fig.  5) was cut for such a purpose by Silveria Hernández Hernández. The spirit entity she gives form to has a rake-­like headdress, a central V-cut for the heart, and fingers at the ends of leaf-­like arms. Openings in the body are ears of corn with the husks folded upward, and the feet reveal the plant’s roots. 33. Cruz (2017: 170). 34. Martínez de la Cruz (2000: 46, 133–­36). 35. See Gómez Martínez (1999a: 120–­23; 2002: 85–­86) and Martínez de  la  Cruz (2000) for additional information about apanchaneh. Hooft has published an article (2001) and book (2007) on oral narrations about water among Nahua in the state of Hidalgo, and Hooft and Cerda Zepeda (2003: 101–­26) record myths about this figure in Nahua and Teenek communities north of Amatlán. García de León (1968) records a myth about the water owner among Nahua of southern Veracruz, and Ichon (1973 [1969]: 134–­36) documents a Totonac example.

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36. For the basic template of the apanchaneh myth we rely on the versions told in 1990 by two respected Amatlán storytellers, Bartolo Hernández Hernández (recording no. 1) and Efrén Hernández Hernández (no.  37), with story elements incorporated from Domingo Lagos Hernández (no. 18), Silveria Hernández Hernández (no.  41), José Luis (Carlos) Hernández Magdalena (nos. 43, 44), Juvencio Hernández Hernández (no. 68), and Efrén Hernández Hernández (nos. 102, 104). The audio recordings, transcripts, and draft Spanish-­English translations are preserved at https://​ailla​.utexas​.org/; see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986–­98). 37. In some versions of the story, the woman lives with her brothers, not her husband. 38. As some tell it, she simply bathed in the arroyo and did not carry water to her house.

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39. Our translation paraphrases the story in Martínez de la Cruz (2000: 69–­71). 40. Abelardo de  la  Cruz (personal communication, January 17, 2018). 41. Insights about sexual relationships vis-­à-­vis food sharing are revealed in numerous stories and interactions between Nahuat men and women recounted by Taggart (1983: 146); also see Taggart (2007: 4–­6, 81, 86–­87; 2011: 131, 133; 2015: 180; 2020: 128–­33). 42. In some versions she imprisoned him for four or eight days before letting him go. 43. In this telling, the man had not committed a sin. It was his wife who had sinned by feeding the fish to another man. 44. This theme is explored in Martínez de la Cruz (2000: 54, 73); see also Sandstrom (1991: 238, 250; 2021). 45. Also see Cruz (2017: 271–­72).

5 Nahua Ritual Foundations Elements of the Approach In this chapter we offer a straightforward interpretation of the pilgrimage to Postectli that does not stray far from the information and documentary materials we have so far presented. Amid thoughts about the cumulative research and published output we hear the ringing words of a friend from Amatlán: “We don’t know what it all means.” As outsiders to Nahua culture, how can we not admit the same? At the very least, however, we can organize and clarify our observations and offer contextual information to synthesize the voices of Nahua individuals alongside those of the ethnographers and scholars. Without a doubt, pilgrimage is the most inclusive, complex expression of contemporary Nahua religious and philosophical thought. The sacred journey to Postectli is an enormous undertaking for people who support themselves through slash-­and-­burn horticulture. Based on what people told us and our observations of the time and energy entailed, it is clear that such journeys are of signal importance to everyone involved. In chapter 1, we briefly outlined the circumstances that allowed us to acquire a sample collection of paper figures comparable to the images actually cut for the pilgrimage to Postectli. Cirilo understood the request as part of our effort to document the rituals of el costumbre and tell others about the beauty of his religion. He hired three colleagues to help him produce the cuttings, all of them ritual specialists who practiced in nearby communities: Teófilo Jiménez Hernández, Cortino Pasiano, and Catalina Martínez Hernández. They completed the commission in February 2007, and we proceeded to interview Cirilo to solicit details about the iconography of the cut-­paper images, the relationships among the different spirit entities, and the roles of both in the pilgrimage proceedings. Stretching over several days, the interviews were tiring for Cirilo and the ethnographers alike. By our count, the collection numbered well over 4,000 paper figure-­pairs on more than 200 petates. We preserved the fragile paper in archival-­quality Mylar sleeves with acid-­free inserts.1 As we have seen, the Postectli pilgrimage rituals are composed of a sequence of mezah altar offerings dedicated to named spirit entities that are executed in the home village of Amatlán, along the trail, in Ichcacuatitla, and on the sacred mountain itself. While altars to the moon and cross were essentially disregarded at the summit, over the course of the entire pilgrimage people assembled and dedicated a total of five major altar offerings and more than a dozen smaller arrays of paper figures and offerings. Constructed with great ceremony and attention to detail, these displays were much more elaborate than those we

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had witnessed on any previous occasion. A pilgrimage to Postectli requires the manufacture of many thousands of coyol palm and flower adornments and an enormous bundle of paper figures, but while the quantity and quality of offerings far exceeded the typical outlay, it is notable that the pilgrimage incorporated essentially the same sequence of ritual episodes observed in lesser rites practiced nearly every day in Amatlán. Ceremonies for annual planting and harvesting cycles are consistent with what we witnessed during the pilgrimage, and we observed probably the most common ritual in the village—­the cleansing—­at least three times during the pilgrimages (with additional cleansings performed for private reasons on behalf of individuals). Our analysis of Nahua pilgrimage will focus first on the sacred music that accompanies all major ritual events. We will then examine the smallest components, including the ritual paraphernalia, altar adornments, and paper cuttings. In chapter 6 we take a close look at the paper figures themselves and then focus on the larger compound elements that make up the iconographic framework of the Nahua sacred paper complex. In chapter 7 we examine theoretical insights from other scholars that help to make sense of Nahua religion and the pilgrimage phenomenon as a whole. It is our contention that Huastecan Nahua religion is conditioned by and can only be understood in the context of Nahua productive activities—­the slash-­and-­burn horticultural technology that supports the entire society. The basis of people’s livelihood, we conclude, is what provides the template for the distinctive Mesoamerican religion and world view of el costumbre.

Sacred Music We begin our discussion with music, of critical significance for the pilgrimage as for most ritual occasions. According to Gómez Martínez, people in Chicontepec believe that music is governed by Santa Cecilia, although we found no evidence of this specific connection in Amatlán.2 Played in the Western scale on the violin and guitar, the guitarist provides a rhythmic background and the violinist plays the distinctive melodies, or sones (literally, “sounds” in Spanish). People call this music xochisones, a mixed Nahuatl-­Spanish term meaning “flower sounds” or “flower music.”3 Selections are short in duration and repeated many times, producing a hypnotic sound that forcefully impacts ritual participants. An interesting feature of the sacred music of the region is that each melody corresponds with a specific part of the ritual, so the

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xochisones essentially constitute a form of signaling. Thus, someone familiar with the ritual music who passes by the xochicalli and hears the music can readily discern what is happening inside.4 To give a better idea of how musical accompaniment is coordinated with the ritual action, we present a detailed inventory of xochisones performed for Chicomexochitl rituals in the municipio of Ixhuatlán de Madero, documented by Nahua schoolmaster Átalo Cruz Reina and presented in their entirety in Nahuatl and Spanish by Rafael Nava Vite: 1 . Tlen ika tlaixnamikih = presentation to the altar 2. Tlen ika tlatehtekih = cutting paper figures 3. Tlen ika kantelatlatiah = lighting the candles 4. Tlen ika tlatlahtoltiah = first chanting for Seven Flower 5. Tlen ika xochichiwah = making the flower adornments 6. Tlen ika xochiihtotiah = dancing with the flowers 7. Tlen ika xochitopileihtotiah = dancing with the sacred walking stick 8. Tlen ika tlahtlaliah = dedicating the offering to the altar 9. Tlen ika tlaltlaliah = dedicating the offering to the earth 10. Tlen ika kipakiltiah miyawaxochitl totozih = to make the little bird-­shaped maize tassel (spikelet) happy 11. Tlen ika atlatlaliah = offering to the water 12. Tlen ika ohtli = for the trail 13. Tlen apixkemeh = for the caretakers of water 14. Tlen tlatotomonianih = for the thunder 15. Tlen aseliltianih = for the rain 16. Tlen mixtli = for the cloud 17. Tlen ahkosemalotl = for the rainbow 18. Tlen tlakopalwiah = for those who cense with copal 19. Tlen tepetl = for the hill 20. Tlen semanawaktli = for the cosmos filled with stars 21. Tlen xochiyawalli = for the arches and crowns 22. Tlen ika tlatzikuiniah = toast to the altar 23. Tlen piomiktiah = preparing to kill the chickens 24. Tlen ika piomeh tlaohoniltiah = giving drink to the chickens 25. Tlen piotlatemaktiliah = killing the chickens 26. Tlen ika tepetlakamawiah = speaking to the hill 27. Tlen akomitlihtotiah = dancing with the pot of water

28. Tlen xochimekatlihtotiah = dancing with the string of flowers 29. Tlen ika tlatlakentiah = dressing Seven Flower 30. Tlen ipan tepehtlatlaliah = putting offerings on the hill 31. Tlen ika moxochikopinah wan moohachpanah = passing through the loop of flowers to remove bad spirit entities 32. Tlen sintokistli = planting maize 33. Tlen ika miltlakualtiah = for the milpa in its third flowering [moyowalotia] 34. Tlen ika miyawakalakiliah = to set the maize tassel (spikelet) 35. Tlen ika elotlamanah = for the young (tender and sweet) maize 36. Tlen konemehihtotiah = for dancing with the maize dressed as girls and boys 37. Tlen kiihtotiah elotl ika kuachikiwitl = for those dancing with the basket of young maize 38. Tlen xiwiyoihtotiah = for those dancing before the altar with the young maize on stalks 39. Tlen ika momakawah = for the leaving of the offering 40. Tlen tlakankuiliah = for the future Seven Flower offering5

The specificity of actions recorded by Nava Vite gives an idea of the large repertoire of individual pieces that the skilled musicians must master. The list emphasizes the separate elements in the ritual performance that are salient and distinctive to participants. The music highlights the ritual acts of censing, dancing, cutting of the paper figures and giving offerings to them, walking to the offering sites, adorning altars, paying obeisance to spirit entities, and giving thanks. Like so much of el costumbre religious activity, the range of variation in sacred music is pronounced: the music mirrors the action but also varies in the degree to which it specifies particular ritual sequences. Additional field research by ethnomusicologists will allow scholars to determine to what extent the communicative value of the sacred melodies is shared among the region’s musicians and ritual practitioners.6 In each of the five pilgrimages we observed how music had a physical presence that lent order to the ritual activities. Individual melodic and rhythmic episodes produced the sacred spaces in which all of the different activities could occur. As an expression of Totiotzin, music makes ritual occasions powerful and efficacious as well as beautiful, akin to the flower-­covered altar. The coordinated

sounds of the guitar and violin draw spirit entities into the rituals by creating festive, colorful scenes filled with incense, food, light, and chanting. Music is a type of offering that centers the ritual and has causal efficacy in human-­spirit relations. The sacred music does more than simply create a proper, welcoming atmosphere—­it orders, centers, balances, equalizes, and thus motivates the spirits to come and participate.

Altars, Adornments, and the Paper Figures Essential components of Nahua ceremony and altar design include candles, copious palm and flower adornments, and the assembly of cut-­paper figures that are the focus of ritual activity. The attractive Nahua altar is designed to be just that—­ a construction to reveal Totiotzin and entice spirit entities to partake of the offerings. In response to our questions about the rituals, Cirilo said that they are the same as “inviting people over for a feast”—­a gift designed for the pleasure of the guests, in this case, the spirit entities. If outsiders unfamiliar with Nahua rituals were to enter a shrine during a major offering, probably the first thing they would notice would be the large number of burning candles covering the altar table. Candles are ever present in Nahua ritual events. When we first went to Amatlán in the early 1970s, the long, thin tapers were made from beeswax harvested from village beehives. Over the years, apiculture has become rare in the community for several reasons. Some people say that it is not worth raising bees because “they no longer want to work.” Others are concerned that disease has devastated the hives and that local species have mixed with Africanized bees and made them too troublesome to keep. Whatever the cause, as locally produced beeswax be­ came scarcer, people began purchasing candles in the market. Now a visitor to the village would notice three kinds of candles in use. The most commonly used type in virtually all rituals, called in Spanish simply cera (“wax”), is made from yellow-­orange paraffin that resembles a beeswax candle. A second, more expensive type is made from white paraffin in the form of a veladora—­a votive candle in a large, decorated, reusable drinking glass. This long-­ lasting candle may stay lit for a day or more, and one sees them flickering on altars long after the offering has been dedicated and people have departed. A third, distinctive candle type is used in cleaning-­curing rituals. Called sebo in Spanish, it is stubby and white and probably made from animal fat. Such tallow candles are associated with

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the underworld and used in the Nahua mezah to attract spirit entities associated with death. In the time predating electricity, candles were a luxury item that few could afford for illuminating houses at night. In addition to creating an atmospheric glow around altars, ritual specialists rub the beeswax-­colored cera candles on patients as a cleansing procedure and hand them out to people who have become new ritual kinsmen. Both types of client take the sacralized candles to burn on their home altars. Candles are an excellent example of an item borrowed from the Spaniards that has been thoroughly incorporated into local Indigenous religious practices. They are more than simple decoration or illumination, however. Lit candles are regarded as offerings because they transmit, in some small measure, their light and solar energy back to the sun entity (tonatiuh). A visiting observer of a Nahua ritual event would also immediately notice that greenery and flowers are requisite altar embellishments. Leafy decorations embody the growing plant, moisture, vegetal fecundity, and the fertile earth. Greenery epitomizes the raison d’être of slash-­and burn horticulture: the growing of plants as food. Tropical flowers in full bloom are also a major focus of Nahua rituals. Hunt writes that, among the Aztecs, the flower was a nodal, multivocal symbol, of major significance in prehispanic religious ideology. It named one of the calendar days, it represented live or sacrificial blood, it signified ornaments, poetry, beauty, articulate speech, vegetable nature, sophisticated thinking, philosophy, joy, love, games, sexual pleasure, venereal diseases, and a multitude of related convergent images.7

Colorful blossoms are appreciated by people all over the world of course, but the Nahua take their love of flowers to a whole new level. Flowers reveal deity, and allusions to them are sprinkled throughout everyday speech. Men and women frequently carry around small bouquets, gardens plots are festooned with blossoming varieties of plants, and women embroider their traditional blouse designs with bold floral patterns.8 We have seen throughout the pilgrimage how participants carefully layer adornments of coyol palm and marigolds over the paper figures on the altar table and on the earthen floor. The Huastecan Nahua embrace all flowers and may substitute other fresh blossoms if marigolds are scarce, but the marigold holds a special place of honor for all ritual occasions. Although people may plant marigolds in their milpas, they are better classified as a semidomesticated species (family Asteraceae, genus Tagetes)

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since they often grow wild at the margins of the fields. Villagers say that “marigolds are companions of maize,” and they are widely recognized as an efficacious botanical companion plant. The marigold’s name in Nahuatl is cempohualxochitl, meaning “twenty-­flower,” and it holds deep significance for people in Amatlán and other Indigenous Mesoamericans. The flowers are closely associated with Día de  Muertos or Day of the Dead, the annual observance during which the ancestors of Indigenous people and Mestizos alike are fêted in the family home and at gravesides, and for this reason, marigolds are regarded as “flowers of the dead.”9 Each coyol palm and flower adornment takes about twenty to thirty seconds to produce, and helpers manufacture them by the hundreds or sometimes thousands for every pilgrimage and major offering. To make the adornment, one first splits the long, thin, stiff leaf of the coyol palm into two parts, making one strip narrower than the other. Holding the flower blossom about a hand’s width from the base of the palm frond, one wraps the narrower strip in a tight spiral around the flower stem to secure it. Over the years we have spent many hours constructing these adornments at the behest of the ritual organizers. One puzzle we have not been able to solve is precisely how many are required for each episode of a ritual. As we have seen, the coyol palm adornments were methodically counted out in bundles of twenty, so the ritual specialists were always aware of how many had been produced. No matter how many were made for a particular event, it seemed there were never enough, leading us to conclude that there must not be a predetermined number required.10 People make many additional types of ritual adornments: coyolcitlalin (shown on the cover), an elaborate pinwheel-­ like star decorating the arch over the altar table; incense braziers ingeniously fashioned from coyol palm leaves (used for decoration and not for burning incense); and a small fork-­like implement called the xochimapilli (“little flower hand”) of Seven Flower. An item called xochi­coztli (“flowered necklace”) or xochicopincayahualli (“flowered circle to remove harm”) in Nahuatl, and rosario (“rosary”) in Spanish, has fresh flowers, usually marigolds, tied at intervals to a strand of vine and forms a circle.11 With the exception of this vine-­and-­flower garland that was employed during the cleansing described in chapter 3, these adornments and several others commonly used in rituals were not apparently called for during the Postectli pilgrimages—­a puzzling omission. Also absent were the implements called chicomexochitl coyolli (“seven flower coyol”) and macuilli xochitl coyolli

(“five flower coyol”), which we often observed in rituals to increase crop yield. Resembling yellow maize cobs, these wand-­like constructions are made by tightly tying seven (or five) rows of marigolds to stiff, short segments of coyol palm leaves. We are unsure why Cirilo did not call for these adornments for the journeys to Postectli, but we noted that helpers constructed many of them for the 2007 Palaxtepetl pilgrimage.12 Anyone entering a Nahua shrine during an offering in full progress would soon realize that activities are directed toward the cut-­paper figures laid out by the hundreds into neat rows or dressed in cloth and packed tightly into sisal carrying bags. Clearly, the paper figures are the very heart of the cleansing, curing, and crop-­fertility ritual complex and, as such, are the key expressive components of el costumbre for the Nahua, Otomí, and Tepehua people of the Huasteca region. For outsiders unfamiliar with the culture area, ritual paper cutting is probably the most surprising feature of Indigenous ritual practices. It is intriguing that people in Teenek communities to the north make no apparent use of paper figures despite their retention of many shared religious traditions, but their absence strikes us as anomalous, and it may be that this facet of el costumbre remains to be documented.13 Part of the mystery of the paper figures is illuminated by examining the historical record of Mesoamerica. We know from the sixteenth-­century chroniclers that paper in the pre-­Hispanic era was considered a sacred substance. Political and religious elites demanded millions of sheets of paper each year in tribute from communities throughout the region, and the Indigenous papermakers expended enormous effort in its manufacture. The specialists who cut paper were important personnel in temples across Mesoamerica, and we know that pre-­ Hispanic paper was used for priests’ clothing and ceremonial decorations, in ritual sacrifices and divinations, and in the manufacture of sacred books.14 The records confirm that amate paper was cut into strips for use in rituals, but the question remains: did people in the past cut paper images of specific spirit entities like their descendants do today? We have some evidence that paper was formed into images, but the documentary record is inconclusive; for the most part it appears that liquid rubber (latex) was dripped or painted on the paper.15 Unfortunately, unless paper is preserved under favorable conditions, it usually does not last for long. Very few examples of ancient paper have survived to the present. However, archaeologists made an astonishing discovery in January 2000 at the Templo Mayor excavations in

Mexico City. They uncovered seven stone boxes fitted with lids carefully placed there by the Aztecs. Over the years, researchers at the site have found many such boxes filled with offerings. Items in them range from seashells and stingray spines to stone objects including small statues. Many of these caches are now on display at the Templo Mayor museum. When cache 102 was opened, archaeologists were stunned to find offerings of 111 different items, including examples of the handmade amate paper. We were in Amatlán at the time and were invited by the conservators to examine the contents of the cache. The paper had apparently survived because the box was filled with water, which acted as a preservative. The archaeologists found a priest’s costume made from paper as well as six small paper placards, each with an anthropomorphic image of Tlaloc, the Aztec deity associated with rain, painted in liquid rubber. The images depicted Tlaloc with a twisted face, characteristic of facial paralysis. These six paper remnants are as close as we have come to a direct link between the contemporary paper figures and pre-­ Hispanic practices.16 The Spanish conquerors, recognizing the importance of paper for the native religions, forbade its manufacture and made it a crime for Indigenous people to possess even a single sheet on penalty of being brought before the authorities. The enormous trade in paper abruptly came to an end, and it was widely believed by scholars that papermaking had been long abandoned. Yet the use of paper for ritual purposes among Indigenous Mesoamericans did not die out completely. We have court records from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries of individuals being discovered conducting rituals that involved paper (sometimes spattered with blood), but most of it was apparently cut into strips to serve as garments for the deities.17 In 1900 American anthropologist Frederick Starr was exploring the Sierra Norte de Puebla on horseback when he was told about Otomí papermaking villages in the region. He went to some of these communities to observe the traditional craftwork, and he also reported seeing altars stacked high with paper images cut into anthropomorphic shapes. Not only had papermaking survived centuries of persecution, but apparently so had some of the traditional rituals associated with it.18 The Otomí paper figures described by Starr were cut using scissors. We speculate that pre-­ Hispanic specialists used obsidian blades to cut the paper. An expert on the cultural history of the Huasteca region, French ethnologist Guy Stresser-­Péan, acknowledges that paper was an important component of pre-­Hispanic rituals but points out that there is little convincing evidence

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that the ritual specialists cut elaborate images such as we find today. He concludes that today’s paper-­figure complex probably traces to the eighteenth century when metal scissors first became widely available.19 Cultural imperatives also help to explain the use of paper in Nahua rituals. As we discussed in chapter 2, Mesoamerican religious ideology makes constant reference to the human body to explain the workings of a living cosmos. Archaeologists have long known that small clay figurines, usually anthropomorphic, are found in abundance in their excavations. These figurines played an important role in domestic rituals, but they have also been found in contexts outside of the home. Most experts assume they were arranged as components of altars to receive ritual treatment.20 We surmise that the paper figures used in rituals of contemporary people are very likely a continuation of practices that involved the production of these tiny clay or stone figurines.21 We must also entertain the possibility that ritual specialists at some point in the past may have been motivated to substitute paper for more durable materials as a way to shield their activities from the prying eyes of clerics and missionaries. Paper is easy to conceal and leaves no permanent trace. Even though Indigenous religious practices are perfectly legal in modern Mexico, we have observed a ritual specialist in Amatlán taking the precaution of hiding his paper cuttings in the loft of his house when a priest arrived on a rare visit to the community. We develop the argument later in this chapter that the paper figures may also be contemporary examples of Nahua pictographs, such as those found in the ancient codices. The practices of ritual paper cutting in el costumbre may derive from both figurine and pictographic traditions. There is yet another factor that we believe helps explain why there are so many different paper figures employed in rituals. Because Nahua religion is pantheistic, people see every object and being in the cosmos as interrelated in fundamental ways. Pantheism may appear to be overly abstract and philosophical, distant from the everyday concerns of adherents. Someone seeking help for a critically ill child or a desiccated milpa needs something more tangible than religious abstractions or platitudes. At some point, and likely for this simple reason, ritual specialists developed the means to make divine power seem approachable and more sensitive to their immediate, pragmatic concerns. One solution would be to break up seamless religious power into manageable segments, which people could then deal with directly. These segments are merely the temporary manifestations of the great unity, and

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such aspects merge back into that totality when the ritual is completed. In Buddhism and Hinduism—­usually acknowledged as pantheistic religions—­there are an enormous number of deities, all considered by elite priests if not individual worshipers to be part of a single, sacred being. For Buddhists the sacred unity is Buddha, and for Hindus it is Brahma. The thousands of deities or deity aspects of these religions mask the unity that lies at their core. In the same way, the paper figures are a particularly New World solution to an age-­old problem in religious thought and metaphysics regarding the nature of being. What appears to be a multitude of deities is in reality only one, a reflection of Totiotzin in all its complexity. Following most rituals, the paper figures are either destroyed or left to disintegrate, to return to their source from which they were singled out for some specific purpose. In sum, the Nahua use of cut-­paper figures in their rituals—­a practice well grounded in their history—­reflects important cultural understandings and is consistent with their pantheistic religion. Living in the inhospitable reaches of the Huasteca has also served to position the Nahua far from urban influences and the scrutiny of government and church officials. The hot lowlands of the southern Huasteca are densely covered by lush, tropical vegetation, crisscrossed by numerous streams and rivers, subject to torrential rains, and home to countless venomous snakes, scorpions, and centipedes. Older Amatlán residents recall that they had to walk for several days to reach Álamo in the municipio of Álamo Temapache, the nearest city of any size (with about 25,000 residents). The nearby Sierra Norte de  Puebla, where the paper-­cutting tradition also remains active, lies in the rough and broken backcountry of the Sierra Madre Oriental, a region as inaccessible as the southern Huasteca. While the craft of handmade papermaking and its use in rituals was stamped out across other parts of Mesoamerica, over the centuries it persisted until the present day in these two adjacent regions. With the appearance of scissors and mass-­produced paper in the centuries following the conquest, it was a short step to arrive at the contemporary paper-­figure complex.22 While some Nahua families in and around Chicontepec in northern Veracruz continue to produce the handmade bark paper for ritual use, most practitioners in the region, including in Amatlán, rely on mass-­produced paper instead. At first glance, the range of types and the sheer numbers of paper figures used during the pilgrimage appear bewildering and overwhelming. Before we attempt a deeper analysis of these remarkable ritual items, we can

make a few generalizations that will help to frame the research problem. Like all religions, Nahua beliefs and practices can be understood on many levels. On the one hand, as we have emphasized following Maffie (2014), the religion is highly abstract, philosophically sophisticated, and filled with deep insight into how the universe functions and how the place that human beings occupy fits into the wider cosmos. Nahua religion can also be seen as particularly concerned with the here and now, a belief system that helps people deal with the pragmatic affairs of life.23 When questioned about the images, a participant in the pilgrimage told us that the “paper figures are saints”; in other words, they manifest the spirit entities in the Nahua pantheon and sacredness itself. Generally speaking then, the figures embody or reveal sacralized elements in what Euro-­Americans call the natural and social worlds. As such, they are the result of close observations of human behavior and emotions and the processes of nature, as we outlined in chapter 2. Shortly, we will make the argument that at one level the paper figures produced by the Nahua directly embody fundamental elements of the natural environment such as earth, water, sun, crops, hills, thunder, lightning, and stars. At a slightly more abstract level they invoke complex elements such as the altar, cross, walking stick, key, bell, and the numerous saints whose names the local people borrowed from Spanish Catholicism (and whom they usually equate with sacred hills). Comprehending these items, all of which are aspects of Totiotzin, requires knowledge of the history of the Nahua people and their encounter with Spanish culture as well as familiarity with the corpus of Indigenous myths. The straightforward way the paper figures are named makes identifying them relatively unproblematic: water dweller, good wind, altar, cross, earth, and so on. The descriptive naming of spirit entities apparently applies to the malevolent winds as well. We will examine the character and purpose of each of them in turn: man owl, death, corpses wind, and all the other dangerous elements. When pressed to explain the paper figures, Cirilo more than once stated that they are señales of the spirit entities; he chose the Spanish word señal, which means a “sign,” “signal,” “mark,” “trace,” or “vestige.” We do not take this somewhat ambiguous explanation at face value, however, and we will examine closely the meanings that the ritual specialists and others have shared with us. Before going further, we need to reiterate that almost all of the ritual cut-­paper figures have at their center the human body, expressing the animating force of the living cosmos.24 For ritual participants, the properly cut

and properly arranged paper figures reveal aspects of Totiotzin and thus manifest a living cosmos. Individual figures are always part of a larger complex in which human beings and comic forces are intertwined. The paper figure embodying maize, for example, is more than the physical growing plant. And it is greater than a doll-­ like representation of a human body. It is a living link between the sun and humanity as a whole. Moreover, it constitutes an affirmation that the cosmos provides all that makes life possible and worthwhile. In the end, the paper figure of maize takes its place in a broad, abstract system of thought and belief, and it is empirical proof that the perpetual exchange between humans and the wider universe is in some kind of balance, at least for the time being. But not all paper figures use the body in this way. Man owl and man owl woman, part of the ritual cleansing apparatus, appear to have the wide body and tail of an owl. In the case of such theriomorphic figures, the ritual specialist communicates to all observers (and particularly patients during a cleansing-­curing procedure) that the leader of dead souls in the underworld is not a part of the human family but belongs to the disordered realm of wild animals. Indigenous peoples throughout Mesoamerica associate animals of the forest with the dangerous yet potentially productive periphery, as opposed to the or­ dered center of the human community.25 The form of paper figures varies from place to place and among ritual specialists, but design and iconographic manipulations must take place within certain constraints. Ritual specialists appear to strive to achieve a degree of uniformity in the cuttings they produce for their rituals. Images of the earth, apanchaneh, and the sacred walking stick, for example, clearly adhere to standards—­some aesthetic and some iconographic—­ so that people in attendance can identify them. Because many of the ritual specialists who cut the paper figures were from neighboring villages, we were curious how the degree of uniformity was achieved for the rituals we observed. The answer came in an unexpected way. During the 1998 preparations as the visiting paper-­cutters arrived, we noticed that Cirilo would go to a corner of the shrine and consult with them before they sat down to their task. He took out a folded bundle of cardboard and opened it as he was talking. Inside was a stack of precut figures that he had collected, which he called muestras (“samples,” “models,” or “patterns”). He assigned certain figures to his assistant practitioners to cut and showed them the design that they should copy. Sometimes they would be so familiar with what was required that they simply found a place to sit,

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took out scissors, and began to cut. Otherwise, they studied the sample figure closely and copied it precisely, taking care to place it back into the cardboard bundle when they finished the job. We had discovered the mechanism by which Cirilo ensured that the cuttings done by others would conform to his requirements. Cirilo had learned his craft in similar fashion from his mentor Evaristo, and these sample figures were his way of conforming to an expected style within a particular lineage of knowledge. It is interesting that Cirilo himself was not able to identify all of the images when we questioned him about a few that were unfamiliar to us. This fact is not surprising because skilled cutters may create idiosyncratic images for their ritual practices. Nahua ritual specialists enjoy a certain freedom to devise new iconographic forms to express an infinite number of ideas. We can testify that these “people of knowledge” often experimented with new designs, but as with artistic license generally, ritual specialists must strike a balance between innovation and replication.26 One common way that ritual specialists innovate and successfully introduce new forms is to create variations on recognized design elements. An example of this practice is shown in figure 5.1, which also illustrates the challenges of comparing design motifs and classifying unfamiliar cultural categories. Cirilo frequently cut for his altar-­ offering arrays (i.e., as part of his customary mezah layout) a standard presentation of tlalli, the earth (figure 5.1a). Its rake-­like headdress (with seven or nine even notches, resembling a crenellated parapet) is vegetation growing from the earth’s surface, and the inverted V-cuts in the body (usually nine, aligned three by three) are the sacred hills. He also cut multiple variations on this particular figure, calling it “other earth” (figure 5.1b), and we can see that this cutting plainly lacks the vegetative headdress of the standard depiction of earth. One might imagine that it embodies a patch of the earth’s surface without plants, for example, high mountaintops or dry regions. But its lack of headdress actually signals that the figure is the opposing gender of a spirit-­entity pair. Cirilo explained that the cutting he called “earth over there” (figure 5.1c) embodies the patch of earth in Ichcacuatitla lying at the base of Postectli, an excellent example of heightened specificity in Nahua ritual practice. This figure features the standard earth-­type headdress but has fewer sacred hills cut from the body. Its pattern of four cuts arranged in a rectangle is an ancient Mesoamerican motif that indicates the surface of the earth. A unique cutting that Cirilo identified as “earth of the altar” (figure 5.1d) embodies the patch of earth beneath the altar. This figure has a flat-­topped

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headdress, and thus differs significantly from other images of the earth (or, for that matter, the altar, which will be illustrated shortly). It nonetheless features a four-­ lobed quatrefoil design that is recognizable as the surface of the earth. The corners define a space that can be read as a milpa where the crops grow, or the entire earthly plane as defined by the four points on the horizon that mark the farthest reaches of the sun during the winter and summer solstices. If all of this were not confusing enough to outsiders, Cirilo cut for us another unique paper figure that he designated “earth changes” (figure 5.1e), which mixes the familiar earth-­type headdress with a flower bud-­like device cut from the center of the body. We puzzle over the meaning of this iconographic detail further in chapter 6, but suffice it to say for now that the range of the ritual paper cutter’s creativity is bounded only by his or her culturally appropriate vocabulary.27 In sum, the paper-­ figure complex allows the ritual specialist to move from generalized images to those that emphasize particular details. In this way, the practitioner can modify a paper figure that embodies the entire volume or surface of the earth to focus attention on the tiny patch of land beneath an altar table. This capacity is one way in which these skilled paper cutters tailor their creations (and conceptions) to match the need of a specific ritual event or a particular client. Here we have a clear example of the practice of scaling that plays such an important role in Mesoamerican religions: just as they comprehend the earth as a human body enlarged, the Nahua can readily conceive of its enormity reduced to the diminutive size of a paper figure. By modifying the basic form that they cut from paper, the ritual specialists break down broad abstractions and the enveloping conception of reality that characterizes pantheistic religion into small, familiar, tangible (and thus interchangeable, easily manipulated) units. Difficulties we faced in analyzing the paper figures were compounded when Cirilo’s assertions would contradict the iconography of a paper figure. For example, Cirilo identified one paper cutting, which we recognized as his standard image of the altar, as “earth below.” It is possible that he could not see well in the dimly lit shrine or may have been in a contrarian mood. In several ambiguous cases like this we noted the ritual specialist’s identification but classified the figure according to its design similarities to other paper figures on the strength of the cumulative data. However, it was precisely in reconciling a confounding instance like this that we were alerted to consider whether the place on the earth occupied by the altar is indeed synonymous with the altar. It is a typical

a. Earth

b. Other Earth

c. Earth Over There

d. Earth of the Altar

e. Earth Changes

Figure 5.1. Various paper figures embodying the sacred earth. Drawing by Ana Laura Ávila-­Myers.

feature of el costumbre that embodiments intertwine in mutually reinforcing and yet contradictory ways. We have to remember that as a scaled-­down version of the sacred cosmos, the altar incorporates elements of not only the earth’s surface and its belongings but also the interior of the earth, thus providing linkages among all the figures. The figures are nearly always shown front-­facing with the arms raised alongside the head. Frontal portrayal has a long history in Mesoamerican art and is associated in some way with the earthly realm.28 Although many of the cut-­paper spirit entities come from realms of the cosmos far removed from planet Earth, the ritual specialists create front-­facing figures to communicate the idea that important cosmic forces meet on tlaltepactli, the earth’s surface, where people live out their lives and make meaning of their shared human experience. An intriguing mystery remained unresolved in our long-­standing interest in Nahua ritual and the paper figures, namely, what precisely is the meaning of the upraised hands? Is it simply a posture of reverence or greeting? Whenever we asked ritual specialists about this common design characteristic, they would reply obliquely, making some remark like “así es el costumbre”—­ “that’s the custom.” Nor have researchers working among Otomí, Tepehua, and other groups of Nahua in the region, all of whom cut figures in a similar pose, been able to offer any more convincing explanation.29 Perhaps the stance once held explicit meaning but is no longer known to people today or simply escapes their notice. Yet, if the significance has been truly lost, it seems unlikely that the design

would be perpetuated with such consistency. It has always been our contention that the front-­facing, hands-­by-­the-­ head posture of the paper figures provides an important insight into core elements of Nahua religion and philosophy. The characteristic posture of the figures summarizes much of how the Nahua understand the structure and dynamics of the cosmos, even if we were not sure of is meaning. It was during our detailed examination of the collection of paper figures prepared for the pilgrimage that a solution to the problem finally presented itself. One of the most frequently produced paper cuttings for the pilgrimage is the image of the altar itself, illustrated in figure 5.2. The cutting that Cirilo called simply “altar” (figure 5.2a) is an unelaborate figure without a distinctive headdress and a blocky, rectilinear shape suggesting that it is clothed. The body contains four V-cuts with their flaps folded open, likewise arranged in a rectangle. We know that the rectangular shape and the four points inscribing it were also a pre-­Hispanic convention for describing the earth’s surface. It seems clear that this figure communicates the earthly aspects of the altar, namely, the top of the table and the area directly beneath it. Cirilo also cut a related paper figure that he explicitly called “upper altar” (figure 5.2b). This cutting closely resembles the standard image of altar, but in place of the four openings tracing the corners of a rectangle, its three V-cuts are arranged in an equilateral triangle. We recognize this pyramidal design as the arch that completes the upper part of the altar table, which serves to reproduce the sky realm, ilhuicactli. Suddenly it dawned on us that this seemingly

Nahua Ritual Foundations  :  189

a. Altar

b. Upper Altar

Figure 5.2. Core anthropomorphic form of the paper figures. Drawing by Ana Laura Ávila-­Myers.

insignificant embodiment of upper altar clarifies the posture or gesture of these anthropomorphic figures. The two upraised arms and hands with the head at the midline correspond to the three points of an arch. At last we saw it: the cut-­paper images of the Mesoamerican costumbre religion are themselves scaled-­down altars, replicas writ small of the structure of the living cosmos. Gómez Martínez provides confirmation of this interpretation when he notes that people conceive of the sky and earth as reclining in wooden chests; a curved one for the sky and a quadrangular one for the earth.30 According to this logic, the human body (like the Nahua altar) reflects the structure of the animated cosmos, encompassing the sky vault above, the earth’s surface, and the interior earth. The head and hands of a spirit entity cut from paper form the arch of the sky or celestial realm, the rectangular body is isomorphic with the earth’s surface, and the legs and feet anchor earth’s volume or interior. Nahua ritual specialists capture and ritually employ elements from the natural and social worlds (water, earth, hills, lightning, the maize plant, wrath, bad and good winds, witness-­guardians, and so forth) by cutting the general shape of a human body from paper and giving it identifying attributes so people know what it is. Bodies link people directly to the sacred: the body itself constitutes an animate altar, and the form of each individual is homologous to the structure of the cosmos. In sum, the design of the paper figures acts as a highly condensed statement of Nahua pantheism and ontological

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monism, plainly revealing the entire cosmos to be a single, homogeneous, and vivified entity. If we allow ourselves a moment of conjecture based on the evidence as we understand it, we would describe the Nahua cosmos as an animated construct of graduated scalar units. It has a structure based on the human form that people perceive to unfold at progressively larger—­and smaller—­scales. It is a human-­altar structure whose power and beauty lies in the self-­replicating patterns that tie together discrete realms of experience. Figure 5.3 illustrates the comparable design principles that transcend relative differences in size and underlie the earth’s revered hills and mountains, decorated Nahua altars laden with offerings, mature maize plants emerging from cultivated fields, and the ubiquitous front-­facing, hands-­upraised human form at the core of a ritual paper figure.31 Viewing the illustration from left to right (with the scale shifting from large to small), the first panel shows a profile of Postectli (seen in photo 1.1), which locates (1) the sky vault at the mountain’s head or summit (tzonteconpoztectli), (2) the earth’s surface at the middle of Postectli (tlahcopoztectli), and (3) the interior earth at the place beneath the precipice (tepexitzintlan). The next panel shows an altar with (1) the decorated arch of star adornments replicating the sky realm, (2) the array of paper figures and offerings on the rectangular tabletop, isomorphic with the earth’s surface, and (3) the array beneath the altar evoking interior earth. Next, the maize plant reflects the same basic structure with its (1) tassel at the top, (2) stalk and leaves enveloping the maize cob in the middle, and (3) roots penetrating the soil below. Likewise, the composition of a Nahua paper figure of the earth reveals (1) the sky realm in the customary posture of upraised arms and hands alongside the head (with its identifying headdress), (2) the earth’s surface in the core rectangular body shape (with V-cuts revealing the hills), and (3) the legs and feet grounding the human form within the earthly domain. We do find an exception to the essentially invariant stance of the anthropomorphic figures with their arms and hands pointing upward. Among the paper cuttings prepared for the ritual cleansings, only one type has its arms down at the sides. When we first asked him to explain the portrayal, Cirilo replied simply that it is a disease-­causing wind, ehecatl, associated with mictlan, place of the dead. Apparently, the arms-­down position indicates the extraordinarily dangerous nature of this spirit entity as he went on to identify this fearsome image as “corpses wind,” an entity closely associated with death itself. We must wonder, however, whether the figure’s arms merely point to the

underworld realm lying beneath the earth’s surface, and we bring up the question again in the next chapter.32 The size of the paper images as a design feature can sometimes indicate their power. In Cirilo’s collection, we observe that the leaders of the disease-­causing winds and their collaborators are larger than the average-­sized paper figures. Interestingly, the seed images cut for pilgrims to take home with them and safeguard on the home altar are also cut larger than most of the other figures. We note, too, that Cirilo’s renderings of these permanently preserved seed figures are increasing in size compared to ones he cut in past years, perhaps reflecting their growing prominence in his system of belief. The difference in size, however, may be attributed simply to stylistic preferences among ritual specialists.33 In chapter 2 we discussed how color can communicate significant information about the identity of specific paper figures. The majority of cuttings that ritual specialists cut and arrange on all of the pilgrimage altars are uniform in size and not distinguished by color. As we described in chapter 3, the paper chosen for these cuttings is an inexpensive grade of newsprint that is off-­white or grayish in color, although people called it simply “white.” Many of the disease-­causing wind spirits are cut from brightly colored tissue paper (papel de china), while the larger, colorful seed figures are cut from the heavier paper called papel lustre, which has a lustrous or shiny finish. Adding to the difficulties of establishing the consistent meaning of various colors, there are often inadvertent variations in the color of paper used for the same figure. In general these differences result not so much from the intent of the ritual specialist but rather from different dye lots and grades of paper available for sale. Thus, a figure they would call “red” appeared to us to vary in color from light pink to a vivid rose or even violet, depending on the paper supply. We conclude that the ritual specialists did not seem to regard such color variations as a problem. Figures are cut in such a way that knowledgeable followers of the religion of el costumbre can identify and name the spirit. A significant identifying feature is the headdress. The variety of headdress designs seems endless, ranging from distinctly hat-­like headgear to more fanciful shapes that appear to be mountains, vegetation, foliated objects, crosses, knobs, animal horns, and so forth. In pre-­Hispanic Mesoamerica, sumptuary laws controlled the type of headdress a person was allowed to wear, and it indicated a person’s status in society. Justyna Olko writes that “[a]mong the highest ranking status objects were head adornments made from a variety of materials.”34

Likewise with the paper figures, the headgear says something about the character of the spirit entity. Animal horns nearly always indicate that the entity is dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. As we saw in figure 5.1, figures portraying the earth generally have the rake-­like headdress that we initially had difficulty interpreting. Years ago, people told us definitively that its comb-­like, pronged cuts are the open, devouring jaws of the earth.35 But such an association would suggest the underworld, death, and danger, whereas we knew the paper image of the earth is considered beneficent, the source of fertility and life. After years of probing for the answer to this question, a ritual specialist one day mentioned nonchalantly that the vertical cuts of the headdress are tree trunks growing out of the earth. Interestingly, the Nahua believe that the tonalli soul, associated with vitality and power, is concentrated in the top of the head and particularly in the hair.36 Thus, vegetation is analogous to the hair of the earth, and the paper cuttings reveal it emerging from the earth’s head. We can now, with confidence, interpret the rake-­like headdress as a device that signifies the generative power of the earth to produce the vegetation upon which life depends. From pre-­Hispanic days clothing has had an exceptionally important emphasis in Nahua culture. Attire is a telling attribute that reveals status or rank and is closely tied to the identity of the wearer. As part of the sacred cosmos, clothing also has power in its own right. The pilgrims expended a great deal of effort in fashioning miniature outfits for the seed spirits, and they laboriously laundered, dried, and even ironed them as part of the offering in Amatlán. For the Nahua of today, placing garments on a statue or paper figure is an act of the highest respect. The pilgrims dressed the altar to the sun at the summit of Postectli by wrapping a white cloth around it. Nahua corn bundles are clothed by wrapping them in colorful bandanas, and people employ the word cueitl (“skirt”) when emphasizing realms of the cosmos calling the Milky Way citlalcueitl (“star-­skirt”), for example, and the planet Earth tlalcueitl (“earth-­skirt”). Paper figures are replete with designs that suggest articles of clothing or their components, such as blouses, skirts, pants, shirts, shoes, pockets, shawls (rebozos), ponchos (jorongos), and various headgear. Ritual specialists typically portray the spirit entities in full dress.37 Our 1986 study of the design elements of the paper figures cut by Nahua, Otomí, and Tepehua practitioners, Traditional Papermaking and Paper Cult Figures of Mexico, laid out some basic principles underlying the iconography of the Indigenous practices of paper cutting. Because

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Figure 5.3. Template for the animated cosmos. Drawing by Michael A. Sandstrom.

the very manner in which el costumbre ritual specialists cut and handle the paper figures reveals a great deal about their world view and religious conceptions, we would like to summarize here some main points of that analysis, which followed the lead of Nancy Munn (1966), who worked among the Walbiri people in Australia. She examined Walbiri drawings and developed a method of analyzing the design elements of culturally standardized visual portrayals, and we applied these methods to the paper figures. Munn wrote about Walbiri drawing from a dualistic perspective, that is, she assumed that the images represented or symbolized something else: the signifier is distinct from the signified. We are making the case in this study that the Nahua are monists, and therefore the paper figures are best said to reveal, manifest, or embody elements of the cosmos: that is, the signifier and the signified are one and the same. Despite our own fundamental shift in how we interpret the images, the fact is that Nahua ritual specialists incorporate iconographic elements in their cuttings to indicate what aspect of Totiotzin they choose to reveal, rendering Munn’s general approach relevant and her method fruitful for identifying and comprehending

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the design components. She writes that each example of Walbiri iconography (just as for the paper figures) is a combination of irreducible visual elements that is meaningful to ritual participants. These visual elements consist of icons, meaning that there is a direct correspondence between the visual image and the idea conveyed. For example, rib holes in a Nahua figure embody a skeleton, and oblong shapes cut from the body are maize cobs. These icons are irreducible in that they are not composed of lesser or supplementary images that can in themselves stand on their own and convey meaning. Icons differ from symbols. For symbols there is no correspondence between the representation and the item represented; the dollar sign ($) is a conventional symbol that in no way resembles an actual dollar. Paper figures are a combination of one or more icons that taken together constitute the meaning of the image. Looking again at our earlier example of earth-­tlalli (figure 5.1), we can see that the sacred earth combines a number of visual elements. It takes the basic form of Totiotzin’s animating force—­the human body—­complete with head, torso, arms, hands, legs, knees, and feet. It has two eyes and a mouth but

(1) Sky vault above

(2) Earth's surface

(3) Interior earth below

rarely, in Cirilo’s lineage of practice, a nose or ears. The rectangle of the torso reveals that the figure wears clothing (perhaps a tunic or a man’s poncho-­like jorongo or a woman’s shawl or rebozo) draped over its shoulders; simultaneously, its quadrilateral shape demarcates for viewers the surface of the earth. We now understand that the rake-­ like headdress is composed of the trunks of trees growing from the earth’s surface. The V-cuts in the torso are the sacred hills that dot the landscape around Amatlán. As they invariably do in preparing the figures for a ritual, the people assisting the paper cutters fold open every one of the flaps of paper in the body, especially the mouth and eyes. When we asked a respected ritual specialist why they do so, he responded, “So they can see.” These elements introduce a degree of dimensionality and the appearance of vitality in the otherwise flat paper objects. As we noted in chapter 3, the paper spirit entities’ jowl-­like facial features connect them with the toad, which is widely associated with moisture, fertility, and renewal. These elements of the Nahua living cosmos conjoin in a paper creation that not merely depicts the planet Earth, but conveys the crucial, transforming properties of fertility.

The majority of paper cuttings exhibit an economy of style whereby the icons convey just enough meaning that the presentation of the entity or cosmic force is unambiguous. Few icons could be left out without changing the unique identity of a given cutting. The range of meanings represented by a single visual element are what Munn calls “elementary categories.”38 Thus, individual fruits or vegetables defining a seed figure may have multiple overall meanings, but they are conveyed by a single icon. The oblong, cob-­shaped cuts in the seeds’ paper image are an elementary category that reveals the multiple meanings of maize for the Nahua. Where meaning is communicated by a combination of elements (such as we see in a series of completed paper figures of the earth), Munn calls these cases “composite categories”39 A paper cutting may contain few (or many) such elements, each contributing in an additive process to the overall visual presentation of the distinctive aspects of a spirit entity. By this definition, all of the paper images envisioned by the Nahua paper cutters employ composite categories. In general, the elementary and composite categories of Nahua visual elements are relatively restricted in the

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number of meanings that can be assigned to them. People in other cultures may attribute whole ranges of meanings to individual visual elements. Among the Walbiri, for instance, a circle stands for circular path, waterhole, fruit, fire, yam, tree, buttocks, and many other things. Munn labels ranges of this type as “discontinuous” because a single icon can represent many different classes of things.40 For example, the small, three-­dimensional, nonindividualistic Totonac ritual figures (the talakšin, discussed earlier) constitute an example of discontinuous representation. The Nahua, on the other hand, employ “continuous” representation in that each icon refers to a fairly narrow range of meanings. In cases where multiple meanings can be attached to an icon, the images are often of the same class. To illustrate this point, an image with four V-cuts arranged in a rectangle can indicate the earth’s surface generally, a particular place on the earth, the specific case of the milpa, or the surface of an altar table. These phenomena are indeed closely related for the Nahua. Where an icon has multivalent referents, the aspect of Totiotzin conveyed is determined by the context. At this point, anthropologists are unable to specify why some cultures employ continuous strategies of representation (or presentation) while others use discontinuous ones. If the Nahua were to employ the discontinuous approach in envisioning their ritual paper figures, they would simply cut one form to stand for all of the different spirit entities, and we would have to collect only a few samples to see the full range of expression. Understanding that the Nahua have developed a continuous, visually descriptive system of iconography helps to explain why they cut so many different types of paper figures for their rituals. The paper images have what Munn defined as the “core-­adjunct” method of composition.41 As we have seen in figure 5.2, at the center of most figures is the front-­ facing human form (“the core”), with the arms and hands raised up alongside the head or, rarely, held downward. Ritual specialists add to this core various iconic markers (or “adjuncts”) that define the identity of the spirit entity. Examples include headgear, clothing, pockets, ribbons, jewelry, fruits and vegetation, rib holes, teeth, jowls, wrinkles, the profile of an ax or other objects, and so forth. The core-­adjunct presentation allows the viewer to distinguish individuals in a group while at the same time seeing continuity from one image to another. The core anthropomorphic (or, rarely, theriomorphic) element is nearly an invariant feature of paper images, regardless of which ritual specialist cuts them or to which lineage of practice he or she belongs. In our view, this core element

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reflects something important about the way that Nahua (as well as Otomí and Tepehua) practitioners of el costumbre conceive of the spirit pantheon and organization of the cosmos. As Munn puts it, “To the extent that the design structure conveys an organization inherent in the cosmology, the designs function as visible models that present these principles, as it were, directly for inspection.”42 What better way to convey the diversity of the spirit pantheon than through myriads of ephemeral paper images? And how better to visualize the single, indivisible entity that underlies apparent diversity than to put the human form at the center? Out of the animating energy of Totiotzin embodied in a human form emerges all of the variety that characterizes the spiritual and physical worlds that human beings experience. However, it must be said again: diversity is an illusion—­the sacred cosmos is a singularity. To summarize the role of the cut-­paper figures in Nahua rituals, we would like to quote James Maffie’s discussion of the role of the ixiptla or teixiptla among the Aztecs. These terms refer to the “physical manifestations of deities” that range from dressed and painted stone figures and effigies to humans dressed in ritual attire. Synthesizing the body of work of Alfredo López Austin, Arild Hvidtfeldt, Davíd Carrasco, Richard Townsend, Elizabeth Boone, and others, Maffie defines ixiptla-­teixiptla as meaning “substitute,” “representative,” “stand-­in,” “container,” or the so-­called “‘envelope’ of the divine.”43 As Maffie further explains it: An ixiptla consists of materials that are properly ordered so as to unconceal teotl or some aspect of teotl. The proper organization of the various elements composing an ixiptla along with the requisite accompanying ritual activities enable the assemblage to disclose specific clusters of teotl’s aspects. . . . The assemblage is thus able to serve as a medium through which ritual participants can focus upon and engage with specific aspects of teotl. What’s more, the assemblage also becomes metaphysically (not just symbolically) potent itself since it becomes empowered with the concentration of the specific forces associated with and constituting the relevant cluster of teotl aspects. The assemblage ceases being an ixiptla and loses its potency upon disassembly. A nonixiptla is simply not properly arranged. That which becomes an ixiptla or teixiptla, in short, does so by virtue of becoming properly arranged and well-­ordered as well as incorporated into relevant ritual activities. The Aztecs’ ritual construction and use of an ixiptla and teixiptla appears

cut from the same cloth as contemporary Nahuas’, Otomís’, and Tepehuas’ ritual construction and use of cut-­paper figures. In both cases, ritual specialists temporarily single out and abstract from the sacred whole various manageable segments for ritual attention. In both cases, there is no essential metaphysical distinction between ritual object and totality.44

Likewise, in her discussion of the ixiptla figure among the Aztecs, historian Inga Clendinnen writes that they came in many different forms and were distinguished by three criteria: “An ixiptla was a made, constructed thing; it was formally ‘named’ for the particular sacred power, and adorned with some of its characteristic regalia; it was temporary, concocted for the occasion, made and unmade during the course of the action.”45 The paper figures employed by today’s practitioners of el costumbre certainly fit the three criteria. Religious-­studies scholar Molly Bassett (2015) affirms Maffie’s conclusions about ancient Aztec beliefs surrounding teotl embodied in images and human impersonators. To augment her ethnohistorical research, Bassett observed two Chicomexochitl–­Seven Flower rituals in a village north of Amatlán in 2006 and 2010. She writes of her experience that “[i]n communities where modern Nahuatl speakers maintain costumbres (traditional practices), ritual manufacture in ceremonies like Chicomexochitl (7 Flower) brings about ontological transformations in ordinary materials that become highly animate entities.”46 Further, she says that during the ritual “the paper figures transform from inanimate  .  .  . amatl (paper) into animate . . . tlatecmeh (paper figures of natural deities). By the ceremony’s end, the sponsors recognize the Chicomexochitl effigies as living beings and family members.”47 In sum, the paper figures go beyond simple representation. In the same vein, Maffie continues: The metaphysical relationship between teotl and teotl’s ixiptla, therefore, is one of strict identity. . . . Teotl’s medium of presentation is itself. . . . There is only teotl presenting itself. And teotl presents itself in a variety of ways, some of which disguise and conceal its nature, others which disclose and unconceal its nature. A well-­made teixiptla discloses and unconceals certain aspects of teotl. It is well-­rooted in teotl, enjoys well-­rootedness-­cum-­aletheia [i.e., disclosure or truth], and therefore possesses power that is ordering, stabilizing, centering, and beneficial to humans. Yet remember that the relationship between teotl and that which is not an ixiptla is also one of identity.48

Like the pre-­Hispanic constructs of ixiptla-­teixiptla, we argue that the modern-­day paper figures far transcend a merely symbolic representation of the spirit entities. By being cut properly, these images become embodiments of Totiotzin, exemplifying how the sacred entity unfolds and reveals itself. By being assembled in profusion and arranged properly in a mezah (the altar offering of el costumbre), the paper figures transform into living manifestations of Totiotzin. Ritual specialists and devotees feed and dress them, speak to them with the greatest respect, and in the case of disease-­causing wind figures, treat them as infectious agents. Based on their behavior toward the paper figures, the ritual practitioners see them truly as living aspects of a sacred cosmos. It turns out that the paper figures reveal a coherent view of the world that transcends dualism and provides a means for people to resist the disorder that threatens to overwhelm them.49

Paper Figures and the Mezah in Nahua Ritual Rarely deployed singly, the paper figures are most effective or powerful when used in groups. Ritual specialists conceive of the images in units of twenty figures on a single petate or paper bed. When Evaristo, the famed Otomí costumbre practitioner, called for helpers to create “more cross,” “more key,” or “more hill” figures, he meant an entire petate with its twenty identical, double-­ply images of that entity. As discussed earlier, figures themselves are replicated in mechanized fashion, usually in five batches of four doubled figures, expertly and efficiently cut from a sheet of paper that has been folded over multiple times to form a neat packet. As described in chapter 3, each figure in the pair is connected to the other by folding open the paper flaps that form the eyes, mouth, and other distinctive V-cuts in the body, giving the anthropomorphic figure an alert, lively mien and surprising dimensionality. As we have shown in the photographs, helpers repeatedly throughout the proceedings arranged numerous petates on altars, each paper bed laden with the prescribed twenty figures laid out in two precise rows. Teófilo Jiménez Hernández, a former student of Cirilo’s (and his assistant on four of the five pilgrimages), was asked by another investigator to enumerate the specific paper figures he would cut to place on the altar during a Chicomexochitl ritual.50 Teófilo replied without hesitation and without the aid of any mnemonic device that he would create images of “cross, star, fire, thunder, lightning, sugarcane, altar, bean, walking stick, maize, flower of Santa

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Rosa, chili, water, cloud, Santa Juanita, San Antonio, witness to the mezah, hill, earth, key, and good wind.” He emphasized that each of these entities required its own distinctive paper figure. An important goal of our research was to determine if any of the separate mezah altar offerings contained paper figures corresponding to particular episodes of the pilgrimage or to identifiable locations in the sacred landscape. If so, we anticipated that such correspondences would remain fairly stable over time within a ritual specialist’s own repertoire or lineage of practice. Because Cirilo informed us that the major mezah in Amatlán was primarily dedicated to the seeds, along with earth and water, we hypothesized that paper figures of the major food crops, earth, and water should be present in greater numbers there compared with other mezah locations dedicated to different entities. We also wanted to know what relationship each array of offerings would have with the other offerings as the pilgrims progressed from Amatlán to the summit of the sacred mountain. Would distance from the center of activity in Amatlán play any factor in the makeup of particular altar offerings? These and other questions required us to focus our attention not only on the sequence of ritual performances but also on the assembly of paper figures created for the pilgrimage. On numerous occasions and in different contexts, we persisted in asking Cirilo if there was some overall plan that determined which figures should go on particular altars. He invariably replied that the specific configuration for each offering would come to him in dreams and for the most part were simply a surtido—­an “assortment” of images. Based on the sample collection Cirilo and his fellow ritual specialists prepared for us, we were able to associate each set of paper cuttings with a specific ritual cleansing or offering at each location documented for the actual Postectli pilgrimages in 1998 and 2001. Table 5.1 lists the seven locations chronologically in the first column, beginning and ending in the village of Amatlán. The second column enumerates the sequence of ritual episodes—­divinations, cleansing rituals, the dedication of offerings at major or minor altars, and smaller ritual arrays laid out at the hearth, at springs, or in rock clefts on the mountain—­and highlights the spirit entities (shown in bold font) that are the focus of each offering. The third column enumerates the altar sets; the fourth lists the number of petates required for each ritual. The last column shows the number of figures of distinctive spirit entities (and variant designs) embodied in the collection. Thirteen bundles of paper cuttings (Altar Sets 01 to 13) make up the sample Postectli pilgrimage collection proper.

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Each bundled altar set contains either four or twenty-­four units, or petates, as indicated. Typically, the individual petates hold identical paper figures, but just over 20 of the petates contained more than one type of paper figure, either intentionally or in error; these are noted in the table with a plus (+) sign followed by the observed number of such variants. For some locations, altar sets of petates are divided up into smaller subsets. An ampersand (&) in the table indicates these smaller arrays laid out at springs, at the hearth, in rock clefts, or beneath major altars; the question mark (?) indicates that the actual number of petates deployed at that location is not certain. Our discussion in chapter 6 details the numbers, identities, and significance of the paper figures in Altar Sets 01 to 13. Altar Sets 14, 15, and 16 (indicated in brackets in the table) contain bundles of paper figures of the dangerous winds cut for three separate cleansings performed before the major offerings. The figures cut for one such cleansing we have taken as a representative set, forming a composite unit that we label Altar Set 00, also discussed and illustrated in chapter 6. Finally, Altar Set 17 presents a representative sample of the large, dressed images created for the pilgrimage and left behind on the mountain or taken home as mementos. More than 320 drawings (grayscale or in color, as appropriate) illustrate these sacred works of art. Our initial effort to document the paper figures led us to think that there were no easy, systematic rules guiding the selection of images that reflected or highlighted particular themes of a given altar. Each altar seemed to contain a variety of different figures, and we puzzled over whether there were any distinctive patterns in how they were deployed. One of the first patterns we recognized was that far more paper figures of sacred hills were cut for the altars leading to the summit of Postectli. Thus, for the three major mezah altar offerings on Postectli, the ritual specialists cut seventeen images of the sacred hills, whereas those altars in Amatlán and Ichcacuatitla together featured only three such images. While this concentration of hill figures was apparent, and clearly intentional, we did not readily discern other such notable patterns in how the paper cuttings were distributed by location or ritual episode. In fact, what first struck us as surprising was the number of expected spirit entities that were absent. On the Amatlán altar dedicated to the crop seeds, for instance, we found relatively few seed images; only beans were present there, along with pilcintzin, or “little maize” (maize in its tender, sweet phase). Perhaps it sufficed that the large, dressed figures of the seeds embodying the predominant triumvirate of beans, chilies,

Table 5.1. Altar Locations, Ritual Episodes, and Focus of the Pilgrimage Offerings Altar Locations

Sequence of Ritual Episodes and Focus of Offerings

Altar Set ID

No. of Petates

No. of Figures + Variants

Location 1. Amatlán, a pseudonymous Nahua community in the municipio of Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz

1.1 Maize kernel divination prior to pilgrimage 1.2 Cleansing prior to offerings 1.3 Major mezah to seeds, earth, water 1.4 Array beneath altar to earth 1.5 Array at hearth to fire 1.6 Array at spring to water 1.7 Altar to outside cross

—­ 00 [15] 01 06 & 06 & 06 & 06

—­ —­ 24 4 4 4 4

—­ 74 20 + 2 20 20 20 20

Location 2. Peregrination trek

2.1 Arrays at springs and water sources along route

?

?

?

Location 3. Ichcacuatitla, a Nahua community in Chicontepec, Veracruz

3.1 Cleansing prior to offerings 3.2 Major mezah to seeds, hills 3.3 Array beneath altar 3.4 Altar to outside cross

00 [14] 04 & 04 05

—­ 24 ? 4

76 20 + 4 ? 20

Location 4. Tepexitzintlan, “beneath the precipice”

4.1 Cleansing prior to offerings 4.2 Major mezah to earth, clouds 4.3 Array beneath altar 4.4 Array to clouds, chicken interred in rock cleft

00 [16] 07 & 07 08

—­ 24 ? 4

66 20 + 2 ? 20

Location 5. Tlahcopoztectli, “middle of Postectli”

5.1 Major mezah to water, lightning-­thunder 5.2 Array beneath altar 5.3 Array at rock cleft to water dweller apanchaneh 5.4 Array at rock cleft to lightning-­thunder

09 10 03 02

24 24 4 4

20 20 + 8 20 20

11 & 12 ? ? 13

24 24 ? ? 4

20 + 3 20 + 2 ? ? 20

17 —­

—­ —­

11+ —­

Location 6. Tzonteconpoztectli, 6.1 Major mezah to water owner zahhuan, cross “head or summit of Postectli” 6.2 Array beneath altar 6.3 Altar to moon 6.4 Altar to cross 6.5 Circular altar to sun Location 7. Return home

7.1 Clothed paper figures of seeds, earth, water 7.2 Maize kernel divination following pilgrimage

and maize accompanied the pilgrims from start to finish. Another puzzle was the omission in our sample collection of any images of mixtli (“cloud”) at tepexitzintlan (“beneath the precipice,” Location 4), even though that mezah was specifically dedicated to the clouds and earth. Similarly, no image of apanchaneh was cut as part of the sample collection for the next mezah at tlahcopoztectli (“middle of Postectli,” Location 5), an altar offering dedicated to water. And why was the paper image of fully developed, mature maize—­the staple of the Nahua diet—­created only once for the pilgrimage? If selection was indeed random, why would the ritual specialists label some (but not all) of the bundles allotted to particular altar offerings? Eventually, with study, the sample collection’s arrangement of images for each altar revealed a pattern in how they are distributed throughout the pilgrimage. While the pattern seems inherently flexible and reflects the dreams of the ritual specialist who organizes the ritual, it is significant that many of the same spirit entities appear on all five of the major altars and that petates holding a specific spirit entity need not be represented in altar offerings dedicated to that entity. For example, despite the fact that the

offering in Amatlán (Location 1) is dedicated in part to the seeds, there are greater numbers of seed figures involved in the offering halfway up Postectli, even though that mezah (at Location 5) is ostensibly dedicated to apanchaneh. What at first seems to be a studied nonchalance or even haphazard quality to Nahua rituals may on closer inspection be a core expression of the religion. As we will argue, one reason the ritual specialists set up the arrays on altars the way they do is to demonstrate that the great diversity of the paper figures is in fact illusory—­that despite multitudes of paper cuttings, there is only Totiotzin. And, importantly, while there are discernible patterns in the distribution of paper figures, each mezah is conceived as an independent unit. Altars and the offerings on them are modules that are basically interchangeable with other altar offerings constructed for the pilgrimage. Ritual specialists have their own individual style of cutting the paper figures, so distinctive that people often can look at a figure and identify its creator. They also have a great deal of freedom in selecting which figures will appear on altars dedicated to salutary spirit entities. However, a different set of constraints operates when

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specialists are dealing with paper figures of dangerous, disease-­causing winds. The Nahua idea is that the dangerous entities embodied in paper are a fixed presence that relentlessly afflict human beings. Those entities, associated with disorder, disruption, pollution, lack of respect, and antisocial behavior of all types, reflect a general breakdown of the delicate balance between the human and spirit worlds.51 Ritual specialists lay out the figures of the malevolent winds in intricate arrays according to their own individually determined design, but we found that they did not vary their repertoire much, whether they were intent on curing an illness or cleansing an area preparatory to a major offering. Some variation of this pattern is possible, for example, cutting extra figures to address a specific problem, but, in general, ritual specialists consistently use the same array of paper figures, whether for curing or for cleansing purposes. These arrays are highly focused and contain only cut-­ paper figures of the spirit entities associated with the underworld—­images of the normally salutary or benign spirits are never included in the arrays designed to cleanse and cure. The reverse also holds: no mezah devoted to salutary spirit entities, whether a major or minor offering, contains underworld figures. Another observation is that ritual specialists place only selected cuttings of the dangerous wind spirits on petates, and they lay out the other malign figures directly on the ground. As we have seen during the ritual offerings, assemblies of paper figures of salutary spirit entities are placed on petates and then on altar tabletops, beneath the altar, by the fire, at the spring, in the cave of apanchaneh, and in the rock clefts devoted to thunder and lightning. In every setting these figures are never deployed alone or placed directly on the ground. To reemphasize this point, the dangerous creatures embodied for cleansing-­curing purposes can be laid right on the earth, since they originate in mictlan and emanate from this peripheral underworld realm far removed from the security of the community. They are the angry and aggressive wandering tonalli souls of people whose lives were cut short by violent death, who died prematurely as children, or who faced shameful neglect by their living relatives. In their cleansing-­ curing efforts ritual specialists make no attempt to single out specific spirit entities for their entreaties; instead, they dedicate a general offering to the entire menagerie. These malevolent winds require constant attention. They swarm around, searching for inevitable human weaknesses and any exhibition of antisocial behavior or the breakdown of order. They are ever present, always ready to infect people if given

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an opening. The ritual specialist’s life and effort is largely taken up trying to keep these forces of disorder at bay. Commodities offered to the bad winds are scaled-­down versions of the same offerings used to attract and satisfy salutary spirits: tobacco, alcohol, soft drinks, eggs, cornmeal, candles, and so on. These terrifying forces of disorder and suffering are of the same sacred substance as human beings and have identical appetites. Despite their threat, malevolent forces are a part of the sacred cosmos—­yes, they are dangerous entities, but they cannot be considered evil or immoral in the Judeo-­Christian sense. Unlike the Christian Devil who tempts humans, the winds are more analogous to disease-­causing agents like bacteria or viruses, capable of causing death without any necessary intent to do harm. Because ritual specialists do not vary their idiosyncratic cleansing-­curing mezah, the three sample cleansing arrays we received from Cirilo contained a nearly identical assortment of images of dangerous wind spirits. That inventory of figures is unique to Cirilo, and he uses them consistently from one curing to another. There was some slight variation in the numbers of figures that made up the three arrays he cut for the pilgrimage, but we are convinced that the discrepancies were due to error rather than intent. Because the cleansing-­curing arrays are complete units in and of themselves, they share the fundamental modular pattern evident in the altars dedicated to the salutary spirit entities. It will be recalled that during the pilgrimage people assembled numerous smaller arrays to accompany the larger displays on the main altar table. These abbreviated sacred spaces are the sites of offerings that consist of adornments, a few petates of paper figures, and simple gifts of food and drink. Regardless of their reduced scale, these qualify as a mezah altar offering too. Similarly, the array of dangerous spirits laid out for cleansing-­curing rituals is also technically the same—­a mezah—­the sacralized site where people dedicate offerings. However, a significant difference between cleansing rituals and the mezah aimed at the salutary entities is that following the dedication of offerings, the ritual specialist carefully gathers up and folds the malevolent paper figures into a bundle and disposes of it where no one may inadvertently encounter the contents, removing the infectious winds to the periphery so as to protect people. In the mezah featuring the pantheon of salutary spirit entities people leave the paper cuttings to disintegrate on their own, dismantling the array sometimes weeks or months later only to make room for another ritual offering.

From the photographs and descriptions of the offerings it is clear that altars of all types are the centerpiece of Nahua rituals.52 The tiered altar table reveals the cosmos—­it does not merely represent or symbolize it. A properly configured, well-­decorated altar broadcasts beauty and discloses something of Totiotzin—­it constitutes a miniature version of all there is and constitutes further proof that everything is related to everything else. Nahua altars (in the construct of mezah, the altar offering), far from being mere constructions, are animate entities in their own right that disclose cultural principles of well-­orderedness and equilibrium. Altars attract benevolent spirit entities to a specific time-­ place, thus allowing human beings to communicate and negotiate with them.53 Even though we have been writing about the spirit entities as if they can be divided into benevolent and malevolent categories, it is important to remember that no such discrete distinction exists in Nahua religion. What the Nahua consider benevolent entities are those forces or kinds of energy that provide rain, productive crops, human fertility, and health, which orderly communities, respectful people, and balanced reciprocal relations attract. What the Nahua think of as malevolent entities are capable of generating disease, misfortune, destructive storms, crop pests, drought, and other afflictions, and they are attracted to disturbances, disrespect, and social disorder. Neither type of spirit entity intends benefit or harm; they are simply different kinds of potential energy that must be controlled through ritual means. Beneficent entities will destroy if people neglect them or exhibit disrespect, while malevolent entities can be persuaded to save humans from disease and death. The slash-­and-­burn system of cultivation may be threatened by tlazolli, regarded as disorder originating from the periphery of the Nahua community, but such disorder in the form of forest refuse also provides the nourishment and fecundity that makes the crops grow. The bottom line is that spirit entities providing sun, earth, rain, and fertile seeds will readily abandon the human community if they are disregarded. In the interconnected cosmos of the Nahua, human intervention and diligence are required to balance these forces and to sustain production, reproduction, health, and well-­being.

Reading the Paper Figures Nahua ritual specialists dedicate offerings to spirit entities through their chanting in an effort to obligate them to support human needs. They identify these key spirits by name and welcome each to partake of the food,

drink, music, dance, incense, and general good cheer of the event. However, judging from what we have found in studying Nahua rituals, words alone are insufficient. Ritual specialists also must fashion out of their imagination and apprenticeship training the images of spirit entities, and no offering is complete without them. The figures as living aspects of Totiotzin must be persuaded by the ritual specialist to accept offerings and perform the services required. Following the work of Elizabeth Boone, we will make the case that the Nahua, Otomí, and Tepehua paper figures are a contemporary instance of a graphic system of communication widespread among the Indigenous people of Mesoamerica and beyond that traces to the Preclassic (Olmec) period. However, we perceive (as we will explain) that Boone and other scholars have insufficiently accounted for the philosophical monism of the Nahua and other peoples of Mesoamerica, which leads them to misconstrue the nature of the signs employed in this ancient system. It is our hope that study of the contemporary paper-­figure complex will help us better understand such sign systems.54 Boone writes that a name for the Mesoamerican graphic system is lacking and suggests that until one is agreed on, analysts should call it “X,” which she defines as the practice and materiality of recording and interpreting knowledge of a specific nature by means of graphic or tactile marks that are made on or in a permanent or semi-­permanent substance (the permanence depending on the durability or fragility of the medium). The marks are conventionally understood within their societies to signify objects, events, identities, temporalities, relations, and other concepts and things.55

In short, the system is not “glottographic,” that is, a form of writing (like English or Spanish) composed of a system of conventional symbols that approximates speech. Rather the system is “pictographic” in that it communicates directly to the observer through conventional representation. For the most part, pictographs are iconic in that they resemble what they are meant to convey and are recognizable by multiple readers. People who live in literate societies tend to regard a glottographic system of communication (i.e., true writing, in their view) as the advanced endpoint of a long, evolutionary process that begins with pictography. This frankly ethnocentric view is expressed in the work of historian I.  J. Gelb, in whose perspective “writing” always refers to graphic systems that reproduce a spoken language.56

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According to Boone and others, this way of thinking is an example of presentism that serves to diminish alternative communication systems.57 In contrast to glottographic systems, pictographs can convey “meaning directly to the reader/viewer by means of graphic marks that signify within the conventions of its own system.”58 Like writing, pictographs have the ability to record across space and time specific kinds of data and understandings that are important to people operating in a culture.59 A continuing source of confusion is that analytical categories developed from studies of Old World writing do not fit very well with New World graphic communication systems. As Mikulska states the problem, “[E]ven when we restrict ourselves to the writing systems known and accepted as such in the reality of the Old World, what results is that none of the commonly used categories [of graphic communication]—­ logographic, syllabic, phonetic, and other writing—­ is pure”60 In short, all graphic systems make use of a variety of communication devices; none of them is based solely on a single principle. Rather than focus on the efficiency or precision of New World graphic communication, Mikulska advocates instead that analysts direct research attention to uncovering how such systems worked. Boone claims that “pictography easily conveys a great range of data and thought, including entities, qualities and states of being, places, abstract concepts, actions and events, temporalities, appellatives, and the sounds of language.”61 She further asserts that “the commonalities of scripts [i.e., writing in the traditional definition], signs, and pictographs . . . are, to my mind, more profound than their differences.”62 Often overlooked, pictographs can have distinct advantages over writing. For one, they can be read by people who do not share a common language. Aztecs, for example, could read Mixtec pictographs even though their languages were unrelated.63 Pictographic writing, in fact, has the potential to communicate a wider range of knowledge, emotions, and interpretations than do written words tied to speech. Writing systems tend to be linear in presentation so that they can mimic spoken utterances, although plot elements in narrations may of course be presented in a nonlinear fashion. Picture writing, on the other hand, can be arranged in any number of ways to enhance or amplify whatever is recorded and subsequently read. Finally, pictographic systems tend to combine aesthetic expression and communication in an illustrative way that is rarely achieved through alphabetic writing systems alone. The pictographic systems of Mesoamerica are ex­amples of a broader form of communication called “se­­­­ma­sio­gra­­phy,”

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a term coined by Gelb to refer to graphic expression that he claims preceded development of glottographic systems.64 Gelb derived the word from the Greek sēmasía, referring to “meaning or signification,” plus graphē, “writing.”65 Though the term is not in wide use today other than by specialists in the field, we will adapt the concept and use it—­shorn of its presentistic and evolutionary bias—­in the analysis that follows. “Semasiographic systems of communication,” as defined by Boone, “convey ideas independently from language and on the same logical level as spoken language rather than being parasitic on them as ordinary scripts are. They are supralinguistic because they can function outside of language.”66 Some Aztec pictographs did convey their meaning by referring to speech, but the overwhelming majority of these signs communicated directly to the reader apart from spoken language. Semasiographic communication is found in virtually all of the world’s cultures, not least in Europe, despite its long tradition of literacy in alphabetic systems. This observation suffices to confirm that semasiography can exist alongside glottographic systems and is not simply an earlier stage in the evolution of the latter. Boone identifies two types of semasiographic systems: conventional and iconic. In conventional systems, meaning is encoded in arbitrary symbols. Examples in the European tradition include symbols representing chemical reactions, mathematical symbols, musical scores, and choreographic notation. In iconic systems signs convey meaning directly because the signs resemble what they represent, although cultural background may be necessary to read the signs. Familiar examples include international road and airport signs and functions on computer screens and keyboards.67 The stained-­glass windows of medieval cathedrals that render Biblical themes in spectacular, light-­filled displays epitomize iconic semasiography. Or take the example of the Bayeux tapestry in France, which recounts through exquisite embroidery the history of the Norman conquest of England. The work conveys clearly a complex message through picture writing; after nearly a thousand years contemporary viewers can see and, in effect, still read the figurative story of the initial friendship between William and Harold, Harold’s betrayal of William, and the running account of battle scenes culminating in Harold’s defeat at Hastings. Interestingly, both the media of stained glass and tapestry were created in part to inform a largely illiterate population for whom written history would be of little value. We would add that medieval European audiences and Westerners today share sufficient cultural background to be able to understand

the messages conveyed by these works. A Mexica observer from the fifteenth century would undoubtedly be able to pick out and understand images emblazoned in these media but might struggle to reconstruct the narrative thread. Case examples of semasiography’s enduring ingenuity and appeal include graphic novels and comic books, which combine pictorial display with minimal written text. The impact of the visual display in each of these examples equals or surpasses the information provided through alphabetic writing. Mesoamerican pictographs were sometimes carved into monuments, rendering them as permanent fixtures.68 Just as often, however, messages were recorded in screenfold books or rolls made from deerskin or amate paper. The advantage of this medium was that it could be transported and used in a variety of applications. Mesoamerican pictographs were generally rendered without depth or dimension, and the field surrounding the figures was likewise flat. Incidentally, most glottographic writing systems share these features of two-­dimensionality on a flat ground. The pictographs usually resembled what they were meant to portray: human beings were rendered with heads, torsos, arms, and legs so that they were unmistakable, recognizable even to people from different cultural traditions and historical eras. They were not, however, realistically portrayed or designed to create the illusion of three-­dimensional space, as one finds in representational art. Thus, for example, “[f]igures are arranged to display the most characteristic features of the different parts, which means that heads and limbs in profile extend from torsos that are usually frontal.”69 Many of these observations apply to the paper figures as well. The images laid out in intentional, patterned arrays come alive to ritual participants. Similar to the paper figures with their core-­ adjunct composition, Boone points out that pictographs in the codices are “also accretive and agglutinative, being composed of multiple visual elements that are added to a core.”70 She easily could be referring to the layout of the paper figures on the altars during the pilgrimages when she writes, “Mexican pictography . . . employed figures and symbols to encode semantic meaning that relied on spatial arrangements of these figures to provide relational syntax.”71 Furthermore, picture writing “allowed individuals to convey information across time and space,” and it was part of the information technology “in which their societies invested prodigious amounts of cultural and human energy.” According to Boone, semasiographic systems “not only functioned to record information and ideas, they also were significant

sites of discourse between people. They set the stages and became the foundations of ceremonies and other actions on which their societies depended.”72 Our descriptions of how ritual specialists create and employ the paper figures during their pilgrimages attest to a hitherto little-­known Mesoamerican pictographic system that, in our view, traces to the ancient documents and inscriptions. We would add that pictographic systems of communication convey an enormous amount of information relatively economically, a characteristic of ritual expression that we explore more fully later on. A few additional observations help to cement the relationships between the Nahua paper-­figure complex of el costumbre and ancient Indigenous Mesoamerican practices of picture writing. Gelb notes that “[b]oth the old Mexican writings and the more modern writings of the American Indians frequently employ a method of coloring the signs.”73 In semasiographic communication systems color does convey significant information. Nahua ritual specialists choose to portray images of the malevolent winds in a variety of colors in order to convey important information to the people about their origin and ubiquity. Those fashioned without color identifiers are often blackened with charcoal from the fireplace to link them to polluted, disordered places. The large paper images of the various seed spirits also make use of brilliantly colored paper as well as colorful garments to enhance the messages they convey. In glottographic signs, by contrast, color is rarely used to convey meaning but is more often merely a decorative technique. Unlike signs in alphabetic writing, semasiographic signs do not need to be presented in a specific order to convey meaning.74 Laying out the paper images on an altar is a reverential gesture that presents a multidimensional message to people without the requirement of any narrative line. Additionally, in alphabetic writing systems there is always a separate sign for a number and the sign for an object. One would not indicate twenty paper figures by repeating the phrase “paper figures” twenty times; instead, one would write the sign for “twenty” and the sign for “paper figure.” In the Nahua pictographic system the same idea of twenty figures is expressed by cutting twenty actual pairs of paper figures and arranging them on a paper bed. It surprised us to learn that the means by which scribes represented plural objects or people is one key criterion used by linguists to determine whether an early script is an alphabetic or a pictographic form of writing.75 These factors help to establish the sacred cut-­paper figures as another example of the

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widespread semasiographic systems found throughout the New World. Isabel Laack makes an important statement about the Nahua cultural value of what she terms the “act of seeing”: The pictorial writing system by itself strongly emphasized the act of seeing. While it tells us little about the thoughts, ideas, and motivations of the protagonists, it strongly presents visual aspects of individual identities, places, or situations. The Central Mexican pictorial sources place particular emphasis on the attire, ceremonial implements, adornments, and paraphernalia of deities and deity impersonators, sometimes depicted elaborately, sometimes abbreviated. A simple broom, for example, could evoke the complete range of qualities associated with Tlazolteotl (DiCesare 2009: 90). These rich associations with qualities, emotions, activities, cognitive concepts, and cosmic relationships can be quickly perceived and imagined by a literate Indigenous reader of pictorial writing and much more easily than if they had been recorded in alphabetic writing.76

Laack further asserts that peoples’ “ability to perceive the underlying structures of reality was considered a special gift. Nahua texts and paintings were used to learn about these structures of reality by looking at them. Skilled readers most probably could see more than ordinary people.”77 It is our contention that seeing the altar laden with paper figures during the drama of a Nahua ritual has a similar, powerful sensory impact for people today. Mikulska’s ongoing work (2015, 2019a, 2019b) on Meso­ american graphic communication systems is likewise noteworthy for its breadth and depth of coverage and evenhanded treatment of complex debates surrounding the varied methods to record information graphically that people all over the world have developed. She sees these methods of recording to be a reflection of collective memory, which fits very well with contemporary Nahua data.78 Her extended discussion of semasiography is wonderfully insightful, and she concludes that no graphic recording systems, glottographic ones included, are pure, but instead are always admixtures of different solutions to the problem of putting down information in a lasting form where others can assimilate it.79 Boone finds that all graphic communications systems are based on two fundamental principles: abstraction and metaphor.80 The person producing the graphic representation first selects what to represent and then, using metaphor, creates the message surrounding the subject. Thus, to

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represent victory in battle, the scribe may portray a person in warrior’s garb holding the topknot of a prone figure. Mikulska’s proposals make sense, particularly as they are founded on her thorough evaluation of the literature on the subject. However, we believe that she, Boone, and other scholars concerned with Mesoamerican pictography have likely overlooked a key feature of the cultural context in which such graphic systems have been created and interpreted. If Nahua religion is pantheistic, as we assert, the graphic system of the paper figures takes on a whole new level of complexity. As we will discuss in chapter 6, the idea that everything in the cosmos is an aspect of divinity means that the paper figures themselves are part of the totality that people call Totiotzin. Through the pictographs, the sacred substance that is isomorphic with reality unfolds itself and becomes visible to the reader. Normally hidden from direct view, Totiotzin is concentrated in such special places as Postectli, and it reveals itself under certain conditions, for instance, in a well-­ ordered milpa, a beautifully decorated altar, or an artfully cut paper image. Thus, the paper figures do not represent the deity or deities; instead, they present the sacred to ritual participants. They are not a metaphor for water and earth or a metonym for these sacred elements; rather, they are living aspects of Totiotzin that embody them. In the dualistic Western view the paper figures must symbolize or stand for something else; in the monistic Nahua view the paper figures are fully embodiments of the sacred—­a portion of and integral to the seamless reality.81 The ritual paper figures created by the practitioners of el costumbre are comparable to the Aztec teixiptla deity impersonator, who, once properly arrayed in ritual paraphernalia, is transformed through chanting into a sacred personage. It does not appear that many scholars have fully entertained the bold idea that the graphic communication system of the Aztecs, rather than operating through metaphors (such as they might work in the Western tradition), employed semasiography as a method for directly revealing the sacred to the well-­versed reader. Alessia Frassani, for one, seems to recognize this shift in perspective: We are left to wonder, then: is this a depiction of a god or a performer? This ambiguity becomes even deeper given that the god, priest, or impersonator is seen performing a ritual and singing a song that should be more specifically chanted to him, rather than by him. No clue is given on where the chant and dance may be taking place, because no participant or

temple is shown, rather the image is witness to the effect of the chanting: still and mute while on display in the pantheon . . . it becomes alive because of the power of the accompanying chant. Both text and images, engaged in an act of mutual interpretation, do not explain one another, but rather point to the constitutive elements of the performance. The song, the music, the dance, and the image of the god, all these elements together, are the god.82

Danièle Dehouve also attempts to overcome the as­sump­tions of Western dualism but does not go far enough in her analysis, in our opinion, when she concludes that metaphor and metonym are not simple language conventions but instead ways of thinking about the world.83 She examines how contemporary Nahua in Guerrero identify with and speak about maize during rituals and finds that their relation to the plant is simultaneously both metaphoric and metonymic. She argues, for example, that maize plants are metaphoric human bodies and at the same time maize is in metonymic relation to human flesh. The way that the Nahua sometimes talk about maize may appear to be metaphoric, but the way they act toward and usually speak about the sacred plant (and many other phenomena) reveals a monistic philosophy in which maize and the human body equally reveal

the same fundamental reality, namely, Totiotzin. Where Dehouve sees dualism—­a signifier and a signified—­we maintain that to those who operate in the Nahua world view, the signifier and signified are the same. This way of relating to maize and other phenomena (to reiterate our thesis) is an expression of pantheism and monistic ontology that appears alien only to those schooled in the philosophical tradition of dualism. In the end, metaphor and metonym are terms that may be useful for describing language use or rhetorical strategies, but they are decidedly less fruitful in describing the fundamental features of Nahua cosmovision. In summary, Nahua ritual specialists cut each of the paper figures with iconic identifiers to specify which aspect of Totiotzin is revealed by its presence on the altar. The figure of tlalli, the earth, is portrayed with a tree-­trunk headdress and sacred hills cut from the body to reveal that particular aspect of the sacred cosmos that humans experience as the earth. Properly cut and arranged, it is that part of the earth unfolding from Totiotzin. The figure presents the earth to el costumbre practitioners who are able to recognize its iconography. Because icons distinguish one figure from another, the assemblage of individual cuttings very clearly constitute pictographs in a semasiographic communication system that is decipherable. It is our challenge next to read what they have to say.

Notes 1. The Postectli cuttings are preserved as part of a larger collection of Mesoamerican ritual paper figures held at Indiana University’s newly merged Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; staff of the former Mathers Museum of World Cultures can provide catalog records and access to the study collections on request. 2. Gómez Martínez (2002: 142). 3. The son is also a particular musical style in Mexico, probably originating in Veracruz, that combines Spanish medieval and Baroque dance music with African and Native American traditions. Each region has developed its own distinctive style of this musical form, according to Pacheco (2014: 1n1, 139n62). 4. Boilès provides an analysis of the structural features and discusses the signaling capacity of Tepehua (1967) and Otomí (1969) sacred music. 5. We retain the Nahuatl spelling of Nava Vite (2009: 156–­58; 2012: 21–­22); translation ours. 6. For comparison, see the list of thirty musical pieces recorded in Ichcacuatitla by Pacheco (2014: 193–­94). 7. Hunt (1977: 92).

8. Maffie (2014: 99, 107–­8, 226, 316) discusses the sources that claim that among the Aztecs green (blue-­green) was the color of order, stability, balance, equilibrium, and “well-­ rootedness,” that is, disclosing the nature of teotl (Totiotzin). The predominance of green on the altar may serve to center the whole ritual process. Hill (1992) finds evidence among speakers of Uto-­Aztecan languages, including the Nahua, of an elaborate religious complex surrounding flowers that she calls the “flower world,” which originated deep in Mesoamerican prehistory; see Sandstrom (2021). Hays-­Gilpin and Hill (1999) present archaeological evidence of this same complex in the American Southwest and Mesoamerica. Acosta Márquez (2016) also reports the conception of such a flower world among contemporary Nahua of Pahuatlán in the Sierra Norte de Puebla. España Soto (2018) illustrates the importance of flowers in Otomí costumbre practice in San Bartolo Tutotepec, Hidalgo. 9. See Sandstrom (1991: 280–­81). Ruvalcaba Mercado (1992, 2012) offers analyses of these observances in the Huasteca and the wider implications of such celebrations of death for Mexican national identity.

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10. See estimates by Nava Vite (2009: 151) and the section in chapter 2 titled “Empirical Observations, Colors, and Numbers.” 11. See descriptions and illustrations of these items and other implements in Sandstrom (1975: 165–­67, 201, 206, 234); Ixmatlahua Montalvo et al. (1982: 97); Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986: 37–­43, 64); Gómez Martínez (2002: 110–­11); Gómez Martínez and Hooft (2012: 7). 12. See photo A.22 in appendix A. 13. See Alcorn (1984: 45–­46, 56–­68). For additional background on ritual paper cutting generally, see Medellín Zenil (1982: 107–­10); Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986); Galinier (1987: 460–­78); Sandstrom (1991: 261–­79); Gómez Martínez (2002: 66–­92); and Laack (2019: 272–­74). 14. The types of fibers used in paper manufacture in the New World was hotly debated in the early twentieth century (see Sandstrom and Sandstrom 1986: 18–­27). Scholars now think the major sources included the inner bark of a number of species of tree called amatl in Nahuatl, yielding the Spanish word amate (and belonging to the family Moraceae, genus Ficus), along with species of the maguey plant (family Amaryllidaceae, genus Agave). Tolstoy (1963: 661) has posited trans-­Pacific contact between Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica sometime around the beginning of the first millennium BC based on similarities in papermaking methods, basically a felting technique involving pounding soaked fibers with stone beaters. In this context it is interesting to find a recent account (Cauquelin 2002) of ritual paper cutting among Tibeto-­Burman people living today in Vietnam and the Guangxi region of southeastern China, whose human-­form cutouts strikingly resemble those created by the Nahua, Otomí, and Tepehua ritual specialists. 15. See Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986: 11–­12). Sahagún (1950–­82 [1575–­80?]: bk. 9, 9–­11) records that Aztec merchants, before departing on a trip, painted an anthropomorphic image of the earth on paper and beheaded quails, dripping their blood on the paper. 16. Archaeologists also found in the box several examples of sacred bastones or walking sticks made from paper. As we saw, the people on the pilgrimages associate this implement with rain. For an account and photographs of this rare find, see Barrera Rivera, Gallardo Parrodi, and Montúfor López (2001). 17. Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986: 17–­18); Gómez Martínez (2002: 72). 18. For a detailed account of Starr’s discovery, see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986: 3–­34). Galinier (1987: 308–­15) provides further information on contemporary Otomí papermaking. 19. Stresser-­Péan (2009: 222–­25). 20. For archaeological surveys of the Mesoamerican figurine complex, see especially Marcus (1998, 2009, 2019); Olson (2007); Brumfiel and Overholtzer (2009) and other contributors to Halperin et al. (2009); and Rice (2019). 21. Bruce (1973) reports on contemporary Lacandon ritual use of small anthropomorphic figures made from latex. 22. In this context we must mention that the Otomí community of San Pablito, Pahuatlán, in the Sierra Norte de Puebla,

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has become renowned for its papermaking industry using the ancient techniques. Not only has a supply of the paper itself become available in tourist markets worldwide but also examples of paper cuttings of various designs have been mounted on bark paper and sold to collectors of folk art. Innovative entrepreneurs in Otomí communities also began selling sheets of the amate paper to Nahua people in the distant state of Guerrero who have used it to paint decorative motifs adapted from their pottery. Later, Nahua artists began to paint elaborate village scenes and histories, which have become enormously popular collectors’ items (Good Eshelman 1988; Cowen 2006). Observing the demand for their creations, some Otomí entrepreneurs from San Pablito have also produced handmade screenfold books for sale. Handwritten in Spanish, these unique documents illustrate and describe the pantheon of paper cuttings, rituals, and certain religious beliefs. A facsimile reproduction of four such books, created by the Otomí ritual specialist Alfonso García Téllez (2018), has been published in French with an analysis by Pierre Déléage. 23. Lupo (2001: 366–­67). 24. See Sandstrom (2009). 25. See Sandstrom (1996) and further discussion of this point in chapter 7. 26. Gómez Martínez (2013: 174) reports that ritual specialists in Chicontepec draw out altar arrays on paper for the purpose of training new members of the profession. 27. Taube (2006: 329) presents ethnographers’ reports of contemporary Tzeltal Maya in Chiapas and other Indigenous groups planting maize in a quincunx pattern. The ancient Aztecs frequently used the four-­point quatrefoil motif, along with the X-shaped quincunx and olin glyphs, to signify the earth’s surface and the milpa in particular. Maffie (2014: 230–­ 40) proposes that these shapes reflect the reciprocal, oscillating movement of complementary partners (a concept described by the Nahuatl word inamic, which we also examine in the next chapter). Guernsey (2010: 17) reviews the many iconographic associations of the four-­lobed or flower-­shaped quatrefoil in Preclassic Mesoamerica, and concludes that the motif invokes “watery portals, caves, elite power, and supernatural communication throughout time.” 28. See Klein (1976). 29. Galinier (2004 [1997]: 81) claims that the upright-­arms posture of Otomí paper figures “evokes the discharge of sexual power.” 30. Gómez Martínez (2002: 65–­66). 31. We examine Nahua expressions of miniaturization and scaling more closely in chapter 7. 32. See table 6.1 and the discussion of corpses wind (paper figures 00-­04a,b,c) in chapter 6. Anticipating our analysis ahead, which hones close to the data, we offer a further speculation here. We are not quite sure what to make of a remarkable piece of information that came to us late in our analysis from anthropologist Edward Abse, who conducts ethnographic research on religious change among the Mazatec people of northern Oaxaca. In a book in preparation (Abse n.d.),

he recounts his efforts to question Mazatec shamans about the appearance of the supreme Earth Lord Chikon Tokoxo. He reports that “on separate occasions and independently by two shamans unknown to each other, I was provided with an iconographic representation of Chikon Tokoxo’s peculiar and somehow ineffable relations with the Holy Trinity—­each time verbally (and identically) described, and once shown acted out in gesture, once drawn on a square of butcher paper in pencil. In both, the Earth Lord was depicted as a shadowy anthropomorphic figure, frontally portrayed with the hands palms open, fingers splayed, and raised by either side of the head, as if almost tipping the ears. The upper half of the otherwise featureless face is covered by the geometric figure of a triangle with an open and disembodied eye at its center, while over the chest region there are two matching bowl-­shapes hanging suspended from either end of a centrally pivoted lever, in the form of a balance. This mysterious configuration was explained to me in terms of four salient features: the forward-­facing silhouette in the background indicating the Earth Lord, and the two superimposed figures each indicating one Person of the Holy Trinity, with either the raised hands gesture itself or the ears as the third” (Abse, n.d.: 40–­41). Abse (n.d.: 74–­75, 74n12) notes the resemblance of his description to the paper figures. Only four explanations for this remarkable correspondence appear plausible. One is that the images developed independently, which seems unlikely. A second explanation is that the Mazatec have come across Nahua (or Otomí or Tepehua) sacred cuttings. Or somehow Nahua ritual specialists have incorporated Mazatec ideas into their portrayals of the spirit entities. What seems more likely to explain the similarities between Mazatec conceptions of the Earth Lord and the paper-­figure complex is that both trace to common ideas shared across time and space. Abse speculates that the depictions of the balance scale and the single eye may have been inspired by the Masonic imagery on US currency. We may never know the reason for these intriguing likenesses. 33. An apparent exception to the generalization that size correlates with potency is the set of diminutive tlacotontli figures that are considered more powerful than other disease-­causing winds; we address this puzzle in the next chapter. 34. Olko (2014: 33); also see Olko’s detailed treatment of Mesoamerican headdresses (2014: 37–­70). 35. See Sandstrom (1991: 273); compare Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986: 215, 217, 230) and Williams García (1963: 187). 36. López Austin (1988 [1980]: vol. 1, 206, 214, 220–­21). 37. See Gómez Martínez (2002: 61, 94n16) for more on these points, and Maffie (2014: 479–­522) on the importance of weaving in the Aztec understanding of the cosmos. González González and Medellín Urquiaga (2007: 37–­38, 79; 2008) examine the significance of clothing for contemporary Nahua of the southern Huasteca. 38. Munn (1966: 937). 39. Munn (1966: 942). 40. Munn (1966: 938, 945).

41. Munn (1966: 943). 42. Munn (1966: 946). 43. Maffie (2014: 113). 44. Maffie (2014: 113–­14). For clarity (here and in subsequent quoted passages), we substitute italic font for the Nahuatl terms in roman font in Maffie’s original. We also remind readers that the Aztec word teōtl (also tiōtl) is the root morpheme of Totiotzin, the Huastecan Nahuatl appellation designating sacredness itself. 45. Clendinnen (1995 [1991]: 252). 46. Bassett (2015: 14). 47. Bassett (2015: 21). 48. Maffie (2014: 114). 49. See Laack (2019: 136–­40) for an in-­depth discussion of shared essence or resemblances between signifier and signified among the Nahua. The paper-­figure complex would seem to be an ideal topic for the new multidisciplinary effort focused on understanding “sensory culture” and its relation to religious practice. Members of this research group (e.g., Promey 2014) investigate the relations between objects and the senses in the context of ritual and belief. Nahua conceptions and ritual practices would also be of interest to scholars participating in the new “material turn” in religious studies. Distinct from what anthropological archaeologists have called “material religion” (e.g., McAnany and Wells 2008), scholars’ contributions to this research specialty concentrate on the use of physical objects (and music) in religious contexts; see for example Bräunlein (2016). 50. Nava Vite (2009: 154). 51. In Sandstrom (1989) and Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2021) we analyze the strategic options employed by ritual specialists to counteract instances of social discord. 52. See Sandstrom (2003). 53. Our thanks to Jim Maffie for these insights; see especially the sections in Maffie (2014: 100–­13) dealing with self-­ presentation, nonhierarchical well-­ordering, and ixiptla-­teixiptla deity manifestations. 54. Boone (1994: 14–­15), Houston (2004: 284), and Whittaker (2009, 2021) summarize what is known about pre-­Hispanic Nahuatl writing systems. A monumental work on Mesoamerican graphic communication systems by Mikulska (2015) focuses particularly on divinatory codices and covers the scholarly debate over definitions of writing and other schemes of recording information. The edited volume by Mikulska and Offner (2019) provides an up-­to-­date literature review and a helpful rethinking of the complexities of New World graphic communications systems. Severi (2019) reviews this body of literature as well, significantly broadening the scope of research on Mesoamerican picture writing to compare it to other Native American writing and “memory-­recording systems,” including examples of Kuna, Dakota, and Hopi pictographs. In an insightful analysis blending evidence from ethnography and ethnohistory, Frassani (2016) shows how analyzing contemporary Mazatec ritual specialists’ chants may help to clarify the interpretation of ancient Mesoamerican iconography.

Nahua Ritual Foundations  :  205

55. Boone (2011b: 379). 56. Gelb (1963 [1952]: 190). 57. Boone (1994: 4–­13) and Jansen (1988: 86–­88) discuss Eurocentrism in the interpretation of New World writing systems. 58. Boone (2016: 31). 59. Boone (2011b: 379, 381). Marcus (1992: 17) defines true writing as signs reproducing spoken language, but at the same time she writes that “the differences between Near Eastern and Mesoamerican writing that have lowered Gelb’s opinion of the latter have more to do with the functions of early writing in the two areas than with the level of cultural achievement” (Marcus 1992: 19; emphasis in the original). 60. Mikulska (2019a: 13). 61. Boone (2016: 34). 62. Boone (2011b: 384). 63. Boone (1994: 19); Mikulska (2015: 214). 64. Gelb (1963 [1952]: 11–­13). 65. Gelb (1963 [1952]: 190–­91); also Sampson (1985: 29). 66. Boone (1994: 15).

206  : Nahua Ritual Foundations

67. Boone (1994: 16). 68. Wright-­Carr (2017), for example, documents how Otomí craftsmen incorporated semasiographic messages into the stonework of sixteenth-­century churches. 69. Boone (2011a: 200). 70. Boone (2016: 33). 71. Boone (2011a: 197). 72. Boone (2011b: 380, 388). 73. Gelb (1963 [1952]: 19). 74. Gelb (1963 [1952]: 193). 75. Sampson (1985: 50). 76. Laack (2019: 193). 77. Laack (2019: 349). 78. Mikulska (2015: 308–­11). 79. Mikulska (2015: 339–­52). 80. Mikulska (2015: 256–­59). 81. For a similar point regarding the Otomí paper figures, see Pérez González (2011: 43). 82. Frassani (2016: 443); emphasis in original. 83. Dehouve (2015: 53).

6 Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments What the Paper Figures Convey In this chapter we systematically analyze the iconographic content and communicative potential of the paper figures that Cirilo and his colleagues created for us in 2007. Using ethnographic information to identify and describe their fundamental elements, we illuminate how the paper figure assembly operates as a communication system. We draw on the interpretations presented in the previous chapter, although we must admit that the task of decoding the content of the religious complex of el costumbre is far from complete. We will discuss the individual figures that make up each unit of analysis (what we term the “altar set”) in the order of their appearance in the pilgrimage. Each altar set belongs to a particular location within a customary sequence of mezah altar offerings. Based on information provided by Cirilo and his assistants, we are able to assign each of the sacred cuttings to a specific location, altar, and ritual observance that correspond to the pilgrimage rituals we witnessed firsthand in 1998 and 2001. Again, we emphasize that although these paper figures are not the ones deployed for those pilgrimages, we have confidence that the demonstration collection accurately reflects actual practice.

Cleansing the Way We begin by examining the set of dangerous or malevolent beings whose images are cut for cleansing rituals (in Nahuatl, ochpantli, defined as “sweeping” or barrida in Spanish, also limpia, “cleansing”) performed before and during the pilgrimage journey. Such is the power of the disease-­causing winds (ehecameh) that three such rituals, at minimum, to deflect their threat were needed at critical junctures during the sacred journey. Recall that table 5.1 listed the locations and sequence of ritual episodes; table 6.1 details the content of these cleansing episodes at Amatlán (Location 1, Ritual Episode 1.2), Ichcacuatitla (Location 3, Ritual Episode 3.1), and the first level spot on Postectli called tepexitzintlan, “beneath the precipice” (Location 4, Ritual Episode 4.1). Cirilo and his assistants prepared three sets of paper cuttings, preserved as Altar Sets 14, 15, and 16, which we assigned arbitrarily to one of these locations. Although the sets were likely meant to be identical, each contained a slightly different number and configuration of figures, as table 6.1 documents. Once we reconciled some confusion in their organization, we determined that Altar Set 14 included seventy-­ six paper cuttings, Altar Set 15 had seventy-­four cuttings, leaving Altar Set 16 with sixty-­six

https://​doi​.org​/​10​.5876​/​9781646423309​.c006

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cuttings. We designated Altar Set 15 as a composite, Altar Set 00, allowing us to analyze the full inventory of figures cut for a typical cleansing. The table lists the spirit entities alphabetically by name in English, followed by Spanish and Nahuatl, with alternate names in brackets; the table is accompanied by illustrations of this composite set (in order by paper figure ID). Physical descriptions in brackets distinguish cuttings of similar design and iconography. A figure ID shown underlined in bold font indicates the drawing of the wind (ehecatl) images selected by the ethnographers to serve as exemplars of their type. The table also points out anomalies we discovered in the sample collection. For instance, paper images of cross wind and water wind are marked “missing” in Altar Set 16 because they seem to have been omitted inadvertently. We also found an extra petate of twelve colorful paper images placed with Altar Set 16 but observed that these very cuttings were missing in Altar Set 14. This seemed to be a simple error, so we moved them to the correct set. Cirilo included without explanation two extra cuttings of the diminutive tlacotontli (“something cut smaller”) cuttings in Altar Set 14. But later, in trying to categorize the distinctive headdress designs of these tlacotontli images, we discovered that Cirilo had not distributed the different styles evenly across the three cleansing sets (and may not have intended to do so). So some designs are marked “absent” in the table. To illustrate the range of the design variations, three unique tlacotontli images that he placed in Altar Sets 14 and 16 appear in our composite Altar Set 00, made up of Altar Set 15 figures. To perform a cleansing, Cirilo would slowly and methodically lay out his paper cuttings of malevolent spirit entities directly on the ground as we illustrate below. After chanting over the array, Cirilo and his helpers spread the offerings of food and drink all over the paper figures (as we saw in the photographs in chapters 3 and 4). Following a brief interval during which the spirits are given time to consume the food and drink, the ritual specialist gathers up the sodden figures, folds them into a compact bundle, and takes it away to discard in the forest far outside the community. As we emphasized in describing the actual pilgrimage cleansings, people regard the paper figures as animate beings with the power to infect, even though victims may be unaware of their presence. In chanting, the ritual specialist exhorts the assembled entities to accept the offering and, once satiated, to depart. Having been attracted to the well-­ordered array at the center of ritual action, the virulent assembly must be visibly and forcibly disordered and physically delivered back to the periphery.

208  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

Taken as a whole, the array of figures cut for the cleansing episode presents the forceful elements of disease, disorder, and death that possess the power to afflict human beings, animals, and crops. Each figure characterizes a form of disruption best thought of as interference or an obstacle to the maintenance of the delicate equilibrium between forces of the cosmos and the human community. People depend on rituals to establish and restore the balance on which life depends, thereby ensuring their own livelihood and well-­being. The cleansing addresses these negative forces directly and without ambiguity. The physical presence of the particular spirit entities in the form of paper figures communicates a significant amount of information to ritual participants who are able to read the iconographic message of the display with greater or lesser facility, and thereby enrich and deepen their own experience of the cleansing. Here we introduce the malign cast of characters. The spirit entity we examine first in the composite set of paper cuttings is the striking figure of tlacatecolotl or man owl (paper figure 00-­01), introduced briefly in chapters 2 and 3. According to people we talked to in Amatlán, this spirit entity, together with his consort tlacatecolotl cihuatl, man owl woman (paper figure 00-­02), leads the souls of the dead who reside in the underworld, mictlan. The conception of leaders and followers reproduces the social hierarchy in Mexico in which local Hispanic elites dominate Indigenous people throughout the region; thus, even the souls of the dead are socially ranked. Tlacatecolotl contains within its name tlacatl (literally, “man” but connoting “human being”) plus tecolotl (Nahuatl for “owl”).1 Among many Indigenous groups throughout Mesoamerica owls are associated with darkness and death. Man owl’s companion has cihuatl (“woman”) appended to her name, signifying that she is his female counterpart. As one might expect, the spirit pantheon also reflects human marital relations, although the Nahuatl would normally take the possessive form to indicate “his woman,” signifying wife. To reinforce the connection with souls of the dead, man owl and man owl woman display prominent cuts in the body, icons that indicate a skeleton’s ribs. The male figure has headgear that resembles animal horns, and both the male and female aspects have dangerous-­looking, jagged teeth and the suggestion of a tail. By associating them with animals, the ritual specialist links these cuttings to the untamed wild creatures of the tropical forest. Man owl woman has no headdress in this portrayal, a convention that conveys its identity as the dual aspect of man owl, or in this case, a binary of the opposite sex.

Table 6.1. Spirit Entities Featured in the Cleansings SPIRIT ENTITY CATEGORY = Total Number of Cuttings, Number of Exemplars Name in English [Variant] / Spanish / Nahuatl Paper Type, Arrangement

LOCATIONS OF CLEANSINGS

Location 1. Amatlán

Location 3. Ichcacuatitla

Location 4. Beneath the Precipice

Altar Set 15

Altar Set 14

Altar Set 16

= 74 cuttings, designated composite Altar Set 00

= 76 cuttings (not illustrated), with 2 extra tlacotontli figures

= 66 cuttings (not illustrated), missing 8 ehecatl figures

PAPER FIGURE ID = Shown underlined in bold font are Exemplar Paper Figures 00-01 to 00-21 in composite Altar Set 00; drawings of the cuttings arranged together by ID number are illustrated below

BAD WIND = 8 total per set, 2 exemplars bad wind [bad air] / mal aire / ehecatl 4 colors, on petates

Paper Figure 00-­05a = 00-­05a-­15 4 paired cuttings

00-­05a-­14

00-­05a-­16

bad wind [bad air] / mal aire / ehecatl 4 white, on petates

Paper Figure 00-­05b = 00-­05b-­15 4 paired cuttings

00-­05b-­14

00-­05b-­16

bad wind [bad air] / mal aire / ehecatl 2 large white, on the ground

absent

absent

absent

CORPSES WIND = 10 total per set, 3 exemplars corpses wind / viento de cadáveres / miccatzitzin ehecatl 4 colors, on petates

Paper Figure 00-­04a = 00-­04a-­15 4 paired cuttings

00-­04a-­14

00-­04a-­16

corpses wind / viento de cadáveres / miccatzitzin ehecatl 4 white, on petates

Paper Figure 00-­04b = 00-­04b-­15 4 paired cuttings

00-­04b-­14

00-­04b-­16

corpses wind / viento de cadáveres / miccatzitzin ehecatl 2 large white, on the ground

Paper Figure 00-­04c = 00-­04c-­15 2 paired cuttings

00-­04c-­14

00-­04c-­16

CROSS WIND = 10 total per set, 3 exemplars cross wind [from below] / mal aire de la cruz [de abajo] / carus ehecatl 4 colors, on petates

Paper Figure 00-­06a = 00-­06a-­15 4 paired cuttings

00-­06a-­14

missing

cross wind [from below] / mal aire de la cruz [de abajo] / carus ehecatl 4 white, on petates

Paper Figure 00-­06b = 00-­06b-­15 4 paired cuttings

00-­06b-­14

00-­06b-­16

cross wind [from below] / mal aire de la cruz [de abajo] / carus ehecatl 2 large white, on the ground

Paper Figure 00-­06c = 00-­06c-­15 2 paired cuttings

00-­06c-­14

00-­06c-­16

continued on next page

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  209

Table 6.1.—continued DEATH WIND = 10 total per set, 3 exemplars death [wind, bad air] / muerte [viento, mal aire] / miquiliztli [ehecatl] 4 colors, on petates

Paper Figure 00-­03a = 00-­03a-­15 4 paired cuttings

00-­03a-­14

00-­03a-­16

death [wind, bad air] / muerte [viento, mal aire] / miquiliztli [ehecatl] 4 white, on petates

Paper Figure 00-­03b = 00-­03b-­15 4 paired cuttings

00-­03b-­14

00-­03b-­16

death [little dead one wind] / muertito [viento, mal aire] / miquiliztli [ehecatl] (variant name and design) 2 large white, on the ground

Paper Figure 00-­03c = 00-­03c-­15 2 paired cuttings

00-­03c-­14

00-­03c-­16

EARTH WIND = 10 total per set, 3 exemplars earth wind / viento de la tierra / tlalli ehecatl 4 colors, on petates

Paper Figure 00-­07a = 00-­07a-­15 4 paired cuttings

00-­07a-­14

00-­07a-­16

earth wind / viento de la tierra / tlalli ehecatl 4 white, on petates

Paper Figure 00-­07b = 00-­07b-­15 4 paired cuttings

00-­07b-­14

00-­07b-­16

earth wind / viento de la tierra / tlalli ehecatl 2 large white, on the ground

Paper Figure 00-­07c = 00-­07c-­15 2 paired cuttings

00-­07c-­14

00-­07c-­16

MAN OWL = 1 per set, 1 exemplar man owl / hombre búho / tlacatecolotl 1 large white, on the ground

Paper Figure 00-­01 = 00-­01-­15 1 paired cutting

00-­01-­14

00-­01-­16

continued on next page

The uncontrolled, dangerous nature of such figures from the underworld is emphasized by the practitioners who mark them with charcoal from the fireplace before lining them up with other similarly blackened figures along the bottom edge of the cleansing array. This treatment also serves to link these underworld creatures with disorder and pollution. Ritual specialists say that they “do whatever they want” without restraint and pose a constant danger to everyone. Cirilo called them “bones from the graveyard,” adding that they are “fat and travel around at night.” During nanahuatilli (coinciding with the Lenten observance of Carnival), masked dancers called mecos rampage through the village, causing mayhem and generally breaking rules of decorum. People say that the mecos are from mictlan and, like the souls of the dead, are led by tlacatecolotl and tlacatecolotl cihuatl. The Nahua today

210  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

associate these unruly creatures with another malevolent being that endures from the pre-­Hispanic era called tlahueliloc, who today exemplifies personal disorderliness, social discord, and unleashed anger, fury, or wrath.2 When asked to explain his understanding of tlacatecolotl, the apprentice ritual specialist Raymundo offered the following in an interchange with anthropologist Arturo Gómez Martínez: I think el demonio, the demon, commands from below. We call this one tlacatecolotl. He commands from below the earth. That is why we also have to give food [to this being] when we remove bad airs [from a patient]. We also have to give it an offering, and that is why some believe and the evangelists say that we are conducting a costumbre to the Devil. That is why

Table 6.1.—continued MAN OWL WOMAN = 1 per set, 1 exemplar man owl woman / hombre búho mujer / tlacatecolotl cihuatl 1 large white, on the ground

Paper Figure 00-­02 = 00-­02-­15 1 paired cutting

00-­02-­14

00-­02-­16

SOMETHING CUT SMALLER = 14–­16 per set 13 exemplars in bold are grouped iconographically, illustrating distinctive headdress designs something cut smaller / cosa cortada o reducida / tlacotontli 2-­by-­2 diminutive figures in color, joined at feet and sides, on the ground

Paper Figure 00-­09 = 00-­09-­15a 1 paired cutting 00-­09-­15b

00-­09-­14a 00-­09-­14b

00-­09-­16a 00-­09-­16b

Paper Figure 00-­10 = 00-­10-­15 1 paired cutting

00-­10-­14a 00-­10-­14b

00-­10-­16

Paper Figure 00-­11 = 00-­11-­15 1 paired cutting

00-­11-­14

00-­11-­16

Paper Figure 00-­12 = 00-­12-­15a 1 paired cutting 00-­12-­15b 00-­12-­15c 00-­12-­15d

00-­12-­14

00-­12-­16a 00-­12-­16b

Paper Figure 00-­13 = 00-­13-­15 1 paired cutting

00-­13-­14

00-­13-­16a 00-­13-­16b

Paper Figure 00-­14 = 00-­14-­15 1 paired cutting

00-­14-­14

00-­14-­16

Paper Figure 00-­15 = 00-­15-­15 1 paired cutting

00-­15-­14a 00-­15-­14b

00-­15-­16a 00-­15-­16b

Paper Figure 00-­16 = 00-­16-­15 1 paired cutting

00-­16-­14a 00-­16-­14b

absent

Paper Figure 00-­17 = 00-­17-­15 1 paired cutting

00-­17-­14

absent

Paper Figure 00-­18 = 00-­18-­15 1 paired cutting

absent

absent

absent

Figure 00-­19 = 00-­19-­14a 1 paired cutting 00-­19-­14b 00-­19-­14c

00-­19-­16

absent

absent

Paper Figure 00-­20 = 00-­20-­16 1 paired cutting

absent

absent

Paper Figure 00-­21 = 00-­21-­16 1 paired cutting

WATER WIND = 10 total per set, 3 exemplars water wind / viento de agua / atl ehecatl 4 colors, on petates

Paper Figure 00-­08a = 00-­08a-­15 4 paired cuttings

00-­08a-­14

missing

water wind / viento de agua / atl ehecatl 4 white, on petates

Paper Figure 00-­08b = 00-­08b-­15 4 paired cuttings

00-­08b-­14

00-­08b-­16

water wind / viento de agua / atl ehecatl 2 large white, on the ground

Paper Figure 00-­08c = 00-­08c-­15 2 paired cuttings

00-­08c-­14

00-­08c-­16

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  211

00-01 Man Owl

00-02 Man Owl Woman

00-03a Death Wind

00-03c Little Dead One Wind

00-03b Death Wind

212  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

00-04a Corpses Wind

00-04c Corpses Wind

00-04b Corpses Wind

00-05a Bad Wind

00-05b Bad Wind

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  213

00-06a Cross Wind

00-06c Cross Wind

00-06b Cross Wind

00-07a Earth Wind

00-07c Earth Wind

00-07b Earth Wind

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00-08a Water Wind

00-08c Water Wind

00-08b Water Wind

00-09 Something Cut Smaller

00-10 Something Cut Smaller

00-11 Something Cut Smaller

00-12 Something Cut Smaller

00-13 Something Cut Smaller

00-14 Something Cut Smaller

00-15 Something Cut Smaller

00-16 Something Cut Smaller

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00-17 Something Cut Smaller

00-18 Something Cut Smaller

00-20 Something Cut Smaller

00-21 Something Cut Smaller

they say it. I tell them yes, of course we give it food, because if we don’t, it will eat us. I tell them we have to give [something] because we walk on the earth, we plant in the earth. Everything that exists, everything we eat, everything there is comes from the earth.3

Missionaries over the centuries have tried to convince Indigenous peoples that man owl is equivalent to the Christian Devil, and several people in Amatlán articulated this belief when we asked about it. However, the spirit entity shares few of that figure’s characteristics. As we have asserted, the duo of man owl and man owl woman cannot be seen as evil or the polar opposite of good because such categories reflect a Euro-­American view of the world—­a decidedly non-­Nahua conception. Cirilo stated emphatically that “tlacatecolotl is not the devil.” In his view, man owl and his consort are social beings who may sometimes enter into an exchange with humans, and when someone is feared to be dying, the ritual specialist can convince them to save the person’s life. They appear in Carnival as tricksters rather than Satan’s incarnations.4 Thus far we have described just two of the key figures deployed during the cleansings prior to the

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00-19 Something Cut Smaller

major offering, and already one can appreciate that the paper images of these powerful entities contain a great deal of information and emotional content to be interpreted by the participants. Seeing the blackened figures surrounded by their minions carries a powerful, even terrifying, message. The fearsome assembly led by man owl and man owl woman is something to behold. Cirilo next cut a paper figure of a creature he identified as miquiliztli, “death,” but he also called it by the general Nahuatl term ehecatl (meaning “wind” but unambiguously designating a dangerous “bad wind”). When speaking in Spanish, Cirilo collectively referred to this class of spirit entities as malos aires (“bad airs”) or malos vientos (“bad winds”). Death conceived as the ill wind consists of four anthropomorphic figures (paper figure 00-­03a) identical to one another except for color. The four colors selected for this entity are yellow, red (or a deep hue we would call rose), black, and green. Yellow and red/rose are usually associated with the sun, black with the earth, and green with water (although, as we suggested in the discussion of color in chapter 2, some Nahua also associate yellow with the west, red and green with the east, and black with the south). The broad range of colors may also be understood

locally to indicate that the menace of death comes at a person from multiple directions. Telltale rib holes associate it with a skeleton, and its small, wing-­like arms enable it to fly in the air like the wind itself. This dreadful creature infests most of the cosmos and particularly likes to attack people as they walk unsuspecting along trails. Many people in the Huastecan outback have had close encounters with death at some time in their lives or have lost children to its power. But like man owl, death is dangerous—­not an evil being—­for it, too, can be enticed to enter into exchanges with humans. In extreme cases, a ritual specialist may dedicate offerings to this spirit entity so that it will spare the patient’s life. According to Cirilo, death likes to travel around with the generalized image of ehecatl, “bad wind” (paper figure 00-­05a), and with the frightful figure we examine next.5 The image of miccatzitzin ehecatl, “corpses wind” (paper figure 00-­04a), would scare anybody. Its arms are pointed downward in the distinctive pose of the dead, readily understood by viewers. Cirilo explained that this particular wind spirit emanates from places where bones of dead people are buried, and the position of the arms associate it with the earth, the underworld, and death. The hands are wing-­like because it is a malevolent wind that flies about making people sick and visiting tragedy upon their lives. Cirilo cut the figures in red tissue paper and in a shade of deep rose as well as black and yellow. The two diamond shapes near the tops of the legs are probably rib holes, not to be confused with the V-cuts in other, more benign figures that Cirilo usually described as pockets. This spirit entity is a companion of death (paper figure 00-­03a) and earth wind (paper figure 00-­07a), along with generalized bad wind (paper figure 00-­05a). One can imagine the nightmare-­like associations that people have when contemplating corpses wind.6 Cirilo identified one of these companion images (paper figure 00-­05a) only by the generic term ehecatl in Nahuatl, calling it, in Spanish, simply mal aire, “bad air” or “bad wind,” and no other special designation. Like the others, its rib holes are a clear indication of the dangerous nature of this spirit entity. The creature travels around at night searching for victims to sicken or kill. Nighttime in Nahua culture is imbued with dangerous associations, a time when the protective sun is absent, leaving people vulnerable to attack. With short, upraised arms and wing-­ like hands cut from the block of its large, squarish head, and lacking any distinguishing headdress, this figure is made out of four colors of paper (purple, yellow, green, and black) to indicate its broad dominion. Cirilo added

that the spirit entity is rather social. As the companion of death and corpses wind, the three dangerous entities like to travel around together.7 Serving to illuminate the special form of dualism that underlies Nahua metaphysical thought, the paper figures are conceived as binaries and sometimes characterized by having a complementary or contrastive partner derived from the single substance that animates the cosmos. Many of the Nahua paper figures (like man owl and man owl woman) are cut as male-­female pairs. Others appear in distinctive beneficent-­malevolent opposition. For instance, the embodiment of bad wind as a bringer of suffering stands against that of good wind, which blows in the rain-­producing clouds to fertilize the milpas. The cross, associated with the life-­giving sun and Jesus Christ (as discussed in chapter 2), is one of the most powerful and positive manifestations of Totiotzin for the contemporary Nahua. And yet our next figure is one Cirilo called caruz ehecatl, “cross wind” (paper figure 00-­06a), in Spanish, mal aire de la cruz, “bad air of the cross.”8 The cross in this paper cutting comes from within the earth, not the sky, and like all harmful winds it spreads illness and affliction. Cirilo specified that this paper image is the spirit entity’s male aspect, but he did not give us an example of a female counterpart. He pointed out that the rectangular shape of the body is a poncho-­like jorongo, a common item of apparel for Nahua men, and he cut the figure with rib holes and a cross headdress. The colors Cirilo chose are purple and black (to associate it with the earth) and yellow and green (probably to suggest that it is ubiquitous). An excellent example of Nahua spirit entities’ equivocal nature (from the perspective of most Euro-­Americans) can be found in the next figure, the malevolent tlalli ehecatl, “earth wind” (paper figure 00-­07a). Without a doubt, the sacred earth is one of the most powerful and beneficent entities in the pantheon. As we have emphasized, people often refer to the earth simply as “God” to indicate its central importance. Even though the appellation appears synonymous with the Christian God and is addressed in Spanish as “Dios,” the spirit entity invoked is closer to the Nahua conception of Totiotzin. From the earth comes the very possibility of life and all wealth, in the form of fertility, water, maize, and the sacred mountains that arise from it. And yet here in the cleansing array is an instance of the dangerous earth taking the form of an underworld wind associated with disease and adversity. Cut with the customary rib holes, earth wind’s rake-­like headdress is indistinguishable from that of the beneficent, fecund earth with its emerging vegetation. Its different aspects

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  217

are indicated by red, purple, blue, and yellow paper, signaling an association with the earth (the purple color) and its widespread prevalence (the other colors). The image that Cirilo called atl ehecatl, “water wind” (paper figure 00-­08a), reflects the malevolent potential of the precious liquid so essential to the survival of slash-­and-­ burn horticulturalists. Cirilo describes it as agua cimarrón, a Spanish adjective that connotes water’s “wild” or “untamed” nature. Here is a creature capable of destructive and patently unfair behavior, the apparent antithesis of the water dweller, apanchaneh, who provides crucial water to the fields. Water wind is attracted to situations in which people exhibit envious behavior; interestingly, Cirilo added that it leads people to listen to bad counsel and make disastrous decisions. The horned or hat-­like headdress of this wind is identical in design to that of apanchaneh (e.g., exemplar figure E-24, discussed below), but it also resembles the animal-­horn headgear of man owl, which serves to link both water wind and man owl to the wild, untamed periphery of the Nahua world. Like the other ehecatl figures, rib holes are evident, and the figure is cut from yellow, green, red, and purple paper to emphasize its water association (the green) and its wide dispersal (the other colors).9 Thus far we have examined six colorful wind spirits in addition to man owl and his partner, man owl woman, all of whom make their appearance in the cleansing episodes of the pilgrimages. Cirilo next produced virtually identical images of the six malevolent winds from newsprint-­ grade paper (papel revolución), replicating the colorful images in white paper so as to reiterate their constant mortal threat.10 Cirilo produced four paired cuttings each of death (paper figure 00-­03b), corpses wind (00-­04b), the generalized ehecatl or bad wind (00-­05b), cross wind (00-­06b), earth wind (00-­07b), and water wind (00-­08b). In total, he laid out forty-­eight colored pairs and forty-­ eight white pairs of cuttings, dividing them—­ twelve each—­ among four paper petates: two beds of colored paper figures and two of the white ones, with three different kinds of winds on each petate. Figure 6.1 illustrates two typical designs of paper petates that Cirilo prepared for the cleansing array; note how the decorative cuts in the paper resemble the figures’ rib-­hole openings. He arranged the beds in a rectangular grid at the center of the array, placing the colored and white images in an opposing X shape. Clearly, the ritual specialist’s strategy is to force (or coax) these incarnations of instability, disruption, and chaos into a precise, orderly arrangement.11 The paper cuttings of the aforementioned winds are relatively small: the white ones measure 5–­5.5 × 17.5

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centimeters (about 2 × 7.5 inches), while the colorful ones are 6–­6.5 × 18.5–­19 centimeters (about 2.5 × 7.5 inches); the available paper stock probably accounts for the size differences. In contrast, man owl and man owl woman are cut larger, measuring 17–­17.5 × 23.5–­24 centimeters (7 × 9.5 inches), probably to indicate their greater power. Cirilo proceeded to create more of these oversized figures from white paper. In all, he produced two cuttings each (also double-­layered) of corpses wind (paper figure 00-­ 04c), cross wind (00-­06c), earth wind (00-­07c), and water wind (00-­08c). These frightful images are narrower than man owl and his consort but about as tall, ranging in size from 8–­8.5 × 23.5–­24 centimeters (3 × 9.5 inches). For some reason Cirilo did not reproduce in large format any figures of the generalized bad wind or that of death, like those made from white and colored paper that he laid on petates. It is unlikely that the omissions were an oversight as Cirilo produced a unique depiction of death (paper figure 00-­03c). Speaking in Spanish, he specified that its name is muertito (“little dead one”) and stated that this ehecatl travels around at night as a companion of cross wind and corpses wind. He cut muertito with the standard rib holes to associate it with death, but gave it upraised arms, unlike the other death-­related figures that featured wings (paper figures 00-­03a,b) or whose arms pointed down (00-­04a,b).12 Cirilo prepared for our sample all of the figures he would need for his usual cleansing-­curing ritual. As illustrated in figure 6.2, he placed the figures of man owl and man owl woman at the bottom center of the array, flanked by the large underworld horde. We noted, however, that their arrangement varied from ritual to ritual. Sometimes he placed matched pairs of the large figures side by side, but we also saw them interspersed more or less randomly. Another observation we made is that large size does not always correlate with power or importance. For the Nahua ritual specialists sometimes smaller signals even greater danger. Cleansing-­curing rituals often (but not always) include a series of diminutive cuttings cut from colored tissue paper that embody a powerful class of bad winds. Over the years we had observed these cuttings employed in rituals to cure a patient, but we were never able to find out what purpose they served. Ritual specialists always seemed reluctant to speak about them but acknowledged that they are unusually strong. Our friends in Amatlán identified these figures as tlacotontli, but we have come to recognize that there is considerable ambiguity in how the label is applied or understood by people in different communities. For some Huastecan Nahuatl speakers in

Chicontepec today, for instance, tlacotontli refers to a type of preventive cleansing ritual designed to thwart envy or contravene an attack of sorcery.13 However, Gómez Martínez considers tlacotontli to be the culminating episode of the cleansing-­curing ritual when the practitioner of el costumbre gathers up the soaked paper images after the offering and hides the debris where no one can inadvertently come across it.14 Over the centuries the connotation of this word has perhaps evolved in meaning, but the sixteenth-­century dictionary compiled by Fray Alonso de  Molina provided one sense of tlacotontli as “something diminished, or cut, something reduced” (in addition to other meanings having to do with grasping or gleaning something, like a sheaf of wheat, ears of maize, or fruit).15 Thus, the portion of Molina’s definition that we have settled on for the English terminology—­“something cut smaller”—­may apply equally to the diminutive paper cuttings or to an abbreviated cleansing-­curing ritual (or an episode of such). The term tlacotontli is rendered into Spanish (in Amatlán at least) as something that has the power “to cut” (cortar), “to burst or wreck” (reventar), or “to destroy” (destruir). It seems reasonable to conclude that the dangerous spirit entities embodied in the paper cuttings themselves take their name from the rituals in which they are deployed.16 Eventually we did learn that both the tlacotontli ritual and the set of paper figures are designed to ward off the malevolent intentions of a sorcerer or tetlachihuihquetl. A sorcerer may be envious of the offerings during the pilgrimage, or may even be paid by a disgruntled person to disrupt the proceedings. Sorcery is rarely openly discussed among the Nahua, especially with outsiders. Apparently, ritual specialists do not normally attempt to halt the activities of the suspected sorcerer but instead work to intercept the dangerous spirit entities that practitioners send out to disrupt, destroy, and kill. Despite their diminutive size, these tlacotontli spirit entities are regarded as extremely dangerous, not something to be trifled with. The tlacotontli cuttings are composed as four anthropomorphic, miniature individuals attached at the feet and along the sides: the beings so conjoined form an intricate, almost lacelike, rectilinear unit measuring 12–­12.5 × 17.5–­18.5 centimeters (about 5 × 7 inches). Some cuttings are virtually identical, distinguished by no other feature than color (red, rose, black, yellow, purple, or blue, as illustrated). Notably, none of these tlacotontli figures was cut from white papel de china, the color associated with death, bones, and the north. We can only conclude that, like all of the malevolent winds, the range

of colors indicates that they are encountered anywhere and everywhere. Another ritual specialist informed us one day, quietly, that the tlacotontli figures are connected to one another by their feet because they are from the earth, and added that the four individual figures joined as one form a malicious family composed of father, mother, and two children. The sample set exhibits a great variety of headdresses and colors that should distinguish one from the other, so it surprised us when we interviewed Cirilo that he started to attribute generalized labels for them, such as xochiehecatl (“flower wind”), but then stopped abruptly and stated that they have no individual names. He repeated the point unequivocally when we pressed him to identify each of them separately.17 The tlacotontli are the only class of paper figures that, to our knowledge, are not explicitly and consistently identified by name. Cirilo described them as cimarrón ehecatl, using a mixed Spanish-­Nahuatl phrase meaning “untamed wind.” He asserted that, like the untamed water, these beings are very dangerous and have the power to do great damage as they move along. For nefarious reasons, sorcerers loose the tlacotontli, and only the armamentarium of the ritual specialist can deflect them.18 Despite the reticence we encountered in trying to identify them individually, the impactful design of these something-­cut-­smaller tlacotontli figures reveals clues to their identity and the range of places they inhabit. The pronged headdress of the first cutting, for instance (exemplified by paper figure 00-­ 09), reveals obvious iconographic associations with the earth wind (paper figures 00-­07a,b,c) and with some guises of the salutary earth (as illustrated in figure 5.1).19 Despite the critical importance of water in Nahua life, water’s dangerous aspects are also embodied in the design of a diminutive tlacotontli cutting (paper figure 00-­10). It features a headdress like that of the malevolent water wind (paper figures 00-­08a,b,c), discussed earlier, but one can visually compare the headgear and observe the same design in the embodiment of the water dweller apanchaneh (e.g., exemplar figure E-24; we will discuss shortly these exemplar cuttings noted here parenthetically). Another tlacotontli cutting (paper figure 00-­11) features a cross headdress that resembles that of cross wind (paper figures 00-­06a,b,c), although the cross in its salutary guise (e.g., exemplar figure E-6) lacks the headdress and instead has a cross shape cut from the body. The most frequently occurring tlacotontli image (paper figure 00-­12) has no distinctive identifying headdress, which associates these creatures with the majority of the other ehecatl figures, also bareheaded. The absence

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Figure 6.1. Two petate designs for the cleansings. Each petate holds a set of twelve paper images of the dangerous winds (paper figures 00-­03a,b to 00-­08a,b) arranged in a single row of overlapping cuttings. Ritual specialists lay out four petates at the center of the display and place on them three different wind spirits (four paired figures of each entity). Drawing by Ana Laura Ávila-­Myers.

of a headdress can have multiple interpretations, as we will explain shortly. Because the bodies of the tlacotontli are undifferentiated, we cannot say whether the ritual specialist intended them to be the malevolent aspect of a particular salutary spirit entity (the paper figure of altar, for instance, which has no headdress; see the exemplar figure E-1 of altar, in table 6.2, in the next section, below). A distinctive, pronged headdress characterizes a tlacotontli cutting (paper figure 00-13) that is similar to the design of flag or the generalized hill (e.g., the exemplar figures E-9 and E-12, respectively). Each cleansing set features a tlacotontli figure with a bifurcate or forked headdress (paper figure 00-­ 14), matching the design of specific sacred hills portrayed in paper (like those of San Bartolo or San Estéban, also illustrated in the next section). Certain tlacotontli figures (paper figure 00-­15) have a simple, flat-­ topped headdress, as does thunder (e.g., exemplar figure E-22). Cuttings of tlacotontli with elaborate vegetative headdresses (paper figure 00-­16) also have their stylistic counterparts, such as Santa Rosa (exemplar figure E-20). Other tlacotontli cuttings with a broad, hat-­like headdress (paper figure 00-­17) likely portray generalized vegetation, similar to bean (e.g., exemplar figure E-3). Another example has distinctive wavy cuts alongside the face (paper figure 00-­18, the sole example of this cutting among the three cleansing arrays), which closely resembles the image of fire (e.g., exemplar figure E-8), whose cuts may signify wrinkles (and associate the fire spirit tlixihuantzin with old age and death, as we will discuss). The final three examples of tlacotontli cuttings (paper figure 00-­19, which lacks a headdress altogether, and

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paper figures 00-­20 and 00-­21, with headdresses resembling that of water and another with a vegetative motif) also feature a recognizable arch over the head. This device could conceivably depict the rainbow, an inauspicious sign associated with the ending of rainstorms.20 We presented the argument in chapter 5 that the paper figures’ upraised arms framing the head inscribe the physical shape of the arch over the altar table and thus constitute a human-­altar structure in miniature. Because all of the distinctive tlacotontli cuttings have upraised arms (and some feature the overarching design element as well), we must allow that these dangerous wind spirits (like the salutary paper figures) likewise embody the self-­replicating structure of the animated cosmic order. The intriguing something-­cut-­smaller figures likely have deeper meanings, but we currently have insufficient ethnographic information about them. Our conjectures are based on outward appearances, but it is clear that they are integral to the ritual cleansings and occupy a place of privilege in the pilgrimage proceedings. At the center of the cleansing-­curing array lie the four petates containing the aggressive, death-­ dealing wind spirits that the ritual specialist arranges in a rectangular grid. Below it is the row of large, charcoal-­blackened paper figures of corpses wind lined up with cross, earth, and water winds and death’s aspect as little dead one wind. Duplicate figures of these creatures are placed on each side of man owl and man owl woman, bringing the total number of the large white images to twelve. Outside the order-­inducing grid at the center is where Cirilo places approximately fourteen tlacotontli figures draped

Figure 6.2. Customary layout of a cleansing array. The diagram shows the approximate placement of paper figures and offerings for a typical Nahua cleansing-­curing ritual. Drawing by Michael A. Sandstrom. From Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2021: 96, fig. 3.3), adapted with the permission of the University Press of Colorado.

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  221

over an incense brazier or stacked in piles atop bunches of cleansing herbs gathered from the forest. Their placement suggests that they are too wild to contain.21 The array of tlacotontli figures brings the total number of distinctive images that Cirilo creates for a typical cleansing ritual to around seventy-­four or so. Because they are inimical to human welfare, the malevolent wind figures (ehecameh) can perhaps best be seen as the antithesis or opposite of the salutary spirit entities: they would appear to be the malevolent face of beneficence in an example Nahua dualistic thought. In essence, the troop of ehecameh appear to be negations of the life-­ affirming spirit entities whose paper embodiments line the main altars. They essentially cancel out the beneficial potential of the earth, water, good wind, cross, flag, saints, or thunder. Just like envy, the ehecameh threaten life and invite death by undoing the work of people and the salutary spirit entities. And yet these disruptive, dangerous entities are just as much a part of the sacred cosmos as their opposites. This tension between opposing forces operating within a pantheistic world view Maffie labels “agonistic inamic unity,” a mixed Nahuatl-­ English phrase by which he means “the continual and continuous cyclical struggle (agon) of paired opposites, polarities, or dualities.”22 The term inamic is derived from the Nahuatl verbs namiqui and namictia, which convey a broad range of meanings, including “to meet,” “to find,” “to join,” “to marry,” or “to even things up.”23 Although he was concerned with explaining ancient Aztec philosophy, Maffie could easily have been writing about contemporary Nahua thought when he states: The cyclical, back-­and-­forth tug-­of-­war between inamic partners combined with the alternating, temporary dominance of one inamic over its partner constitutes and hence explains the genesis, diversity, movement, and momentary ordering of the cosmos. Each moment in this back-­and-­forth, cosmic tug-­of-­ war consists of the temporary dominance of one or the other inamic within a pair, and therefore represents a temporary imbalance between the two.24

It is the purpose of Nahua ritual to bring the forces embodied by the ehecameh into balance, even if temporarily, with their salutary counterparts in the pantheon. Engaging the concept of “dual-­aspect monism,” Maffie help us to understand how both ancient and contemporary Nahua process metaphysics is fundamentally monistic precisely

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because of its apparent duality. He makes the convincing case that what on the surface are opposing realities in fact derive from a common substrate.25 In this perspective, the winds become dangerous when they come to dominate the cosmic struggle with their paired opposite—­their “opponent” or “match.”26 So long as these dangerous spirit entities prevail, human beings are in imminent peril, and it is up to the ritual specialist to dedicate offerings to them to calm their ire and restore the balance with their beneficial counterparts. One can never eliminate these expressions of disorder and pollution, but they can be matched by the equally powerful, countervailing forces of order and respect. The fundamental idea is that by restoring balance between these forces, the winds will not interfere with the offerings and the cleansing operation will reduce the broader threat to humanity (just as in the disease-­curing context, the patient may be able to gather the strength to recover). The paper images created for a cleansing never appear individually but are always part of an array arranged upon the earth by the ritual specialist. Photographs we have of cleansing episodes accompanying the pilgrimages to the sacred mountains show the participants standing around the display holding various ritual items in their arms. This action is meant to rid the participants’ bodies and the objects they carry of any adhering bad winds, as if the destructive gusts are sticky. We doubt that most lay participants in the rituals could accurately and consistently identify each individual cutting in the cleansing-­curing array—­only the ritual specialists possess such detailed knowledge. However, people have seen the assembly of paper cuttings on many occasions throughout their lives, and everyone knows it to be a concentration of malevolent and threatening spirit entities. Much as a magnifying glass concentrates sunlight, the array draws these beings from all realms far and wide (i.e., from the periphery) to a central place where they can be addressed and incorporated into the system of exchanges. We wish to emphasize again a key finding from our research: the paper figures are not symbolic or representative of the disease-­causing winds—­they embody these agents. By cutting the images according to strict iconographic standards, ritual specialists allow Totiotzin—­the sacred entity coterminous with the cosmos—­to unfold or reveal itself through the particular shapes and colors of each individual figure. In this sense a paper image of tlacatecolotl discloses the actual presence of Totiotzin in the temporary form of man owl. The properly cut image unconceals (using Maffie’s

felicitous term) the overwhelming power of Totiotzin. The danger posed by the array of wind spirits during the cleansing is much more than symbolic—­it is a palpable threat, and the paper images of bad winds manifest the disease itself. They are contagious, and touching one can leave a person infected. The malevolent entities are actually present in their images, and their threatening character is felt strongly by everyone who participates in the rituals. Elemental units of malevolence embodied by the paper figures contrast with their salutary paired opposites implicated in the pilgrimages. The negative entities infest the entire cosmos and are the forces that sicken and destroy crops, animals, and people. They are insidious, powerful, and inimical to human interests, yet they do not seem to have a history. With the possible exception of man owl and man owl woman, there are no oral narrations associated with them; corpses wind has no adventures that people could recount. Many of the disease winds are the wandering souls of people who died bad deaths or were neglected by their kinsmen during Todos Santos observances. But in their wanderings the winds have become anonymous vehicles of disorder and disequilibrium, devoid of personality. The more benevolent spirit entities attracted to the decorated altars laden with offerings do, by contrast, have past histories, and most play roles in the stories that people tell each other. Thus, water, fire, and the seeds are the subject of myths, and other important entities such as the earth, the sun (manifested as Jesús), the walking stick, and thunder and lightning do have histories of their own. In our discussion of altar design and modularity in chapter 7, we show that both ancient and contemporary Nahua associate the number 20 with ownership. In this context it is interesting that ritual specialists place a basic unit of twenty typically identical paper figures on each petate for the pilgrimage offerings, but choose only twelve figures (four cuttings each of three different winds) to place on four petates, arranged as the central component of a cleansing ritual. Apparently, the malevolent winds do not own (or are not responsible for) the patch of earth occupied by the petate. Forever condemned to wander, they are at best temporary inhabitants who must be coaxed to move along. In contrast, benevolent spirit entities, like their human minions, are owners who belong to the earth and who are attached to specific places in the landscape. Human beings form similar attachments to the land, dependent as they are on their ability to produce food from the milpas.

The way that ritual specialists arrange the cleansing mezah also reveals something of the Nahua world view. Unlike the three dimensions of the altar table reflecting the three-­layered cosmos, the cleansing array laid out directly on the earth’s surface appears to occupy only the two-­dimensional, horizontal plane. But on closer examination the cleansing configuration illustrated in figure 6.2 reveals unexpected complexity. At the upper right and lower left of the display are the colored-­paper figures on two petates, alternating with their counterparts (upper left and lower right) in white paper. The colorful figures placed opposite their matched white figures on petates serve to highlight the X shape of the rectangular grid, creating the familiar quincunx-­quatrefoil design that designates the surface of the earth. The grid is positioned centrally, and just below are the large white images flanking man owl and man owl woman. The four petates bespeak the variegated, colorful surface of the earth that lies over the bleak underworld, with its paper figures of death the color of bones. The paper images are invaders of the human realm, and it is up to the ritual specialist to arrange (or confine) them within the ordered space and return them to the underworld where they pose less of a threat. Susan Gillespie, in a remarkable study of Mesoamerican artistic conventions using computer-­assisted drawings to illuminate her theory, revealed that the ancient Aztec and Maya artwork of painting and bas-­relief that stress two-­dimensionality were actually understood by people at the time to be multidimensional spaces but merely folded up. These projections of a “space-­time continuum” unfolding on the horizontal plane and vertical axis in such a way as to depict in two dimensions the geometry of a three-­dimensional space are much like a pop-­up book.27 The cleansing array of el costumbre ritual practice is similarly designed to define spatial reality in a culturally specific, Mesoamerican way of seeing, and we hypothesize that Nahua participants experience in its layout a hidden third dimension that reveals the human and underworld realms. The petates of paper figures form a rectilinear grid in both cleansing arrays laid on the ground and on raised altars dedicated to salutary spirit entities. Mikulska calls this type of layout “tabular” and notes that it seems to be a common feature of graphic communication systems, including glottographic ones.28 For example, in our own Euro-­American approach to the written page, one reads from left to right and from top to bottom, reproducing this grid pattern. Information is contained

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  223

in paragraphs organized into sections and chapters. Grid-­based graphic organization of this type is evident in “encyclopedias, dictionaries, recipes, the Bible, and the like,” and Mikulska notes that the tabular pattern of signs traces to the very origins of such communication systems and may have originated in divinatory texts. Writing about Mesoamerica, she states, “Exactly this same kind of tabular organization is present in the divinatory codices, in which it is not a matter of fluently reading/interpreting all the information from beginning to end but of finding the necessary fragment first by locating the proper almanac and then locating the appropriate mantic scene, taking advantage of the calendric arrangement.”29 The tabular layout of the paper figures on the altars, in short, may very well reproduce ancient Mesoamerican patterns of graphic communication. It is interesting to observe that the powerful but out-­of-­control tlacotontli figures are arranged by the ritual specialist in discrete stacks outside the main display where they are, quite literally, off the grid.30 Our examination of the salutary spirit entities that populate the altars constructed for Nahua pilgrimage reveals three images to be foundational: altar, cross, and earth. The images are found consistently repeated in the small bundles of paper figures placed beneath altars, and they are also part of the large sets of cuttings created for each major offering and placed on the tabletop. The altar itself appears to act as a mediator between the cross (sky realm) and the earth realm below. Altars thus are where human beings interact with wider forces in the cosmos. For the pilgrimage cleansings, by contrast, ritual specialists cut three different foundational entities among the ehecameh: water, cross, and earth winds; there are no cuttings called altar wind. By analogy, the cleansing array laid on the ground can be viewed as a kind of folded-­up or collapsed altar linking human beings to the realm of disorder where death and dissolution reign. The abbreviated mezah to the underworld beings bespeaks of an impoverished domain lacking sun, flowers, or food crops. Creatures inhabiting the underworld are pale reflections of their earthly counterparts. Here paper figures embodying cross-­sky and earth are also mediated—­not by the altar but by water. The precious liquid is a kind of connective tissue in the living cosmos in which earth and underworld are tied into a coherent whole. Water is to the earth what blood is to the human body. Water comes from the earth and provides the path allowing human beings to interact with the forces of darkness that threaten their well-­being.

224  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

We have no evidence that the paper figures laid out in the cleansing array constitute a fully formed semasiographic narrative, as does the Bayeux tapestry. At least it is not a narrative as conceived by the ritual specialist. Paper figures of the cleansing array instead constitute the spectrum of misfortune originating from all realms, conditions, and circumstances of existence. These embodiments tell of the chaos, disease, and death that emanate from water, earth, air, and dead bodies, and they are universal in their threat. From the range of possibilities, participants undoubtedly create private narratives involving their own family members, children, and themselves. Everyone who has confronted suffering and death in their personal history can gaze upon the cleansing array and look deeply into the contingencies of their own life to address the fears born of experience and their imaginations. Herein lies the incredible power of the paper images laid out within the protective device of the vine-­and-­marigold loop, which captures their forces and renders them manageable through the efforts of the ritual specialist. During the many cleansing rituals that we have witnessed over the years, ritual specialists often constructed seven (or more) small bundles of the sturdy leaves of the amatl (or amate) papermaking fig tree and tied onto each a pair of paper figures.31 In the completed display the bundles are arranged alongside the flowered loop so that they, too, encircle the main group of paper figures. Cirilo identified these figures as “soldier winds,” recruited, as it were, to stand guard and ensure that malevolent forces do not escape their containment to threaten people.32 Although we did not observe them being used for the Postectli pilgrimages, they featured prominently in the cleansing prior to the 2007 pilgrimage to Palaxtepetl, and the cleansing layout in figure 6.2 shows these soldier winds surrounding the array. We do not know why Cirilo chose to omit them from the Postectli pilgrimages except to note that the cleansing episode in 2007 was especially elaborate.33 The layout of these figures gives physical form to the inchoate fears and emotional states of people who live in a world constantly threatened by dissolution, breakdown, and destabilizing forces resulting from inevitable disequilibrium. They present a visual reality that far surpasses anything that could be expressed by words alone. Like the stained-­glass images that impressed the people of medieval Europe (and still affect people today), the paper figures encapsulate meaning for the Nahua that would difficult or impossible to express through other means. A person does not have to know the specific identity of each figure to perceive the power that it embodies. Equally important, a

person does not have to know the name of a paper figure of a spirit entity to understand the relevance of that entity for his or her own life, health, and safety. Each one is a physical manifestation of something very real that poses a concrete and existential threat. It is the purpose of a cleansing ritual to shine light on these shadowy forces and to offer a means for dealing with them. As embodiments of Totiotzin, they transcend simple pictography and engage people simultaneously on intellectual and visceral levels. Although he uses terminology that differs from ours, anthropologist James Dow (1986, 2003) develop an explanatory framework for understanding how cleansing-­curing systems work effectively for ritual participants and people suffering from illness and various medical disorders.34 Dow conducted ethnographic investigations among the Otomí of the Sierra Norte de Puebla region, and his long-­ term study focuses on the curing techniques of a ritual specialist named Don Antonio. Don Antonio cut paper figures for his curing rituals that appear to be broadly similar to those we have documented for the Nahua of Amatlán and their Otomí neighbors in Ixhuatlán de  Madero. Dow takes many of his insights from psychoanalysis but departs from orthodox Freudian theory. He posits that the shaman, by laying out the paper figures, creates a mythic world into which he draws the patient and can then attach the patient’s emotions to certain symbols and manipulate these to effect a cure.35 We believe that Dow’s theoretical insights regarding symbolic healing are well worth pursuing in light of insights deriving from the framework of ontological monism following Maffie (2014) and the arguments regarding Mesoamerican pantheism.

Making the Journey The colorful cut-­paper array and the candle-­lit ambience of the cleansing ritual, replete with chanting, copal incense, music, ritual accoutrements, and dedication of offerings, is a dramatic performance that allows onlookers to experience and participate in the unseen workings of a cosmos existentially relevant to their lives. As the focus of activities, the sacred paper-­figure complex of el costumbre constitutes a semasiographic system. Other such systems throughout North and South America include the quipu of the Inca, the uchu dolls of the San Blas Kuna, sand paintings of the American Southwest, and Hopi kachina dolls as well as the system of iconography conveyed by pottery decorations, textile patterns, ceramic and rubber figurines, petroglyphs, and the codices of ancient Mesoamerica, among others. Paper figures constitute

pictographs in that they are two-­ dimensional, iconographic, and convey meaning to people in a particular cultural context. Existing alongside language, they cannot be reduced to speech acts alone. Paper images are activated and engaged by precisely arranging them, and they serve to focus people’s attention during dramatic performances in specific ritual contexts. Seen in this wider framework, the paper-­cutting practices of el costumbre become less mysterious and can be seen as the logical outgrowth of rituals recorded as far back as (and undoubtedly predating) the Aztec empire. If Stresser-­Péan is correct that scissors were introduced into the Huasteca region in the eighteenth century,36 we can look to that time when local ritual specialists adapted their semasiographic system to the realities of the Spanish conquest and the dangers of a New World order thrust upon them. At a glance, table 6.2 offers analysts a visual summary of the thematic focus of the numerous altars and offerings prepared for the Postectli pilgrimage. The pattern of unique figure ID numbers in tabular form helps one gauge the variety and density of spirit entities deployed at each location (reading down columns). One can get a sense (reading across rows) of the temporal dimension and frequency of a given entity’s appearance in the ritual across the sequence of locations. Taking note of the step-­like display within columns, one can appreciate how, as the entourage ascends the sacred mountain, the ritual participants encounter divinity expressed in a great diversity of vivified spirit entities. Numbers heading the columns in the table refer to the sites of major ritual action along the pilgrimage route (as table 5.1 details in the previous chapter): Location 1, Amatlán, the pseudonymous Nahua community in the municipality of Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz; Location 2, the peregrination trek to Postectli, with minor offerings at water sources along the way; Location 3, the Nahua community of Ichcacuatitla in Chicontepec, Veracruz, at the base of Postectli; Location 4, the level spot partway up Postectli called tepexitzintlan, “beneath the precipice”; Location 5, the cleared area called tlahcopoztectli, “middle of Postectli,” and the sites nearby involving cave offerings; Location 6, the summit, called tzonteconpoztectli, “head of Postectli”; and Location 7, the return to participants’ home communities. Spirit entities listed alphabetically by English name are arranged in order of their placement in altar offerings (at Locations 1 and 3–­7). Photos taken during the twelve-­ hour trek confirm that paper cuttings were taken from the bundle for offerings at water sources (Location 2), but we cannot readily identify specific paper figure ID numbers

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  225

in the table. The cuttings that make up Altar Sets 01–­13 (paper figures 01-­01 to 13-­04) with design variations that we judged to be important are labeled with a letter (a,b,c, etc.) after the paper figure ID. The large cuttings clothed in actual garments in Altar Set 17 (paper figures 17-­01 to 17-­05) and left behind on the sacred mountain (Location 5) or brought back to the community and permanently preserved on home altars (Location 7) are listed with front, back, and separate components (labeled a,b,c, etc.). We illustrate every one of these salutary spirit entities in subsequent tables in this chapter. Numbers underlined in bold font in the first column (paper figures E-1 to E-25) are twenty-­five paper figures selected as exemplars of their spirit-­entity type; within the table, we also highlight the unique figure ID number of each example. We chose these particular examples from among the thousands in the collection commissioned from Cirilo to illustrate the range of spirit entities he chose to portray in paper for a major pilgrimage like the one to Postectli. Our criterion for choosing one cutting over another as the exemplar was our ability to discern the master’s distinctive paper-­cutting style, usually readily distinguishable from that of Cirilo’s assisting ritual specialists. Telling details were visible in the way Cirilo depicted the symmetry of facial cuts or the upraised arms with the fingers and shoulders precisely defined. Hands, knees, and feet also display his characteristic style in their proportions and angularity. We selected several as exemplars (e.g., bell, San Antonio, Santa Rosa, and star) that likely were produced by his colleagues because no comparable cutting clearly bore his mark. We assume that Cirilo approved all of the representative cuttings, even if they departed slightly from his standard. To facilitate the comparison of their iconography, the twenty-­ five selected drawings accompanying table 6.2 are arranged side by side on facing pages in alphabetical order by English name. To repeat an important point once again, it should be understood that each cutting (whether deployed on or beneath an altar as part of a major or minor offering, or created for a cleansing ritual) is in fact a pair of identical figures composed of two layers of paper. All of the cuttings listed in table 6.2 (and the following tables 6.3 to 6.8) are held together by their folded flaps, whereas the cuttings in table 6.1 used for cleansings have no such V-cuts and so are simply layered as one. It strikes us (as we similarly concluded with the cleansing arrays) that the sequences of individual paper images,

226  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

so precisely laid out on a progression of altars, does not form a narrative structure per se. The Nahua pilgrims may look upon them as more of a cross section, cluster, or constellation of spirit entities that belong together, drawn out of the pantheon of forces that impinge on crop fertility and the quotidian concerns of subsistence farmers. The prayers that people utter and the chants that leaders deliver recount these life-­or-­death matters very eloquently, even if we are unable to discern the narrative thread among the sacred paper cuttings. Laid out before them are the cosmic forces and struggles that they encounter day in and day out as they wrest a living from the unpredictable tropical-­ forest environment. While individuals may not be able to name all the images arrayed on the altar table, the distinctive iconography of each embodied spirit entity helps them recognize, if in a general way, the great diversity and powerful nature of cosmic forces. Perhaps they also serve as a device allowing pilgrimage participants to weave the spirit entities into their own personal life histories and thereby connect themselves in a meaningful way to the system of myths and cultural history. Who can look upon the image of apanchaneh, with her sublime expression and arrayed with earrings, necklaces, plaited ribbons, and dressed in shimmering blue-­green clothing, and fail to reflect on the mythic complex in which she is the protagonist? Individuals have daily, firsthand encounters with seeds, earth, and water, and the ritual context gives them form, brings them vividly to life, and conveys them to the human plane through their ephemeral paper manifestations. All that remains to resolve is how to interact directly with these elements, and people address that problem through strategies of reciprocity. The spirit entities and human beings alike are all expressions of Totiotzin, but that is not to say they are identical to each other. For the Nahua it is clear that spirit entities respond to the unspoken rules of social exchange, just as people do among themselves the world over. A gift implies an obligation on the part of the receiver, an obligation to respond with a gift of equivalent or greater value. Rituals are elaborate offerings that obligate spirit entities. The Nahua practitioners of el costumbre walk the pilgrimage path and dedicate food and music. The spirit entities repay with the gift of life. We asked Raymundo to explain how the spirit entities come together to listen to the people’s pleas and grant their wishes. He used an analogy with the government to describe just how it is that “at the moment of creating the mesa, placing the offering on the altar, all the saints come

Table 6.2. Spirit Entities Featured in the Pilgrimage Offerings SPIRIT ENTITY CATEGORY = Total Number of Cuttings, Exemplar Figure ID Name in English [Variant] / Spanish / Nahuatl ALTAR / UPPER ALTAR = 21 paired cuttings, 2 exemplars: Paper Figure E-1 altar [earth below] / mesa [tierra de abajo] / tlaixpamitl

LOCATIONS OF PILGRIMAGE ALTAR OFFERINGS 1. Amatlán; 2. Peregrination Trek; 3. Ichcacuatitla; 4. Beneath the Precipice (Tepexitzintlan); 5. Middle of Postectli (Tlahcopoztectli); 6. Summit of Postectli (Tzonteconpoztectli); 7. Return Home 1

2

3

4

01-­12 01-­16 06-­03 06-­08 06-­11 06-­15

02-­03 03-­02 09-­12 10-­03 10-­12a,b

04-­02 04-­04 05-­03

09-­16 09-­19

01-­10 01-­17

04-­18

09-­01 10-­07 10-­08

04-­14

09-­03 09-­06 09-­11 09-­14 09-­15 09-­20 09-­21 09-­22 10-­01 10-­09a 10-­19a,b,c 10-­22b

Paper Figure E-4 bean chili [chili, jalapeño chili, little chili, serrano chili, spicy chili] / frijol picante [chile, chile jalapeño, chile serrano, chilito, picante] / chilli etl

BELL = 3 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-5 bell / campana CROSS = 16 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-6 cross [little cross] / cruz [crucito] / caruz

6

7

PAPER FIGURE ID = Shown underlined in bold font are Exemplar Paper Figures E-1 to E-25; drawings of the cuttings are illustrated below

Paper Figure E-2 upper altar / mesa [altar de arriba] / tlaixpamitl BEAN / BEAN CHILI = 33 paired cuttings, 2 exemplars: Paper Figure E-3 bean / frijol / etl

5

07-­02a,b 07-­03 07-­05 07-­20

12-­15

11-­08a,c 12-­10 12-­16 12-­24 11-­15 11-­23 12-­01 12-­20

17-­04e

11-­03 12-­06 12-­14a

17-­04g 17-­05b

11-­22 07-­23 01-­24

01-­01 06-­02 06-­07 06-­09 06-­12 06-­14

04-­03 05-­01 05-­02

02-­02 03-­03 09-­05 09-­17

11-­18 12-­03 12-­12

continued on next page

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  227

Table 6.2.—continued EARTH = 30 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-7 earth / tierra / tlalli

earth [earth of the altar] / tierra de la mesa / tlalli earth [earth over there] / tierra de allá / tlalli

06-­04 06-­06 06-­10 06-­13 06-­16

04-­09 04-­10 05-­04

07-­12

01-­09

04-­01 04-­05

09-­08

12-­23

07-­09

earth [other earth, God] / tierra [otra tierra, Dios] / tlalli [Totiotzin]

10-­15 10-­24

earth [ancient one, grandmother earth, earth mother] / tierra [antigua, abuela] / tlalli [antihuatl, tlaltenanan]

11-­08b

17-­02a,b

earth [ancient one, grandfather earth, earth father] / tierra [antigua, abuelo] / tlalli [antihuatl, tlaltetatah]

17-­03a,b

06-­05

FLAG = 4 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-9 flag [sun] / bandera [sol] / [tonatiuh]

13-­01 13-­02 13-­03 13-­04

GOD-­TOTIOTZIN see also SAINTS = 2 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-10 God [god above, little god] / Dios [dios arriba, diosito] / Totiotzin

10-­10

07-­06

GOOD WIND = 9 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-11 good wind / viento bueno / cualli ehecatl HILL = 20 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-12 hill [any hill] / cerro [cualquier cerro] / tepetl

11-­10 12-­13

01-­03

earth [earth changes] / tierra se cambia / tlalli

FIRE = 1 paired cutting, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-8 fire [honored fire] / lumbre / [tlitl, tlixihuantzin]

02-­04 03-­04 09-­10 10-­04a 10-­05 10-­20 10-­23

04-­08

08-­01 08-­02 08-­03 08-­04

10-­11 10-­13 10-­22a

12-­14b

12-­11 10-­02a 10-­04c 01-­13 continued on next page

228  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

Table 6.2.—continued hill [La Cueva hill] / cerro de La Cueva

01-­21

hill [San Bartolo hill] / cerro de San Bartolo

04-­21

hill [Xihuiyoh hill] / cerro de Xihuiyoh

12-­08

07-­04 07-­22

hill [Santa Úrsula hill] / cerro de Santa Úrsula

09-­09

hill [Guitarra hill] / cerro de Guitarra

09-­23

hill [San Gregorio hill] / cerro de San Gregorio

09-­24

hill [Jonotál hill] / cerro de Jonotál

10-­14

hill [Chicontepec hill] / cerro de Chicón [Chicontepec]

10-­17

12-­21

hill [Teyahual hill] / cerro de Teyahual

11-­04a,b

hill [Lindero hill] / cerro de Lindero

11-­05

hill [Huitzitzilco hill] / cerro de Huitzitzilco

11-­11

hill [Xochicualaloya hill] / cerro de Xochicualaloya

11-­12

hill [San Estéban hill] / cerro de San Estéban

11-­16

KEY = 8 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-13 key / llave key [key to San Jerónimo hill] / llave a cerro de San Jerónimo

04-­06 04-­15a,b 04-­22

11-­24 12-­07

07-­14

01-­02

key [key to San Sebastián hill] / llave a cerro de San Sebastián

11-­01

LIGHTNING = 5 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-14 lightning [lightning bolt, lightning flash, thunderbolt] / rayo [rayo trueno, trueno rayo, relámpago] / tlapetlani MAIZE = 12 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-15 little maize / maizito / pilcintzin maize / maíz / cintli

11-­19 02-­01 10-­16 07-­18 04-­16

01-­04 01-­11 01-­14

12-­19

04-­24

09-­13

17-­04d 17-­05a

17-­04f 17-­05d continued on next page

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  229

E-1 Altar

E-2 Upper Altar

E-3 Bean

E-4 Bean Chili

E-5 Bell

E-6 Cross

E-7 Earth

E-8 Fire

E-9 Flag

E-10 God-Totiotzin

E-11 Good Wind

E-12 Hill

230  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

E-13 Key

E-14 Lightning

E-15 Little Maize

E-16 San Antonio

E-17 Santa Juanita

E-18 Santa Panchita

E-19 Santa Rita

E-20 Santa Rosa

E-21 Star

E-22 Thunder

E-23 Walking Stick

E-24 Water Dweller

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  231

Table 6.2.—continued maize with bean chili / maíz con frijol picante / cintli etl chilli

17-­04b 10-­09b

SAINTS see also GOD-­TOTIOTZIN = 23 paired cuttings, 5 exemplars: SAN ANTONIO [Saint Anthony of Padua, Mexican god, Huastecan god] Paper Figure E-16 / San Antonio [Santo de la Páuida, San Antonio de Pádua, dios mexicano, dios huasteco] SANTA JUANITA Paper Figure E-17

07-­15a,b 07-­16

01-­05 01-­06b

07-­11

SANTA PANCHITA Paper Figure E-18 SANTA RITA Paper Figure E-19

10-­02b 10-­04b

12-­18

07-­10 01-­06a 01-­15

12-­04a,b

04-­12

SANTA ROSA Paper Figure E-20 04-­23

07-­19 07-­21

09-­02 09-­04 10-­18

11-­07 11-­14 11-­20 12-­02

SEEDS see BEAN / BEAN CHILI, also MAIZE or SQUASH SQUASH = 1 paired cutting squash / calabasa / ayohtli

17-­05c

STAR = 3 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-21 star [seven star, Pleiades, many] / estrella [estrellas cabrillas, Pléyades] / chicome citlalin [miacquetl]

01-­22 01-­23

star [morning star, Venus, first big star, shining one] / estrella [estrella lucero, primera estrella grande] / tonquetl

01-­20a,b

THUNDER = 8 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-22 thunder / trueno / tlatomoni WALKING STICK = 8 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-23 walking stick / bastón / tlanahuatilcuatopilli

01-­18 01-­19

01-­08

04-­07 04-­20a,b

04-­19

07-­08 07-­17

10-­21

11-­21 12-­09 12-­17

09-­07

11-­13 11-­17 12-­22

continued on next page

232  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

Table 6.2.—continued WATER = 15 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-24 water dweller [siren] / agua [la sirena] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenah]

? 04-­11 04-­17a,b,c

01-­07 06-­01

water dweller [male siren] / agua [el sireno, sirena hombre] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenoh]

? 04-­13

07-­01

03-­01 17-­01a,b,c

11-­06 11-­09 12-­05

11-­02

07-­07 07-­13 07-­24

WIND see GOOD WIND WITNESS = 2 paired cuttings, 1 exemplar: Paper Figure E-25 witness [witness-­guardian] / testigo / tlamocuitlahuihquetl

09-­18 10-­06

for a meeting and they talk among themselves. Just as we ask them, so too all the saints meet—­mother earth, all of the saints, those above—­they get together with the siren and they discuss whether or not they are going to give us what we ask for.”37

So the question then for us is this: which spirit entities, out of the entire Mesoamerican pantheon, do the ritual specialists choose to assemble on the altar table in the Amatlán shrine?

E-25 Witness

together, they come to see us.” Arturo Gómez Martínez asked him to explain further; both spoke mainly in Spanish. Arturo: “Do they speak with the tlatomonianih, the thunder spirits?” Raymundo: “Yes, that is why we ask them. We have to ask for help from all of the saints so that they all talk among themselves. No, it’s just like holding a meeting when they talk it over, like soliciting something [from the government]. They have to discuss it among themselves to see if they are going to give something to us or not.” Arturo: “Do the saints first talk to apanchaneh, to calm her down as well?” Raymundo: “So that they give us water, so that everything we plant will bear fruit—­well, yes. They gather

Paper Figures for the Mezah in Amatlán We confirmed that the major altar offering in Amatlán (Location 1) is primarily dedicated to the seeds, earth, and water.38 As we have explained, Altar Set 01 is the first of thirteen sets of sacred paper figures that make up the Postectli sample collection of our analysis. The set consists of twenty-­four petates, each holding twenty two-­ply paper figures. We noted that the ritual specialists and several helpers laid out arrays of additional petates of paper figures for a sequence of minor offerings: on the earth beneath the main altar (Ritual Episode 1.4); at the hearth fire where women cook food for the household (Ritual Episode 1.5); at one of the largest springs supplying water to the community (Ritual Episode 1.6); and on a small altar table erected outside the shrine dedicated to the cross (Ritual Episode 1.7). These four minor arrays correspond to the cuttings in Altar Set 06 of the collection. When we unpacked this assembly as it was given to us by the ritual specialists, we found that it consisted of sixteen petates: four tied bundles of four petates identified unambiguously

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  233

Figure 6.3. A typical petate design for the altar offerings. Cirilo cut many similar petates to hold each set of twenty paper images of the salutary spirit entities (paper figures in Altar Sets 01 to 13). Each petate holds two rows of ten overlapping cuttings, usually of the same spirit entity. Each figure is actually a pair of cuttings, formed of two layers of paper held together by the folded flaps. Drawing by Ana Laura Ávila-­Myers.

by labels, written in pencil, which read el agua, la sirena (“the water, the siren”), la lumbre (“the fire”), la cruz (“the cross”), and la tierra (“the earth”). To aid our discussion of the iconography of each paper figure in the pilgrimage collection, we begin with Altar Sets 01 and 06 and ultimately present more than 250 drawings, illustrated and arranged in numerical order by paper figure ID (which consists of the altar set identifier plus a two-­digit number that reflects its order in the set as we received it). These illustrations accompany the corresponding tables 6.3 to 6.8, listing the spirit entities alphabetically by name in English. The design of petates holding paper figures destined for the altar offerings (see an example in figure 6.3) differs from the petates prepared for cleansing rituals (compare figure 6.1). Although both styles resemble embroidered cloth napkins or tablecloths and the dimensions measure about the same (24 × 35 centimeters, or 9.5 × 14 inches), the latter petates used for cleansings are decorated with open triangular or diamond-­ shaped cuts, much like the rib holes, mouths, and eyes of the dangerous winds that reveal lifeless beings associated with death. In contrast, the petates holding images of the salutary spirit entities typically feature chevron-­shaped V-cut incisions. We note that these V-cuts mirror the salutary spirit entities’ body iconography and facial features, the flaps of which are always folded open to enable them to observe the proceedings (as the ritual specialist commented and we reported in chapter 5). Initially, it surprised us to discover that the Nahua cut paper images of the altar itself (paper figures 01-­12 and

234  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

01-­16). Reflecting Nahua beliefs about the human body that are core to their conception of the cosmos, this anthropomorphic figure assumes the typical front-­faced stance, with the arms and hands raised by the sides of the head. Every paper image in the collection that Cirilo and his circle of ritual specialists cut for us has the iconographic element of pronounced jowls, associating them all with the toad, moisture, and fertility, as Cirilo confirmed. The figure of altar is plain with no headdress and exhibits the familiar quadrilateral body shape suggestive of clothing with four cuts arranged in a rectangle, which, as mentioned earlier, is a typical Nahua notation for the surface of the earth. Cirilo described one of these embodiments of the altar (paper figure 01-­16) using the phrase tierra de abajo (“earth below”). By this expression he was referring to the patch of earth occupied by the altar table in the shrine. As we have seen, the tabletop replicates the surface of the earth, and the display beneath the table replicates the interior of the earth. The altar is where contact is made and where reciprocal exchange is established between spirit entities and human beings. That people would see the altar as a living presence or embodiment is not at all alien to Nahua thought. The altar has a tonalli soul, like every other object and being, and that soul can be cut from paper. Designed to be the center of ritual activities, the well-­proportioned, finely decorated altar is festooned with sacred objects and valued goods. The arrangement provides an excellent example of Totiotzin revealing itself or unfolding its powerful presence in that the altar is a manifestation of

Table 6.3. Altar Sets 01 and 06 Paper Figure ID

English / Spanish / Nahuatl Name of Spirit Entity [and Variants]

Altar Set 01 Paper Figures 01-­01 to 01-­24 01-­12

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl

01-­16

altar [earth below] / mesa [tierra de abajo] / tlaixpamitl

01-­10

bean / frijol / etl

01-­17

bean / frijol / etl

01-­24

bell / campana

01-­01

cross / cruz / caruz

01-­03

earth [earth of the altar] / tierra de la mesa / tlalli

01-­09

earth [earth over there] / tierra de allá / tlalli

01-­13

hill [any hill] / cerro [cualquier cerro] / tepetl

01-­21

hill [La Cueva hill] / cerro de La Cueva / tepetl

01-­02

key [key to San Jerónimo hill] / llave a cerro de San Jerónimo

01-­04

little maize / maizito / pilcintzin

01-­11

little maize / maizito / pilcintzin

01-­14

little maize / maizito / pilcintzin

01-­05

Santa Juanita

01-­06

Santa Rita [01-­06a], also Santa Juanita [01-­06b, probably an intentional variant]

01-­15

Santa Rita

01-­20

star [shining one, first big star, morning star, the planet Venus] / estrella [estrella lucero, primera estrella grande] / tonquetl [variants 01-­20a, 01-­20b]

01-­22

star [seven star, Pleiades] / estrella [estrellas cabrillas, Pléyades] / chicome citlalin

01-­23

star [seven star, Pleiades] / estrella [estrellas cabrillas, Pléyades] / chicome citlalin

01-­18

thunder / trueno / tlatomoni

01-­19

thunder / trueno / tlatomoni

01-­08

walking stick / bastón / tlanahuatilcuatopilli

01-­07

water dweller [siren] / agua [la sirena] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenah]

continued on next page

the sacred entity. Given the monistic philosophy of the Nahua, that the altar should appear as a paper figure is not surprising after all. It is interesting that two full petates of altar figures were prepared for this mezah. We will witness similar reduplications throughout our analysis of the pilgrimage. Why the reduplication? We believe that repetitions like this occur for the same reason that phrases are so often repeated in chants: namely, to attract the attention of aloof spirit entities, ensure they are paying attention to the ritual performance, and reinforce the ritual message. We have discussed the altar as a distinct spirit manifestation with its own paper cutting and have pointed out its connections to the earth in Nahua thought. This blurring of identity among seemingly discrete spirit entities is a common characteristic of the Indigenous

pantheon, and we will observe it repeatedly throughout our discussion of the paper figures. Of the remaining twenty-­two petates placed on the altar in the shrine in Amatlán, two petates hold the earth. Cirilo cut one unique earth-­related entity (paper figure 01-­03) with a flat-­ topped headdress and quatrefoil design at the center of the body. The intricate, four-­lobed quatrefoil appears to be the analog of the four V-cuts arranged in a rectangular design to indicate the surface of the earth. The image is the only one of its kind in the entire collection. Cirilo called it “earth of the altar” and explained that it signifies the earth beneath the altar table. Being highly specific in locating actions or beings is common in Nahua thought and language. In the dim light of the shrine Cirilo initially identified paper figure 01-­09 as a cutting of altar, but he later

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  235

01-01 Cross

01-02 Key to San Jeronimo Hill

01-03 Earth of the Altar

01-04 Little Maize

01-05 Santa Juanita

01-06a Santa Rita 01-06b Santa Juanita

01-07 Water Dweller

01-08 Walking Stick

01-09 Earth Over There

01-10 Bean

01-11 Little Maize

01-12 Altar

236  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

01-13 Hill

01-14 Little Maize

01-15 Santa Rita

01-16 Altar Earth Below

01-17 Bean

01-18 Thunder

01-19 Thunder

01-20a Venus Morning Star 01-20b Venus Morning Star

01-21 Hill La Cueva

01-22 Pleiades Seven Star

01-23 Pleiades Seven Star

01-24 Bell

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  237

Table 6.3.—continued

Altar Set 06 Paper Figures 06-­01 to 06-­04 Altar Set 06 comprises four separate bundles of four petates each. The first, a tied unit of four petates, is labeled el agua, la sirena (“the water, the siren”). The topmost petate holds 20 cuttings of apanchaneh, the water dweller, and the three petates beneath it hold 20 images each of altar, cross, and earth. The drawings accompanying the table (in paper figure ID order) reflect the sequence in which the ritual specialists stacked the petates and tied them together.. 06-­01

water dweller [siren] / agua [la sirena] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenah]

06-­03

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl

06-­02

cross / cruz / caruz

06-­04

earth / tierra / tlalli

Altar Set 06 Paper Figures 06-­05 to 06-­08 The second tied bundle of four petates is labeled la lumbre (“the fire”), with 20 images of fire on top of petates 0f altar, cross, and earth. 06-­05

fire [honored fire] / lumbre / [tlitl, tlixihuantzin]

06-­08

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl

06-­07

cross / cruz / caruz

06-­06

earth / tierra / tlalli

continued on next page

06-01 Water Dweller

06-02 Cross

06-03 Altar

06-04 Earth

06-05 Fire

06-06 Earth

06-07 Cross

06-08 Altar

238  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

Table 6.3.—continued

Altar Set 06 Paper Figures 06-­09 to 06-­12 The third tied bundle of four petates is labeled la cruz (“the cross”), with 20 images of cross on top of petates of altar, another set of cross, and earth. 06-­09

cross / cruz / caruz

06-­11

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl

06-­12

cross / cruz / caruz

06-­10

earth / tierra / tlalli

Altar Set 06 Paper Figures 06-­13 to 06-­16 The fourth tied bundle of four petates is labeled la tierra (“the earth”), with 20 images of earth on top of petates of altar, cross, and another set of earth cuttings. 06-­13

earth / tierra / tlalli

06-­15

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl

06-­14

cross / cruz / caruz

06-­16

earth / tierra / tlalli

06-09 Cross

06-10 Earth

06-11 Altar

06-12 Cross

06-13 Earth

06-14 Cross

06-15 Altar

06-16 Earth

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  239

corrected himself, calling it “earth over there.” The figure shares iconographic features with altar, with its four openings embodying the surface of the earth, although its name and rake-­like headdress design composed of tree trunks and other vegetation growing from the forest floor associate it with the earth. Like other cuttings deployed later (paper figures 04-­01, 04-­05, 09-­08, and 12-­ 23), which Cirilo identified as “earth over there,” it presents some distinguishing design element but otherwise is recognizable as an earth figure. The odd name refers to that part of the earth’s surface located in the community of Ichcacuatitla at the base of Postectli—­an example, as we have mentioned, of Nahua specificity. It precisely references the earth at the pilgrims’ destination, not the earth in Amatlán. Because this figure is narrowly focused on a particular place, it lacks the profusion of sacred hills depicted in other generalized cuttings of earth. For the Nahua, hills are the supreme expression of the sacred earth. Hills are the source of all that is good (notably, moisture and rain), so pilgrimages are almost always directed to the summits of these impressive features of the landscape. Cirilo cut a paper figure of a nonspecific sacred hill that he called cualquier cerro (“any hill”) (paper figure 01-­ 13). It has a spiky headdress that he asserted is its corona (“crown”), and he confirmed that the two bolsas (“pockets”) near the bottom of the figure’s rectangular body shape are part of its jorongo-­like garment. The cutting provides us with the exemplar of its type (exemplar figure E-12), and he cut several other generalized hill figures with identical features (paper figures 10-­02a, 10-­04c, and 12-­11, illustrated below). People in Amatlán associate individual named hills with the category of entities they refer to as santos (“saints”), by which they mean the sacred beings implicated in the creation of the current cosmological age and, in turn, the forces that create the conditions supporting life. When beginning field research in Amatlán we wondered how people knew about such a large inventory of Catholic saints. Villagers rarely, if ever, attended Mass in the only Catholic church in the area, the Iglesia de San Cristóbal in the municipal head town of Ixhuatlán de Madero. The priest only rarely visited the small communities like Amatlán, and when he did, he never stayed for long. We also noticed that many people were named after sometimes obscure saints that are not widely known, even among urban Mexicans well versed in Catholic theology. Initially we assumed that early missionaries to the region must have imparted an arcane list of saints to people in their attempts to convert them to Christianity. Several years into the work, though, we finally solved the mystery.

240  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

Many Indigenous people throughout the Huasteca own a copy of an inexpensive almanac titled Calendario del más Antiguo Galván, published in Mexico each year since 1826. The work provides a detailed list of the saints and their feast days along with those of countless martyrs and other historical figures from Catholic tradition. Parents commonly look up the birth date of a newborn and confer on the child the name of the person commemorated that day. Here, then, was the source of the names of saints and their namesakes in the community. The Aztecs likewise named newborns according to when their birth date fell in the tonalpohualli divinatory calendar.39 We generally retain the Spanish version of saints’ names as well as designations for hills and other geographic places rather than translate them into English. Another earth-­related phenomenon (paper figure 01-­ 21) is an unusual figure of a hill called La Cueva, which Cirilo admitted was not part of the Nahua pantheon of sacred prominences. It is an example of the freedom or even playfulness that ritual specialists sometimes demonstrate. “La Cueva hill” embodies the sacred character of hills as well as caves in Nahua thought, and it is mentioned as an important location in pilgrimage chants. In this case, however, the cutting’s design is of Otomí origin, which Cirilo learned about from his mentor Evaristo. The figure is an actual mountain and features a spiky crown and two vertical rows of cuts that Cirilo identified as “little buttons.” He was clear in his intention to credit Evaristo when he pointed out that “this paper cutting is ‘Otomito’ ” (meaning a little Otomí in appearance).40 Yet another paper figure related to earth is the key, which ritual specialists use to gain access to the powers of sacred hills. This cutting of the key (paper figure 01-­02), Cirilo asserted, “belongs to San Jerónimo.” The iconography features a headdress-­like topknot (perhaps the tip of a key itself, invoking the mountain summit), along with two pockets below and the unmistakable serrated profile of keys protruding from both sides. We assume that the imagery must be colonial in origin, and understanding its iconography offers a good example of how practitioners of el costumbre combine traditional religious beliefs with novel concepts. Cirilo told us that the figure of the key is “like a bottle opener,” that it “opens things” (namely, the sacred mountains), providing access to the treasure inside. He added that “when you ask for pardon, the key opens the door” to the spirit entities residing there. Cirilo and his assistants cut a total of eight petates holding images of the key figures for the Postectli pilgrimage collection (see their distribution in table 6.2).41

San Jerónimo, which lies in the neighboring state of Puebla, features a small, now-­dry lake near its peak. As recounted in the chants in chapters 3 and 4, people of the southern Huasteca believe that the maize spirit Seven Flower was born at the site of La Laguna, which remains an important pilgrimage destination for Indigenous people. Pilgrims from Amatlán have trekked to this distant sacred mountain, although it is known mainly as a place held sacred by neighboring Otomí and Tepehua peoples. La Laguna as well as San Jerónimo are also features of the sacred geography of the area’s Nahua practitioners, and their actual location likely encompasses various pilgrimage destinations in the vicinity of the town of San Bartolo Tutotepec, Hidalgo. An Augustinian church constructed there in 1542 was later dedicated to Santa María Magdalena, a saint closely associated by the Otomí with observances of Santa Campana, the sacred bell. According to Otomí ritual specialists, there are twelve sacred bells in the region, one of which is in Chicontepec.42 One day, as we sat in the shade of a tree talking with the ritual specialist María Dolores Hernández, she mentioned a “house with seven doors.” We had not heard of this before, and she explained that one needs a key to enter this house with seven doors. We inquired if the paper cutting of the key gave people access to the place (as she put it) where God and Tonantzin live, and she affirmed that indeed it does. Later we learned that this story likely alludes to the ruins of a sixteenth-­century former monastery and church, probably in the vicinity of San Bartolo Tutotepec. The cut-­ paper images of the key provide the means to approach the sacred precinct of the colonial church, where generations of Indigenous people have been told that God, Jesus Christ, and the Virgin Mary reside. In the context of Nahua ritual, then, the paper cutouts permit the faithful to make direct contact with cosmic forces. On the Amatlán altar dedicated in part to the seeds planted in the milpa we would expect to find examples of crops cut from paper. Images of “little maize” or the young maize plant (paper figures 01-­04, 01-­11, and 01-­14, called pilcintzin in Nahuatl and maizito in Spanish) highlight its tassel-­like crown and two developing ears cut from the body. The ear of maize at this stage (elotl in Nahuatl, elote in Spanish) is characterized by kernels that are soft and sweet. It is much enjoyed by people eaten right off the cob or in a number of special dishes like atole (borrowed into English and Spanish from the Nahuatl atolli), a popular beverage with the consistency of porridge, usually served warm, made from boiled ground maize, and sweetened with cane sugar. A close examination of the figures on

the petate reveals some variation in the portrayal of little maize. Sixteen of the cuttings have two V-cuts above the legs, signifying pockets, but four have none. The irregular portrayal can be attributed to the different style and skill level of the paper cutters that Cirilo recruited to help him prepare the sample collection. We have taken care to note where individual cutters introduce significant or deliberate variations in the paper figures included on a petate, but we do not believe that minor inconsistencies such as this change their purpose. Many types of beans are important components of the Nahua diet. We noted a great deal of variation in paper figures embodying this food crop that can only be partly explained by stylistic differences among cutters. We observe one image (paper figure 01-­10) wearing a prominent headdress that looks like a three-pronged hat or heavy crown, with two thick bean pods cut from the sides and two pockets above the legs. In contrast, the other cutting (paper figure 01-­17) is depicted with a flat, anvil-­ shaped headdress, two pockets above the legs, and a pair of wavy cuts on each side that are the bean pods. We are unsure whether the differences between the bean figures are simply stylistic or are in fact distinct (and recognizable) varieties of bean. We will discuss other variations, such as the composite “bean chili,” as we explore the iconography of additional cuttings. Another problem we faced in identifying the paper figures with these elaborated bean pods is that they could be confused stylistically with the image of lightning, which has similar pairs of undulating side cuts that depict lightning flashes or thunderbolts. Cirilo himself sometimes had trouble distinguishing among figures. We have done our best to identify images accurately by reconfirming his information and carefully comparing the visual details of individual cuttings. Water is featured among the array of paper images on the altar in Amatlán. In typical fashion, the precious liquid is presented in discrete spirit-­entity guises or associations. Most directly, there is an image portraying the siren or water dweller, apanchaneh (paper figure 01-­07), a female entity wearing a hat-­like headdress and the standard rectangular body shape suggesting clothing. The two zigzag lines on her chest are flowing water. The four V-cuts arranged in a rectangle enclose a space on the surface of the earth where people commonly encounter the siren—­in still waters of springs, ponds, and lakes or the small streams and arroyos she is said to occupy. Cirilo would invariably identify similar V-cuts with the flaps folded open as pockets, although the shape of the cuts differs slightly in this example. Additional zigzag cuts radiate out

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  241

from these openings (likely an icon that identifies them with water), but at least one other ritual specialist we asked said that they are the shoulder and hip joints. Possibly the joints are indicated because the tonalli soul is believed to be concentrated in those parts of the body. We are uncertain why these anatomical features are so emphasized in this cutting of water. But because water is such an important focus of the pilgrimage, its paper image makes an appearance on each major mezah throughout the proceedings (table 6.2 documents the placement of fifteen petates of this spirit entity). The central importance of water for the Nahua and water’s many forms such as dew, fog, mist, hail, and clouds, in addition to rain, have led ritual specialists in different Nahua communities to elaborate their designs that depict this spirit entity in paper.43 Another manifestation of water is Santa Juanita (paper figures 01-­05 and 01-­06b), a female aspect of the Nahua conception of San Juan Bautista (zahhuan, the water owner chained to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico), as recounted in myth. Santa Juanita is associated with gentle rainfall and abundant bodies of water, in contrast to her often-­violent male counterpart. The elaborate floral headdress has an interior component that Cirilo identified as a cross. The cross design in this case is another instance of the quatrefoil motif, embodying the earth’s surface.44 The M-shaped jagged line on her chest is water (although the design differs from the longer zigzag cut of the previous figure of water), and she is outfitted with two lower pockets. Santa Juanita is one of the few saints that Cirilo emphatically stated is not associated with a specific hill but instead is connected to the Gulf of Mexico.45 Nahua closely associate Santa Juanita with Santa Rita (paper figures 01-­06a and 01-­15), who is her companion or perhaps alter ego. Santa Rita is cut with the same foliated-­cross headdress as Santa Juanita, along with the two pockets (or perhaps hip joints) just above the legs; her center cut is a star that, like the cross headdress, links her to the celestial realm. According to Cirilo, Santa Rita “raises the clouds” in advance of a rainstorm and thus is closely linked to water and crop fertility. We believe that some of the anomalies recorded in our database of the paper cuttings are due to Cirilo’s sometimes poetic way of describing the spirit entities. For example, the central cut in this figure closely resembles an actual star (as confirmed by comparing it to other figures of star), far more so than the central cuts that Cirilo often described as the figure’s heart (using the Spanish corozón instead of the Nahuatl yollotl). What Cirilo may have actually been saying via this cutting is that Santa

242  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

Juanita’s heart—­or essence, that which defines her place in the cosmos—­is the star. In similar fashion, he would sometimes point to the zigzag cuts of water dweller’s paper image and call them the heart of apanchaneh, meaning that water is the essence of her being. When we questioned Cirilo about the cuttings in the Postectli collection, he frequently confused Santa Rita with Santa Juanita. In fact, they are similar in iconography, and both embody the water realm. We note, for example, that on one petate there are twelve figures of Santa Rita and eight of Santa Juanita arranged together (paper figures 01-­06a and 01-­ 06b), mixing distinctive cuttings rather than mere stylistic variations among similar paper figures. In this case, Cirilo was adamant that combining different figures on the same petate is perfectly all right, even if uncommon. Whether Santa Rita and Santa Juanita were intentionally or mistakenly placed together on the petate, it is just this sort of flexibility of interpretation that characterizes the ritual specialist’s practice of paper cutting. Closely associated with water in the form of rain is thunder, and the ritual specialists cut two petates of this entity (paper figures 01-­18 and 01-­19) for the main altar in Amatlán. Thunder is portrayed with a flat-­topped, cap-­like headdress that varies somewhat in shape depending on the artistic sensibilities of the ritual specialist; the style variations evident in this figure’s design force us to conclude that some paper cutters have greater facility with scissors than others. The distinguishing feature of this figure is the hatchet-­shaped ax design cut in the center of the body. In Nahua belief (as discussed in chapter 2), the water carriers or rain dwarfs (pilhuehuentzitzin) traveling from the Gulf to the summit of Postectli grasp walking sticks and hatchets as they cross the sky in the form of clouds. As they trundle along, they strike at trees and branches, knocking them to the ground. Farmers in Amatlán, in fact, do occasionally discover ancient copper hatchets in their milpas and along the trails after a heavy rainstorm exposes these exquisite objects hidden beneath the soil. The major altar in Amatlán is the only mezah on the entire pilgrimage where we find paper figures of stars and constellations. Two images (paper figures 01-­20a and 01-­20b) occupy the same petate; they are variations of the so-­called morning star or the planet Venus, called tonquetl (“shining one”) in Nahuatl. Neither paper cutting has a headdress. Each is cut with four pockets (or joints) surrounding a central star element. It is in this central feature where we find the variations, and these appear to be the result of stylistic differences that probably have no significance. It is interesting that regardless of differences,

both configurations of cuts form a quincunx, the Classical Aztec (and Nahua) indicator of the surface of the earth as well as an ordering process.46 The Pleiades constellation of chicome citlalin (“seven star”), or sometimes miacquetl, meaning “many” (i.e., multiple stars) in Nahuatl, is revealed in two versions of the star figure, distinguished by their body designs. One image (paper figure 01-­22) has five star-­like patterns arranged in a quincunx and no headdress, while the other (paper figure 01-­23) has a single-­star motif, two lower pockets, and an elaborate headdress that Cirilo said is starlight. In our estimation, these anomalies are stylistic differences that exemplify the range of iconographic vocabulary available to the ritual specialists. The headdress–­no headdress variation does highlight their complementarity or polarity as an iconographic feature that we will discuss further. As mentioned, the stars take over the sun’s guardianship during its nightly journey when stones and other familiar objects are said to transform into monsters that threaten people. Over many years in residence in Amatlán we tried to get people to articulate what they knew about the role of the planets, stars, and constellations, only to be disappointed. Even the ritual specialists were unable to provide us with much information on this fascinating topic.47 Three remaining petates of paper figures complete the array on top of the altar table in the shrine in Amatlán. The first of these is the bell (paper figure 01-­24), which, like the figure of the key mentioned above, is probably a borrowing from Spanish Catholicism. People from remote villages have encountered church bells on visits to regional markets in towns with colonial-­era churches. As recorded in several of the photographs, people ring small bells before the altars to rouse the spirit entities and call them to partake of the offerings.48 The bell figure is wearing a hat, and the large irregular shape cut in the middle is the bell itself. Other examples of this figure in the Postectli collection show an elaborate internal structure in the bell, including what appears to be a clapper (e.g., compare paper figure 07-­23, but paper figure 11-­22 is similar to this cutting). The two slits in the figure’s side may suggest clothing or perhaps the armature supporting a large church bell, but we were unable to elicit much information from Cirilo about these design elements. The bell is, however, a worthy subject to evince in paper because of its close association with ritual activity. Paper images of the sacred walking stick (paper figure 01-­08) are featured on this altar. As discussed in the descriptions and photographs of the ritual offerings in chapters 3 and 4, walking sticks of command play a

prominent role in Nahua religious ritual. They are carried by the rain dwarfs as they travel across the sky, producing lightning and thunder when they strike them against the firmament. Ritual specialists demarcate a moving sacred space by carrying them at the front and rear of the group of pilgrims as they trek toward their destination, and sticks are decorated with ribbons and other accoutrements and paraded before the altars. Paper images of the walking stick are portrayed in consistent fashion with a small flat cap-­like headdress and the shape of the head of the walking stick with its flowing ribbons inscribed in the middle of the body. It is not only associated with the rain dwarfs but also the authority of the ritual specialist, by whose power and command the pilgrimage proceedings take place. Cross (paper figure 01-­01), the final remaining figure intended for the main altar in Amatlán, is bareheaded with a cruciform shape cut in the body and two lower pockets. It turns out that this image is the most invariant and frequently cut image in all the Postectli collection’s great display of iconographic designs, an observation that we will return to in the book’s final pages. As we have seen, the cross is a complex conception that involves the physical sun (tonatiuh in the Nahua pantheon) and Jesus Christ. Many Nahua believe that the sun animates the sacred cosmos with its heat, making all life (including human life) possible. The cross itself is a sacred object whose shape mimics the human body with arms outstretched. It is also the extension of the earth’s surface traced in the solstice-­equinox trajectory of the sun during its annual journey, a pattern invoked in classic Mesoamerican quincunx design. The form of the Roman cross in use today is undoubtedly borrowed from Spanish missionaries, but the meaning of the cruciform shape has been extended to encompass far more than its specific Christian application. The sun-­Jesús-­tonatiuh complex as a central feature of Nahua religion has come to embody (in the paper image of cross-­sun) the sacred living cosmos itself. To better understand the semasiographic contribution that this array of paper figures makes to the overall pilgrimage, we proceeded to quantify the different image types. The exercise allowed us to grasp more readily the overall themes that the ritual specialists wish to convey to participants. Of the twenty-­four petates prepared for use in Amatlán (Location 1), fully five are dedicated to the seeds: little maize and the bean plant. Four are devoted to the earth in one of its multiple manifestations: earth of the altar, earth over there, a generalized hill (“any hill”), and a specific one (La Cueva hill). The one petate of the key

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  243

designated to open San Jerónimo hill can also be included in the earth-­ related category. Six petates hold figures closely associated with water: Santa Rita, Santa Juanita, thunder, and water dweller. In all, sixteen of the twenty-­ four petates are related directly to the stated focus of the Amatlán offering: the seeds, earth, and water. Three additional petates are devoted to celestial phenomena—­the planet Venus and the constellation Pleiades—­that protect people and are linked to the daily round and the seasons. Two petates hold the scaled-­down expression of the entire cosmos—­the altar. One petate contains an important ritual item used to call the attention of the spirit entities—­the bell. Another petate is devoted to the implement whose presence asserts the authority of the ritual specialists to call forth rain—­the walking stick. Finally, the ritual specialists included one petate of the figure that discloses the living universe—­the cross. On the earthen floor beneath the magnificent display on the altar table in Amatlán goes another array of paper images that provides the literal and figurative ground upon which Nahua ritual activity is based. As we took apart the large bundle of paper figures that Cirilo and his colleagues had prepared for us, we noted that there were seven smaller sets, each made up of four petates. All twenty-­eight petates were tied together with a piece of plant fiber to keep them safely intact but separate from the rest. Cirilo had further segregated four of the small sets from the larger bundle and affixed labels to them to identify the contents of each. On all of the pilgrimages we participated in we observed that the ritual specialists made frequent use of handwritten notes tucked into the bundled petates to help them select the right ones for each mezah. Our plan early on was to document the collection of paper figures just as we had received them in the field, which necessitated photographing and numbering each component in the order in which the ritual specialists had assembled them. The current scheme of altar set and figure ID numbers, therefore, reflects the order in which we unpacked the cuttings, not necessarily the order in which they would appear in the pilgrimage. To avoid introducing errors, we took pains to retain the original numbering scheme and thus describe the drawings nonsequentially (and nonhierarchically, it turns out). Three of the seven small bundles, each containing four petates, constituted Altar Sets 02, 03, and 05. These would make their appearance later in the pilgrimage, and we discuss them at their respective locations. As itemized in

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table 6.3, Altar Set 06 contained four labeled sets of four petates each, which the paper cutters intended to form a unit. Ritually deployed, the sixteen petates of Altar Set 06 (still labeled and tied in bundles) would be placed on the floor beneath the altar in the Amatlán xochicalli, lying in place before the dressed figures of grandmother earth and grandfather earth, seated in a miniature wooden chair (see photo 3.12). We expected to discover a variety of paper figures in these smaller sets, similar to the diversity contained in Altar Set 01, intended for the major offering on the altar table. But instead we were surprised to find that three of the four petates belonging to each set held identical figures of altar, cross, and earth. The single identifying petate on top of the set distinguishes these otherwise identical bundles, and the labels confirm their identity. The first bundle, labeled el agua, la sirena (“the water, the siren”), contains one petate of twenty paper cuttings of water dweller apanchaneh on top of three petates devoted to altar, cross, and earth. The second bundle, labeled la lumbre (“the fire”), has a petate of twenty cuttings of fire on top of beds of altar, cross, and earth. The third one, la cruz (“the cross”), with its petate of twenty cuttings of cross, and the fourth, la tierra (“the earth”), with twenty earth figures, are likewise accompanied by petates holding altar, cross, and earth. The trio form what we have determined is a foundational altar-­cross-­earth module (see figure 6.4). By combining them with a fourth, distinctive petate embodying another spirit entity, Cirilo deliberately reduplicates certain elements to magnify their importance overall, but also highlights particular ones in each instance. This instantiation of the principles of modularity and specificity appears repeatedly in el costumbre ritual practices. The paper figures of altar and cross have been discussed as components of the collections of arrays on the main altar, so we begin our examination of the floor array beneath the altar table by describing its five generalized earth images in Altar Set 06, all identical save for the number of headdress elements (paper figures 06-­04 and 06-­06 with nine-­pronged headdresses, paper figures 06-­10, 06-­ 13, and 06-­16 with headdresses of seven prongs). The two petates of earth in Altar Set 01, as manifested in the guise of “earth of the altar” (paper figure 01-­03) and “earth over there” (01-­09), are different in appearance from the standard design that we find here. Earth is a complex entity in Nahua thought. It is both womb and tomb—­the source of fertility and water but also the location of mictlan, place of the dead. Earth wind is a fearsome creature that

Altar

Cross

may attack without warning (as we saw in paper figures 00-­07a,b,c), yet earth is also a welcoming figure: Nahuas frequently equate earth with the God-­Totiotzin complex, and people see it as the literal ground of existence. Earth is portrayed with a vegetative headdress and nine sacred hills emerging from its body; again, we note that the flaps of its eyes and mouth, when folded open, and the V-cuts arranged like furrows in the earth give it an unmistakably three-­dimensional quality. This standard image of the earth is one of the cuttings most frequently produced for the pilgrimage, and it appears as part of the major offering at each location.49 Fire is of unquestioned importance in Nahua religion, as stories told about the hearth spirit Tlixihuantzin acknowledge. But fire as portrayed by the ritual specialist as a cutting (paper figure 06-­05) presents some interesting ambiguities. Cirilo identified this cutting as la lumbre in Spanish (which would be tlitl in Nahuatl), but in other contexts he referred to the spirit entity using the name xahuantzin, a local pronunciation of tlixihuantzin.50 Cirilo specified that its four body cuts are its pockets, but we know that the paper figure’s rectangular configuration also designates the earth’s surface and, in particular, the milpa carved out of the tropical forest. Slash-­and-­burn technology uses controlled burning to clear the horticultural fields, kill weeds and pests, and return vital nutrients to the soil, and we surmise that the four body cuts are a design element that reinforces fire’s links to the fertile milpa. The paper figure has no headdress but is portrayed with distinctive elongated ears and, likely, earrings, as mentioned earlier. The fire spirit described in myth is

Earth

Figure 6.4. The foundational altar-­cross-­earth module. Drawing by Ana Laura Ávila-­Myers.

undoubtedly a male character, but Cirilo remarked that it is “a woman,” as he cut a nearly identical figure of fire in April 1998. At the time we were uncertain whether he meant that the image embodies a female aspect of the spirit entity, or whether the earrings link fire to a woman’s role in food preparation. We speculate that the facial cuts could plausibly be described as wrinkles, thus connecting the spirit entity to the Classical Aztec “Old God” deity, Huehueteotl, who was portrayed as a wizened old man. As he cut the paper image of fire, Cirilo also remarked without elaborating further, “When we want rain, we put out the fire and call rain to refresh the earth.” This intriguing comment warrants further inquiry as it possibly traces to practices surrounding the New Fire ceremony of the Aztecs. In our description of the offerings in chapter 3 and on close examination of the photos, we can see that some number of petates under the Amatlán altar were taken away by helpers after the dedication of offerings. At the start of the ritual at least four sets of tied bundles lay beneath the main altar, where they were spattered with copious amounts of chicken and turkey blood. Around the time that the sacrificial fowl were being cooked, helpers removed the tied bundle that held cuttings of fire on the top petate and placed it by the kitchen hearth. They also moved the bundle topped by paper figures of cross to the altar for the outside cross. The contingent of participants who went to the village spring carried with them the bundle with the petate of water for the offering to apanchaneh. A bundle of cuttings that remained under the main altar in the xochicalli contained paper figures of earth on the top.

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  245

All told, the set destined for the array beneath the altar initially consisted of sixteen petates of figures, including cross (five petates), earth (five petates), altar (four petates), water (one petate), and fire (one petate). Earth, water, fire, and cross are essential members of the Nahua pantheon and thus form the literal foundation upon which the ritual action rests. The altar ties everything together and shows how these entities contribute to the coherent structure of the cosmos. The bundles of paper figures removed from the display and placed by the fire, outside cross, and spring are covered with coyol palm adornments and left in their places until the pilgrimage is completed. Likewise, the remaining images on the top of the altar are left in place until they are removed to make room for a future ritual offering weeks or months after the completion of the pilgrimage. Taken together, the sacred paper figures that form the heart of the mezah in Amatlán provide ritual participants with a powerful focus for their religious thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Charismatic and slightly mysterious master practitioners stand before the altar, chanting their poetic message to the multitude of images before them. The elaborate altar glowing in the darkened shrine acts as the focus of much intense activity. Many of the followers who dance or sway rhythmically before the altar exhibit deep emotional reactions to the scene. Here for all to see and experience are fragile paper manifestations of a living cosmos in precarious balance, a world that provides everything necessary for life, including life itself, and yet it is a world constantly on the brink of disorder, chaos, and dissolution. It is an event focused on universal forces that the ritual specialists summon through the creation of paper images. Here assembled are the altar, earth, seeds, water, stars, bell, walking stick, and cross. The power is almost overwhelming. People move around the altar carefully and respectfully, and they speak in hushed voices. Their mood is not one of fear or anxiety but rather stalwart purpose and even joy, expressing overt confidence that they are doing the right thing. They demonstrate through their actions the kind of respect that will heal the world and maintain ordered existence. By the end of the ritual action, all of the paper figures lay spattered with the life-­giving blood of sacrificed fowl, hidden beneath a verdant layer of coyol palm and flower adornments.

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Paper Figures for the Mezah at Ichcacuatitla The pilgrims arranged a full complement of petates with paper images on the long altar table when they reached the Ichcacuatitla shrine situated at the base of Postectli (Location 3). The handwritten label accompanying the sample collection’s twenty-­four petates in Altar Set 04 indicated that it belonged to this “mesa de xochicali,” in Cirilo’s spellling. We were not able to determine the precise disposition of each of the petates during the actual ritual itself or by studying the photographs later, but we noted that a few petates were also positioned beneath the altar. Because of the crowded conditions in the shrine and the presence of so many strangers, as outsiders we were reluctant to intrude, and so we could not ascertain at the time whether the ritual specialists conducted a blood offering for this mezah (but see our comments below). It is also unclear whether the Amatlán pilgrims made offerings at the fire table where food was prepared by local residents. This step was possibly skipped in Ichcacuatitla because the food for altar offerings had been planned and prepared in Amatlán before the pilgrims left. We did not observe food being cooked on site. We also note that since the sample collection of paper cuttings contained only one petate of figures of the fire spirit, it suggests that the offering at the hearth in Ichcacuatitla was omitted. The contents of Altar Sets 04 and 05 intended for use the night before the ascent are listed and illustrated in table 6.4. Of the twenty-­four petates in Altar Set 04, fully fifteen of the arrayed figures are identical (or nearly so) to those in Altar Set 01, intended for the Amatlán mezah: namely, two petates each of altar, earth, earth over there, thunder, and water dweller, along with bean, cross, little maize, Santa Rita, and walking stick. Slight variations in designs of earth over there (paper figure 04-­01) and altar (04-­02) reveal six V-cuts in the body (instead of the customary four exhibited in paper figures 01-­09 and 01-­12) and offer an example of the myriad and subtle iconographic differences that we will return to later. We will confine our discussion now to the newly introduced paper cuttings in these two sets. One that appears for the first time at this location is chili, usually identified in a composite form in a figure that Cirilo repeatedly called frijol picante in Spanish, which we translate as “bean chili” (paper figure 04-­14), taking his picante (“spicy” or “hot” in English) as a well-­understood synonym for chili peppers belonging to the genus Capsicum. The bean is a staple crop for

Table 6.4. Altar Sets 04 and 05 Paper Figure ID

English / Spanish / Nahuatl Name of Spirit Entity [and Variants]

Altar Set 04 Paper Figures 04-01 to 04-24 04-­02

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl

04-­04

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl

04-­18

bean / frijol / etl

04-­14

bean chili [jalapeño chili] / frijol picante [chile jalapeño] / etl chili

04-­03

cross / cruz / caruz

04-­09

earth / tierra / tlalli

04-­10

earth / tierra / tlalli

04-­01

earth [earth over there] / tierra de allá / tlalli

04-­05

earth [earth over there] / tierra de allá / tlalli

04-­08

good wind / viento bueno / cualli ehecatl

04-­21

hill [San Bartolo hill] / cerro de San Bartolo / tepetl

04-­06

key / llave

04-­15

key / llave [variants 04-­15a, 04-­15b]

04-­22

key / llave

04-­16

lightning [lightning bolt, thunderbolt, lightning flash] / rayo [rayo trueno, trueno rayo, relámpago] / tlapetlani

04-­24

little maize / maizito / pilcintzin

04-­12

Santa Rita

04-­23

Santa Rosa

04-­07

thunder / trueno / tlatomoni

04-­20

thunder / trueno / tlatomoni [variants 04-­20a, 04-­20b]

04-­19

walking stick / bastón / tlanahuatilcuatopilli

04-­11

water dweller [siren] / agua [la sirena] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenah]

04-­17

water dweller [siren] / agua [la sirena] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenah] [variants 04-­17a, 04-­17b, 04-­17c]

04-­13

water dweller [male siren] / agua [el sireno, sirena hombre] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenoh]

Altar Set 05 Paper Figures 05-01 to 04-04 05-­01

cross / cruz / caruz

05-­03

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl

05-­02

cross / cruz / caruz

05-­04

earth / tierra / tlalli

the Nahua. While people typically consume a variety of beans flavored with many different types of chilies, the paper figure of bean chili may actually convey the idea of this ubiquitous food as it forms part of a complete meal (i.e., a coherent cuisine rather than the growing plant). The melding of discrete components in this figure provides an example of the creativity with which the specialists envision these images. The iconography of bean chili is similar to that which we will examine in the large paper images that ritual specialists cut and assemble together in

bundles and then clothe and decorate with jewelry, creating the composite figures of the seed crops preserved in a box on people’s home altars. Because Nahuas typically consume beans in combination with some variety of fresh or dried chili peppers, the association of the two crops in a single paper figure is unproblematic in the Nahua semasiographic system. However, the bean-­plus-­chili imagery has proven to be challenging for us to recognize in the sample Postectli collection. The frequently cut images of bean chili (or

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  247

04-01 Earth Over There

04-02 Altar

04-03 Cross

04-04 Altar

04-05 Earth Over There

04-06 Key

04-07 Thunder

04-08 Good Wind

04-09 Earth

04-10 Earth

04-11 Water Dweller

04-12 Santa Rita

248  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

04-13 Water Dweller Aserenoh

04-14 Bean Chili

04-17a,b,c Water Dweller

04-21 Hill San Bartolo

04-15a,b Key

04-18 Bean

04-22 Key

04-16 Lightning

04-19 Walking Stick

04-23 Santa Rosa

04-20a,b Thunder

04-24 Little Maize

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  249

05-01 Cross

05-02 Cross

bean alone) appear on no fewer than thirty petates; their iconography, however, varies considerably, and even Cirilo struggled to identify some instances of this figure. The composite figure of bean chili is generally cut with one descending bean pod on each side and a central cut embodying the chili pepper (either a simple, open diamond shape or a more elaborate, downward-­hanging fruit). The headgear is usually either the simple, flat-­top affair also observed for many depictions of bean alone or, less commonly, a three-­pronged, hat-­or crown-­like affair similar to the headdress of water dweller. Bean chili may be cut with a pair of pockets, but most cuttings lack this feature. After comparing the iconographic details closely, we are reasonably confident that we have accurately identified the majority of the food crops. While we admit that some of them classified as bean chili could in fact be solely chili (or bean), we felt it would be better to err on the side of combining these entities into the composite bean-­plus-­chili category when we discovered an iconographic warrant for doing so. Taking into account the possibility that we may have missed some intended nuances, the images of bean and bean chili together (totaling thirty-­three cuttings by our count), along with that of the earth (thirty in total), are the most numerous images prepared for the pilgrimage to Postectli. As table 6.2 shows, this figure can be found in all of the subsequent altar locations on the sacred mountain.51 Another interesting composite figure like bean chili makes its first appearance on the altar at Ichcacuatitla. Here we have lightning and thunder combined (paper figure 04-­16), what Cirilo usually called rayo trueno in Spanish, although sometimes he named it the reverse as well, trueno rayo, and also simply rayo or relámpago. We

250  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

05-03 Altar

05-04 Earth

designate this cutting and four others like it in the collection (paper figures 02-­01, 07-­18, 10-­16, and 11-­19) as simply “lightning” after confirming that the iconography emphasizes the visible flash or bolt of lightning accompanied by the sound of thunder (sometimes called thunderbolt in English). This variant of the figure of thunder is portrayed without a headdress but with the identical ax or hatchet-­like element cut in the center of the body. It is further distinguished from thunder by the addition of jagged bolts of lightning descending from beneath the arms to meet those that rise upward, emerging from the feet. While the Nahua observe that thunder and lighting can occur together, with the flash and roar occurring simultaneously, these events are often separated by several seconds. That people conceive of these as separate phenomena is attested in the myth of Seven Flower, where thunder alone was unable to break open the mountain but the water owner zahhuan accomplished the deed aided by his bolts of lightning. We will examine the iconography further when we discuss the paper figures deployed near the summit of the sacred mountain at the cave home of lightning-­thunder. Three of the figures cut for the Ichcacuatitla offering are related to water. Good wind, cualli ehecatl, blows the clouds in to bring rain to the milpas. This spirit entity should not be confused with the class of disease-­causing winds that are the focus of cleansing and curing rituals. As Cirilo put it, this “wind that raises the clouds” is the kind of gentle breeze that rustles the maize in the milpa and cools the stifling heat of the day. Envisioned in paper, good wind (paper figure 04-­08) is typically cut with a headdress that bears a striking resemblance to the cross. The figures of good wind on this petate have three V-cuts in the body

arranged in a triangle (similar to paper figures 10-­11 and 10-­13). Other portrayals of good wind (e.g., paper figures 08-­01 to 08-­04, 10-­22a) have five V-cuts in a quincunx design. These differences may be significant iconographically or a stylistic aberration introduced by a novice paper cutter assisting Cirilo. Another cutting (paper figure 12-­ 14b) has a decidedly flat headdress reminiscent of bean chili (which accompanies it on the petate; see paper figure 12-­14a), although Cirilo averred that it is an image of the good wind. The total of nine petates of good wind exhibit a high degree of variation overall, confounding our efforts to summarize the iconographic characteristics of this salutary spirit entity. We realized that the many challenges to facile classification had only just begun. Altar Set 04 also contains two petates of apanchaneh, the water dweller or la sirena. Despite minor stylistic variations (paper figures 04-­11 and 04-­17a,b,c), the cuttings are similar to the one described previously. However, the mezah in Ichcacuatitla features in its first appearance a cutting of the male aspect of apanchaneh, called el sireno or sireno hombre in Spanish and translated “male siren” (paper figure 04-­13). This paper figure is identical to the female counterpart except that it lacks a headdress; the distinctive terminology also underscores the belief that apanchaneh is female. As we have mentioned, the absence of a headdress or headgear seems to be a common way to convey a spirit entity’s opposite gender, although the inamic tension that characterizes such binaries might be best described as complementary rather than opposing. A third, important manifestation of water can be found in the image of Santa Rosa (paper figure 04-­23), a fascinating but ambiguous spirit entity seen for the first time in Altar Set 04. As noted in chapter 4, Indigenous people in the region closely associate the sixteenth-­century Saint Rose of Lima, renowned for her visions, with the marijuana plant. Ritual specialists sometimes consume marijuana by combining it with aguardiente in order to produce a trance-­like state. We should point out that this practice is more commonly associated with Otomí ritual practitioners than with the Nahua of the southern Huasteca.52 The importance of Santa Rosa in her guise as an ostensibly salutary (although temperamental) spirit entity is revealed in the ten petates of her image that Cirilo cut for the pilgrimage collection. Usually portrayed with a pronged headdress, a flower bud on her chest, and leaves cut from the lower body, there is evidently a great range of variation in the depiction of Santa Rosa, which we attribute as much to the different levels of proficiency among the paper cutters as to her complex persona.

Some cuttings highlight in the body an elaborate flower bud (paper figures 04-­23, 07-­19, 07-­21, 10-­18, 11-­07, 11-­20, and 12-­02), but practitioners may substitute for the floral icon a three-­sided box or the outline of a leaf with scalloped margins (09-­02, 09-­04, and 11-­14), and she occasionally has pockets. Santa Rosa’s headdress iconography varies from the abbreviated rake-­like affair (paper figure 04-­23) or a bud-­like design (07-­21) to one like the tassel of young maize (11-­07). Despite all the variations in the body and headdress designs, Santa Rosa’s headdress features either five prongs (like paper figure 04-­23, the exemplar figure E-20) or seven prongs (like the cutout that Cirilo explicitly called cimarrón, paper figure X-19). We are not able to offer any ritual specialist’s explication for the thinking that underlies or differentiates the designs involving contrastive numbers of otherwise similar elements, except to point out that Santa Rosa’s five-­and seven-­ pronged headdress designs are mirrored in the same distinctions evident in earth’s standardized image (paper figure 06-­04, the exemplar figure E-7, with seven-­pronged design) and others with a nine-­ pronged design. We will posit some summary iconographic observations in the book’s Coda. One of the named hills, San Bartolo (paper figure 04-­ 21), appears in the set intended for Ichcacuatitla. Most saints that the Nahua have incorporated into the spirit pantheon are affiliated with an actual hill and are therefore closely associated with water. This spirit entity is cut with a distinctive bifurcate headdress that possibly evokes flowing water. It has two pockets above the legs and a complex design cut from the chest that Cirilo said was its corona (“crown”). Another portrayal of San Bartolo hill is entirely different from the others (see paper figure 07-­04, appearing later in the pilgrimage as part of the first mezah beneath the precipice at tepexitzintlan). It appears to be an anomaly in that its bifurcate headdress has a jagged edge and its diagnostic interior cuts in the body are missing. Instead, it has four quadrilateral shapes protruding from the body below the arms and above the knees. We believe the jagged headdress and square protrusions seen in paper figure 07-­04 are suggestive of keys, which people closely associate with the sacred hill of San Bartolo.53 The final three petates contain paper images of the key (paper figures 04-­06 and 04-­15a,b, illustrating two variant designs, and 04-­22). Unlike the paper image of the key intended for the mezah in Amatlán (paper figure 01-­02), which Cirilo clearly identified as the key to San Jerónimo hill, these images are generalized keys that can open any hill and reveal the treasure hidden inside. The importance

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  251

of this spirit entity can be seen in the total of eight petates of key cut for the pilgrimage collection, including one iconographically identical to the others but which Cirilo insisted opens a specific hill, that of San Sebastián (paper figure 11-­01). While there are variations in how he and his assistants portray this intriguing spirit entity, all are quite elaborate (compare paper figures 07-­14, 11-­24, and 12-­07). One cutting (04-­15b) has a cap-­like headdress, but another (07-­14) has none, perhaps indicating the spirit entity’s opposite gender. In interviews Cirilo confirmed that the small bundle of four petates (Altar Set 05) is intended to form part of the offering at Ichcacuatitla (Location 3). The bundle is composed of two petates of cross and one each of earth and altar. Our close analysis of photos confirmed that specialists did in fact sprinkle the figures with blood, similar to the treatment in Amatlán, and then placed two petates of cross on the cruz afuera altar outside the xochicalli entrance, leaving the earth and altar petates inside beneath the main altar. We also confirmed that the main altar in Ichcacuatitla is dedicated primarily to the seeds and the hills. In sum, there are three petates of seeds (bean, bean chili, and little maize) and one of the hill San Bartolo. The three petates of key are clearly intended to help ritual participants open up and gain access to the treasures of water and food crops stored inside the hills. Closely related to hills is the earth, and the set includes two petates of the generalized earth and two petates of its manifestation as “earth over there.” Hills and seeds are linked to each other through water because the precious liquid comes from the hills and fertilizes the seed. A total of nine petates altogether are dedicated to water-­related spirit entities: good wind, Santa Rita, Santa Rosa, thunder (two petates), lightning, and three petates of water dweller apanchaneh (in both female and male aspects). We also find one petate of walking stick, which establishes the authority of the ritual specialists. Finally, the three petates of cross serve to reinforce the message that the cross–­sun–­Jesus Christ association lies at the core of the religion. At no time did we ever see the leaders of el costumbre or any of their followers stand around the altar and try to count or analyze the paper figures. People would place themselves before the mezah altar offering and gaze upon the candle-­lit array of the multitude of spirit entities. With feelings of awe, some were roused to action: one person after another would take up an aromatic copal brazier, a carrying bag filled with dressed seed spirits, or the festooned walking stick and proceed to dance with restrained reverence before the blood-­spattered paper

252  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

images lying beneath the palm and marigold adornments and food offerings. The pilgrims, visibly exhausted, in an unfamiliar shrine far from home, and surrounded by strangers, were nonetheless comforted by the ritual procedures they knew so well. All faced the prospect of a strenuous ascent early the next morning to visit the most powerful place in their sacred landscape. Taken in context, the paper figures as pictographs make a profound impression on all of the participants. Here, gathered in the mezah are seeds, water, earth, and keys—­elements conjoined to unlock the secrets and treasures of the hills. What are normally only abstract thoughts or fleeting impressions of a deeper vision of reality now lie embodied before the worshipers—­they, along with the spirit entities, are present in the xochicalli. The massed paper figures imbue in participants the conviction that they are witness to something grand and sublime. Herein lies the power of this little-­known religion. The system of belief and ritual that touches people throughout their lives (and the semasiographic system of which the sacred paper figures are a part) endures and is shared widely by the Indigenous communities throughout Mesoamerica. It serves to create a sense of belonging and identity in opposition to Mestizo elites. But it also does much more. The system of communication expressed in the religion of el costumbre gives a name and a form to forces and powers that surpass the ability of language to describe.

Paper Figures for the Mezah at Tepexitzintlan, beneath the Precipice The altar constructed at the first stop on Postectli about one-­third of the way up the towering monolith (Location 4), is dedicated primarily to the earth and clouds. As in Amatlán, the sample collection cut by Cirilo for this mezah included a complete set of twenty-­four petates (Altar Set 07) plus a smaller set of four petates (Altar Set 08). Cirilo and his colleagues cut five new paper figures that have not appeared previously. We list and illustrate the contents of Altar Sets 07 and 08 in table 6.5, and discuss the novel cuttings below. The first of the novel cuttings in Altar Set 07 is a mysterious image that Cirilo called tierra se cambia or “earth changes” (paper figure 07-­09). This entity has the nine-­ pronged headdress of many of the earth’s manifestations, two pockets above the legs, and a flower-­like design cut from the center of its body. While Cirilo pointed out that the figure wears pants and the unusual bud-­like central cut is its heart. Despite our efforts we were unable to elicit

Table 6.5. Altar Sets 07 and 08 Paper Figure ID

English / Spanish / Nahuatl Name of Spirit Entity [and Variants]

Altar Set 07 Paper Figures 07-01 to 07-02 07-­02

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli [variants 07-­02a, 07-­02b]

07-­03

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli

07-­05

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli

07-­20

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli

07-­23

bell / campana

07-­12

earth / tierra / tlalli

07-­09

earth [earth changes] / tierra se cambia / tlalli

07-­06

God [little god] / Dios [diosito] / Totiotzin

07-­15

San Antonio [Saint Anthony of Padua] / Santo de la Páuida [San Antonio de Pádua] [variants 07-­15a, 07-­15b]

07-­16

San Antonio [Mexican god, Huastecan god] / San Antonio [dios mexicano, dios huasteco]

07-­04

hill [San Bartolo hill] / cerro de San Bartolo / tepetl

07-­22

hill [Xihuiyoh hill] / cerro de Xihuiyoh / tepetl

07-­14

key / llave

07-­18

lightning [lightning bolt, lightning flash, thunderbolt] / rayo [rayo trueno, trueno rayo, relámpago] / tlapetlani

07-­11

Santa Juanita

07-­10

Santa Panchita

07-­19

Santa Rosa

07-­21

Santa Rosa

07-­08

walking stick / bastón / tlanahuatilcuatopilli

07-­17

walking stick / bastón / tlanahuatilcuatopilli

07-­01

water dweller [siren] / agua [la sirena] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenah]

07-­07

water dweller [male siren] / agua [el sireno, sirena hombre] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenoh]

07-­13

water dweller [male siren] / agua [el sireno, sirena hombre] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenoh]

07-­24

water dweller [male siren] / agua [el sireno, sirena hombre] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenoh] continued on next page

additional information about this figure. Taken at face value, it appears to signify the changing earth as opposed to more permanent aspects of this important spirit entity. But because Cirilo described the figure in Spanish using the reflexive verb cambiarse, another plausible understanding is that the earth changes its clothing, referring to seasonal changes in vegetation. But since it appears nowhere else during the pilgrimage, we also entertain the possibility that it is a whimsical creation of the ritual specialist. Even so, it reflects the Nahua view of the transformational nature of the earth. Another new cutting making its first appearance on this pilgrimage altar (paper figure 07-­06) is one of several images of “saints” or “God,” according to Cirilo’s general designation. Cirilo identified the cutting simply as diosito, “little god” in the Spanish familiar or diminutive form

of Dios but synonymous with the honorific Totiotzin. It appears to be an unusual combination of iconography that blends pilcintzin (or maizito, “little maize”) and apanchaneh, the water dweller. It has the same headdress as the young maize plant, and the two wavy lines on its chest are water, a characteristic design feature of the siren, and like the siren it has two pockets above the legs. Only one other cutting of a generalized image of God-­Totiotzin (paper figure 10-­10) makes an appearance later in the pilgrimage. Cirilo identified a paper figure that he called “Santo de la Páuida” (paper figure 07-­15) and also dios, and then quickly added, “San Antonio.” We believe that it is most likely his interpretation of the Catholic saint known as San Antonio de Pádua (Saint Anthony of Padua). In paper he created its image with a flat headdress, four pockets forming a rectangle, and a three-­or five-­lobed central

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  253

07-01 Water Dweller

07-02a,b Bean Chili

07-03 Bean Chili

07-04 Hill San Bartolo

07-05 Bean Chili

07-06 God-Totiotzin

07-07 Water Dweller Aserenoh

07-08 Walking Stick

07-09 Earth Changes

07-10 Santa Panchita

07-11 Santa Juanita

07-12 Earth

254  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

07-13 Water Dweller Aserenoh

07-14 Key

07-15a,b San Antonio

07-16 San Antonio

07-17 Walking Stick

07-18 Lightning

07-19 Santa Rosa

07-20 Bean Chili

07-21 Santa Rosa

07-22 Hill Xihuiyoh

07-23 Bell

07-24 Water Dweller Aserenoh

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  255

Table 6.5—continued

Altar Set 08 Paper Figures 08-01 to 08-04 08-­01

good wind / viento bueno / cualli ehecatl

08-­02

good wind / viento bueno / cualli ehecatl

08-­03

good wind / viento bueno / cualli ehecatl

08-­04

good wind / viento bueno / cualli ehecatl

08-01 Good Wind

08-02 Good Wind

feature that is probably plant growth or a flower. The petate we received contained sixteen cuttings of the five-­ lobed version (07-­15a) and four of the three-­lobed variant (07-­15b). The pockets and floral element form the familiar Nahua quincunx design. Cirilo was adamant that, unlike most of the entities he called “saints” and equated with particular hills, this one was “Dios, not a hill.” Likewise, in describing another cutting of San Antonio (paper figure 07-­16) as God (again asserting that the saint was not a hill), Cirilo added the designations mexicano, huasteco. The terms may refer to speakers of Nahuatl and Huastec Maya (Teenek) languages, but Cirilo did not clarify what he meant by associating them with the saint. Assuming that he intended the words as adjectives, we translate them simply as “Mexican god” and “Huastecan god.” The imagery juxtaposes several familiar iconographic elements: a foliated-­cross headdress (like Santa Juanita and Santa Rita, but elaborated with the addition of a crescent-­ shaped icon that we describe, provisionally, as a solar disk), along with an identical three-­lobed central cut (like one of the San Antonio variants) and two pockets below (instead of four). Another unique figure cut for the mezah at tepexitzintlan, “beneath the precipice,” is that of Santa Panchita (paper

256  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

08-03 Good Wind

08-04 Good Wind

figure 07-­10). Cirilo stated that this entity “is a friend of Santa Rita.” As a companion to that saint, she is linked to clouds and rain. Her paper image has two pockets above the legs and an M-shaped design on the chest, similar to Santa Juanita’s design, and thus may be a variant or alter ego of that important figure (we showed earlier how Cirilo deliberately combined two saints—­Santa Rita and Santa Juanita [paper figures 01-­06a and 01-­06b]—­on a single petate). Panchita is likely Cirilo’s feminine version of a common nickname for Francisco—­Pancho—­and so the spirit entity may be a female aspect of San Francisco, but we have not confirmed that detail. At any rate, it seems to be another instance, design wise, of the inamic pairing that seems commonplace in Cirilo’s conception of the Nahua pantheon of named saints. Finally, the hill Xihuiyoh (paper figure 07-­22) is yet another distinctive paper figure appearing for the first and only time at this first altar offering on Postectli. Its image is cut with a hat-­like headdress similar to water dweller’s, two pockets (or possibly hip joints) above the legs, and a five-­lobed design on the chest that appears to combine water and floral motifs.54 Paper images of spirit entities associated with the earth and clouds are in abundance. There are four petates of earth-­related spirit entities: the earth (paper figure

07-­12), earth changes (07-­09), San Bartolo hill (07-­04), and Xihuiyoh hill (07-­ 22). We also associate the key (paper figure 07-­14) with the earth because it is instrumental in unlocking the sacred hills. In sum, ten petates are directly related to water and clouds: two each of San Antonio (paper figures 07-­15a,b and 07-­16) and Santa Rosa (07-­19 and 07-­21), one each of Santa Juanita (07-­11), Santa Panchita (07-­10), and lightning (07-­18), and four petates of water dweller in both male and female aspects (07-­01, 07-­ 07, 07-­13, and 07-­24). We provisionally classify the petate with a variant of Totiotzin that Cirilo called diosito or “little god” (07-­06) with the several of San Antonio because each of these figures shares iconographic details with the other named saints, combining water, maize, floral, and foliated-­cross motifs. The question remains of how to interpret the relationship between water-­related entities and the saints that are entities other than hills. Ritual specialists also included in this mezah four petates of bean chili variants (paper figures 07-­02a,b along with 07-­03, 07-­05, and 07-­20) to remind onlookers that a major purpose of the pilgrimage is crop fertility. Three additional petates of paper figures prepared for the main altar include the bell (paper figure 07-­23) and walking stick (07-­08 and 07-­17), signaling ritual activity and authority, respectively. The assembly of spirit entities at tepexitzintlan (Location 4) on the sacred mountain subtly shifts the attention of ritual participants away from the earth and seed themes of previous altar offerings toward a greater concentration on the earth and hills and the different forms of water that emerge from them.55 It was at this spot on Postectli where helpers interred a live white chicken in a crevice in the rock face behind the altar table. For our sample collection Cirilo cut four petates of good wind figures (paper figures 08-­01 to 08-­04, described earlier) that he intended for use in this chicken-­burial episode. The juxtaposition of the good wind (cualli ehecatl) and clouds (mixtli, singular) seems straightforward, as the offering is aimed to remove obstacles preventing the gentle winds from blowing in rain clouds to fertilize the milpas.56

Paper Figures for the Mezah at Tlahcopoztectli, the Middle of Postectli At the next stop up the sacred mountain (Location 5), the altars are dedicated to water, lightning, and thunder. These multiple altar offerings involve the largest outlay of offerings and numbers of paper figures in the entire pilgrimage. All told, Cirilo and his helpers cut for the sample

Postectli collection two full sets of twenty-­four petates each (Altar Sets 09 and 10) for the major altar and the space beneath it. In addition, they cut two small sets of four petates each (Altar Sets 02 and 03), like those that would be deployed at the caves (rock clefts) belonging to the water dweller apanchaneh and lightning-­thunder spirit entities. These paper cuttings are listed and illustrated in table 6.6 on the following pages; those we have not previously described are discussed below. For the sample collection of cut-­paper figures meant to go on top of the altar table at tlahcopoztectli (“middle of Postectli”), Cirilo directed his colleagues to cut six novel images not previously seen. The first unique image in Altar Set 09 is one he called altar de arriba in Spanish, and he produced two petates of these figures embodying “upper altar” (paper figures 09-­16 and 09-­19).57 It is apparent that this entity closely resembles the paper figure he designated simply “altar” (09-­12), and he identified both designs as tlaixpamitl, using the Nahuatl word for the altar construction itself. While the paper image of altar is fashioned with four V-cuts in the body arranged in a rectangle, that of upper altar has only three: two cuts below and one above, forming an arch-­like or triangular design. Other than this distinguishing design element, altar and upper altar are similarly unelaborate, depicted without headdresses. However, one cutting of upper altar (paper figure 09-­19) differs from the others by sporting water dweller’s three-­pronged headdress. We have demonstrated how the paper image of upper altar references the physical arch over the altar table, which in turn constitutes the celestial realm, but why the design elements of water and upper altar are juxtaposed remains unclear—­and piques our curiosity about water’s celestial connection. In all, Cirilo and his colleagues cut a total of seven petates containing paper figures of altar or upper altar for this mezah (Location 5) and five additional petates for altar offerings at the summit (Location 6). The preponderance of altar–­upper altar cuttings deployed high up on Postectli provides further evidence that the Nahua view the sacred monolith as a gigantic altar in situ. We also received cuttings embodying three more named sacred hills: one petate each of Santa Úrsula hill (paper figure 09-­09), Guitarra hill (09-­23), and San Gregorio hill (09-­ 24). Guitarra hill was completely new to us, and we suspect it may be a recent addition to the list of sacred prominences. It is cut with a seven-­pronged headdress identical to that of many of the earth images. The figure has two pockets just above the legs and a wavy line of water. We were unable to obtain additional information on this

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  257

figure or to identify the actual location of this hill. Santa Úrsula hill is one of the many sacred hills associated with water that dot the southern Huasteca, and she is cut with the standard three-­pronged headdress of the siren, two pockets above the legs, and a design on her chest of vegetation above a wavy line of water.58 San Gregorio hill is also associated with water and is cut with an earth-­related, pronged headdress and a central design that resembles a bud, flower, or even fruit of a plant, which Cirilo again called its “heart.” Virtually every hill is sacred in Nahua thought, and so, not surprisingly, there are endless possibilities in their presentation. The cuttings intended for the major altar at Location 5 contain the only example we have of a petate devoted to the spirit entity of mature maize, cintli, (paper figure 09-­ 13). Cirilo created five petates of little maize (pilcintzin) for use in Amatlán, Ichcacuatitla, and at the summit, but this location marks the only appearance of the mature plant. It has a flat headdress, two fully formed ears of maize flanking an M-shaped heart, and a diamond-­shaped opening above the legs. Because the pilgrimage is scheduled in late spring into early summer, it is dedicated to the power of germinating seeds at planting time, and thus maize appears around this time as sprouting plants or shoots emerging from the ground. The mature maize crop following this rainy-­season planting (xopanmilli in Nahuatl) is not ready to harvest until autumn, which probably explains why it is largely absent in this ritual held early in the growing cycle.59 The final unique petate in Altar Set 09 meant for this major array on the altar top contains a witness spirit (paper figure 09-­18), called tlamocuitlahuihquetl in Nahuatl, testigo in Spanish. People conceive of it as a guardian as well, so we use the designation witness-­guardian interchangeably with witness. Nahua witness-­guardians not only protect people from danger but also act as messengers, conveying offerings from altars to major spirit entities such as the sacred hills. People keep these paper cutouts in their houses where they can be seen tucked behind a Catholic saint’s picture, from which vantage they watch over the family. Numerous types of witness figures are cut for different purposes. The design of this one, with an opening cut in the headdress, shows it has another specialized ritual purpose, something we observed for the first time in 2007. In those pilgrimages the ritual specialists cut multiples of such figures to hang at approximately one-­ meter (three-­ foot) intervals from the mecaxochitl, the flowered vine that functions like a telegraph wire to connect the outside c­ ross altar with the altar inside the

258  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

shrine. The addition of the cuttings of witness-­guardians also suggests that it serves to guard against interference by malevolent agents.60 The paper figures in Altar Set 10 that Cirilo and his colleagues created for placement beneath the altar include four cuttings (and one variant) that we have not seen previously. The first Cirilo identified as “Dios” (paper figure 10-­10), adding for emphasis, “Totiotzin,” invoking the sacred living cosmos. Lacking a headdress, it has a jagged line cut in the center of the body that, as we have observed, is isomorphic with water and simultaneously the stylized profile of a hill or mountain. Of the twenty cuttings on this petate, sixteen have three V-cuts (as illustrated) in the lower body, which Cirilo again definitively identified as bolsas or pockets (the other four have just two cuts, not shown). We contend that, even though essentially all of the paper figures are aspects of Totiotzin, here in this cutting we can observe how the Nahua religious specialists give concrete form to their highly abstract conception of deity. When we pressed Cirilo to explain more about its iconography, he replied, cryptically, “Dios arriba” (“God above”), and added that the cuts are its shirt or blouse, using the Spanish word camisa. The extra V-cut is unusual; we found just two other cuttings with this device, variants of Lindero hill (paper figure 11-­05) and upper altar (11-­08c), discussed below. But note that it lacks the elaborate headdress of the other generalized image of God-­Totiotzin (the “little god” or diocito illustrated by paper figure 07-­06, which we designated exemplar figure E-10). We surmise that this cutting must embody Totiotzin’s opposite gender. To reinforce our reading of the iconography, Nahua women often keep a small bit of money rolled into the front of their embroidered blouses and tucked into the waistband of their skirts, which serves the function of a pocket or purse. We wish we knew for certain whether Cirilo chose this design element for that reason.61 The array beneath the altar also has a single petate with sixteen examples of a generalized tepetl or hill (paper figure 10-­02a) interspersed with four figures of Santa Juanita (10-­ 02b); both of these entities have been described earlier. To reiterate, petates containing a mix of paper figures of different identities (not simply variant design elements) are fairly unusual in the collection, as we have noted, and this struck us as a probable error. Cirilo struggled to see the variant cuttings and misidentified them at first as Santa Rita and then proposed Santa Magdalena, explaining his confusion was “because of the cross above.” However, we found yet another petate in this particular altar set

Table 6.6. Altar Sets 09, 10, 02, and 03 Paper Figure ID

English / Spanish / Nahuatl Name of Spirit Entity [and Variants]

Altar Set 09 Paper Figures 09-01 to 09-24 09-­12

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl

09-­16

altar [upper altar] / mesa [mesa de arriba] / tlaixpamitl

09-­19

altar [upper altar] / mesa [mesa de arriba] / tlaixpamitl

09-­01

bean / frijol / etl

09-­03

bean chili [little chili, jalapeño chili] / frijol picante [chilito, chile jalapeño] / etl chilli

09-­06

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli

09-­11

bean chili [little chili] / frijol picante [chilito] / etl chilli

09-­14

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli

09-­15

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli

09-­20

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli

09-­21

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli

09-­22

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli

09-­05

cross / cruz / caruz

09-­17

cross / cruz / caruz

09-­08

earth / tierra / tlalli

09-­10

earth / tierra / tlalli

09-­23

hill [Guitarra hill] / cerro de Guitarra / tepetl

09-­24

hill [San Gregorio hill] / cerro de San Gregorio / tepetl

09-­09

hill [Santa Úrsula hill] / cerro de Santa Úrsula / tepetl

09-­13

maize [mature maize] / maíz / cintli

09-­02

Santa Rosa

09-­04

Santa Rosa

09-­07

walking stick / bastón / tlanahuatilcuatopilli

09-­18

witness / testigo / tlamocuitlahuihquetl

continued on next page

containing a mix of cuttings, including another eight images of Santa Juanita (paper figure 10-­04b), along with four of earth (10-­04a) and eight of hill (10-­04c). We have since confirmed that ritual specialists often innovate and freely combine different paper figures as warranted by the ritual context, and we have tried dutifully to take such puzzles into account and report the idiosyncrasies. We are unsure just what the configurations tell us in this instance. The image of Chicontepec hill (paper figure 10-­17) has a distinctive headdress—­a sunburst design resembling that of the flag, or bandera (see paper figures 13-­01 to 13-­04)—­along with a pair of tapering rows of cuts interior to the body. We were not able to determine their precise meaning, but we note that the body design approximates the broad shape of a hill as it narrows at the top. This figure embodies not Postectli itself but another sacred

mountain in the municipality of Chicontepec. A different sacred peak called Jonotál hill (paper figure 10-­14), located near Amatlán, is also part of this display. This figure is cut with a flat-­topped headdress, and its five cuts in the body form a quincunx. Recall that Postectli, as governor of all the hills, is said to redistribute offerings it receives among the lesser hills of the region. Because the overall theme of the several altar offerings (at Location 5, tlahcopozteclti) just below the summit of Postectli focus on water—­specifically, rainfall accompanied by thunder and lightning—­it is surprising to find no paper figures whatsoever of water dweller apanchaneh (in Altar Sets 09 and 10) intended for the main altar. For this mezah we instead find two petates of cuttings devoted to Santa Rosa (paper figures 09-­02 and 09-­04), an entity closely associated with the siren and through whose

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  259

09-01 Bean

09-02 Santa Rosa

09-03 Bean Chili

09-04 Santa Rosa

09-05 Cross

09-06 Bean Chili

09-07 Walking Stick

09-08 Earth Over There

09-09 Hill Santa Úrsula

09-10 Earth

09-11 Bean Chili

09-12 Altar

260  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

09-13 Maize

09-14 Bean Chili

09-15 Bean Chili

09-16 Upper Altar

09-17 Cross

09-18 Witness

09-19 Upper Altar

09-20 Bean Chili

09-21 Bean Chili

09-22 Bean Chili

09-23 Hill Guitarra

09-24 Hill San Gregorio

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  261

intercession the ritual specialists make direct contact with apanchaneh. Water is said to be released from the earth through the openings in hills, and so the petitioners have laid out two petates of the familiar image of earth (paper figures 09-­08 and 09-­10) along with three petates of hills (09-­09, 09-­23, and 09-­24).62 The overwhelming majority of figures deployed here embody the crops: one petate of bean (paper figure 09-­01), eight of bean chili (09-­03, 09-­06, 09-­11, 09-­14, 09-­15, 09-­20, 09-­21, and 09-­22), and the single petate of mature maize (09-­13). Added to the mix is one petate of altar with its four V-cuts describing the earth (09-­12), and two petates of cuttings depicting upper altar, with its three characteristic V-cuts arranged in a triangle (09-­16 and 09-­19). We interpret the juxtaposition of altar–­upper altar, deployed here for the first time together, as illustrating the focal importance of Nahua altar construction in connecting human beings with cosmic powers. Two petates of cross (paper figures 09-­05 and 09-­17) are cut for the altar tabletop, along with one petate each of cuttings of walking stick (09-­07) and witness (09-­18). The concatenation of cross linked to the sun, walking stick embodying the authority to summon rain, and witness to observe and protect the integrity of the ritual proceedings suggests they belong, as such, in a series underscoring the ritual specialist’s command. The diversity of paper cuttings intended for use beneath the altar at tlahcopoztectli largely reinforces this interpretation. The twenty-­four petates of Altar Set 10 convey the message that this is the penultimate stop before people reach the culmination of the pilgrimage at Postectli’s summit. We find six petates directly related to water or rain clouds: one of Santa Rosa (paper figure 10-­18), one of lightning (10-­16), one of thunder (10-­21), and three of good wind (10-­11, 10-­13, and 10-­22). Six petates are earth-­related, including the generalized earth (10-­04a, 10-­05, 10-­20, and 10-­23) and those that Cirilo designated “other earth” (10-­15 and 10-­24)—­that is, earth of some complementary or dual aspect (such as gender). For emphasis, he added “dios” when he identified paper figure 10-­15, underscoring the connection of “other earth” with God-­Totiotzin. There are three petates of hills (paper figures 10-­02a, 10-­ 14, and 10-­17, which include distinctive cuttings of the named hills Jonotál and Chicontepec). We also find petates of bean (10-­07 and 10-­08) and bean chili (10-­01,10-­19a,b,c, 10-­22b), plus another petate that combines two variants: sixteen cuttings of bean chili (10-­09a) illustrating the standard three-­pronged headdress of bean (recall the exemplar figure E-3), interleaved with four cuttings of

262  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

an unusual figure embodying three crops—­maize, bean, and chili—­with a unique, stylized tassel of the maize plant (10-­09b). Such innovations contribute significantly to the power of the display for those versed in el costumbre iconography. Here at Location 5 we find two more petates of altar (paper figures 10-­03 and 10-­12a,b) and one more of witness (10-­06), both notable for their variations.63 Most of these cuttings of altar (sixteen of the twenty illustrated by paper figure 10-­12a) have this spirit entity’s typical four V-cuts, but four cuttings (10-­12b) have an extra fifth flap in the center. We note that the additional cut makes this figure the match of several with the identical quincunx body design: good wind (paper figures 08-­01 to 08-­04), Jonotál hill (10-­ 14), and walking stick (11-­17). The petate of witness figures (paper figure 10-­06) features a distinctive M-shaped, zigzag icon for water at its center (similar to that of Santa Panchita, paper figure 07-­10), whereas the one other petate of witnesses placed on the altar top (paper figure 09-­18, described previously) has the three V-cuts isomorphic with upper altar. Save for their headdress–­no headdress differences, the correspondences are striking. Here we posit (solely on the strength of the visual evidence) that this witness-­guardian pair illuminates how Cirilo uses iconographic design to connect the different realms of the Nahua cosmos. His vision of testigos as witnesses, advocates, protectors, and guardians makes them interlocutors among the celestial, earthly, and water realms. The paper cuttings that make up Altar Sets 02 and 03 are reserved for the two narrow rock crevices or caves situated below the summit of Postectli, and they clearly convey the identity of the spirit entities who dwell inside.64 These final two bundles of petates are similar to the series of four-­petate modules discussed earlier (and constitute a total of seven such assemblies). They are composed of three beds holding twenty cuttings each of the foundational figures altar-­cross-­earth (illustrated in figure 6.4), topped by a petate of the identifying spirit entity. The topmost petate of paper figures in Altar Set 02 holds cuttings of lightning (paper figure 02-­01), while Altar Set 03 presents water dweller (03-­01). The iconography of these figures has been discussed earlier. In use, the ritual specialists sprinkle the entire bundle with the blood of sacrificial fowl and place them in their respective caves along with adornments and offerings, keeping the four-­petate bundle intact, neatly tied with a vine cord. By including the foundational altar-­cross-­earth module in each bundle, Cirilo apparently means for them to serve as a reminder

Table 6.6.—continued

Altar Set 10 Paper Figures 10-01 to 10-24 10-­03

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl

10-­12

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl [variants 10-­12a, 10-­12b]

10-­07

bean / frijol / etl

10-­08

bean / frijol / etl

10-­01

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli

10-­09

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli [variant 10-­09a]; also maize bean chili / maíz (con) frijol picante / cintli etl chilli [variant 10-­09b]

10-­19

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli [variants 10-­19a, 10-­19b, 10-­19c]

10-­04

earth / tierra / tlalli [variant 10-­04a]; also Santa Juanita [variant 10-­04b]; hill / cerro / tepetl [variant 10-­04c]

10-­05

earth / tierra / tlalli

10-­20

earth / tierra / tlalli

10-­23

earth / tierra / tlalli

10-­15

earth [other earth, God] / tierra [otra tierra, Dios] / tlalli [Totiotzin]

10-­24

earth [other earth] / tierra [otra tierra] / tlalli

10-­10

God [God above] / Dios [Dios arriba] / Totiotzin

10-­11

good wind / viento bueno / cualli ehecatl

10-­13

good wind / viento bueno / cualli ehecatl

10-­22

good wind / viento bueno / cualli ehecatl [variant 10-­22a]; also bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli [variant 10-­22b]

10-­02

hill / cerro / tepetl [variant 10-­02a]; also Santa Juanita [variant 10-­02b]

10-­14

hill [Jonotál hill] / cerro de Jonotál / tepetl

10-­17

hill [Chicontepec hill] / cerro de Chicón [Chicontepec] / chicontepetl

10-­16

lightning [thunderbolt, lightning bolt, lightning flash,] / rayo [rayo trueno, trueno rayo, relámpago] / tlapetlani

10-­18

Santa Rosa

10-­21

thunder / trueno / tlatomoni

10-­06

witness / testigo / tlamocuitlahuihquetl

continued on next page

that altars are the medium of communication linking earthly and celestial realms. The altar-­cross-­earth trio are the spirit entities most commonly portrayed; only the bean–­bean chili cuttings are more prevalent and distributed as systematically across all of the altar offerings from Amatlán to the heights of Postectli.

Paper Figures for the Mezah at Tzonteconpostectli, the Summit The peak of Postectli (Location 6) is the site of four separate altar offerings. The ritual specialists created two large altar sets of twenty-­four petates and one small set of four petates. One large, elaborate mezah dedicated to the water owner zahhuan and the cross is where Altar Sets 11 and 12 are deployed. Altar Set 13 is intended for the offering on

the circular altar dedicated to the sun. The paper figures contained in these altar sets are listed and illustrated in table 6.7 on the following pages. Some portion of Altar Sets 11 and 12 would likely be part of the separate offerings to the cross and moon, although neither mezah was completed in the actual pilgrimages to Postectli. Of the twenty-­four petates in Altar Set 11, only six present new spirit entities (or design variations) that have not appeared previously in other arrays. We initially thought there were more; however, one of the two petates of walking stick features V-cut openings in a quincunx design (paper figure 11-­17) that Cirilo confirmed was an error, saying it should have been the standard design (like 11-­ 13) with a center cut of the walking stick festooned with ribbons (compare the exemplar figure E-24). The unique entities are all named hills, plus one petate that holds

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  263

10-01 Bean Chili

10-05 Earth

10-02a Hill 10-02b Santa Juanita

10-06 Witness

10-09a Bean Chili 10-09b Maize Bean Chili

264  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

10-10 God-Totiotzin

10-03 Altar

10-04a Earth 10-04b Santa Juanita 10-04c Hill

10-07 Bean

10-11 Good Wind

10-08 Bean

10-12a,b Altar

10-13 Good Wind

10-17 Hill Chicontepec

10-21 Thunder

10-14 Hill Jonotál

10-18 Santa Rosa

10-22a Good Wind 10-22b Bean Chili

10-15 Other Earth

10-16 Lightning

10-19a,b,c Bean Chili

10-20 Earth

10-23 Earth

10-24 Other Earth

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  265

Table 6.6.—continued

Altar Set 02 Paper Figures 02-01 to 02-04 02-­01

lightning [thunderbolt, lightning bolt, lightning flash] / rayo [rayo trueno, trueno rayo, relámpago] / tlapetlani

02-­03

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl

02-­02

cross [little cross] / cruz [crucito] / caruz

02-­04

earth / tierra / tlalli

Altar Set 03 Paper Figures 03-01 to 03-04 03-­01

water dweller [siren] / agua [la sirena] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenah]

03-­02

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl

03-­03

cross / cruz / caruz

03-­04

earth / tierra / tlalli

02-01 Lightning

03-01 Water Dweller

266  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

02-02 Cross

03-02 Altar

02-03 Altar

03-03 Cross

02-04 Earth

03-04 Earth

Table 6.7. Altar Sets 11, 12, and 13 Paper Figure ID

English / Spanish / Nahuatl Name of Spirit Entity [and Variants]

Altar Set 11 Paper Figures 11-01 to 11-24 11-­08

altar [upper altar] / mesa [mesa de arriba] / tlaixpamitl [variants 11-­08a, 11-­08c]; also earth [other earth] / tierra [otra tierra] / tlalli [variants 11-­08b]

11-­15

bean / frijol / etl

11-­23

bean / frijol / etl

11-­03

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli

11-­22

bell / campana

11-­18

cross / cruz / caruz

11-­10

earth / tierra / tlalli

11-­11

hill [Huitzitzilco hill] / cerro de [Huitzitzilco] / tepetl

11-­05

hill [Lindero hill] / cerro de [Lindero] / tepetl

11-­16

hill [San Estéban hill] / cerro de San Estéban / tepetl

11-­04

hill [Teyahual hill] / cerro de [Teyahual] / tepetl [variants 11-­04a, 11-­04b]

11-­12

hill [Xochicualaloya hill] / cerro de [Xochicualaloya] / tepetl

11-­24

key / llave

11-­01

key [key to San Sebastián hill] / llave a cerro de San Sebastián

11-­19

lightning [thunderbolt, lightning bolt, lightning flash,] / rayo [rayo trueno, trueno rayo, relámpago] / tlapetlani

11-­07

Santa Rosa

11-­14

Santa Rosa

11-­20

Santa Rosa

11-­21

thunder / trueno / tlatomoni

11-­13

walking stick / bastón / tlanahuatilcuatopilli

11-­17

walking stick / bastón / tlanahuatilcuatopilli

11-­02

water dweller [male siren] / agua [el sireno, sirena hombre] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenoh]

11-­06

water dweller [siren] / agua [la sirena] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenah]

11-­09

water dweller [siren] / agua [la sirena] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenah]

continued on next page

images of the key to San Sebastián hill (paper figure 11-­01). Throughout the sample Postectli collection the various images of the spirit entity identified as key all vary slightly from one another, displaying a range of creative depictions; this one has three protruding rectangles on each side signifying the working parts of a key. Among the highly individualized portrayals of the sacred hills is one petate of Teyahual hill (paper figures 11-­04a and 11-­04b). Teyahual is the pre-­Hispanic platform mound we visited during the 2007 pilgrimage to Tres Pozitos.65 The variant styles of the cuttings on this petate reveal two practitioners’ distinctive renditions of this important precinct: a majority of the cuttings have four groups of three inverted V-cuts arranged in a rectangle, while the remaining cuttings have four groups of

four vertical slashes, likewise arranged in a rectangular pattern. The design is entirely unusual compared with others in the collection but shows Cirilo’s own style of cutting. Another unique cutting is that of Lindero hill (paper figure 11-­05), which has a small, flat, cap-­like headdress, one V-cut in the chest revealing its heart, and three V-cuts above the legs, a design feature mentioned earlier that connects it iconographically to two other variant designs (which we will bring up again in the Coda). Another figure is Huitzitzilco hill (paper figure 11-­11), with the hat-­ like headdress typically associated with water and three V-cuts in the body arranged in a triangle. It has a round face that is stylistically unlike the figures that Cirilo cuts, so this design is probably the creation of an assistant (as seems likely for several other figures in this set). When

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  267

11-01 Key to San Sebastián Hill

11-05 Hill Lindero

11-02 Water Dweller Aserenoh

11-06 Water Dweller

11-09 Water Dweller

268  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

11-10 Earth

11-03 Bean Chili

11-07 Santa Rosa

11-04a,b Hill Teyahual

11-08a Upper Altar 11-08b Other Earth 11-08c Upper Altar

11-11 Hill Huitzitzilco

11-12 Hill Xochicualaloya

11-13 Walking Stick

11-14 Santa Rosa

11-15 Bean

11-16 Hill San Estéban

11-17 Walking Stick

11-18 Cross

11-19 Lightning

11-20 Santa Rosa

11-21 Thunder

11-22 Bell

11-23 Bean

11-24 Key

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  269

we questioned Cirilo about this hill, he pointed toward the south, indicating its location relative to Amatlán. Xochicualaloya hill (paper figure 11-­12) is cut with a seven-­ pronged headdress similar to that of the generalized earth. We were unable to determine the significance of the six V-cuts in the body, arranged in two parallel vertical lines. Finally, San Estéban hill (paper figure 11-­16) has a forked headdress and also features six cuts in the body, now arranged horizontally in two lines. Not surprisingly, the majority (sixteen out of twenty-­ four) of the paper figures in Altar Set 11, intended for the mezah at the summit and dedicated to zahhuan the water owner and the cross, are either manifestations of water itself or the earth and hills where water originates. Three petates present Santa Rosa (paper figures 11-­07, 11-­14, and 11-­20), one presents thunder (11-­21), there is one of lightning (11-­19), one of the male aspect of the water dweller (11-­02), two of water dweller herself (11-­06 and 11-­09), one of the earth (11-­10), five of the earth-­related sacred hills just discussed (11-­04a,b, 11-­05, 11-­11, 11-­12, and 11-­16), and the one key to San Sebastián hill (11-­01). An additional petate is dedicated to an earth-­related entity, the generalized image of the key that unlocks any of the hills (11-­24). Nahua ritual specialists and lay people alike connect all of these images directly to water in the form of springs, arroyos, lakes, or rain. Even though several pilgrims confirmed that the main altar at the summit is dedicated to the cross in addition to zahhuan, Cirilo and his colleagues cut only one petate of cross (paper figure 11-­18). The apparent lack of attention to the cross in this set of cuttings may be due to the separate mezah on the summit of Postectli dedicated to this all-­important spirit entity in its guise as the sun, as we discuss below. Additional images included on the zahhuan-­cross mezah in Location 6 are crops in the form of two petates of bean (paper figures 11-­15 and 11-­23) and one of bean chili (11-­ 03). The crop images remind everybody that the purpose of all of the ritual action is to benefit the milpa plantings. Finally, there is one petate of bell (paper figure 11-­22) and another single petate containing three variant designs (11-­ 08a, 11-­08b, and 11-­08c) that Cirilo initially identified (in Spanish) simply as tierra, “earth.” However, four of them were identical to his cuttings of upper altar (paper figure 11-­08a), twelve were identical to those of other earth (11-­ 08b), while the four remaining cuttings (11-­08c) resemble upper altar with the added unusual fourth V-cut at the bottom like that for Lindero hill (11-­05) and also the image of God-­Totiotzin (10-­10). As before, when we pressed him to explain why more than one design appeared on one petate,

270  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

Cirilo insisted that the images go together. Following our method of classification based on visual design, the two variants belong to the upper altar category; however, we offer a provisional explanation for mixing the different figures together: the upper altar figure specifies the celestial realm while the altar figure generally serves as the physical mechanism linking humans to the major spirit entities inhabiting the cosmos. We must consider that the combination of cuttings on this petate is indeed intentional, meant to emphasize such a connection. Altar Set 12 is the last twenty-­four-­petate bundle of the pilgrimage, possibly destined to be divided between the incomplete altars to the moon and cross. Even though we did not observe the figures laid out in the traditional way, we think the sample petates that Cirilo prepared for us functioned as a kind of summary of the entire pilgrimage. It is here where the most important themes of the entire endeavor are repeated and reemphasized. Six petates contain figures directly connecting the proceedings to water: water dweller (paper figure 12-­05); thunder (12-­09 and 12-­17); and the three water-­related saints, Santa Rosa (12-­ 02), Santa Rita (12-­04a,b), and Santa Juanita (12-­18). Both earth (12-­13) and earth over there (12-­23) are present, along with three sacred hills: San Bartolo hill (12-­08), a generalized hill (12-­11, which Cirilo again designated cualquier cerro, “any hill”), and another image of Jonotál hill (12-­21). There is also another cutting of the generic key (12-­07), used to open and reveal the stores of treasure within the hills. Additionally, Cirilo and his colleagues cut five petates of crops: bean (paper figures 12-­01 and 12-­20), bean chili (12-­06 and 12-­14a), and maize in the form of pilcintzin, “little maize” (12-­19); accompanying bean chili on the same petate were variant figures of good wind (12-­14b). Also present are figures of altar in the form of upper altar (12-­ 10, 12-­16, and 12-­24) along with one petate of altar proper (12-­16). Finally, two petates of cross (12-­03 and 12-­12) and one of walking stick (12-­22) are present too. All told, Cirilo has assembled the full complement of manifestations of the cosmos in these sublime paper creations. Cirilo created one final novel cutting for the sample Postectli collection, that of the paper figure of bandera, “flag” (paper figures 13-­01 to 13-­04), intended to be deployed on the circular altar to the sun; we pointed it out in photos in chapter 4. The altar to the sun is the literal and figurative pinnacle of the pilgrimage to Postectli. The sun, tonatiuh, often explicitly identified as Totiotzin, is simultaneously a distant figure and omnipresent. It is embodied in the thousands of paper figures at the heart of the pilgrimage as well as in the adornments, offerings, and

Table 6.7.—continued

Altar Set 12 Paper Figures 12-01 to 12-24 12-­15

altar / mesa / tlaixpamitl

12-­10

altar [upper altar] / mesa [mesa de arriba] / tlaixpamitl

12-­16

altar [upper altar] / mesa [mesa de arriba] / tlaixpamitl

12-­24

altar [upper altar] / mesa [mesa de arriba] / tlaixpamitl

12-­01

bean / frijol / etl

12-­20

bean / frijol / etl

12-­06

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli

12-­14

bean chili / frijol picante / etl chilli [variant 12-­14a]; also good wind / viento bueno / cualli ehecatl [variant 12-­14b]

12-­03

cross / cruz / caruz

12-­12

cross / cruz / caruz

12-­13

earth / tierra / tlalli

12-­23

earth [earth over there] / tierra de allá / tlalli

12-­11

hill [any hill] / cerro [cualquier cerro] / tepetl

12-­21

hill [Jonotál hill] / cerro de Jonotál / tepetl

12-­08

hill [San Bartolo hill] / cerro de San Bartolo / tepetl

12-­07

key / llave

12-­19

little maize / maizito / pilcintzin

12-­18

Santa Juanita

12-­04

Santa Rita [12-­04a, 12-­04b]

12-­02

Santa Rosa

12-­09

thunder / trueno / tlatomoni

12-­17

thunder / trueno / tlatomoni

12-­22

walking stick / bastón / tlanahuatilcuatopilli

12-­05

water dweller [siren] / agua [la sirena] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenah]

continued on next page

altars that constitute Nahua devotional practice. Ritual specialists therefore find it appropriate that the final altar of the pilgrimage be devoted to the presence of the sun, where Totiotzin reveals itself in the clearest, most dramatic fashion. The heat and light of the sun makes every being and thing come alive, and ultimately it is this universal life force that motivates the pilgrims to undertake their arduous journey. Cirilo used the Spanish term bandera to identify this cutting, not the Huastecan Nahuatl term for “flag,” pantli. In his words, “The flag is God, it is the sun. It guards over the milpa.” Among contemporary Nahua the nation’s flag also conveys a telluric meaning in its association with the portion of the earth’s surface occupied by Mexico and their Mexica antecedents, the place warmed and illuminated by the sun.66 The iconography is straightforward: its sunburst, fan-­like headdress design of either five or seven prongs invokes the rays of light emitted by the sun. At first glance

it resembles that of the hill or earth cuttings (see exemplars E-12 and E-7, respectively), whose seven-­and nine-­pronged designs reveal plants growing from the earth’s surface. The design of flag-­sun could easily be mistaken for the others, but on close comparison the distinctions are obvious. And exactly like earth’s portrayal, the paper image of flag also has nine V-cuts protruding from the body, aligned three by three in parallel columns, the central column higher than the outer ones, suggestive of a mass of hills. The flag-­sun and earth cuttings, taken as a whole (and together with cuttings of the various hills), portray an immensely rich sacred landscape dotted with mountains linking humans’ earthly terrain to the celestial realm. In closely examining our archive of photographs of the sun altar on Postectli we can recognize other paper images of spirit entities (e.g., assorted cuttings of earth, water, and hill figures, based on headdress and body designs) that had been contributed by the cohort of ritual

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  271

12-01 Bean

12-02 Santa Rosa

12-03 Cross

12-04a,b Santa Rita

12-05 Water Dweller

12-06 Bean Chili

12-07 Key

12-08 Hill San Bartolo

12-09 Thunder

12-10 Upper Altar

12-11 Hill

12-12 Cross

272  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

12-13 Earth

12-14a Bean Chili 12-14b Good Wind

12-15 Altar

12-16 Upper Altar

12-17 Thunder

12-18 Santa Juanita

12-19 Little Maize

12-20 Bean

12-21 Hill Jonotál

12-22 Walking Stick

12-23 Earth Over There

12-24 Upper Altar

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  273

Table 6.7.—continued

Altar Set 13 Paper Figures 13-01 to 13-04 13-­01

flag [sun] / bandera [sol] / [tonatiuh]

13-­02

flag [sun] / bandera [sol] / [tonatiuh]

13-­03

flag [sun] / bandera [sol] / [tonatiuh]

13-­04

flag [sun] / bandera [sol] / [tonatiuh]

13-01 Flag

13-02 Flag

specialists who participated in the actual pilgrimages in 1998 and 2001. Since Cirilo chose to include in our representative sample only the cuttings of flag for the pilgrimage’s final mezah, we conclude that this image must summarize for him the meaning and message of the entire undertaking. In their immense outlay for the pilgrimage, the paper figure of flag embodies the struggles of a people who gain their living from an intractable environment conjoined with the complex forces of the cosmos that make life simultaneously difficult and worth living. We surmise that people view the life-­giving crops in the milpa, parallel to the physical flag waving in the breeze, as similarly animated by the good winds that bring forth rain.

Paper Figures That Remain on the Mountain or Return Home In table 6.8 we present drawings of a selection of the large dressed figures of water, earth, and the seeds—­spirit entities that play such crucial roles in the pilgrimage rituals. Although not organized like the previous altar sets, we designated this final unit as Altar Set 17 in our numbering

274  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

13-03 Flag

13-04 Flag

scheme (see tables 5.1 and 6.8). Certain of these large, constructed paper images clothed in actual fabric outfits are created with the intention of leaving them behind on the mountain; such is the fate of water dweller, grandmother earth, and grandfather earth. The clothed figures of the seeds, on the other hand, are returned to Amatlán or communities elsewhere, to be safely preserved on the altars of ritual specialists and el costumbre devotees. As evident in photographs in chapters 3 and 4, the elaborately outfitted images of the seeds were transported with great reverence all the way from Amatlán to the sacred mountain and back, bundled securely into sisal carrying bags. Additional new seed figures were cut and assembled during rest stops throughout the pilgrimage and were dressed in tiny outfits that people brought with them on the trek. From the way they were handled and their physical presence as infant-­ sized bundles, it seems clear that these valued souvenirs of the journey are believed to embody the precious life force of the germinating seeds. The dressed paper figures of apanchaneh and the male-­female aspects of the earth (the ancient ones or antihuameh), are the largest of all the paper cutouts in el costumbre practice. The ones created for our sample Postectli collection measured approximately

Table 6.8. Altar Set 17, the Dressed Paper Figures Paper Figure ID

English / Spanish / Nahuatl Name of Spirit Entity [and Variants]

Altar Set 17 17-­01

water dweller [siren] / agua [la sirena] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenah] [17-­01a] (dressed view); 17-­01b (front view); 17-­01c (back view showing armature)

17-­02

earth [ancient one, grandmother earth, earth mother] / tierra [antigua, abuela] / tlalli [antihuatl, tlaltenanan] [17-­02a (dressed view); 17-­02b (front view)]

17-­03

earth [ancient one, grandfather earth, earth father] / tierra [antigua, abuelo] / tlalli [antihuatl, tlaltetatah] [17-­03a (dressed view); 17-­03b (front view)]

17-­04

little maize–­bean–­maize–­bean chili / maizito–­frijol–­maíz–­frijol picante / pilcintzin–­etl–­cintli–­etl chilli [17-­04a (dressed view); 17-­04b (front view); 17-­04c (back view showing armature); 17-­04d (little maize); 17-­04e (bean); 17-­04f (maize); 17-­04g (bean chili)]

17-­05

little maize–­bean chili–­maize–­squash / maizito–­frijol picante–­calabasa–­maíz / pilcintzin–­etl chilli–­ayohtli–­cintli [unassembled individual cuttings: 17-­05a (little maize); 17-­05b (bean chili); 17-­05c (squash); 17-­05d (maize)]

16–­17 × 45 centimeters (6.5 × 18 inches), while the sample of seed figures bundled together measured 11–­12 × 35 centimeters (4.5 × 14 inches), on average. Over the years, we have examined similar constructions created by Nahua ritual specialists and observe that those created by Cirilo and his colleagues for the Postectli pilgrimages and later 2007 rituals are larger than the older examples. The spirit entity known as water dweller–­la sirena–­ apanchaneh (paper figure 17-­01) is one of the dressed images that the ritual specialists create for the pilgrimage and leave behind to disintegrate on the sacred mountain, tucked into her cave home in the vicinity of tlahcopoztectli, “the middle of Postectli” (Location 5). Dressed, front, and back views (paper figures 17-­01a,b,c) document the components and provide a glimpse of the skeletal armature of folded paper that stiffens the body. Her raiment is a garment made from a shimmering bluegreen or teal-­colored fabric constructed of hand-­sewn and machine-­sewn elements, trimmed with ribbons and a button closure (all purchased materials), designed as a one-­piece dress like that worn by young girls.67 The abstract concept of “ancient one” or antihuatl (borrowed from antigua) is referred to by various names, including the descriptive appellation tlaltenanan-­tlaltetatah (“earth mother”–­“earth father”) or in the familiar guise of abuela-­abuelo. These entities are given form in the clothed images grandmother earth (paper figures 17-­02a,b) and grandfather earth (17-­03a,b). We have visual evidence that paper embodiments of the earth are given a place of honor beneath the main altar at tlahcopoztectli, just below the summit of Postectli.68 Like water dweller, the costumed spirit entities are poised, seated and ready to receive offerings, and then left at this location on the mountain to decompose in place, slowly melding into the background after having

been a prominent focus of ritual attention. Deteriorated remains of these figures left behind by previous pilgrims are shown the greatest respect, demonstrating their inherent power and long-­lasting efficacy. It is also illuminating that a freshly dressed tlaltenanan-­tlaltetatah pair is also given a seat of prominence beneath the altar in the ritual specialist’s shrine.69 By properly positioning the finely costumed, complementary dual-­aspect embodiment of the earth at both the sacred precinct and in the community, the Nahua maintain a tangible line of communication with the spirit pantheon. Additional drawings show in different views the layered components that make up the seed figures, including a dressed bundle of figures, its front and back views, and views of individual paper cuttings contained in the bundle, including little maize (i.e., young maize), bean, maize (i.e., mature maize), and bean chili (paper figures 17-­04a to 17-­04g). Additional cuttings in the sample collection illustrated for comparison but not assembled into a clothed bundle include little maize, bean chili, squash, and maize in its mature state (paper figures 17-­05a to 17-­ 05d); recall that an unusual cutting (paper figure 10-­09b) combined maize, bean, and chili into a single image with a stylized tassel, perhaps the equivalent of the bundle (illustrated by paper figure 17-­04b). A fair number of the oversized dressed images are distributed to pilgrimage devotees to take home and safeguard in a wooden box on the household altar.70 The cloth costumes of the seed spirits are hand-­or machine-­stitched by women, often made from a shade of green or blue cloth, like water dweller’s costume, and decorated with buttons, lace, and ribbons. All of the images dressed as females feature jewelry (earrings, rings, necklaces) and beribboned braids or hairpins to suggest hair styling appropriate to their sex.

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  275

17-01a Water Dweller (Dressed)

17-01b Water Dweller (Front)

17-01c Water Dweller (Back)

17-02a Grandmother Earth (Dressed)

17-02b Grandmother Earth (Front)

17-03a Grandfather Earth (Dressed)

17-03b Grandfather Earth (Front)

276  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

17-04a Little Maize–Bean–Maize–Bean Chili (Dressed)

17-04b Little Maize–Bean–Maize–Bean Chili (Front)

17-04c Little Maize–Bean–Maize–Bean Chili (Back)

17-04d Little Maize (Component)

17-04e Bean (Component)

17-04f Maize (Component)

17-04g Bean Chili (Component)

Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments  :  277

17-05a Little Maize (Component)

17-05c Squash (Component)

Summary and High Points of the Postectli Pilgrimage Before we turn in chapter 7 to an examination of some of the elements that make up Nahua pilgrimages, we first want to summarize the salient continuities between the 1998 and 2001 Nahua sacred journeys. As we have seen, pilgrimage to Postectli is composed of a dynamic sequence of events and episodes that stretched over nearly a week-­long period. Both pilgrimage events we observed began when Cirilo dreamed that it was time to visit those sacred places on the earth. In both years people were summoned to begin the work of preparing adornments, cutting the paper figures, and assembling the offerings. The first official act was the maize-­kernel divination to determine whether the timing was auspicious to begin

278  : Spirit Entities and Their Embodiments

17-05b Bean Chili (Component)

17-05d Maize (Component)

the offering sequence. Following a positive outcome, Cirilo and the other cooperating ritual specialists rid the area of dangerous spirit entities by conducting a cleansing. Next helpers decorated the altar and laid out varieties of folded pairs of paper figures in units of twenty on their individual petates. During the entregada, or delivery episode, participants held palm adornments and slowly danced or swayed in place while helpers offered liquid libation and then engaged the sacrificial fowl in mock combat; after cutting the birds’ throats with scissors, they distributed the blood over the complete array of paper figures. During these sequences, ritual specialists chanted to the spirit entities, bargaining with them and entreating them to accept the offerings. Helpers decorated the altar and placed the food and drink offerings

directly over the bloodied paper figures. They next left a small offering to the fire at the hearth where the sacrificial fowl were cooked and prepared dishes of tamales and broth with meat that were subsequently placed on the altar. A small group went to a nearby spring in the village to leave an offering for apanchaneh. Upon returning, participants dedicated another offering at the cruz afuera. After a pause during which the spirit entities partook of the essence of the offerings, the people consumed the food items, wasting virtually nothing.71 Focusing on the procedures surrounding the major altar offerings on the sacred mountains during all five pilgrimages, we find the sequence of events to be consistent from sacred journey to sacred journey. We observed that the participants clear the area of refuse, discarding the desiccated ritual offerings from previous pilgrimages; then they decorate the altar table and arch with fresh items, lay out petates of paper figures, gather people for the entragada, cut the throats of the sacrificial fowl, sprinkle the blood on the paper figures, finish decorating the altar, place food offerings atop the decorations, wait a short period, and then proceed to consume the offerings. As the participants grew increasingly exhausted, we took note of some deviations we interpreted as mistakes and witnessed people’s attempts to correct them. Procedures for assembling the many secondary or more minor altars, such as cleansing arrays and the cruz afuera, were also consistently executed from year to year. We expect rituals, such as the Catholic Mass, for instance, to be composed of repeated patterns of invariant behavior. Because of this expectation, we also believe the canonical message of the liturgy to remain constant. Constancy is one feature that sets ritual action apart from other forms of social expression. Nahua costumbre rituals, however, appear to tolerate a high degree of variation and innovation. Variance in ritual performance can partly be attributed to the generally relaxed and informal demeanor with which Nahuas approach most social situations. Adults rarely correct one another, even children, and at all times a restrained politeness and sense of humor is appreciated by everybody. Another important factor is that religion and ritual is based on a body of Nahua Oral Tradition accumulated without benefit of written texts. The complex sequence of events stretching over days or weeks and performed year after year is based solely on memory. While variations are bound to emerge, on the whole the fundamental sequence of ritual episodes is similar from performance to performance, and it is apparent that the actors strive for consistency.

We believe that these ritual patterns hold a significance for Nahua devotees that goes far beyond the merits of simply obeying the rules or following procedure. Altars that the Nahua construct establish an ordered center to counteract the disordered and sometimes threatening periphery. What the altar offering or mezah does for the spatial layout of the cosmos, consistency in ritual performance does for its temporal aspects. In essence, by repeating ritual sequences as scrupulously as possible, the people impose a sense of order that complements the order expressed in altar design and the array of offerings. For the ancient Aztecs, putting things in temporal order was a critically important philosophical principle. As Maffie points out, the Nahuatl verb tecpana means “to arrange or put in order, to line up, to arrange a sequence.”72 This was the same term used to describe the work of learned rulers and priests who created the apparatus of calendars, laws, and rules of conduct. The Nahua today continue to create order in this way through strict adherence to the yearly round of observances and the proper sequencing of events during rituals. Evidence for these connections appears in the orderly arrangement of the cut-­paper figures that are integral to a mezah, termed quintecpanah tlatecmeh (“arranging the paper figures”) and also the corresponding sequence of sones or ritual music.73 The same root tecpana appears several times in a chant to Seven Flower delivered by ritual specialist Silveria Hernández Hernández, in which she refers to the act of planting or sowing the maize seed as arranging things in an orderly way (e.g., mitztecpanati, “they put you [the sacred maize seed] in a row” or “in order”).74 The pilgrimage to Postectli, replete with music and heartfelt chanting, is colorful and moving and also exciting as people gather from neighboring communities to work toward a common goal. At times it is intense, as sacrificial birds are killed and offerings are tearfully dedicated. At other moments the mood is profound, as the deepest concerns and fears of the people are addressed. All the while it is a joyous celebration of Indigenous culture celebrated in opposition to quotidian dealings with the dominant Mestizo population. No other ritual occasion in the Nahua repertoire requires such an enormous outlay of time and resources or so much physical stamina to complete. By directly engaging the spirit entities and, through them, the sacred cosmos itself, the pilgrimage establishes or reestablishes balance, harmony, and equanimity between the human and spirit worlds, leading people to a deep satisfaction and confirmation that they are living their lives aligned with the affirming, life-­giving forces in the cosmos.

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Although Nahua religion, as we have seen, has incorporated certain elements from Christianity, these appear to be ancillary to the purpose and overarching structure of the pilgrimage rituals. The sacred journey to Postectli (or any of the lesser mountains) is the concrete expression of highly sophisticated philosophical ideas that not only trace to prehistory but give the participants a sense of who they are—­people are clearly riveted by their experience. Without an understanding of the content of the ritual episodes and how these practices affirm what it means to be Nahua, the pilgrimage tradition would be incomprehensible. We came to the events as outsiders, and their meaning was less pertinent to our own lives, but

even so, they have touched us deeply. Nahua pilgrimage is the ultimate act of respect toward fellow human beings and the forces of the cosmos that sustain life. To fail to demonstrate this deep level of respect is to be a coyotl—­an outsider, a Mestizo, a non-­Indigenous person, or, more troubling, a fellow villager who has forsaken his or her cultural traditions to become a Protestant or reformed Catholic evangelical and intolerant of el costumbre religious practices. The people returned to their communities completely exhausted and at the same time thoroughly energized by the fact that they had experienced something significant that had changed both themselves and the world.

Notes 1. The Nahuatl name and the Spanish hombre bújo have been rendered in English as “owl man” as well as “man owl” (our preference). 2. The name mecos is a Spanish borrowing from the original Nahuatl (spelled mēcoz or mēcohtinih; in the singular, mēcoh, in Huastecan Nahuatl), which derives from chichimecos, referring to the hunter-­gatherer peoples called Chichimec, who lived in the desert zone north of the Huasteca at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards (see Provost 1975). As we mentioned in chapter 2, Báez-­Jorge and Gómez Martínez (1998: 70–­76; 2001: 434–­38) connect the conception of man owl–­hombre búho–­tlacatecolotl to the pre-­Hispanic trickster deity Tezcatlipoca, or Smoking Mirror. In 1985 Amatlán ritual specialist Silveria Hernández Hernández cut a paper image of tlahueliloc (see paper figure X-9 in table X.1) to evoke her conception of “wrathful one”; see further information about this possible manifestation or alter ego of tlacatecolotl in Sandstrom (1991: 267, fig. 11). Silveria portrays wrath as a creature with horns (or a horned headdress), a central cut she described as its heart, and an animal’s fringed tail. 3. Statement 12, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 01:25:34–­01:26:23 (AILLA resouce ID: 284722). 4. María Dolores Hernández cut an image in 1985 from black paper that she identified as a devil or diablo (see paper figure X-10 in table X.1) because, as she explained, it is a malevolent wind, one of seven that like to travel around together at night. She gave it animal horns, a mouth full of teeth, an animal’s hairy tail, numerous wing-­like protrusions below the arms, a heart, and two other unidentified body cuts. Like Cirilo, she asserted that this devil is not the same as tlacatecolotl (“man owl”), nor is it tlahueliloc (“wrath”), but added that the devil is the brother of miquiliztli (“death”). In chapter 2 we reported the finding that some people regard him as the alienated elder brother of God-­Totiotzin (Sandstrom 1991: 186). Based on the incomplete and contradictory ethnographic information about these spirit entities, we identify this particular paper image only as a devil (diablo); cf. Sandstrom (1991: 267, fig. 12).

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5. Figures of miquiliztli (“death”) are common in paper-­ figure arrays assembled for purposes of curing. Versions cut by ritual specialist María Dolores Hernández for a typical cleansing-­curing ritual reveal her range of style in portraying this entity; see Sandstrom (1991: 268, figs. 13–­14). She created the cuttings from delicate white tissue paper (papel de china) because, she said, “they are the color of bones.” Both have a wrinkled appearance to indicate great age. One image of death she called “bone skirts” (see paper figure X-11 in table X.1), pointing out the fringe-­like cuts on its sides. In her conception miquiliztli is a creature with the irregular flight of a butterfly that walks around on its tiptoes (note the three-­toed feet). Another image of death (X-12) reveals the spirit entity’s elbow, shoulder, and hip joints, and strange ribs radiating from its heart. 6. Compare Sandstrom (1991: 271, fig. 20). 7. Compare Sandstrom (1991: 270, figs. 17–­18). 8. His choice of the term caruz in Nahuatl is a Spanish borrowing that may be an idiosyncratic local usage. 9. Nicholson (1971: 416, 428) identifies the winds associated with the four cardinal directions and underworld entities conceived in quadruple form in pre-­Hispanic Mesoamerica. The color dimensions and multiples of four are facets of contemporary Nahua ritual that warrant further investigation. 10. As reported in Chicontepec (Gómez Martínez 2002: 61), white may be associated with rain storms that originate in the north, but white, as the color of bones, also links these figures with the underworld. 11. The layout is based on Cirilo’s paper cuttings in our composite Altar Set 00, augmented by the documentary record of photographs taken during the Postectli cleansings in 1998 and 2001 as well as the series of cleansings we observed during the pilgrimages to Palaxtepetl, Tres Pozitos, and Xomulco in 2007 (see appendixes A, B, and C). The rendering is also informed by two cleansings that Cirilo conducted for clients during January and February that year. We analyze these preventive

counter-­sorcery rituals and illustrate the layout of the ritual array in Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2021: 96, fig. 3.3). 12. In Altar Set 16 (not illustrated) Cirilo portrayed one such cutting of “little dead one wind” with the jagged teeth of an animal, similar to the visage of man owl and his female counterpart. This kind of flexibility in creative expression seems to be the norm and not the exception in Nahua practice. 13. See the Huastecan Nahuatl definition of tlacotontli in Sullivan et al. (2016: 472) and English translation in Online Nahuatl Dictionary (n.d.) at https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​ /​204697; compare https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​ 191040. 14. Gómez Martínez (2002: 121; 2013: 197–­98). 15. Molina (1944 [1571]: pt. 2, col. 4, 119); translation ours. 16. See Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2021: 93–­ 96). Karttunen (1983: 256), citing modern usage in the Nahuat dialect of Zacapoaxtla, Puebla, recorded by Key and Key (1953: 194), defines the verb tlacotōnaltia as “to prohibit someone from doing something,” which would seem to confirm our interpretation. Classical Aztec glosses of words formed from the morphemes cotōna, “to cut something, to break something off, to wound someone,” and cotōni, “for a cord, thread, or rope to snap” (Karttunen 1983: 42), are attested in numerous sources and also fit with contemporary usage regarding cutting, shortening, and breaking things as well as causing (or preventing) destruction. For example, tlacotontontli, “a small part of something” (Molina 1944 [1571]: pt. 2, col. 4, 119), or tlacoton, “little half,” an Indigenous unit of measure (according to Lockhart 1992: 166), entail the morpheme tlahco-­ (alternately spelled, or confounded with, tlaco-­), meaning “middle, center, half” (Karttunen 1983: 260); additionally, numerous compounds imply “to divide or split something in half” (see tlahcoitta in Online Nahuatl Dictionary [n.d.] at https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/​node ​/​207781). But consider how tlacōlhuia, “to deflect something from its path, to change a trajectory” (Karttunen 1983: 255; also Key and Key 1953: 194), based on the verb cōlhuia, “to skirt something, someone; to avoid something, someone bypassing to one side,” involving the element col-­, “something twisted” (Karttunen 1983: 40), may also inform the cultural understanding of ritual practices to prevent these malignant forces from wreaking havoc. The many words (and homophones) deriving from this complicated semantic domain are worthy of deeper analysis. 17. Years previously, in 1985, Cirilo produced a cutout from white newsprint that he called xochiehecatl (see paper figure X-13 in table X.1). That image of the flower wind (also “flowery” or “flowered” wind) has rib holes and the rake-­like headdress that associates it with the earth. Cirilo said that, attracted when people tell lies, it adversely affects the seed about to be planted. We have documented many examples of the disease-­causing xochiehecatl figures cut as four attached figures, arranged head-­to-­ head or side-­by-­side in multiples. But while some cutters designated these malevolent entities only as xochiehecatl (or tlazolli ehecatl, meaning simply “filth wind”), others would identify them by their realm of origin and thus give specific names like

tlalli ehecatl (“earth wind”), atl ehecatl (“water wind”), apan ehecatl cihuatl (“water wind woman”), or mictlan tlazolli ehecatl (“filth wind from the place of the dead”); see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986: 81–­100, figs.  1–­26; 2020: 95, fig.  3.2), Sandstrom (1991: 269–­74, figs. 15–­24). 18. See Cirilo’s characterization later in this chapter of the wild aspect of Santa Rosa cimarrón, a spirit entity associated with marijuana. 19. In table 6.1 we group together iconographically the full collection of tlacotontli or something-­cut-­smaller cuttings present in Altar Sets 14, 15, and 16, but we have space to illustrate only one exemplar in each group (the drawings are those figures highlighted in bold font in table 6.1). 20. We have chosen to illustrate three tlacotontli cuttings as Altar Set 00 exemplars that feature this arch device (which the ritual specialist placed together in Altar Sets 14 and 16 but omitted the style from Altar Set 15). 21. The location of these figures outside the array led us to conclude erroneously in an earlier publication (Sandstrom 1978: 19, 21) that they were figures cut in excess or intended for later use in a curing ritual. On occasions when the tlacotontli figures are cut for a private cleansing-­curing ritual commissioned by an individual client, they may be placed on a bag of earth taken from the floor of the person’s house or on a container of water taken from the place where they bathe. This procedure serves to protect the patient from spirit attack. 22. Maffie (2014: 137); italics in the original. 23. Following Maffie (2014: 144–­45); Karttunen (1983: 158–­59). 24. Maffie (2014: 138); italics ours. 25. On dual-­aspect monism, see Maffie (2014: 13, 48, 137–­40, 169–­70). See also Lorente Fernández (2011: 22) on equilibrium and balance in the Nahua cosmos. 26. Maffie (2014: 145–­46). 27. Gillespie (2007: 114). 28. Mikulska (2015: 272–­75; 2019b: 46–­49). 29. Mikulska (2019b: 48). See the helpful extended discussion of tabularity in Mikulska (2015: 261–­76). 30. The discussion in chapters 7 and Coda explores how such tabular structures serve to impose order on unruly wind spirits. 31. Sandstrom (1989: 372; 1991: 71, fig. 19). 32. We illustrate one such image (see paper figure X-14 in table X.1; also Sandstrom 1991: 271, fig.  19) that Cirilo cut in 1985 but only later identified, in a comment aside, as a soldier wind. Squat in overall size (about 6 × 15.5 centimeters, or 2.5 × 6 inches) and lacking any distinguishing headgear, the figure has rib holes to indicate that this guard is itself a dead soul. 33. See photos A.49 and A.50 in appendix A. 34. Our study of the paper-­figure complex of el costumbre (Sandstrom and Sandstrom 1986) was published the same year as Dow’s book The Shaman’s Touch, and so neither work engages the other. Dow (1986: 135) calls the practitioner’s role “shamanic” and his curing techniques “symbolic healing.” 35. See Dow (1986: 150) for a summary of his theory of Otomí symbolic healing.

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36. Stresser-­Péan (2009: 225). 37. Statement 13, VHS Tape 1, MP4 counter 01:32:08–­01:33:14 (AILLA resource ID: 284722). 38. The schema of altar locations, ritual episodes, and foci of the pilgrimage mezah altar offerings is outlined in table 5.1. 39. Justeson and Kaufman (2001: 331). 40. In 1998 Cirilo cut another image of La Cueva hill (see paper figure X-15 in table X.1) with a decidedly different appearance from that of his more Otomí-­styled creation by the same name. In this version La Cueva hill has as its heart a distinctive zigzag cut with four points, but no headdress. At the time Cirilo described the zigzags and V-cuts that form an arch at the bottom of the body as the hill’s traje or its suit of clothing. 41. In hindsight, we recognize the significance of a cutting that Cirilo produced years earlier that is illustrated in Sandstrom (2005a: 59, fig.  3.6). It appears to be his standard portrayal of key that he designated “Postectli, Hill of the Siren.” He remarked at the time, “When you ask pardon for something you have done, the keys on either side of the figure open the door to the hill” (Sandstrom 2005a: 58). 42. See Perez González (2011: 86, 125). Galinier (1997: 50) and Stresser-­Péan (2009: 245) relate local historical accounts of incidents involving church bells. 43. See Sandstrom (2019). We have selected one additional image of apanchaneh from our archive that reveals something more of water dweller’s nature. The cutting (see paper figure X-16 in table X.1) was created by Silveria Hernández Hernández in the shape of a mermaid with a woman’s head, long hair, fin-­ like arms, a heart, and a folded-­paper tail like that of a fish in place of legs. This portrayal reflects her image as presented in myths and her crucial role in providing water for the crops as well as fish for people to eat. The flowing hair reflects a widespread belief that she protects women whose husbands are unfaithful. When the wayward husband crosses a stream to return home after cheating on his wife, apanchaneh entangles his feet in her long hair and drowns him. 44. As in Nahua practice, the flower-­covered cross is prevalent in Otomí rituals (Dow 2005: 246). The foliated-­cross motif is widespread in the central highlands as well as Maya archaeological sites, including Palenque far to the south of Amatlán in the state of Chiapas. It is said to portray the world tree, an expression of the four cardinal directions, which stands at the center of the world (Villaseñor Black 2001: 287–­88). 45. In April 1998, just before the pilgrimage in June to Postectli, Cirilo cut an alternate version of Santa Juanita (paper figure X-17) that illustrates the master paper-­cutter’s range of expression. He explained that the spirit entity has two V-cuts revealing pockets in her clothing and she wears a fringed shawl (rebozo) over her shoulders. He pointed out the figure’s upraised arms alongside the lower portion of her body and said that the central, lobed cut depicts manos rezando, her “praying hands.” 46. Maffie (2014: 220–­22, 230–­40). 47. Köhler (1991) compares sixteenth-­century accounts of Aztec identifications of constellations with those of modern Indigenous people of Mesoamerica.

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48. Heiras Rodríguez (2005: 226) records this practice in Tepehua rituals, as does Galinier (1997: 124, 126) for Otomí costumbres. 49. As mentioned earlier, an especially important aspect of this spirit entity is tlaltepactli, the earth’s surface. In 1985 Amatlán ritual specialist María Dolores Hernández cut a paper figure of tlaltepactli (see paper figure X-18 in table X.1; also Sandstrom 1991: 262, fig.  1) from white tissue paper. She depicted it with an elaborate headdress of vegetation, a heart, a pair of shoulder joints, two cuts embodying maize ears, and a row of diamond cuts for its belt or possibly clothing decorations. The arms-­down stance indicates that the figure is a powerful manifestation of the earth, a convention normally reserved for death-­related entities. She asserted that the figure is both male and female and is occasionally encountered on trails at night, appearing in the guise of an old man with a beard. 50. Abelardo de la Cruz (personal communication) explained that the cooking fire is called lumbre and rarely fuego in the Huasteca (the latter term being more familiar to urban Spanish speakers), while the spirit entity’s name in Nahuatl varies by community. Gómez Martínez (2002: 141, 149n6) characterizes the different manifestations of fire: tlixictli (in Spanish, ombligo del fuego, meaning “navel of fire”); tlitl xahauntzi (fuego con llamas, “fire with flames”); and huehuentzi tlitl (viejo fuego, “old fire”). 51. Folklorist and ethnomusicologist Charles Boilès collected Tepehua and Otomí sacred cut-­paper figures in the 1970s as part of his research into ritual music. He told us that a meal of tortillas and beans may indicate the conjoining of sun and earth. We could never elicit systematic commentary from our Nahua companions on the cultural meanings of different foods, but it would make a fascinating study. 52. Cirilo cut an image for us in 1998 of Santa Rosa cimarrón, “wild Santa Rosa” (see paper figure X-19 in table X.1), who stirs up the wind if annoyed. Like the other untamed, wild things he chose to portray in paper, the behavior of this entity is neither wholly malevolent nor benign but unpredictable. See Barrera Caraza (1996) and Báez Cubero (2012) for information on the use of marijuana by Otomí practitioners. 53. In April 1998, perhaps in preparation for the Postectli pilgrimage a few months later, Cirilo cut for us another figure of San Bartolo (see paper figure X-20 in table X.1) that offered insight into the puzzling iconography. This particular figure lacks the characteristic headdress but has a series of cuts in the body showing the heart, pockets lower down, and two flanking cuts that we now know are keys. It will be recalled that one function of the key is to open the house with seven doors, likely an allusion to the church ruins in San Bartolo Tutotepec. 54. Cirilo produced a different cutting of Xihuiyoh hill in April 1998 (see paper figure X-21 in table X.1), perhaps anticipating the pilgrimage in June that year. The headdress has four flanges instead of two, and there are two vertical columns of four cuts that invoke the range of sacred hills. 55. As we have emphasized, the range of spirit entities that Nahua ritual specialists cut in paper is limitless. A selection of water-­related figures from around Chicontepec and the village of Amatlán is reproduced in Sandstrom (2019), including the

one of apanchaneh with a mermaid’s tail (see paper figure X-16, again, illustrated in table X.1). 56. Our close examination of photographs of a similar episode in the Palaxtepetl pilgrimage in which a white chicken is buried alive shows a blood offering on images of the good wind. For some reason, Cirilo and his colleagues chose to omit the image of cloud from our sample collection, and so we include one he created in 1998 (see paper figure X-22 in table X.1), just prior to the pilgrimage that year. The cutting features distinctive bulges protruding from below the arms and above the knees. Cirilo asserted that these are the entity’s muscles, because the clouds are so strong they “cannot be vanquished.” The paper figure’s bifurcate headdress is unusual; only a few of the sacred hills, for instance, three images of San Bartolo (paper figures 04-­21, 07-­04, 12-­08) and one of San Estéban (11-­ 16), feature similar designs. Cirilo described the parallel cuts in the cloud’s headdress as flowers, but they may indicate running water. Maldonado Jiménez (2001) and Juárez Becerril (2015) report on a series of ritual offerings in the state of Morelos directed to the rain-­bringing winds. 57. This is the cutting that provided insight into the front-­ facing, arms-­upraised posture that we discussed in chapter 5. 58. Another version of Santa Úrsula hill that Cirilo created earlier in 1998 (see paper figure X-23 in table X.1) lacks a headdress and has two floral designs, one above the other. 59. The dry-­season second planting (tonamilli in Nahuatl) occurs in winter, with accompanying Chicomexochitl rituals and other observances held at that time. We have not participated in pilgrimages except those that coincide with the rainy-­ season planting, so investigators should look out for differences between the atlatlacualtiliztli rituals held to petition rain and these other agricultural-­cycle observances. 60. We include three paper cuttings in the Coda to illustrate the Nahua tlamocuitlahuihquetl spirit entity conceptualized as both witness and guardian. The first (see paper figure X-24 in table X.1) was fashioned from eight layers of white tissue paper by María Dolores Hernández in March 1986. It features a headdress of vegetation, a central V-cut she called its heart, and two lower cuts whose meaning she did not elaborate. The second example (paper figure X-25) was cut from two layers of manila paper (papel revolución) by ritual specialist Silveria Hernández in October 1985. She identified it as tlamocuitlahuihquetl but also called it xochitlalanquetl, meaning “flower carrier” (literally, “one who raises up flowers”). She explained that it delivers flowers and people’s prayers to Totiotzin, flying on wings indicated by the fringe-­like cuts alongside the body. Because it “tells God about illness” and “cares for people and keeps them well,” she incorporates it in cleansings she performs on a hill after a woman has given birth. The pair of figures with their vegetative headdresses shown here joined side-­by-­side are probably meant to be folded together, thus rendering it as a single, four-­ ply image. Finally, we present another witness-­guardian (paper figure X-26) that Cirilo created in 1998, intending that we would take it with us to the US to protect our household. He provided us with many multiples of this particular tlamocuitlahuihquetl

cutting to share with others and showed us how to fold open the facial V-cuts and body cuts to yield a single figure with its two layers folded as one. Like the depictions created by his colleagues María Dolores and Silveria, the headdress of this witness-­guardian entity emphasizes plant growth emerging from the earth’s surface. By piecing together the evidence, we feel comfortable in speculating that the two openings in the body are the open windows or portals through which this spirit entity witnesses the costumbre offerings and enables benefits to flow in return. Silveria stated in her cleansing of Cirilo midway up the sacred mountain that the mezah is unimpeded: “here the door is open, the window is open” (Chant 10, line 41). Cirilo’s design motif in his cutting of paper figure X-26 indeed resembles a church window. We see the same shapes replicated in the cut-­paper ventanas (“windows”) hung as altar decorations in the 2007 Palaxtepetl pilgrimage (photos A.23–­A.25, A.71, and A.72 in appendix A). The witness-­guardian cuttings hung from the vine connecting inside and outside altars (just visible in photo A.19) feature the same portal-­like elements, unlike similar witness figures laid out on petates whose V-cuts Cirilo described as pockets. It remains for ethnographers to confirm just how the paper images furnished with portals or pockets are conceived to foster two-­way communication with the spirit world. Elsewhere we illustrated paper figures of several “senior witnesses” with the same features (Sandstrom and Sandstrom 1986: 108–­13), labeling them onipixtoc aquiqui’ixtoc; Abelardo de la Cruz (personal communication, November 21, 2019) corrected the spelling to read nicpixtoc nicchixtoc. 61. In appendix A, photo A.41 shows a woman (center) wearing an embrodered blouse; the front is tucked in, forming a roll that serves as a pocket or purse. 62. The headdress and body design evident in paper figure 09-­08 matches that of “earth over there” (with a seven-­pronged headdress instead of nine prongs, and six V-cuts in the body instead of the customary nine), but Cirilo identified the image simply as “earth.” It may be an example of the flexibility of Nahua ritual practice, but we suspect that if we had pressed him for more details, Cirilo would have confirmed it as another instance of his hybrid designation “earth over there” (combining one or more altar–­earth–­hill elements into the design). Based on the visual cues, we decided to amplify the figure’s name and place it with similar cuttings categorized in table 6.2. In the Coda we posit an explanation for vagaries such as this, which challenge our understanding of el costumbre iconography. 63. It is worth noting that Altar Set 10 has the greatest number of variant designs mixed together on the petates, either by intention or accident; how the variants are distributed across the collection is summarized in tables 5.1 and 6.2. 64. Again, we point out that our enumeration scheme, which appears to be out of sequence here, reflects Cirilo’s original arrangement of the bundles as he presented them to us. 65. See photos B.34–­B.41 in appendix B. 66. Mikulska (2015: 445–­59) discusses at length the importance of flags—­pamitl (in the singular, alternatively, pantli or panitl) and tetehuitl, a paper (or human) banner—­ and their

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associations with sacrifice in pre-­Hispanic Mesoamerica; compare Huastecan Nahuatl usage in the Online Nahuatl Dictionary (n.d.) at https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org/node/​204386 to classical Nahuatl attestations traced from the entries at https://​ nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org​/node​/​176299 and https://​nahuatl​ .wired​-humanities​.org/node/173202. Maldonado Jiménez (2001: 405) reports that Nahuas of Morelos also associate the Mexican flag with thunder and lightning. Trejo Barrientos and his coauthors (2014: 102–­3, 115) write that while the Mexican flag or bandera expresses civic devotion for many, it has widespread significance for Indigenous people who associate its colors of red, white, and green with the seeds; compare Williams García (1963: 24) and González González (2019: 185–­87) on this point. 67. We document examples of apanchaneh portrayed in paper for each of the pilgrimages: see photos 3.10, 3.19, 4.53, and 4.70 (the Postectli trek); photos A.27, A.38, A.41, A.68, A.70, and A.81 in appendix A (Palaxtepetl); photos B.3, B.6, B.7, B.13, B.15, B.20, and B.33 in appendix B (Tres Pozitos); and photo C.3 in appendix C (Xomulco). 68. In her chant to Chicomexochitl, the ritual specialist Silveria Hernández Hernández addresses the ancient, ancestral earth pair using the honorific forms of address Tlalhuehuentzin

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and Tlalilamatzin; see Sandstrom and Gómez Martínez (2004: 355), where the Nahuatl terms have been transcribed tlalxahuantzi and tlalilamatzi. 69. Compare examples of the sacred earth outfitted in its male-­female aspects in photos 3.12 and 3.19 to those created for later pilgrimages; see photo A.16 in appendix A; photo B.17 in appendix B; and photos C.3 and C.27 in appendix C. 70. In some locales, such as Ichcacuatitla at the base of Postectli, these clothed paper figures are kept in a central community shrine or the sponsoring ritual specialist’s shrine; compare the photograph of chicomexochitl in Gómez Martínez (2002: 79). Similarly dressed and preserved paper figures of maize, other crops, and a “lord of the village” created by Otomí ritual practitioners of San Pedro Tlachichilco, Hidalgo, are illustrated in Stresser-­Péan (2009: 120–­21, figs. 6.19–­6.22). 71. The same basic sequence of ritual events is reproduced in the 2007 pilgrimages documented in appendixes A, B, and C. 72. Maffie (2014: 105–­6). 73. As reported by Pacheco (2014: 193–­94). 74. See Sandstrom and Gómez Martínez (2004: 350, 355, 357), lines 5, 132, and 192.

7 Keys to Nahua Ritual Strategies Ritual Objects as Subjects In this part of the analysis we move from the specific to the general to examine features of the pilgrimage rituals that help to illuminate precisely what the Nahua accomplish when they create an altar and dedicate offerings to the forces of the cosmos embodied in the paper figures. It is clear from our description of the different episodes of the pilgrimage undertaking that Nahua religion is organized around ritual objects—­most prominently, the paper figures. These objects, however, are not the inanimate things of the Euro-­ American world view but rather components of the living Nahua cosmos. As such, they possess a subjectivity and agency that allows them to be active participants in social interaction and reciprocal exchanges. Their physical forms reveal aspects of Totiotzin that are animated and thus can be dealt with through ritual means. They are best understood as agents that can and do have an impact on human life. What is important to emphasize about ritual objects in the Nahua cosmos (or any object, for that matter) is what they reveal about divinity: specifically, they are vehicles that disclose those manifestations of Totiotzin that cause things to happen. Far from being lifeless things, ritual objects share intrinsic qualities with human beings, and people can interact with them because they manifest essential spiritual substance. The reason that Nahua paper cutters create and ritually animate figures of the bell, walking stick, cross, flag, or key is because they regard such entities as aspects of Totiotzin that not only cause events to unfold but also possess the capacity to accept offerings, engage in reciprocal relations, respond to entreaties, and (as we have seen) become monsters that attack and wreak havoc. It is the unique knowledge of the ritual specialist coupled with the out-­of-­the-­ordinary venue of the ritual itself that together provide the context that allows people to engage with ritual objects as a form of social activity. Imposing Euro-­American dualistic thinking on Nahua ritual objects threatens to diminish the religion of el costumbre and reduce it to “idol worship,” but this is a logical fallacy of dualistic thinking. Far from worshiping idols, the Nahua regard all things, entities, and states of being as constituting the fabric of a living cosmos that, under the right circumstances, has the power to impinge on human consciousness and affect events. Like a heavy rock perched on the edge of a cliff, Nahua objects store potential energy activated through the efforts of skilled ritual specialists. What we might call objects, the Nahua see as subjects.

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This emphasis on objects-­ as-­ subjects is shared throughout Indigenous Mesoamerica. What leads us to draw this conclusion is not merely the abundance of ritual paper figures. Photographs of Nahua altars reveal that they are laden not only with food offerings but also additional paraphernalia, including statuary, saints’ images, glowing candles, smoking incense braziers, coyol palm adornments, crosses, Five Flower and Seven Flower marigold wands, clay whistles, flower-­vine rosaries, maize bundles, clothed and bejeweled seed figures, divination bundles (containing maize kernels, coins, crystals, prehistoric figurines, and copper axes), and decorated walking sticks or staffs of authority. These objects-­as-­subjects and numerous other implements are displayed prominently and employed ritually throughout the year. On Nahua offerings and ritual objects Gómez Martínez writes: The characteristics, origin, and selection of the elements of the offering acquire important meanings in the logic of the ritual, depending on the goals expressed to the divinities. The offering not only integrates a grouping of things that are offered in the rite, they are gifts carrying messages and symbols [that] allude to petitions, gratitude, and commitments; through the objects, the link between humans and the sacred world is realized.1

Our description and analysis thus far have emphasized that the overall purpose of Nahua ritual is to recalibrate relations between forces in the universe and the human community. To be sure, people hold rituals in hopes of solving a specific problem—­to cure illness, assure rain, or protect people and animals. But no matter how apparently restricted in scope the immediate religious and pragmatic goals, participants view their efforts as an attempt to reestablish the cosmic balance. Equilibrium is constantly threatened—­ whether from disrespectful behavior, from mere neglect and failure to acknowledge the spirit entities, or from the machinations of a sorcerer. At any given moment it is as if the universe teeters on the brink of chaos and dissolution. But for the Nahua both the immediate need and more abstract goals of maintaining balance and equilibrium are largely fulfilled through the manipulation of objects-­as-­subjects. The strategy is evidently ancient, and it is clearly related to the pantheistic nature of Mesoamerican religion based on a monistic philosophy. We know that other pantheistic traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism are also highly oriented to ritual objects and images. In the end, the focus on the visible and the tangible in Nahua rituals may be understood

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as a strategy to concretize and make more relevant the abstract foundations of what is demonstrably a sophisticated religious and philosophical system. But still we have to ask, Why such an enormous proliferation of ritual objects? We now think the explanation lies in the fact that, whether it is a Catholic saint’s image, a walking stick festooned with bright ribbons, or a precise array of reduplicated cut-­paper figures of some particular spirit entity, what is revealed in each instance is a different aspect of Totiotzin, and each one provides a unique vehicle through which the sacred cosmos expresses itself. An altar laden with the proper objects properly arranged discloses more of the divine and increases the value of that particular placement of offerings. Ritual objects provide an additive function to the rituals. The greater the number and variety of objects, the more Totiotzin is concentrated: 10,000 paper figures are 10,000 expressions of divinity. It is precisely because of the objects placed on Nahua altars that they become the crucible where the power of the cosmos converges and where humans stand to increase the possibility of harnessing the sacred to their own ends. We think this line of reasoning regarding the sacred helps to explain the vast numbers of puzzling stone caches that have been unearthed by archaeologists at the Templo Mayor site in Mexico City. The boxes are filled with multiples of many objects, such as seashells, stingray spines, small statues, colorful rocks, and even amate paper placards with deities drawn on them (as noted in chapter 5). Louise Burkhart writes that the sacred aspect of reality (what Maffie and we would describe as the transforming power of teotl, or totiotzin among contemporary people) is manifest in “shimmering light, precious stones, brightly colored birds and flowers, fragrant scents, and pleasing music,” and, further, that “[l]ife itself is a bursting and blossoming of shimmering, radiant color.”2 Carrying the analogy of this “cult of brilliance” further, following Hill (1992), Burkhart writes that “to sing of flowers calls into being this sacred, iridescent, paradisiacal place infused with creative, animating power.”3 Although she focuses on the power of Nahuatl song, poetry, and dance to call forth sacred reality, Burkhart could be speaking about all ritual objects when she states that the “relationship between the immediately perceived world and this sacred transformation of it is metaphorical, in that elements from the flowery world can ‘stand for’ things of the ordinary world, and yet it is more than metaphorical, for, in a sense, ordinary things ‘really are’ their transformational selves, however fleeting and incomplete one’s perception of those real selves may be.”4 However, to be clear, “sacred things do

not represent power; they are power.”5 It seems that the objects precisely arranged in caches in the sacred precinct concentrated sacred power and made the Aztec capital the religious center of the empire. It became a place where teotl revealed itself dramatically (and, as the Mexica leaders hoped, enduringly). Perhaps the same reasoning explains the green serpentine pavements lying one atop the other beneath the courtyard at the Olmec site of La Venta. Resembling the stacked plates of a storage battery, the construction concentrated and revealed divinity and thereby transformed the place into a power center.

Specificity and Locality The focus on objects-­as-­subjects in Nahua religious practice is exemplified by the exceptional specificity among the multitudes of paper figures. But the sheer number of spirit entities and their embodiments in paper seem to surpass by far what one imagines would be needed to satisfy people’s daily needs. Ritual specialists can create innovative images and envision whole new spirit entities in the process, and perhaps it is this creative impulse that accounts in part for the enormous size of the Nahua spirit pantheon. We recognize that the ability of such practitioners to abstract out of the unity any number of potentially useful (that is, specific) aspects without doing damage to central cosmological and philosophical principles is the great strength of pantheistic religious systems. What is interesting to witness is how deliberately the ritual specialists and participants work to incorporate such multitudes of specific spirit entities (each with its unique identity and image in paper) in order to address the singular sacred entity of Totiotzin. To put it succinctly, people address through ritual action the abstract cosmos by means of social engagement with its infinite, physical manifestations in order to achieve specific, pragmatic goals.6 The specificity of the strategies employed in rituals is matched by the extreme concern with locality in Nahua rituals. During chanting, ritual specialists in Amatlán repeatedly state that the offering is being held in that particular community in the municipio of Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz, as if the spirit entities might misunderstand or mistake the origin of the gifts. Participants circumambulate the cruz afuera altar and the spots where specialists cut the paper figures as if to sacralize and fix those places. The four sacred mountains visited by the pilgrims can be seen as a series of specified locations where people construct altars, sacrifice things of value, and address particular spirits. It is within a certain narrow

cavity in the Postectli monolith that apanchaneh-­tonantzin lives, and it is from another cleft in the mountain where the signs of rain by lightning and thunder emanate. To highlight the importance of naming the exact place on the earth’s surface where offerings are dedicated is the care that a ritual specialist takes to create a paper cutting specifying “the earth over there” (whether indicating Ichcacuatitla at Postectli’s base or the patch of ground beneath the altar table in Amatlán). Since any and every place partakes of Totiotzin, it is interesting that the Nahua expend so much effort in precisely locating in time and space their ritual activities and the dwellings of the spirit entities. We should see these as places where Totiotzin is more concentrated than elsewhere, where the pervasive sacred is focused—­that is, unconcealed—­and people readily perceive its power and nature.7

Ritual Economy, Exchange, and Reciprocity The pilgrimage to Postectli is remarkably elaborate considering the modest means of the people of Amatlán. One can almost regard it as involuted in that the numbers and complexity of the offerings on various altars far exceed what one would think would be minimally necessary to satisfy desired ends. Why do they invest in five altars of such luxuriant proportions rather than one or two? Why hire a costly band of musicians in addition to the guitarist and violinist? Why sacrifice so many valued birds to cover altars with their blood? Even by the standards of Nahua ritual activity overall, the pilgrimages seem costly and extravagant. We considered whether the level of complexity and generosity of the offerings may have been due in no small part to our presence and that of the other outsiders. The ritual specialists perhaps wanted to make an impression on us so that we would report to a wider audience just how important Nahua religion is. On reflection, however, we feel that the participation of those of us who were outsiders was not an important factor in either the 1998 or 2001 pilgrimages to Postectli or for the later journeys to three other sacred mountains. It is remarkable how, during the height of ritual activities, our presence faded into the background. In this regard, pilgrimages to Postectli reported on by Nahua ethnographers similarly document elaborate offerings in the absence of outsiders, and so the makeup of groups participating cannot account for the degree of elaboration.8 Descriptions of pre-­Hispanic rituals in the Valley of Mexico and other urban centers exhibited a similar degree

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of involution albeit on much grander scale than what we observed in Amatlán. The sixteenth-­century chroniclers gave the impression that the people of the time were almost continuously engaged in elaborate ritual activities. From their descriptions one easily imagines that there was little time left to engage in routine daily activities.9 It seems possible that what we are witnessing in Amatlán is a carryover from previous times of chronic worry or even pessimism that the cosmos was at the point of a major cataclysm leading to disintegration. Perhaps more important for understanding the pilgrimages, we can see that the magnitude of offerings transcends mere symbolic engagement with the spirit entities. Lavish food and drink, music, and dance are far more than tokens; they are actual gifts that fully attract, hold, and obligate the powers in the Nahua cosmos. They reflect a monistic philosophy where symbolic representations make little sense.10 Most analyses of human behavior relegate studies of religion and economy into separate, incommensurate realms. Religious behavior concerns people’s relations with the sacred or spiritual environment while economic behavior has to do with people wresting value from their material environment. This division is arbitrary, a product of Euro-­American understanding and philosophy, and creates an obstacle to understanding Nahua religion as well as the economy. In our view, exchange and reciprocity, normally seen as aspects of economic relations, apply equally to Nahua interactions with their pantheon of spirit entities. Bringing in an economic perspective illuminates certain dynamics of the religious system, and in previous publications we explored the implications of combining findings from these seemingly noninteractive realms of social life.11 However, we are far from alone in recognizing the relation between ritual and economy in Mesoamerica. López Austin writes that, among the Aztecs, “the gods were thought to participate in a process of interchange. Men acquired water and crops, and were free of illness and plague in exchange for offerings of blood, hearts, fire, copal incense, and quails. The vocabulary in use indicates that in reality it was a kind of business transaction.”12 López Austin also notes that some human sacrifices were known as nextlahualtin, literally “payments.”13 Gómez Martínez says that offerings among contemporary Nahua are known as tlaxtlahuilli, “payment,” and motlaxtlahua, “with what one pays.”14 Lupo adds that, among the Nahua of the Sierra Norte de Puebla, “[a]lmost always, the rites that accompany pleas include offerings; the intention of the latter is to establish an exchange relationship in which the principle of reciprocity obliges the recipients

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to grant that which is asked of them in return.”15 He also writes regarding Nahua belief that the “offering to the earth is truly an economic investment whose payoff will arrive over time.”16 In sum, scholars as well as the Nahua themselves readily acknowledge the economic aspects of their ritual practice, both in the past and among the people today. Table 7.1 lists the types of items assembled by participants prior to embarking on a pilgrimage. The list highlights the consumable and reusable commodities, which typically exceed the value of monetary contributions from participants. Based on the opportunity costs attending any lengthy religious observance, plus the expenditures that people incur in their efforts to dedicate offerings, Nahua rituals in general can be viewed as very high-­stakes exchanges. The economic character of Nahua ritual clearly traces to the pre-­Hispanic era, but it is interesting to observe that the relationship that Spanish peasants in the sixteenth century had with God and the pantheon of Catholic saints has also been described as a form of exchange.17 Archaeologists Patricia A. McAnany and E. Christian Wells in their introduction to Dimensions of Ritual Economy (2008) define ritual economy as “the process of provisioning and consuming that materializes and substantiates world view for managing meaning and shaping interpretation.”18 This complex statement is an attempt to resolve controversial issues in anthropology that over the years have proven quite intractable. First, and perhaps surprising to many, there is no agreed-­upon definition of either ritual or religion among anthropologists.19 These are analytical categories of social life that are challenging to isolate from people’s everyday experiences. But more controversial still, scholars within anthropology have also struggled to characterize and define the very concept of economy. Distinguishing this area of social life from other facets has proven particularly contentious. Most people in our own society believe they can readily distinguish religion from the economy, but on closer scrutiny they often admit that the two realms overlay each other. More serious problems arise when one tries to apply such distinctions cross-­culturally. We have applied an economic model to Nahua ritual behavior, stating elsewhere that “the cut-­paper figures materialize an abstract pantheistic religion and rituals enact a form of social transaction by which people dedicate offerings to spirit entities, who, in turn, provide basic benefits that make life possible. Spirits for the Nahua . . . are social beings who respond to the normal exchanges that lie at the heart of all human interaction.”20 We do not

Table 7.1. Provisions for the Pilgrimage Monetary Outlays Cash offerings of participants, used to purchase needed items Fees paid to musicians Fees paid to Ichcacuatitla authorities

Purchased Items (Consumed)

Gathered or Locally Manufactured Items (Consumed)

Aguardiente (cane alcohol) Bandanas for wrapping maize bundles Beer Brandy or rum Candles and votives (beeswax-­colored paraffin or tallow) Chocolate Fabric, thread, and notions to make clothing for paper figures Coffee Crackers and cookies Fireworks (rockets) to signal ritual phases Jewelry for paper figures Paper (papel de china, papel lustre, papel revolución) to create cut-­paper figures Perfume for walking sticks Ribbons for paper figures and walking sticks Soap to wash clothing of seed figures Soft drinks String Tobacco leaves and cigarettes Water pots

Bamboo as ornaments, for altar table construction Bananas and other fruits as offerings Banana stalk to hold candles Beeswax for candles (now rarely made) Bread, freshly baked Chickens and turkeys for blood and cooked meat Coffee Copal bark incense Coyol palm leaves Cut-­paper figures and paper altar ornaments Eggs Firewood Herbs Maize bundles made from perfect maize cobs (mazorcas), wrapped in new bandanas Marigold blossoms and other seasonal flowers Sugar loaf (piloncillo) Tamales Tortillas Vines to make ritual items and to tie bundles

Purchased Items (Reused)

Locally Manufactured Items (Reused)

Bowls, cups, glasses, and vases Catholic saints’ images and statues Metal bells to attract spirit entities Palm sleeping mat (petate) to carry paper figures Scissors Sisal carrying bags (morrales) Miniature wooden chair, as seating for dressed earth figures beneath the altar

Carrying baskets Clay whistles to call spirit entities Gourd rattles Gourds to carry water Incense braziers Seating to accommodate workers Shrine (xochicalli) of the lead ritual specialist Walking sticks (bastones) to lead procession Wooden box containing dressed seed figures

Note: A version of this table, adapted with the permission of the University of Arizona Press, previously appeared in Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2017: 117, table 4.1).

wish to imply that Nahua rituals can be reduced to economic exchanges or marketplace transactions—­far from it. These exchanges occur in the context of ritual performance and outside of people’s everyday routines, typically in highly emotional contexts that disclose their most important, socially shared values and implicate those sacred forces of the cosmos that are overwhelmingly more powerful than humans. We think Nahuas themselves fully understand rituals as forms of exchange or reciprocity, and we also suspect that most believers are comfortable in economizing, choosing to modify the level of offerings they invest in a ritual observance in response to the perceived severity of the crisis the ritual is meant to address.21 The costly offering dedicated in the 1998 pilgrimage was designed to address the particularly disastrous drought of that year. The pilgrimage offerings we observed in 2007,

on the other hand, were to resolve the perennial insecurity surrounding rainfall and fertility and thus entailed a less extravagant outlay of the provisions itemized in table 7.1. A minor illness requires a relatively modest curing, whereas a major health crisis might call for a significant expenditure. We have found consistent evidence for the proposition that the Nahua, like people everywhere, “measure the cost of a ritual in proportion to the result they are seeking.”22 The list of participants’ names, compiled along with the amount of money they offered to support the pilgrimage, is clearly a mechanism to ensure that rewards from the ritual offering, such as rainfall or health, reflect the investment that people made. An additional point is that the debt owed to powerful spirit entities can never be fully repaid or brought into permanent balance: “[r]itual exchange is basically an unequal transaction from an

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economic point of view.”23 Because people will always be in the spirits’ debt, part of the value offered in exchange for their cooperation is deference, awe, and respect. Gifts obligate the receiver to respond, and we have seen this exchange mechanism operating in many areas of village life. To work their fields, men engage in labor exchange (mano vuelta in Spanish, matlaniliztli in Nahuatl), while women commonly trade skills and effort in preparing for fiestas or celebrations. The critically important institution of compadrazgo or ritual kinship is likewise based on a finely tuned system of give-­and-­take.24 In the realm of religion, then, the economy of exchange is particularly pronounced, and the ritual economy is a topic we take up again later in the chapter. Briefly, adorned altars are seats of exchange where valued offerings are dedicated to selected spirit entities—­not with the intent of controlling them (for they are far too powerful for that) but to obligate them to reciprocate. The tabletop of the altar is the earth’s surface, but, more particularly, it is the productive plane of the milpa, and the milpa is a patch of ordered earth cut from the disordered tangle of the tropical forest where human effort is repaid.25 Lying beneath the table is interior earth, reinforced by the seated paper figures of grandfather earth and grandmother earth. We asked Cirilo about the offerings placed beneath the altar, and he responded with the following statement: The reason they hold this costumbre for the earth is because many of us consume in excess from this earth where we live. At times we so annoy [the earth] it gets fed up with us, then it must be greeted. . . . Truly, many of us take gluttonously so very much from the earth. We must respect the earth so that it does not become annoyed or tired of us. In some places they no longer observe the costumbres, as we do in making a flower offering—xochitlalia—in this way we put down flowers. God is there for us to greet should we need to ask for a favor, to grant us rain so we will have a fertile crop. Those ancient ones who lived long ago did all of this. They cured themselves on the hill, they put down flowers, they danced, they asked for sustenance—all that is needed to live. And like that, it was beautiful. In the abundant past [when people offered flowers and danced], the harvesters picked much more maize—two or three lines or furrows of maize—but that is no longer the case now. [The earth] no longer wants to grow enough maize, beans, and camotes because, truly, we have so multiplied—we are so many people—and some of them no longer show

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respect. That is why the earth is saddened, because we take excessively from it, walk over it, defecate on it, urinate on it.26

The tabletop and area beneath the altar receive the bulk of the offerings in the Nahua appeal for crop fertility. The central importance of altars is apparent, given their number and complexity in the pilgrimages. The gifts of food, drink, blood, tobacco, and candles along with the music, chanting, labor, and (not least) the risk and effort entailed in the trek itself to the sacred prominence all raise the ante in obligating the powers of the entities embodied in paper to reciprocate by providing the conditions of fertility. Altars are the sites where people dedicate offerings and convey their desires, and the milpa is where the spirit entities fulfill their obligations in the form of abundant crops. This elaborate system of exchange between human and sacred realms can be established or restored through gift-­giving, even though it may be human acts of disrespect (axtlatlepanitta) that interrupted the flow of benefits in the first place. While the dedication of offerings can overcome obstacles regardless of their origin, there is no guarantee that the ritual will succeed or that important elements in the cosmos will reciprocate. If they do not, the consequences for the Nahua can be catastrophic. The limitless power of the sacred cosmos in the face of relative human weakness means that Nahua rituals are highly charged emotional experiences for participants.27 The Nahua ritual specialists design altars to be places where spirit entities come to be entertained, lavished with valued gifts, and entreated to reciprocate. Above all, they are culturally delineated seats of exchange. Nahua ritual offerings, then, form part of a cycle of exchanges. Food, drink, alcohol, tobacco, incense, and flowers laid on the altar are intended to be accepted by the spirit entities. In return, the earth, rain, water, sun, and seeds provide abundant crops in the milpa. The cycle is fulfilled yet ongoing as both human beings and the spirit entities engage in and benefit from continuous rounds of fruitful exchanges. Humans adjust their offerings to match the perceived needs required for a successful harvest. It is in this sense that Nahua offerings are economic even though the spirit entities are nonhuman. Ritual exchanges are never a sure thing—­receivers of gifts may not return the favors expected. Ritual specialists repeat the phrase ica nopeca throughout their chanting, which means “in case it works.”28 But for most Nahua a gift given to the spirit entities increases the chance that the cosmos will reciprocate.

Bargaining with the Spirits Viewing rituals as exchanges helps us to understand and better appreciate the chanting by ritual specialists that is such an important feature of the ritual offering. As we have seen, the ritual specialists invest a great deal of their time and energy chanting before laden altars. Their chants are forceful, poetic, emotionally charged statements. But they are also much more than pleas to spirit entities. In much of the chanting the ritual specialists seem to move back and forth between a poetic recounting of mythic history and a careful, precise enumeration of the effort and commodities being offered. They evaluate the quality of the offerings, stating, for example, that the petitioners present “a good flower,” a “good soft drink,” or other such item. We wondered why the altar offerings need to be so explicitly highlighted as they are plainly on display for all to see. It was then that it occurred to us that the ritual specialists are not only beseeching the spirit entities but also bargaining with them. To make clear the intent of the ritual participants or to prevent any potential misunderstanding, the ritual specialists point out the high quality of proffered items with the implication that the spirit entities ought to acknowledge how well they are being treated. In recent years the shortcomings of neoclassical economics have led to the development of the field of behavioral economics, which focuses on what people do in real life as opposed to how they operate under idealized or experimental conditions. Behavioral economists have identified and shown the effects of systematic biases influencing all decision-­makers, including the people in Amatlán, and they can potentially help to clarify aspects of Nahua religion. We present two brief examples to illustrate the point. Behavioral economist Richard Thaler writes that there are actually two kinds of utility that people maximize in their decision-­making: “acquisition utility” and “transaction utility.”29 Acquisition utility is based on standard economic theory, and it is measured by the level of satisfaction attained by an individual decision-­ maker. Transaction utility, on the other hand, contradicts the idea of the perfectly rational actor of traditional economics by focusing on the value that people place on the transaction itself. For example, people continue to play the lottery even though the odds of winning make it irrational to do so because it provides a moment of anticipatory excitement. Likewise, villagers continue to participate in pilgrimages because they are a time of high excitement that afford the opportunity to meet new people, consume

the best food and drink, and visit important places in the sacred landscape. These benefits accrue apart from and in addition to the actual values exchanged with the spirit entities in the dedication of offerings. Thaler discusses another example that contradicts the rational-­actor model of neoclassical economics—­the “sunk cost fallacy”—­under which people who have invested some value in an enterprise have a difficult time forgetting about it.30 In other words, the more that people have invested in a project, the more likely they will be to continue investing in the future. The sunk cost fallacy may help explain why people persist in allocating resources to an effort even though returns are not immediately forthcoming or, in any case, are hard to measure. Although they do not help explain the meaning or behavioral content of Nahua ritual itself, these systematic biases may help explain why people will engage in ritual behavior despite the lack of clear-­cut evidence that it has a positive outcome.31

Anthropomorphism’s Appeal Because we assert that Nahua religion is pantheistic and because reciprocity provides the fundamental dynamic between humans and spirit entities, we have grown even more curious about how Nahua el costumbre practitioners conceive of the spirit entities so important in their lives. Are the spirits seen as deities in their own right, or are they regarded more as intercessors between worshipers and Totiotzin? Because they are expressed so fluently in paper with a relatively fixed iconography, does this mean that they have stable identities with predictable appetites and desires? Why do people think they respond to human efforts to influence them? We found that most people we queried were not especially articulate about the nature of the spirit entities. Many individuals tried gamely to answer our questions, but usually they simply made reference to myths or offered some general statement to the effect that the spirit entities are all around us, that they have the same appetites as humans do, or simply that they make the crops grow. The fundamental nature of the spirits is not a major concern of most people, fully engaged as they are with the pragmatic problems of daily life. Similar questions addressed to most North American Christians about the nature of God or the saints would surely elicit equally vague and undeveloped responses. Few Nahua are ritual specialists, just as most North Americans are not theologians, and most everyone is content to live with a degree

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of ambiguity concerning the spirit realm and the place of humans in the cosmic order. One can tell, however, something about the spirits by observing the rituals directed to them. Based on the rites we witnessed, these forces in the cosmos appear to enjoy food, music, dancing, and copal incense, but, at the same time, they seem perfectly capable of unleashing great fits of anger. In short, they share the range of possibilities and character possessed by human beings. We learned through bits of conversation and offhand comments over the years that most people conceive of the spirits to be “like air” or “invisible but powerful, like the wind.” As we have seen, disease-­causing spirit entities are called ehecameh (“winds”) and likened to wind gusts that precede storms. Some said that the spirit entities are like shadows that flit in and out of people’s awareness. The souls of ancestors, for instance, who visit their descendants to receive offerings during xantolon (the syncretic Indigenous observance of Day of the Dead) are said to be like puffs of air that consume the aroma and essence of the food offerings. Spirit entities appear in dreams as physical beings who have a presence and exhibit personality traits such as willpower. The maize spirit chicomexochitl may appear in dreams as a weeping baby conveying stress of the crop in the milpa.32 Like their human counterparts, the spirit entities can become angry at signs of disrespect and yet be pleased by the gifts offered during a ritual feast. Seed spirits are content to stay in a peaceful harmonious village but are said to flee to Postectli at signs of discord and acrimony. Thus, the spirits exhibit the full range of emotions, and the ritual specialists say that spirit entities are like children that have to be nurtured and cared for, but at other times are vengeful and angry. They have the power to threaten the very existence of humanity. In sum, the spirits are everywhere, they can shift states of being, they are unpredictable, and yet with finesse and wisdom people can deal with them. They resemble human beings, and despite the dangers they may embody, deep down they are social. They respond to reciprocal obligations implicit in the giving of ritual offerings. Being powerful agents in their own right, they are not mere messengers between people and Totiotzin; they are in fact Totiotzin in one of its myriad forms. At the same time, Totiotzin itself cannot be said to be anthropomorphic, to have human appetites and desires, and to enter into exchanges with people. It is instead the aspects or manifestations of Totiotzin that link people to the sacred cosmos. Stewart Guthrie’s Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (1993) takes an approach that we believe helps us

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better grasp the Nahua conception of spirit. His focus is on philosophy and religion generally and not the cultures of Mesoamerica (Guthrie mentions the Aztecs only once in passing). However, the Huastecan Nahua religion of el costumbre as well as other Mesoamerican religions appear to fit well with his theoretical statements. His fundamental idea is that all religions are based upon anthropomorphism, “the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman things or events.”33 On the surface, the approach seems straightforward, even simplistic, but Guthrie demonstrates that anthropomorphism has been an important focus of Western philosophy since the ancient Greeks and that it plays a significant role in art, science, and the everyday experiences of people throughout the world. He even asserts with some compelling evidence that animals may practice a form of zoomorphism in perceiving reality. Most of Guthrie’s book is devoted to placing anthropomorphism in its widest historical and philosophical context, and only in his last chapter does he turn exclusively to religion. Much like Thaler’s behavioral economics, Guthrie’s approach relies heavily on cognitive psychology, and he links the origin of anthropomorphism to the problem of perception. The world is chaotic and devoid of meaning, and so a central challenge for humans and animals is to organize their perceptions so that risks are reduced and opportunities enhanced. He invokes a Darwinian framework in the sense that those individuals and groups of people who succeed in imposing order on their perceptions will tend to live longer and reproduce more than those who do not. Guthrie asserts that human beings are the most highly organized, widely effective phenomena in the world (although we are coming to realize that microorganisms, most notably fungi, probably deserve that status). People can pose danger to others but also rescue others in trouble and, through their technology, utterly transform the environment. Human beings are able to recognize this consummate power and organize their perceptions accordingly. Thus, individuals who assume (at least initially) that animals, objects, and what Westerners call “natural phenomena” are essentially humanlike are employing an efficient and effective perception of their surroundings, one consequence of which is that they are far more likely to avoid danger and succeed in achieving their goals. He offers the example of a person walking in twilight and thinking that a potentially threatening shape ahead is a person, which clearly is a better strategy than assuming that it is a benign object (such as a call box in his example). If the

guess is correct, one is alerted to possible danger; if one is wrong, nothing is lost. This same reasoning applies to guesses or bets about the existence of spiritual entities: “Anthropomorphism (towards animals or anything else) by definition overestimates likeness. It is not simply an assumption of likeness since, in fact, many things are like us in various ways. It is a mistake about likeness.”34 Belief that rain is caused by a humanlike being creates a cosmic order wherein meaningful interaction with crucial but mysterious forces becomes possible. Guthrie summarizes the argument by asserting that belief in gods organizes experience as significantly as possible by positing for nonhuman beings and events the highest actual organization we know: that of human beings and their society. Because humans are highly organized, they are capable of generating a wide array of phenomena. Thus, much is explicable by appeal to humans or something modeled on them. As theoretical entities, gods are reducers of complexity and diversity because the entities on which they are modeled, real humans, are generators of complexity and diversity. Gods appear as powerful components of theory because they are modeled on powerful real organisms.35

Common sense, science, and religion are all human attempts to perceive and interpret, and these ways of knowing are simply variants of each other, according to Guthrie. Common sense relies on learned patterns to sort out reality, science is based on logical organization of empirical observations, and religious knowledge relies on faith and trust. All of these strategies seek knowledge of the world. Science, however, attempts to eliminate anthropomorphism in its explanations of how the universe operates. For their parts, religion and common sense embrace the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman things and events. This is because, as Guthrie states, “religion assumes, critically, that the nonhuman world creates and transmits meaning as people do: by sending and receiving symbolic communication.”36 He writes, My explanation for anthropomorphism closely resembles that for animism. Both phenomena stem from the search for organization and significance, and both consist in overestimating them. Scanning the world for what most concerns us—­living things and especially humans—­we find many apparent cases. Some prove illusory. When they do, we are animating

(attributing life to the nonliving) or anthropomorphizing (attributing human characteristics to the nonhuman). Central among human characteristics is symbolic action. Animism and anthropomorphism are on a continuum and may coexist: [for example] in verbally urging a balky computer, we both animate (give it life) and anthropomorphize (give it language).37

Guthrie makes it clear that attempts to organize perceptions in these ways are found in virtually every culture.38 The inevitable question arises about Buddhism or Jainism, for example, which purportedly have no deities and thus cannot possibly attribute anthropomorphic qualities in the same way as other religions. Guthrie responds that these religions do, in fact, at the level of ritual practice, possess anthropomorphized spirit entities.39 It is in their philosophical, ethical, or psychological systems where the existence of deities is denied. In performance, they are like all other religions in the world. Gods conceived anthropomorphically interact with humans. They may communicate through thunder or rainbows—­shows of nature, as Euro-­Americans would state it. Religious belief according to Guthrie is not by any means a leap into irrational or imaginary fantasies. Just as with scientific thought, religion, like other systems, is an attempt to interpret and influence the world in general. Like other systems, it draws on a framework—­largely shared with the other systems—­of observation, logic, analogy, metaphor, and unspoken assumption in an attempt to make the world coherent. . . . Again, religion as a whole may be hard to falsify; but so may science.40

Anthropomorphism, as Guthrie argues, is not confined to religion but is common to all human activities that attempt to perceive reality outside of the self. Religion, however, is a decidedly human endeavor and extreme in the degree to which it relies on attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things or events. In Guthrie’s summation, “religion is anthropomorphism.”41 But the anthropomorphism that Guthrie describes is far more profound than simply mapping human characteristics onto things and events outside ourselves. Quite the opposite, we see ourselves everywhere in order to create an intimate, familiar world where we can interact and have an impact. True to our arguments about the nature of Nahua ritual as economic transaction, we humans “anthropomorphize because we perceive the world in terms of our interests.”42

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Our exploration of Guthrie’s pathbreaking study does not do justice to its complex theory, but even in outline it is plain to see that the Nahua belief system as revealed by the pilgrimages fits with his conceptions very well and might even have served as a prototype of this way of thinking about religion. We have described how the contemporary Nahua el costumbre complex maps the human body onto the structure of the cosmos. In an earlier work Sandstrom (2005a) made explicit links between the Nahua Postectli pilgrimages and the anthropomorphic sacred geography and explored the phallic nature of mountains and conceptions of the vagina-­womb-­cave. It is clear from the pioneering work of López Austin (1988 [1980]) that such human-­body applications reach far back into Mesoamerican prehistory. For the contemporary Nahua, the form of the human body clearly models the cosmos, and the life force that surges through actual bodies reveals on a smaller scale the circulation of energy throughout the entire cosmos.43 To approach the external world outside of their own bodies, the Nahua use the human form. In so doing they open up the possibility of engaging with the world, analogous to the way in which human beings interact with one another. That the Nahua perceive the world in terms of their own interests, to paraphrase Guthrie, makes perfect sense. They forge bargains with the forces that bring the rain, make the earth fertile, and create the seeds bursting with life. The social-­scientific understanding of religion, far from detracting from its inspirational values and enchanting qualities, serves to increase our appreciation of the reasons why religious belief is such a central concern of people everywhere.

Religion as a Social Act We would like to present two further approaches that we find fruitful for studying ritual and that leave space for people to maneuver within the constraints of conventional cultural order. The first derives from the cultural ecology school of anthropology, most closely associated with the work of Roy Rappaport; the second emerges more recently from the specialty of human behavioral ecology. Rappaport is best known for his study of the Maring Tsembaga people of highland New Guinea. In Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People (1984 [1968]), he showed how ritual is implicated in the cybernetic-­like control of certain key variables in people’s natural and social environments. In this ethnographic case study ritual adjusts the ecological adaptation of the people by regulating the horticultural cycle and carrying

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capacity of the land, balancing the human-­to-­pig ratio, and controlling the incidence of warfare with neighboring groups. While we do not claim that Nahua religion and ritual regulate ecological relations to the extent Rappaport found among the Maring Tsembaga, in a later series of essays Rappaport (1979, 1999) lays out a more generally applicable analysis of the role of ritual in culture and downplays some of the functionalist assumptions of his ethnographic study. The arguments he makes are complex, but we would like to summarize his basic approach to ritual and show how it clarifies some of the more puzzling aspects of Nahua pilgrimage. Rappaport defines ritual as “the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not encoded by the performers.”44 In a departure from the common anthropological affinity for studying people’s symbolic worlds, Rappaport claims that, at the most elementary level, religion and ritual cannot be understood by examining meanings and symbols. Ritual, he argues, is not defined by the values participants intend to express or enact but rather by its sequence of invariant acts. In fact, Rappaport sees in ritual a way to overcome the difficulties and ambiguities intrinsic to symbolic communication. In essence, the author removes meaning from ritual and yet at the same time sees ritual as “the social act.”45 For cultural ecologists, a key problem is that communication through language and other symbolic means leaves human beings vulnerable to deception and outright lying. According to Rappaport, “The point is that lies are the bastard offspring of symbols.”46 How can one know if someone is being sincere in their commitment to a shared religious ideology? How can any Nahua participant in the sacred journeys be certain that fellow pilgrims hold authentic beliefs in the spirit entities and the efficacy of the ritual offerings? Is a person’s commitment to Nahua culture sincere? It is always possible that people are simply going along in order to gain advantages over others in some future social transaction. For Rappaport, ritual as invariant act addresses this critical issue for human social life and even physical survival. Rappaport argues that rituals among animals are almost completely “indexical,” by which he means that they “transmit information concerning their own current physical, psychic, or sometimes social states to themselves and to other participants.”47 In short, the meaning of animal ritual behavior does not go beyond communicating the immediate state of being of participants. Human rituals, by contrast, are both indexical and “canonical,” which he defines as the permanent and unchanging

messages encoded in the liturgy. He sees the liturgy (or liturgical order) as “the fixed sequences of words and acts providing form to individual ritual events.”48 In addition, Rappaport states, following folklorist and ethnologist Arnold van Gennep, that liturgy is “the fixed sequences of rituals that lead men around circles of seasons, along the straight paths that depart from birth and arrive at death, through the alterations of war and peace or along the dream tracks that cross the Australian deserts.”49 Thus, the liturgical order of Nahua pilgrimage takes the form of dedicating food and other offerings to a pantheon of spirit entities on elaborately decorated altars as well as seasonal treks to sacred mountains. Rappaport’s definitions of ritual and liturgy are broad and inclusive. Canonical messages are of central importance to members of the social group, and they are known for their “regularity, propriety, and apparent durability and immutability.” The ritual acts in themselves are “intrinsically correct or moral,” according to Rappaport, and it is to these actions that the canonical message attaches itself in order to appear self-­evident and unquestionably true.50 By participating in a ritual, then, a person not only indicates something of his or her current state of being, but through the repetitive conventional acts of the performance people also affirm their commitment to key messages of the liturgy. Although some behavior may not conform to the canon (i.e., certain people may dissimulate), the rituals’ “performance does more than remind individuals of an un­der­lying order. It establishes that order.”51 When Nahua go on pilgrimage, they follow relatively invariant ritual procedures, the performance of which demonstrates their commitment to the social conventions of their society. It is not the identity of the paper images, the type of offerings deemed appropriate for the spirit entities, chanting, or the meanings of the altars and adornments that are what the rituals are all about. The significance of the pilgrimages and their associated rituals lies in the repeated behavior itself that acts out and thereby asserts loyalty to the canonical content, the social group, and the basic correctness of the Nahua way of life. All of the myths, meanings, rules of reciprocity, and moral lessons are part of the canon that achieves and maintains its power through association with the ritual acts. People may indeed participate in these rituals for all of the wrong reasons, even to the extent of faking it to gain some kind of advantage over others. They may deceive the believers for selfish ends, but by going through the motions of ritual the defectors affirm that these are powerful social conventions and that, through their deception, they have

broken with them. The pilgrims who deceive are still participating in acts that express what it is to be a Nahua. Ultimately, their deception places them outside of the power and safety of the group. Given this perspective, it is easy to see how the pilgrimage rituals have taken on a sense of urgency in the face of overwhelming threats to the Nahua way of life, world view, and religion. Now more than ever it is critically important that people follow the ritual procedures, that they establish their commitment to the conventional social order and thereby reject the sources of disequilibrium and chaos that are a true existential threat to Nahua society. Ritual itself acts as the major mechanism for marginalizing those liars and deceivers who must be identified and dismissed if the righteousness of Nahua life is to prevail. Our challenge is to identify with some degree of certainty the specific ritual acts performed during the pilgrimages that exemplify these deeply held Nahua cultural principles. Dancing gracefully or standing courteously before a decorated altar certainly expresses for all to see a commitment to being a humble, self-­effacing, respectful, and deserving human being. These key attributes of humility characterize Nahua etiquette and interaction patterns. Expending maximal effort over many hours at such repetitive tasks as cutting paper figures, manufacturing adornments, or constructing altars expresses deeply held commitments to hard work (tequitl) and the sharing of the energetic forces (chicahualiztli) that animate the cosmos. The Nahua identify strongly as hard workers and define themselves in opposition to Mestizo elites, many of whom they believe to be lazy and arrogant. In their view, Mestizos think of themselves as too important and too powerful to engage in common labor. Hard work and effort in its own right, then, is a marker of ethnic identity. As we have seen, a key behavioral component of virtually all Nahua rituals is the preparation and dedication of offerings of food. These invariant acts reflect a basic Nahua cultural feature in which a gift of food not only expresses concern for the recipient’s welfare, but also love, friendship, respect, power, force, energy, and life. To provide food, like any expenditure of effort and resources, is to share one’s life force and generously convey the gift of life to others. Ritual acts also express a concern on the part of participants with the overall well-­being of the entire human community. One participates for the good of all, and any hint that someone is in it for one’s self is almost unthinkable. As the ritual specialist Lino Hernández put it in his chant (Chant 3), the offering is for “all the

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countries, not just here.” Nahua rituals create order and beauty in an increasingly chaotic and disordered world. All of the actions associated with the pilgrimage address the potential danger of disruption and pollution, of potentially disastrous disequilibrium in the delicately balanced universe. These and many additional behaviors occur throughout Nahua rituals and can be linked to cultural principles that stand above and beyond the specific meanings of ritual occasions. Following Rappaport’s lead, as we have discussed above, it is the invariant act of giving food that is important here, not the encounter with specific members of the Nahua pantheon.52 If Rappaport is correct that it is the doing of ritual acts apart from their specific meaning that gives them their unique power, perhaps the act of going on pilgrimage, apart from any specific meanings, is what makes the practice so effective. We will examine pilgrimage as a social phenomenon outside its cultural context in chapter 9.

Ritual as Costly Signaling Recent work in the cross-­disciplinary specialty of human behavioral ecology holds promise for analyzing ritual as a vehicle of communication.53 One insight we would like to apply to the Nahua ethnographic data is called “costly signaling.” Originally labeled the “handicap principle,” costly signaling was first developed by biologists to explain why certain animals exhibit behavioral or biological features that would seem to be disadvantageous in the competition for survival. A telling example of this phenomenon is the peacock. The remarkably elaborate tail feathers must be a burden to the animal, standing in the way of the peacock’s ability to access food and to flee from predators. There are many such intriguing examples in nature, and their explanation poses problems for evolutionary biologists. The theory of costly signaling states that animals with features that put them at an apparent survival disadvantage are in fact especially attractive to members of the opposite sex and thus make them more likely to reproduce. The ability to survive, despite some evident disadvantage, signals that the animal is especially fit and a prime candidate to sire robust progeny. Archaeologists John Kanter and Kevin Vaughn have applied this idea to understand the development of pilgrimage sites in archaeological contexts. Their insights apply equally well to contemporary people. Kanter and Vaughn explain, “[W]e are interested in exploring the dynamics of individual decision-­making in group settings that encourage pilgrimage behavior in the first place

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without any strong centralized coordination or coercion.”54 As we saw in Rappaport’s discussion, pilgrimage actors, like those involved in other religious events, face the problem of identifying cheaters (aka freeloaders or free riders) who participate in such events to pursue selfish ends; a person, for instance, may join in simply to be entertained or enjoy food and alcohol. Kanter and Vaughn write, “The problem is that religious affiliation is not difficult to fake—­it is easy to be a ‘cheater,’ in the shorthand of decision theory—­by adopting the symbols and pretending to adhere to the moral code in order to ‘free ride’ off of the prosocial behaviors that true devotees engage in with one another.”55 They note that cheating is a particular problem when the pilgrimage is held under conditions of economic instability, where people come from distant areas or places of disparate wealth, where there are competing religious options, or in any situation where direct reciprocity is difficult to fulfill or even gauge. All of these conditions practically define the context of the Amatlán sacred journeys.56 In a departure from Rappaport’s approach, Kanter and Vaughn conclude that participation in pilgrimage itself is a form of costly signaling, assuring that participants are true adherents of the religious principles at the heart of the event: “One solution to separate free-­riders from true religious devotees is for the latter to exhibit signals of their adherence to the religious system that are so costly that not only do they deter cheaters but they also send the message to others that their participation in the religion is sincere.”57 As we have seen, the substantial costs incurred by the Nahua faithful during the pilgrimages entail not only the arduous trek itself but also the time and labor spent in preparations plus the direct outlay of money and goods for numerous offerings. Costly signaling can also help to explain the lavishness of the altars and offerings as participants attempt to compete with one another in demonstrating their commitment to the Nahua religion. One problem, however, is that the costly signal can only be directly observed by other participants in the pilgrimage. What about all of the community members and others who were not witness to the outlay of resources confirming sincere commitment to the religion? Kanter and Vaughn propose that the widespread practice of returning from the sacred journey with souvenirs addresses this problem. These physical objects act as proof that the person participated in the pilgrimage and that he or she traveled as far as the others did to encounter the sacred center. In Amatlán we saw the significant amount of time invested in preparing the fully clothed paper images of

the seeds. Each of these was dressed and adorned before participants took them back to their communities as proof of their participation. Pilgrims also demonstrate their devotion by guarding their collection of seed images on their home altar. As the collection grows, it serves as increasing evidence that the owner is a sincere adherent of el costumbre. In our view, the mechanism of costly signaling adds a behavioral strategy to the cultural ecological approach developed by Rappaport and others and clarifies reasons why people agree to participate in the pilgrimages. But similar to Rappaport’s perspective on ritual as invariant procedures that establish order and demonstrate commitment to the social group, this particular use of a tool from human behavioral ecology does not address the content of rituals. Of course we know that some individuals are true believers and that they can be counted on to participate in ritual offerings regardless of circumstances. But the majority of people in any social group fall short of this level of commitment. Many Nahua are now wavering in their commitment to the costumbres due to pressures to convert to Protestantism or embrace the Catholic reevangelization. Often it is children working in urban areas who try to convince their parents and relatives in Amatlán to abandon traditional Indigenous beliefs and practices. If Rappaport is correct, participation in the rituals alone is a sure sign that the individual is committed to Nahua conventions or at least that he or she is well aware of them. We would say that given the disorder faced by the villagers who continue to follow the Indigenous traditions, people are keenly alert to signs indicating the commitment of their fellow pilgrims. Costly signaling is one means by which participants can convince others of their sincerity.58

Altar Design and the Principle of Modularity In chapters 3 and 4 we established that the overall purpose of the altar is to convey offerings to a pantheon of spirit entities exemplified by the range of paper figures deployed on them. We will now explore how the major altars during the pilgrimages appear to be interchangeable, self-­contained elements in the overall sequence of ritual events and how this strategy reflects the pantheistic nature of Nahua religion. We have to wonder why people go to such trouble to produce such a diversity of paper figures in units of twenty and then spend considerable effort arranging them so precisely on separate petates; the ritual specialists might just as easily lay the figures directly

on and beneath the altars to receive their offerings. To address this puzzle, we must examine an important feature of Nahua culture that traces to the pre-­Hispanic period and perhaps deep into prehistory. Historian James Lockhart (1991, 1992), in his extensive studies of Nahua ethnohistory and language change following the conquest, identified many domains of Nahua social life that he characterized as having a “cellular” or “modular” structure. Lockhart argued that the Nahua manner of creating larger constructs, whether in politics, society, economy, or art, tended to place emphasis on a series of relatively equal, relatively separate and self-­contained constituent parts of the whole, the unity of which consisted in the symmetrical numerical arrangement of the parts, their identical relationship to a common reference point, and their orderly, cyclical rotation. This mode of organization can be termed cellular or modular as opposed to hierarchical, but it is by no means incapable of producing real, cohesive, lasting larger units.59

He concludes that “one particular mode, the creation of larger units of many kinds through the ordering of separate independent constituent parts, does emerge as a prime characteristic of Nahua culture.”60 According to Lockhart, this modular structure characterized much of Nahua life and cultural production. For example, the cell-­like structure is often found in decorative motifs and in religious architecture.61 Karttunen and Lockhart (1980) found that Nahua songs consist of self-­ contained verses arranged in pairs; these pairs share a common theme but never refer to each other.62 Lockhart identified this cellular structure as also underpinning how the Aztecs understood history. Although events varied from year to year and could not easily be compartmentalized, they followed what he calls the “anales” type of historical presentation whereby “numerical symmetry and rotation . . . are prominent in the calendrical ordering of the years, with the four repeating year signs and the thirteen repeating numerical coordinates.”63 On a more basic level, Aztec residences were divided into discreet subunits, with each household occupying a separate room, giving them a modular quality. Thus, elements of Aztec cosmology, understanding of time and history, and domestic organization all reflect modularity.64 Contemporary Nahua measure land not by calculating surface area but by how much maize can be planted on it. This is a useful, empirical way to convey a clearer understanding of an amount of land and its value based on

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productivity. In this part of the Huasteca it usually takes 20 liters (four cuartillo measures) of seed to plant about a hectare. According to Lockhart, the Aztecs also measured land in terms of 20 units. The precise value of the unit of measure varied from region to region throughout the empire, but 20 was the normal allotment for a household: “Plots held by individuals are described as measuring 20 units, or some multiple thereof, far too frequently for such a result to have arisen from chance.”65 If the number 20 is associated with allotted land among the Aztecs and among the contemporary Nahua of Amatlán, we have a plausible rationale for the way ritual specialists organize the paper figures for the ritual mezah.66 Ritual specialists place paper figures on petates in cellular units. Gazing upon the petate of twenty paper figures is a visual demonstration of the modularity principle operating in Nahua culture. Each individual paper figure requires attention and must receive a share of the blood offering. Ritual specialists take great care to distribute the blood over each cutting, and as we saw in the photographs, they even go to the trouble of painting blood on the ones that were accidently missed, using a feather from one of the sacrificial victims. Each petate and each paper figure on it exists as an independent entity. Recall that the tabletop of the altar is equated with the surface of the earth and specifically the milpa. The paper figures organized into units of twenty on their individual petates are thus plausibly linked to measured land holdings that have specific associations with the number 20. That the number 20 signifies ownership in Aztec and contemporary land-­tenure systems is surely more than coincidence. We have every reason to believe that Nahua today are heirs to this ancient system. In sum, the major altars and their offerings are complete, self-­contained modules of paper figures that are the forces of the cosmos most closely responsible for provisioning human beings with fertility, food, and life organized into land-­holding units. For the Nahua, these forces are the actual owners of the land. We think this understanding of Nahua history helps to explain important features of Nahua ritual and religious pilgrimages today. Since we could discern only general patterns in the identities of the images arrayed so methodically on altars throughout the pilgrimage, we must conclude that each mezah, as an amalgam of units, is dedicated to a range of important figures of the Nahua pantheon. The offerings and the major altar structures stand on their own as independent and equal embodiments of religious ideas. It is as if the individual altar, whose construction reveals the encompassing realms of

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sky, earth’s surface, and earth in and of itself, is a complete offering, a modular summary of aspects of the sacred cosmos that have been selected for emphasis by Nahua ritual specialists. The pilgrimage as a distinctive ritual occasion is composed of discrete spatial and temporal units strung together (much like beads on a necklace) to create a coherent whole. To expand this observation, the altar structures are nearly identical, whether constructed for a pilgrimage or for rituals held for other purposes throughout the year. The interchangeability of the altars reflects the idea that despite apparent diversity, the cosmos is composed of basically uniform units. Different rituals with their decorated altar structures and generous offerings are directed toward the same sacred unity, regardless of how the unity is divided up to serve immediate, religious-­pragmatic ends. This fact reinforces the same idea expressed in the literal embodiment of the human form in multitudes of paper images. The human body at the center of each figure is the way ritual specialists acknowledge Totiotzin as the animating force of the living cosmos. The particular mix of spirit entities cut from paper and iconographically distinct from each other is an ephemeral manifestation, based disproportionately on the dreams of ritual specialists. The modular design of altars and the paper figures alike reflect the monistic core of a pantheistic Nahua religious conception. The smaller altar offerings throughout the pilgrimage also reflect the same cellular or modular structure. Offering arrays at the hearth and spring, on the floor beneath the main altar in Amatlán, and at the outside cross altars in Amatlán and Ichcacuatitla (four episodes in total) all featured one petate each of altar, cross, and earth, which make up the three-­petate unit that we describe as the A-C-­E module. To remind the reader of their arrangement, the ritual specialists added a fourth petate of paper figures to this fundamental unit of three to differentiate it and specify the spirit entity to which a particular offering is dedicated. Thus, for example, the sample collection contained one petate labeled lumbre (fire) on top of the three A-C-­E petates, intended for the offering to the hearth spirit, tlixihuantzin. Moving up the mountain, three more small altar sets are unlabeled but are now easily identifiable by their distinguishing petate lying atop the A-C-­E module: one of cross (Altar Set 05), intended for the outside cross altar in Ichcacuatitla, one of water (Altar Set 03) for the rock-­cleft/cave home of the water dweller apanchaneh, and the last of lightning and thunder combined (Altar Set 02) for the cave of tlapetlani-­tlatomoni, the lightning and thunder spirit entities. In all, the sample

collection features a total of seven small arrays that follow the modular pattern. The common foundation of altar-­ cross-­ earth is an abbreviation of the larger physical altar (and mezah altar offering construct) dedicated to the wide variety of elements that reflect the entire cosmos. Recall that, in chapter 6, we interpreted this repeated modular pattern as an indicator that the Nahua altar site itself stands as a mediator between celestial (cross-­sun) and terrestrial (earth) realms. Even the smallest altar offerings composed of four petates and a few adornments present the layers of the cosmos as a coherent whole. However, the ritual specialists did not confirm or deny (or even acknowledge) this cellular structure in either their altar constructions or their conception of a layered universe, although further research should clarify the issue. If it can be affirmed that they use this organizational principle, it would help explain some of what appear to us as anomalies in Nahua rituals. For example, why is the apparently identical altar (albeit with different inventories of paper figures on each one) constructed five times over the course of the trek to Postectli? And why is each altar so self-­contained, with little to suggest how one altar integrates with the rest to create a holistic narrative line? While Lockhart’s idea of modularity seems applicable to the Nahua pilgrimages originating in Amatlán, we should point out that the evidence he draws on pertains to the time following the conquest when the Aztec political system was decapitated, Spaniards had pillaged the empire, and the Indigenous population had already declined by an estimated 95 percent.67 Any facile conclusion that the Nahua of this period were organized into balanced or cooperating units is contradicted by the evidence of violent intragroup competition within Indigenous communities and the brutal imposition of Spanish power over local populations. Lockhart’s attempt to project his findings onto the pre-­Hispanic society may be more problematic, and he may well have succumbed to a more romanticized interpretation than called for by the data. Critics maintain that modularity is an overly static formulation that misrepresents Nahua cultural dynamism. Some form of modularity is probably found in cultures throughout the world and thus may not be unique to the Nahua. Likewise, Lockhart’s idea that the number 20 is associated with ownership may be overstated. Historical and contemporary speakers of Nahuatl have a vigesimal numbering system, and therefore the number 20 naturally comes up in many contexts, including land ownership. We take these caveats seriously, but even if Lockhart is mistaken

on some points, we find his ideas about modularity and the significance of 20 to be useful in organizing our ethnographic data and comprehending the contemporary Huastecan Nahua complex of el costumbre.

Order and Disorder Early in our ethnographic work in Amatlán, we observed the meticulous care with which people constructed and decorated altars.68 It is part of Nahua etiquette to move slowly and deliberately as an expression of respect, and this partly accounts for their heedful behavior. But the exaggerated care with which they laid out the petates of paper figures, the coyol palm and flower adornments, and the offerings themselves indicated to us that more was going on than this obvious explanation. We believe at least part of the deeper reason for the extreme attention shown to altar construction lies in Nahua conceptions of center and periphery.69 For many Nahua people, the earth’s surface can be understood as a continuum from the ordered center to the disordered periphery. At the center is the house and surrounding area that has been cleared of the forest. Close members of the family live in the house and are the main source of support and good will. Moving outward away from the house, one comes to the village, which has more distant kinsmen, and people consider it to be ordered and safe (although less so than the house). As one moves away farther, there may be trails, roads, fields, other human communities, and finally the disordered tropical forest filled with wild animals, snakes, stinging insects, and unfamiliar and potentially dangerous people.70 Extending even farther, one may encounter the alienating metropolis of regional capitals or sprawling Mexico City—­and beyond that, unwelcoming foreign places such as the US. The continuum runs from order-­safety to disorder-­ danger. Recall that an important related concept is tlazolli, which can be translated as “refuse” or “trash,” but in Nahua thought tlazolli signifies much more—­disorder, pollution, and potential danger that, although it can be encountered anywhere, typically originates from and characterizes the distant periphery. The very disorder of the periphery is due to an abundance of tlazolli. Cutting a forest and burning the brush reduces tlazolli and renders the field ordered and ready for planting. Sweeping the floor is also a way of rendering the tlazolli within the house orderly and harmless and therefore removing potential danger to the family.71 The names of disease-­causing winds often contain the word tlazolli: mictlan tlazolli ehecatl, “trash wind

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(from the) place of the dead,” apan tlazolli ehecatl, “water trash wind,” and simply tlazolli ehecatl, “trash wind.” These creatures live in peripheral zones—­the interior of rocks, the tangled forest floor, and foul, disgusting places such as standing water. The ehecameh are thoroughly associated with filth or pollution, and this disorder-­pollution connection is commonly found in cultures throughout the world (Douglas 1966). The disease-­causing potential of tlazolli helps explain why a curing ritual is called ochpantli, a term that emphasizes sweeping, regarded as the ultimate action for cleaning and rendering disorder harmless. Art historian Cecelia Klein, in her study (1982, 1990–­91) of the role of twisted tangles in the religious ideology of people in Mesoamerica, including the Aztecs, points out that people of the region conceived of snares, nets, traps, intestines, snarled threads, and tangled ropes as indicative of dangerous disorder and the source of disease. This quality of “twistedness,” according to Klein, “was symptomatic in Mesoamerica of moral and social disorder, and of illness in general.”72 Stretching and straightening, on the other hand—­in our view, akin to pilgrims following the path true and straight—­are actions that kept the cosmos in order.73 For the Nahua of Amatlán, ashes are an excellent example of tlazolli in that they combine filth and disorder with fertility. In the Chicomexochitl myth recounted in chapter 1, the maize spirit had to kill and burn his vicious grandmother in the sweatbath and retrieve her bitter ashes to take to the sea. The ashes were the source of stinging insects but, at the same time, the fertile earth’s surface. Paper figures of man owl and man owl woman are smeared with black charcoal from the fireplace during cleansing rituals to link the figures to filth and pollution. They are also instrumental in leading the forces of death and disorder back to mictlan, the underworld, allowing the fertility rituals to proceed and the crops to grow. People take white ashes and paint small crosses on their houses and metates following the disordered days of nanahuatilli (syncretized with Carnival), an act that manifests a return to fertility after underworld figures in the form of masked dancers have disrupted village life. The rectilinear altar table (mesa used in its narrow sense) with its covering arch should be understood as an island of order standing in opposition to the negative, dangerous disorder of tlazolli, produced by misbehavior and disrespect originating often from the periphery. These discordant actions and emotions produced by socially disruptive behavior in turn can affect the rest of humanity by interrupting the flow of benefits from the larger cosmos.

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The mezah of pilgrimage rituals is a highly elaborated version of the simple order-­producing floor array that ritual specialists use to cure patients, and both types of altar offerings are very similar in their purposes. The most common cause of illness, according to the Nahua, is either the afflicted person’s own antisocial conduct or that of some other community member or distant outsider. The Nahua themselves emphasize that this type of contaminating behavior is always associated with the periphery and has no place in the ordered center. The patient may also have unwittingly come into contact with dangerous tlazolli or may be the victim of sorcery—­another source of disordering, antisocial sentiment. Social disruption itself is recognized as a form of tlazolli that has widespread deleterious impact on otherwise innocent community members. As we saw in the description of the cleansing-­curing episodes, disease or misfortune is delivered or personified by the ehecatl (“wind”) spirits attracted from the distant periphery to physical, social, or psychological disorder. Their role in spreading disease demands their removal, and banishing them is the main object of ritual curing. Cleansing-­curing arrays are islands of contained order to counter the disarray. The meticulously constructed and adorned altar tables serve a similar function, creating a sense of order and beauty amid social and ecological disorder. They are specifically designed to counteract the effects of the polluting behavior that creates the obstacles that stand between human beings and the beneficial forces of the cosmos. Given the overall strategy inherent in Nahua rituals, it is easy to see why pilgrims spend so much time and effort making the altars meticulous showplaces. This interpretation also reveals the indirect nature of Nahua rituals, which serve as a fail-­safe mechanism. During a prolonged drought people hold a ritual appeal for rain to remove the disruptions interfering with the harmonious reciprocal relations between human beings and the forces of the cosmos that supply rain. Removing obstacles does not guarantee rain but renders it a possibility. Failure to produce rain directly neither threatens the validity nor the effectiveness of the ritual. But distance and disorder for the Nahua are not entirely negative or threatening, as we have shown.74 Tlazolli and the periphery itself can be sources of power, fertility, and creativity. It is at a distance from the village where spirit entities are encountered, miraculous things happen, and the humdrum of everyday life is transformed into an arena of danger and excitement. Many Nahua myths and stories take place far from the civilized life of the village. The emotionally unstable water owner zahhuan is chained

to the bottom of the distant sea from which he unleashes storms that can both destroy and bring the life-­giving rain. Seven Flower’s mother, tonantzin, the progenitor of the seeds, and his grandmother lived outside the village at the dangerous but fertile periphery. After suffering abuse at the hands of his tzitzimitl grandmother, Seven Flower flees to faraway Postectli, where his self-­exile causes people to go hungry. In everyday life people are surrounded by tlazolli, which causes disease but is beneficial too, as when the litter left on the earth after cutting the forest is burned, producing the nutrient-­rich ash necessary for a fertile milpa. Cirilo’s colleague Evaristo, the Otomí ritual specialist who participated in the 1998 pilgrimage, was himself from the periphery of the Nahua geographic and social worlds, thus amplifying his reputation as a powerful practitioner.

Allure of the Periphery Writing about the sixteenth-­century Aztecs, historian León García Garagarza sees pilgrimages to the periphery as a means of centering the community on the earth’s surface. His statement is worth quoting at length, as these words certainly apply as well to the pilgrimages originating from Amatlán in the present day: [T]he relation between center and periphery expressed in the Mesoamerican cosmovision had a specific ritual manifestation: rather than a marginal status, the periphery of the altepetl [community] in central Mesoamerica was constantly recentered during the frequent pilgrimages to the mountains and hills that characterized the religious life of the people. It was from these that power flowed to the altepetl. In fact, the Nahua term for ritual pilgrimages, Tlayahualoliztli, emphasizes the circuitous nature of religious pilgrimages (the verbal stem Yahualoa means ‘to circle, to go around in procession’). . . . The map of the Aztec ceremonial landscape was drawn by the collective movement of the people, who closed with their ritual pilgrimages the circuit of the sacred from the temples in the city to the sanctuaries in the countryside, and back. The reciprocity of offerings was also a reciprocity of space, sacralizing the landscape and the heart of the participants by circulating the god’s presence in a loop that tied the home and the teocalli [shrine] in the altepetl to the deity’s home in the landscape outside.75

In the inherent tension between center and periphery, the positive aspects of the periphery should inform

our understanding of the ritual appeal of distant places. The pilgrimage approach to Postectli is an actual journey to the edge for the Nahua of Amatlán. People admitted that they considered the trek challenging, even verging on hazardous, as they pressed themselves to the limit and passed through distant, unfamiliar communities to reach wholly unknown areas. Yet their ultimate destination is where they encounter the source of seeds, clouds, water, and the specific place where Seven Flower escaped from his trials and travails. Postectli is the centering culmination, arising out of the chaotic periphery far from Amatlán. In a very real sense the power of Postectli for the people of Amatlán lies in its location at the margin of their everyday lives.76 The element of risk is precisely what makes the pilgrimage experience so potentially fecund and satisfying because it transports the pilgrims closer to the source of the life-­giving cosmic forces and the place where Totiotzin is abundantly revealed. We want to avoid giving the impression that Nahua religion is static or inflexible. Their religious beliefs and practices are changing, surely, but we believe this has always been so and has certainly been the case since the Spanish conquest. What is remarkable is how the Native American religion has adapted to change by incorporating religious concepts from elsewhere. It is clear that the Nahua have accepted many elements of Spanish Catholic religion without compromising the integrity of their own coherent system of beliefs and practices. There is no evidence that the traditional system of el costumbre has lost any flexibility or inclusiveness. Protestantism originating in the US, at the distant periphery, however, does represent a major disruption to the Nahua way of life. Some Protestant converts have tended to treat their neighbors and relatives with disrespect or outright disdain, and in the face of such intolerance the long-­held habit of incorporating elements from other faiths into the Indigenous religion may be forever disrupted. It seems unlikely that Nahua ritual specialists and practitioners of el costumbre will be able to accommodate Protestant beliefs and practices within their own system, although that remains an open question for inquiry. All in all, the Protestant incursion into the rural villages of the Huasteca has been highly destabilizing since the early 1980s.77 The religion that unauthorized US missionaries are bringing to Native American communities in the region is usually a variety of Pentecostalism that, compared with mainstream North American Protestant denominations, is fundamentalist in the extreme. Some adherents among the converts refuse to cooperate with

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medical teams sent by the Mexican government to vaccinate children. Families are internally divided, villages split into warring factions, and community-­wide traditions are rejected as “works of the Devil.” The success of the missionaries can be linked to economic and social-­structural changes roiling all of Mexico and Central America as the forces of industrial capitalism bear down on the region. For the Nahua, however, religions hailing from the periphery are not to be universally condemned as they can also bring positive results. One of the reasons that people cite for why they converted to a new religion is that it helped them to overcome the scourge of alcoholism. In countless Native American communities overconsumption of alcohol has destroyed vulnerable people’s lives. We have witnessed cases in which it led to brain damage, domestic violence, and death. The most common drink available is locally made aguardiente, and it can be more than 80 percent alcohol. Alcohol production is controlled by Mestizos, and aguardiente is inexpensive but far too powerful for habitual consumption. People call this cane alcohol xochiatzin, “beloved flower water” in Nahuatl, and the substance has long played a part in ritual offerings. We have seen that ritual occasions can be venues for people (mainly men) to overindulge and become intoxicated. In a sense, aguardiente serves a similar function for some Nahua as peyote does for the Huichol, helping to break down entrenched ways of thinking and opening individuals to new experiences of the sacred.78 On several occasions when we were asked to purchase alcohol for a ritual, women would plead with us to supply only a small amount so that participants would not drink too much, and we always complied with their wishes. Beginning in the 1990s we observed that while aguardiente was still prominent in the mezah, fewer people drank to excess and some even acknowledged they were avoiding it. In our view, some adherents of the traditional Native American religion have consciously changed their habits regarding alcohol consumption during ritual occasions in direct response to the Protestant threat. As outsiders ourselves, and anthropologists concerned about the welfare of the community, this instance of culture change is one of the few beneficial consequences of new ideas introduced by foreign missionaries.

Scaling Up and Down How the Nahua project conceptions of their cosmos onto smaller and larger planes occurs through a process that analysts call scaling.79 In an in-­depth analysis of Tzotzil ritual in Chiapas, Evon Vogt described the scaling process

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and offered many examples in which people make large-­ scale or small-­scale renditions of “culturally perceived realities or categories.”80 The Nahua of Amatlán clearly share this practice, and we believe it provides insight into not only the nature of el costumbre religion generally but pilgrimage practices in particular. We begin by examining more closely how Nahua practitioners create miniature versions of larger structures and processes. As illustrated in figure 5.3, the Nahua tabletop altar covered by the arch models the cosmos in miniature, revealing a layered but decidedly nonhierarchical view of reality: the sky (or celestial) realm, the earth’s surface (where humans live), and the interior earth (incorporating mictlan, the underworld), with the water realm integrating all three zones. Another example of scaling can be found in the sacred cedar-­wood box displayed on people’s house altar that contains the clothed figures of the staple crops. The box is the seeds’ miniature equivalent of their cave sanctuary on Postectli, and it recalls how ritual specialists of the distant past lured the seeds into the villages, from which vantage they oversee the fertility of crops. People today ensure that the seeds are well cared for and fed, that offerings of desired items are periodically dedicated to them, and that their garments, furnishings, jewelry, and other belongings are refreshed so that they remain content. They lovingly carried the paper figures of the seeds preserved in Cirilo’s shrine to Postectli and back to Amatlán, affording them the same experiences that people enjoy. The paper complex of el costumbre itself is a miniaturization of the larger forces of nature, the sacred aspects of a vast landscape, and the multitude of spirit entities in the pantheon, of which the number and range is infinite. When ritual specialists set them on altars, paper figures reproduce the spirit realm in miniature and reduce this infinity to a manageable scale. We remarked earlier that the large number of small clay figurines found by archaeologists appear to be miniature versions of ancestors, spirit entities, or political leaders.81 And although we were not able to confirm that the Nahua of Amatlán viewed their houses in this light, ethnographers working in neighboring communities report that people conceive of the traditional thatched-­roofed, lashed-­pole house structure as a miniaturized reproduction of the universe and of the cooking-­fire hearth within the house as an embodiment of the sun.82 Pitrou (2016), writing about scaling in Mixe rituals, sees miniaturization to have deep cultural roots in Mesoamerica. To understand the creation of altars and dedication of ritual offerings, he introduces the term

“co-­activity” to describe the process of mutuality among humans and spirit entities and points to “the fact that rites imply that humans and non-­humans co-­participate in creating a common situation.” He writes that scaling down during rituals is what links levels of activity: “[m]iniaturization refers to the well-­ known connection between the microcosmic level and the macrocosmic level, but it also sometimes refers to the activities humans carry out at their own level.”83 In sum, creating tiny replicas serves to transcend realms of ritual action and differences among actors. We have not specifically investigated this type of co-­activity during our own field research, but Pitrou’s insight regarding Mixe ritual likely applies to Huastecan Nahua ritual. Participants in the pilgrimage are keenly interested in discerning whether the spirit entities are attentive and thus responsive to human entreaties and offerings. It would be worth investigating precisely how miniaturized displays operationalize co-­ activity among humans and spirit entities.84 The Nahua practitioners of el costumbre ritual cut multitudes of paper images, and their helpers spend hours handling them, taking up each pair of cuttings and carefully folding open the eyes, mouth, and the V-cuts whose design defines the body and identity of each spirit entity. This intensive manipulation of the two-­dimensional figure pairs, laid out as imbricated layers and stacked and assembled into bundles, transforms these flat miniatures into animated beings that inhabit three-­dimensional scalar worlds. The larger, clothed images of the seeds, the water dweller, and the ancient earth mother–­earth father pair are truly three-­dimensional constructions with skeletal armatures made of paper, and people cradle them like dolls (and refer to them as muñecos in Spanish) as they carry them along on the pilgrimage route.85 The Nahua also scale in the opposite direction by projecting a smaller reality onto larger formats. As mentioned in chapter 2, the human body models the animating principle of Totiotzin and is mapped onto the entire living cosmos. People conceive of the sky, ilhuicactli, as a curved anthropomorphic mirror that reflects starlight down to the earth’s surface.86 With the head of this enveloping form lying in the west and its feet in the east, the Nahua project the human body onto the celestial plane. In a clear case of continuity with their pre-­Hispanic past, the Nahua of Amatlán also project the human form onto the enormity of the earth, saying that mountains are the earth’s head, its feet are in the underworld, the soil is its flesh, the rocks its bones, and the water its blood. In another example of small-­to-­large projection, the sun

is conceived as a huge human face gazing down from the celestial realm. During periods of drought, we have seen families draw a large circular face on the ground using ashes from the fireplace. The idea is to influence the sun to moderate its burning rays, although Abelardo de la Cruz told us that the design is also deployed when people wish to stop overabundant rains. In either circumstance the Nahua project a human face onto the solar disk in order to effect some degree of control over environmental forces. One of the clearest instances of scaling involves Postectli itself. As we approached the dwelling place of apanchaneh-­ tonantzin and birthplace of the seeds, we could not help but notice the shape of the rock cleft’s opening: a vertical slit about the height of a man, slightly wider at the bottom, with rounded edges. Its resemblance to female genitalia was remarkable and unmistakable.87 As Cirilo finished dedicating offerings there and at the nearby cave of lightning and thunder (trueno rayo), a female ritual specialist announced loudly to the assembly, “Now let us go to our real father—­meroh tatah.” She was referring to the sun, whose altar the people would construct at the summit. If water dweller’s cave is a giant earth vagina, then the comment about the summit being the real father suggests that it is regarded as a mountain phallus. At that moment it struck us that from certain angles (photo 1.2), Postectli indeed resembles male genitalia.88 Examples of scaling among the Huastecan Nahua could be extended indefinitely, but now we turn our attention to scaling vis-­à-­vis the altars and offerings in the Postectli pilgrimage. The trek from village to mountain summit was punctuated by major and minor offerings, culminating in the altars constructed at the peak, looking out over the surrounding hills and milpas that lay 600 meters (2,000 feet) below. One of the ritual specialists accompanying Cirilo, a man named Timoteo, told us that the paper figures of the hills such as San Bartolo, Jonotál, and Chicontepec are abogados (“advocates” or “counselors” in the legal sense) that convey offerings to the other hills. In exchange, the hills guard over the people below and provide them with water, wealth, and good fortune. The offerings are directed to all the hills in the sacred landscape, with Postectli serving as the intermediary. Timoteo also said that Postectli is like a grand staircase, where one starts at the lowest level in Ichcacuatitla and moves upward until reaching “the governor,” by which he meant the sun and cross altars at the top. He indicated that offerings at the altars on the mountain are directed to what practitioners view as layers or strata of spirit entities, emphasizing the

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idea of stratification by using the Spanish term niveles, meaning “levels” or “heights.”89 From Timoteo’s remarks we imagined at first that the spirits themselves were ranked and that the different altars presented paper figures that would reflect their position in a hierarchical pantheon. We puzzled at his statements because such an arrangement would have been more consonant with a polytheistic, rather than pantheistic, religion. However, as our analysis of the ritual paper figures in chapter 6 bears out, the range of spirit entities associated with each altar cannot be classed in this way. It was our mistake (and probably the interference of our own cultural conditioning) to assume that different levels imply lesser or greater ranking. Hills may indeed be ordered by their size and by their importance or centrality in the system of myths, but while Postectli is a power center, it is not qualitatively distinct from other hills. To the contrary: each and every hill, Postectli included (or as Cirilo put it matter-­of-­factly, cualquier cerro, “any hill”), is an aspect of the cosmos. Their different paper manifestations equally embody the seamless divinity. Certain spirit entities may have greater influence on the human condition, but all equally are unfoldings of Totiotzin. This perspective helps explain why each altar is a self-­contained module in the larger ritual occasion and how the offerings of one episode get channeled to the entire cosmos. Here we have an excellent example of how the Nahua create, in Maffie’s analytical phrase, “nonhierarchical ordering.”90 Scaling is relative. Postectli acts as a giant altar, a projection onto the enormous mountain of the three-­tiered, arch-­over-­table structure that acts as the seat of offering for Nahua rituals. Simultaneously and despite its great size, the sacred mountain is a reduced instantiation of the entire cosmic structure.91 Our challenge is to find a parsimonious way to synthesize the inventory of paper figures within the overall sequence of altar offerings on the mountain. We start with the example of water because it is telling how the nonhierarchical ordering process clearly incorporates this substance at all levels. Water is ubiquitous in each mezah, at the start in Amatlán, in the small offerings at springs along the route, and in major offerings at the base of the mountain and leading all the way to the summit (Locations 1–­6, table 5.1). It is prominently expressed in the clothed paper image of apanchaneh carried reverentially in her water pot, positioned alongside each altar, and, finally, deposited in the moist rock cleft on Postectli. The numerous petates of water dweller (in male-­ female aspects) are distributed fairly evenly among the altar locations. And in stepwise fashion as the

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pilgrims traveled upward (as table 6.2 shows), one can see increasing numbers of petates of the water-­related spirit entities Santa Rosa and Santa Juanita deployed in the altar offerings. Looking at the altar offerings thematically, each is incorporated into the next higher one as we ascended the mountain. The first offering on the mountain at tepexitzintlan (Location 4) was dedicated to the clouds and to the earth from which the rain-­bearing clouds emerge. At the next level up the mountain, at tlahcopoztectli (Location 5), people constructed the major altar to apanchaneh, the water dweller who distributes the rain to the milpas with the help of her water carriers. Near her cave home we encountered the dwelling of thunder and lightning, also intimately associated with the life-­giving liquid. Finally, arriving at the peak, tzonteconpoztectli (Location 6), people made offerings to zahhuan, the owner of all waters. We suggest that, as the supplicants ascended the mountain, the spirit entities singled out by the ritual offerings at each point were incorporated into the more inclusive ones higher up: thus, the cloud (Location 4) is an aspect of apanchaneh (Location 5), who, in turn, is an aspect of zahhuan (Location 6).92 We surmise that water integrates the layers of the tiered altar just as it integrates the layers of the sacred mountain, commensurate with the way it permeates the planet and, in turn, integrates the entirety of the earth. Water does for the cosmos what blood does for the body. As the pilgrims ascended to the heights, they approached the celestial realm where the presence of Totiotzin is revealed most fully. Recall that Postectli mountain was broken off in primordial times, permanently severing the link between human beings and the ancient ones, including the sun itself. As part of their strategy to reconnect the realms, the Nahua practitioners of el costumbre constructed three self-­ contained altars on the slopes, each a model of the cosmos itself with the arrays of iconographically legible paper figures embodying its constituent elements. Despite being complete universes in their own right, the altars and their prescribed inventories of paper figures reflect the incremental approach as the pilgrims themselves progressed upward, drawing nearer to the fatal breech and to Totiotzin. As part of the first offering “beneath the precipice” (Location 4), ritual specialists placed one petate of diocito (“little god”) and two of San Antonio (the Mexican or Huastecan god)—­all the paper embodiments of God-­Totiotzin itself. Ascending to the next altar and the cave offerings at the “middle of Postectli” (Location 5), they deployed a greater number of paper images of the sacred totality: four petates

a. God-Totiotzin 1998 Sun headdress + Earth body

b. Flag-Bandera 2007 Sun headdress + Earth body

c. Flag-Bandera 2007 Sun headdress + Earth body

of cross (the cross–­sun–­Jesus Christ complex), one of dios arriba (“god above”), the clothed figures of ancient mother earth–­father earth left beneath the altar, and no fewer than ten petates of earth (some specified as “other earth–­ God”). Finally, upon reaching the apex at “the head of Postectli” (Location 6), the sacralized altars there presented three petates of cross–­sun–­Jesus Christ, four more petates of earth (again, some designated as “other earth–­God” and “earth over there”), and—­most revealing of all—­four petates of bandera (“flag”), the embodiment of Totiotzin, the sacred earth-­sun duality. It seems fair to conclude that as the pilgrims scale Postectli, each of the mezah altar offerings lower down is subsumed into higher ones, not as inferior but essential components. Greater manifestations of Totiotzin encompass lesser ones, and divinity reveals itself less diffusely, with enhanced clarity, as it becomes more concentrated and focused. If dreams reveal what specific figures must be cut for each altar and ritual occasion (as Cirilo and his fellow ritual specialists aver), their dreams reflect and reinforce structural principles of a well-­ordered but nonhierarchical Nahua cosmos.

Summary of Nahua Ritual Strategies When we asked Timoteo about the offerings (eager as we were to grasp how each altar and the set of paper figures differed from the others), he said that they are identical for all spirit entities because “they all serve the same purpose.” According to our observations, the statement is literally correct. We were unable to distinguish among

d. God-Totiotzin 2007 Earth headdress + Water body

Figure 7.1. Totiotzin made manifest in Cirilo’s paper figures. Drawing by Ana Laura Ávila-­Myers.

the qualities or quantities of offerings according to which spirit entity was being addressed, largely because, as Cirilo frequently asserted, “they are all the same” and “they like the same things we do.” We take his words to mean that the paper figures cut by the ritual specialists are simply meant to be transient embodiments of the reality of Totiotzin. Even the disease-­causing wind spirits receive their share of ritual attention. To dedicate finer, more expensive, or more desirable offerings to certain spirit entities as opposed to others would violate the logic of their pantheistic system. When Cirilo dreamed about what particular paper figures he needed to create for a pilgrimage to Postectli, we believe that he probably conceived of some as highly abstract (and others highly specific) expressions of the sacred reality. We include a final example of Cirilo’s remarkable paper creations, cut for us in 1998 at the time of our first Postectli pilgrimage.93 In figure 7.1 we compare his 1998 and 2007 images of the supreme totality. He likely produced different iterations of the abstract Totiotzin thousands of times over his career as a master paper cutter, each presented in his own precise way, true to the nature of his medium and his world view. His 1998 cutting (figure 7.1a), which he identified as Totiotzin, is stylistically similar to his 2007 cuttings of flag, or bandera (figures 7.1b and 7.1c, reproducing paper figures 13-01 and 13-04 in table 6.7), which are identical save for their seven- and five-pronged headdresses and illustrate the Nahua earth-sun duality. Compare Cirilo’s 2007 cutting of God-Totiotzin (figure 7.1d, reproducing paper figure 07-06 in table 6.5), which presents (and integrates)

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the iconography of the Nahua water-­earth duality: in this instance, Totiotzin has the headdress of little maize (exemplar figure E-15) and the zigzag cuts revealing water, like those that characterize Santa Juanita (E-­17), Santa Panchita (E-­ 18), and water dweller apanchaneh (E-­24). These alternative portrayals of Totiotzin demonstrate the confluence of sky-­celestial and water-­earth realms or levels, with the sun’s rays crowning earth’s body punctuated by the sacred hills. They reveal the fluidity with which the ritual specialists combine elements from their design vocabulary and show how everything reveals Totiotzin in the Nahua world view. From the perspective of the participants, a pilgrimage undoubtedly appears to be a holistic totality, interrupted by occasional pauses at various locations to construct altars and visit the dwellings of the spirit entities. In this chapter we have shown that, in fact, these sacred journeys

are composed a series of discrete episodes at particular venues developed by the Nahua to contact, engage, and enter into reciprocal exchange relationships with specific aspects of Totiotzin. In response to the problem of how to make contact with unseen forces in the form of spirit entities and incorporate these beings into their social lives, people make full use of objects, specificity, locality, reciprocity, modularity, and scaling, to mention just a few of the techniques the Nahua have developed to create effective rituals—­rituals that serve their needs. We know that at some level these techniques do produce the desired and intended results because people continue to rely on them in their efforts to reset the cosmic equilibrium. Ritual is best seen as a means to an end, and over the years the Nahua have devised strategies that achieve the results they seek.

Notes 1. Gómez Martínez (2013: 171); translation ours. 2. Burkhart (1992b: 345), cited in Maffie (2014: 93). 3. Burkhart (1992a: 89); see also España Soto (2018: 129). 4. Burkhart (1992b: 345). 5. Maffie (2014: 93); emphasis in original. 6. Lupo (1995: 98) illustrates the specificity in ritual requests among Nahua of the Sierra Norte de  Puebla. Maffie (2014: 86–­91, 120–­21) clarifies how the process metaphysics of the Aztecs specified practical and workable aspects of teotl for ritual action. 7. See this insight in the discussion of animism by Maffie (2014: 114–­16). 8. See Martínez de  la  Cruz (2000) and Gómez Martínez (2002, 2004b). 9. Frannie Berdan shared with us in April 2017 an unpublished 94-­page list she had compiled of ritual objects used by the Aztecs in their eighteen monthly ceremonies. It lists hundreds of items, ranging from paper banners to precious capes and feathers. Berdan (2007: 245–­46) discusses the costs involved in Aztec rituals, as described by sixteenth-­century chroniclers, and concludes that by any measure these ritual occasions were “flamboyant and extravagant.” 10. Shorter (2009: 269–­70) comments on the richness of Yaqui (Yoeme) ritual offerings for the dead and states that they far transcend mere symbolism. Furthermore, throughout the study Shorter hints at a Yaqui monistic philosophy by showing that their dance performances do more than represent their history; they embody it. 11. Sandstrom (1982, 2007, 2008c) outlines applications of economic principles to ritual behavior; see also Sabloff (2008). Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2017) present a behavioral-­ economic analysis of Nahua ritual focusing on the pilgrimages here summarized.

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12. López Austin (1988 [1980]: vol. 1, 73–­74). 13. López Austin (2017: 408). 14. Gómez Martínez (2013: 177). 15. Lupo (1995: 99); translation ours. 16. Lupo (1995: 163); translation ours. Abelardo de  la  Cruz (personal communication, June 11, 2019) explained that people in the municipio of Chicontepec feel that they need to pay apanchaneh when they take water for the first time from a spring because, as he put it, “water is not free and we need to leave her a coin.” Gómez Martínez (2013: 175) affirms the same point. 17. William Christian (1981: 55–­59) analyzes such a system of exchange in Spain. Eade and Sallnow (1991: 24–­26) note the transactional and economic nature of Christian pilgrimage in general. 18. McAnany and Wells (2008: 3). 19. See Bell (1992) for an extended discussion of the problem of defining ritual in a precise way. 20. Sandstrom (2008c: 103). 21. Maffie (2014: 94–­95, 355–­64, 524–­27; also 2019) shows how similar, highly complex systems of reciprocity among the Aztecs are implicated in their moral and ethical precepts, and both in conceptions of the sacred and the quotidian. For example, work or effort (tequitl), and even a gift or offering (tlamanaliztli), implicates the vital life force (chicahualiztli) of the worker or gift giver, with the result that people are woven into a social network of energetic exchanges: “One cultivates morally good (cualli) character and genuine humanness by participating in chicahualiztli-­exchanging social relationships” (Maffie 2019: 12). 22. Sandstrom (2008c: 104). 23. Sandstrom (2008c: 112). 24. Anthropologists conducting research in Mexico have often observed that a key organizing principle of Native American religion is the idea of reciprocity or social exchange. In his

ethnographic work in the Nahua village of Ojital Cuayo near Amatlán, Romero Huerta (2016) describes rituals similar to the ones we document and interprets them as a form of reciprocity between humans and spirit entities. Researchers who link rituals to reciprocity include, among others, Furst (1972: 180); Sandstrom (1975, 2008c); Lupo (1995: 163); Monaghan (1995); Hooft and Cerda Zepeda (2003: 106); Berdan (2007: 262); Hooft (2007: 224); Morehart and Butler (2010); Pacheco (2014: 83); Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014: 95); López Austin (2017: 401, 407–­8); López Austin and López Luján (2017: 614); McClung de Tapia and Martínez Yrizar (2017: 180–­82); and España Soto (2018: 126). 25. Sandstrom (2008c: 109). 26. Cirilo’s longer account, “Tlen tlatojtli chicomexochitl = La semilla siete flores” (recording no.  92, AILLA resource ID: 132838) is available at https://​ailla​.utexas​.org/; see Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986–­98). Abelardo de la Cruz corrected the Nahuatl orthography in this brief excerpt (lines 214–­18 and 230–­50) to conform to the IDIEZ system (Sullivan et al. 2016): “Yeca quitlaliah ce coztumbreh pan tlaltepactli pampa miac tictlacazoloah ni tlalli campa tinenticateh. Huanquinon no ticcuecihuiliah, huanquinon ya quemmantzin no quitlahpaloah. . . . Nelliya tinochimeh tlahuel tictlacazoloah tlaltepactli. Ya monequi tictlepanittazceh para iuhquinon axtechcuecihuiliz. Axcanah nopeca cequin ya ayocquinequih quiittazceh coztumbrez, quenni tixochitlaliah. Ya Dios eltoc para monequi tictlahpalozceh, para tlahtlanizceh ce favor, ma techmaca ce ahhuechtli para iuhquinon eliz ce tlatoctli. Tlen huahcapameh nochi yanopa quichihuayayah. Ya mopahtiyayah pan tepetl, xochitlaliyayah, tlamaquiliah, motlahtlaniah, tlen ica panozceh. Huan yehyectzin queuhquinon eliyaya. Huahcahya ohome eheyi cinpamitl quicuiyayah, pero naman ayoctlen. Ayocquinequi tlaeheliz ya cintli, etl, camohtli pampa nelliya timiaqueh, itztoqueh cequin ayoctlen quitlepanittah. Huan yeca tlaltepactli mocuezoa, pues ya tictlacazoloah, ya pan tinehnemih, quixixah, quiaxixah.” 27. Sandstrom (1991: 311); Maffie (2014: 93). 28. Cruz (2017: 270). 29. Thaler (2015: 59). 30. Thaler (2015: 64–­73). 31. Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2017) provide additional examples of how behavioral economics applies to ritual participation. 32. Sandstrom (2009 [1998]). 33. Guthrie (1993: 3). 34. Guthrie (1993: 183); emphasis in original. 35. Guthrie (1993: 36). 36. Guthrie (1993: 37–­38). 37. Guthrie (1993: 62). 38. See Guthrie (1993: 111–­12). Following Guthrie’s model, Malville (2016) applies the concept of animism to archaeological contexts. Contributors to Faugère and Beekman (2020) examine anthropomorphism in prehistoric Mesoamerica from the vantage of multiple disciplines. 39. Guthrie (1993: 193–­94). 40. Guthrie (1993: 195). 41. Guthrie (1993: 178, 185); emphasis ours. 42. Guthrie (1993: 185, 187).

43. Of course, nothing is 100  percent. We want to confirm that Nahua ritual specialists do on occasion create nonanthropomorphic figures of spirit entities in addition to the ubiquitous human forms. We are unable at this point in the research on Nahua religious practices to specify the circumstances or rationale for abandoning the human form in these cases, but we illustrate four examples of nonanthropomorphic figures cut by religious specialist María Dolores Hernández. The first is her version of pilcintzin, the young or “little maize” plant, which she depicts as a naturalistic flowering plant from purple tissue paper (paper figure X-27); each of her creations are illustrated in table X.1 in the book’s Coda. Nahua ritual specialists typically portray this entity as a small human with a tassel-­crown and maize ears cut from the body (compare paper figure E-15, accompanying table 6.2). In her conception, María Dolores renders the bean plant (another cutting prevalent in the Postectli collection) as an exuberant vegetative entity with roots (paper figure X-28), cut from green paper. In her white tissue-­paper images of two important celestial forces, tonatiuh, the sun (paper figure X-29), and mētztli, the moon (paper figure X-30), the ritual specialist envisions them as nonanthropomorphic rectangular forms, with V-cuts radiating from a central point (see also Sandstrom 1991: 278, figs. 33–­34). Compare the photo of an elaborate cutting of the sun (recorte del sol) in España Soto (2018: 136, fig. 10). 44. Rappaport (1979: 175). 45. Rappaport (1979: 174); emphasis in original. 46. Rappaport (1979: 226). 47. Rappaport (1979: 179). 48. Rappaport (1979: 176). 49. Rappaport (1979: 176). 50. Rappaport (1979: 179, 198). 51. Rappaport (1979: 197); emphasis in original. 52. Monaghan (1995) offers an extended ethnographic analysis of reciprocal relations in a Mixtec community, focusing on the concept of nakara, a kind of nurturing love that people demonstrate through sacrifice, gift-­giving, and the provisioning of food. Food and love are also themes explored by Taggart (2007; 2011; 2020) among Nahuat speakers of the Sierra Norte de  Puebla. For further insight into the relationships between work, food production, and the maintenance of cosmic equilibrium in Mesoamerican cultures, see also Williams García (1963: 198); Ichon (1973 [1969]: 103); Lupo (1995: 57, 105, 220; 2001: 369, 379–­80); Gómez Martínez (1999: 8; 2002: 58); Martínez de  la  Cruz (2000: 38, 41); McClung de  Tapia and Martínez de Yrizar (2017: 182). 53. The nature of information flow across academic disciplinary boundaries in human behavioral ecology was the focus of a study by Pamela Sandstrom (1994) in which its antecedents in cultural ecology are traced. 54. Kanter and Vaughn (2012: 68). 55. Kanter and Vaughn (2012: 68). 56. See Irons (1996: 386); Sosis (2003); Sosis and Alcorta (2003), and Sosis and Bulbulia (2011: 51) for applications of costly signaling to illuminate religious behavior.

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57. Kanter and Vaughn (2012: 68). 58. See Dow (2006: 70–­72) and Boyer and Bergstrom (2008: 7–­8) for overviews of the theory. 59. Lockhart (1992: 15); compare Lockhart (1991: 11). 60. Lockhart (1992: 429). Also see Vogt (1976: 204–­8), who develops a concept of the cellular structure of contemporary Maya rituals in Zinacantán, Chiapas, Mexico. 61. Lockhart (1992: 422). 62. See also Lockhart (1992: 394–­95). 63. Lockhart (1992: 377). 64. Lockhart (1992: 440). For information on Nahua modularity applied to village design, household duties, and house-­ naming customs, see Sandstrom (1991: 103–­7). 65. Lockhart (1992: 142). 66. See Ichon (1973 [1969]: 41) and Monaghan (1998: 32) for discussions of the importance of the number 20 in Mesoamerica. 67. Gerhard (1972: 23–­24). 68. It is true that whole components may be left out, such as we saw earlier when the arch embodying the celestial realm or the palm-­leaf-­and-­flower star icons attached to it were omitted. But even in these instances, ritual specialists and their helpers are otherwise maximally conscientious assembling their altars. 69. Taggart (1983: 55–­56, 189); Sandstrom (1996). 70. Stone (1992: 116). 71. Helpful discussions of Nahua understanding of pollution can be found in Burkhart (1989: 87–­129); DiCesare (2009); and Laack (2019: 106–­8, 143, 168, 187, 190, 317–­18). 72. Klein (1990–­91: 82). 73. Klein (1982: 1); Maffie (2014: 261–­70). 74. And see Burkhart (1989: 97). 75. García Garagarza (2017: 598). The definition of yahualoa in Molina (1944 [1571]: pt. 2, col. 1, 32; translation ours) reads: “to circle another, or go to complain before another; to walk around in procession or to encircle; to walk many times around.” In chapter 1 we distinguished tlayahualolli, “procession,” from nehnemiliztli, “pilgrimage.” 76. Turner (1973: 211). 77. Sandstrom (1991: 349–­54); Dow and Sandstrom (2001). 78. See our summary description of Huichol pilgrimage in chapter 8. 79. Sandstrom (2003); Joyce (2009). 80. Vogt (1976: 11). 81. See, in particular, Marcus (1998) and López Luján and López Austin (2010). The practice of miniaturizing has also been well documented among the pre-­Hispanic Maya by Gillespie (2000: 135–­60).

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82. See Lok (1987); Signorini and Lupo (1989: 89); and Lupo (1995: 177–­80). 83. Pitrou (2016: 468). 84. Lorente Fernández (2011: 179) describes miniature offerings dedicated to the ahuaque water spirits among the Nahua of Texcoco. In a special issue of Journal of Anthropological Research devoted to the theme of miniaturization (see Angé and Pitrou 2016), Sillar (2016) argues that the Inka used miniatures as a means to link humans to nonhuman entities. 85. Bailey (2005: 26–­ 44) discusses miniaturization and dimensionality in a fascinating survey of Neolithic figurines, where he summarizes psychology experiments that measured the effects of spatial scale on time perception (DeLong 1981), also cited in Joyce (2009: 411) and Rice (2019: 23). The findings show that people who manipulate miniature figurines and doll-­house furnishings experience time as compressed, passing more quickly as the scale of objects shrinks relative to the full-­scale environment. If cross-­culturally validated, such findings may explain the power and profound effect of the paper-­ figure complex on participants. And as a point of general interest, miniaturization is a feature of Mexican folk art traditions (Flechsig 2004). 86. See Reyes García (1976: 127); Sandstrom (2009 [1998]). 87. See Sandstrom (2005a: 53–­54, 59); compare Báez (2004: 99). 88. Reinforcing the interpretation, a paper figure of Postectli (see paper figure X-31 in table X.1) has an unmistakable phallic shape cut in its chest, a cutting given to us by Arturo Gómez Martínez and reproduced with his permission. It was conceived and created out of glossy green paper (papel lustre) in 1990 by Nahua ritual specialist Efrén Hernández Flores of the village of Xalatla in the municipio of Chicontepec. 89. See Gómez Martínez (2013: 192–­94) and Mar-­Olivares (2015: 60), who confirm that people in the Huasteca see the hills as differentiated by level or height, corresponding to different spirit entities. 90. Maffie (2014: 100–­13). 91. See Gómez Martínez (2004b: 263–­65); Sandstrom (2004); and Gómez Martínez and Hooft (2012: 13) for further discussion on this point. 92. Compare this point in Martínez de la Cruz (2000: 92–­96); also Gómez Martínez (2013: 160–­62). 93. Cirilo’s conception of God-Totiotzin (paper figure X-32 in table X.1) can be compared in the book’s Coda to the creations of other Nahua ritual specialists.

8 Pilgrimage in Perspective Foundational Definitions and Case Examples Pilgrimage is a remarkable custom found in historically unrelated cultures at all levels of sociocultural integration. As a practice, it is centrally important to Christians in Europe and beyond, as well as Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims worldwide. It is an especially important practice among the ancient Aztecs and Maya as well as peoples of the American Southwest.1 Geographer Alan Morinis provides an initial definition of the phenomenon as “a journey undertaken by a person in quest of a place or a state that he or she believes to embody a valued ideal.”2 He leaves the definition intentionally vague to allow room for pilgrimages that do not involve a geographic journey, such as the Hindu inner pilgrimage. The definition also does not imply that the pilgrim’s destination must be religious in nature, simply that it entails some kind of “spiritual magnetism” that attracts people.3 In our secular age people may visit Lenin’s tomb or Elvis Presley’s Graceland to recapture something significant in their own past or shared cultural history. It is easy to see how pilgrimage borders on tourism, and such blurring of boundaries can be true even when the journey has some religious basis.4 Morinis adds that journeys of this type can be taken alone or as part of a group. He offers a surprising fact about the contemporary practice, asserting that in any given year “pilgrimages draw together the largest regular human assemblages on earth.”5 One has only to think of the hajj (or hadj) to Mecca and the many thousands of pilgrimage sites across Christian Europe and Hindu India to comprehend this fact.6 Another defining feature of pilgrimage is that it tends to arise from the people and is rarely organized by religious or social elites.7 Not surprisingly, destinations are often spectacular places that create and reinforce a powerful, lasting impression on pilgrims. It is clear from the photographs we have presented that Postectli fits this characteristic well, while the other three pilgrimage destinations discussed in appendixes A, B, and C are also noteworthy in their own way. A final observation is that no matter what their culture of origin, people often take some kind of memento from the pilgrimage site back to the place where they started. Such souvenirs are typically inexpensive if purchased or so commonplace that they do not compete with the majesty of the place visited or the ideals it represents.8 For our discussion of the phenomenon in a comparative framework, we modify one accepted definition of pilgrimage: “an event consisting of longer than local journeys by numerous persons to a sacred place as an act of religious devotion.”9 We are also going to restrict the definition of pilgrimage to its religious expression but add the stipulation that

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the pilgrims, in addition to leaving a place and traveling to a sacred destination, must return to their point of origin. People already living in a pilgrimage center who wish to embark on a sacred journey themselves usually eschew the nearby familiar site and travel to a distant site; escaping the local scene is a critical element of the pilgrimage process.10 Returning to the point of origin seems to us to be the defining requirement of pilgrimage, however. To go to an important destination and to remain there, or to keep going on without the intent of returning, is simply travel. In our discussion we exclude inner pilgrimages and journeys of a more secular nature while recognizing that the religious and the secular can blend in sometimes surprising ways. Our study of the pilgrimage to Postectli clearly falls into the religious category. No one who journeyed to the sacred mountain could be considered a tourist. Pilgrimages are complex sociocultural phenomena intimately linked to many other cultural expressions.11 During periods of notable or rapid culture change, pilgrimage sites wax and wane in importance. Some destinations may cease attracting visitors altogether, and yet others persist for thousands of years. While variable among themselves, Christian pilgrimages apparently fall into broad patterns according to geographic and culture differences. In Europe only 8 percent of pilgrimage sites are centered directly on the figure of Christ. In Latin America, by contrast, 25 percent are devoted to Christ. In the subcategory of pilgrimage sites within Latin America visited mostly by Native Americans, 52 percent are Christ-­ oriented.12 The pilgrimages to all four sacred mountains described here were focused at least partly on the figure of Jesus Christ manifested as the sun. An authority on Latin American pilgrimage, Mary Lee Nolan, states that while pilgrimages in the New World appear to be unique to the hemisphere, most actually have roots in Europe, and she finds little evidence for large-­scale continuity from pre-­Hispanic practices. Nolan attributes this finding to the role of Catholic Church authorities who, in their apparent zeal to convert but faced with an insufficient number of priests, developed a policy of “permissibility of the familiar,” meaning that Indigenous practices deemed acceptable were allowed and encouraged.13 Pilgrimage was thus tolerated and became open to the teachings of Christianity, supplanting Indigenous meanings. Nolan allows that pre-­Hispanic practices were more likely to survive in remote areas with fewer resources.14 While pilgrimage has long been a subject of interest, it only became an important focus of research for social

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scientists with the publication of Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (1978) by anthropologists Victor Turner and Edith Turner. Since that time, and mostly thanks to their work, a significant literature has accumulated on the topic, and we now have documentation of pilgrimages from many different cultures throughout the world. The work of the Turners focuses on what they call “historical religions,” and they place particular emphasis on Catholic pilgrimage in Mexico. They discuss several sacred places that have become Catholic pilgrimage centers, including Tepeyac (associated with the Virgin of Guadalupe), Zapopan (Our Lady of Zapopan), Ocotlán (Our Lady of Ocotlán), and Chalma (Our Lord of Chalma). While the authors acknowledge that one can find Indigenous elements associated with these pilgrimage complexes, they discuss these destinations in the context of Catholic doctrine and their connections to larger political developments in Mexico. However, if the theory they have developed on pilgrimage has validity, it should apply cross-­culturally to traditions that fall outside the Christian sphere as well. Apart from the specific deities addressed, there is nothing in Christian pilgrimage that distinguishes it analytically from similar practices found in cultures throughout the world; we will address the contrary arguments of George Kubler below. In any case, we believe that it is worth the effort to determine the applicability of the Turnerian model to explaining pilgrimage regardless of where it is practiced. The Turners begin their study by developing a typology of different pilgrimages for the historical religions.15 This classification, of course, is specific to Euro-­American traditions and can tell us little about Nahua practices. The pilgrimage to Postectli as observed today by contemporary people is part of a living tradition, and not surprisingly it does not fit very well within the Turnerian scheme. While the journeys to Postectli and the other pilgrimage sites exhibit syncretic (Indigenous Mesoamerican and Catholic) features, it is the Native American tradition that predominates, with the newer, introduced religion contributing added elements.16 What we require is an additional category of pilgrimage that emphasizes local traditions that persist outside historic, state-­ level religions. To account for the journeys to Postectli, Palaxtepetl, Tres Pozitos, and Xomulco we suggest the phrase “autochthonous pilgrimage” to refer to local practices that largely coexist alongside the historic world religions of Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, or Buddhism. Though unwieldy (but seemingly less so in Spanish, peregrinación autóctono), the phrase acknowledges the debt to

earth-­related (chthonic) Indigenous religious traditions exemplified by el costumbre practice. The Turners propose an interesting and controversial theory of Christian pilgrimage. The theory derives from their previous work on ritual symbolism in Africa in which they expanded on the theoretical contributions made at the turn of the twentieth century by Arnold van Gennep (1960 [1909]). Gennep produced the now-­classic work Les rites de passage, which examines “rites of passage”—­that is, rituals marking a change in social status. Examples he offered include puberty rituals, marriage ceremonies, inductions or graduations, and funerals. He found that such rites are found in virtually every culture and that for the most part they are characterized by a similar ritual process. The adepts or initiates undergoing the change are led through a period of separation (séparation) from other members of the society, followed by a liminal period of transition (marge) in which they are statusless. Then, through a process of incorporation (agrégation), they are taken back into society with their newly attained status. Before we examine the work of Gennep and the Turners we would like to show how this tripartite scheme fits our Nahua data on Postectli. It will be recalled that following several days of preparation, the participants held an all-­ night offering in Amatlán. This event marked the starting point of the period of separation, when the participants entered into a sacred world that existed apart from their normal lives. As the ritual wound down early the next morning, the group left the safety and comfort of the village and walked to the sacred mountain. The physical separation and the exertion of the trek made even more vivid the separation of the pilgrims from their previous statuses in their local communities. Late in the afternoon, the pilgrims arrived at the base of the sacred mountain where they participated in another all-­night offering, the end of which initiated the period of transition. It appears to us that the transition phase began as we started out to climb the steep trail. At that point, the ritual specialists had everyone relieve themselves in the forest before the ascent to avoid polluting the sacred precinct. As Gennep indicated, it is common for participants to cross some kind of threshold to indicate this important stage in the rite of passage. Although alert to this possibility, we noticed no such apparent threshold as we entered the deep forest cover at the base of the mountain. However, Gómez Martínez writes that, on other occasions when he participated in Postectli pilgrimages, the ritual specialists did in fact create a gateway: “Before beginning to climb the hill, the ritual specialists tie a cloth

over the trail to delimit the entrance into the sacred area. Afterward all pass beneath this [cloth] as a symbol of entering the divine area.”17 After the final offering at the summit of Postectli, the pilgrims descended the trail and proceeded back to their communities. Although we saw no ritual marking of this return to normalcy, a psychological shift was evident. People talked with muted excitement and clearly felt exhilarated at having made it to the sacred mountain. In sum, the pilgrims did experience the stages of separation, transition, and incorporation on the sacred journey to Postectli. If Gennep is correct, they returned renewed and transformed, and their position in the social structure was altered, if only because they had become former pilgrims who proved their contribution and commitment to the well-­being of humanity. It is our contention that the Nahua pilgrimages to Postectli and the other sacred journeys are indeed rites of passage. By participating, the pilgrims believed they had changed, if ever so slightly, their relations with the cosmos and the terms of their own lives. The insightful study offered more than a century ago by Gennep clarifies how the widespread practice of pilgrimage conforms in many ways to a wider complex of ritual practices found in every culture in the world. We explore this insight more fully below. It was the Turners who elaborated Gennep’s scheme, first applying it to ritual in Africa (1969) and later extending it to their now-­classic 1978 study of Christian pilgrimage. Their most significant achievement was to amplify understanding of the period of transition in rites of passage. In their view, the adepts lose their previous identities in the transition phase and enter a period of what the Turners termed “anti-­structure” or “communitas” during which participants interact with one another as equals, absent the usual socially defined categories standing between them. This phase is difficult to imagine because, for the most part, people’s lives are played out in a dense thicket of social statuses, expectations, and obligations. In communitas, participants lose their identities as older versus younger generation, male-­female, rich-­poor, high-­low social class, town-­country inhabitants, citizen-­foreigner, and any number of other differentiating categories that people conceivably inhabit. Suddenly, none of those distinctions are salient, freeing people for the first time to be themselves apart from any assigned statuses. In order to emphasize the absence of status during this state, the Turners argue that adepts are often compelled to dress identically or exhibit some visible mark, such as a shaven head, to remove the evidence of social difference. One can

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think of academic graduation ceremonies in which the wearing of identical black robes temporarily erases distinctions of status evident in clothing. Regardless of the overall validity of their approach to the study of pilgrimage, one of the most fruitful contributions of the Turners’ theory has been to stimulate much cross-­ cultural work on this type of sacred journey. Universality of rites of passage and the expanded role proposed by the Turners for the liminal period that exists between the old and new social statuses has captured the imagination of anthropologists and scholars from many disciplines. Communitas in the memories of people who have experienced it is extremely attractive and even life-­changing. It can be a profound fulgurating experience when the trappings of society, once eliminated, enable participants to see each other in their essential humanity suddenly, if briefly. The problematic feature of communitas, however, is that despite all efforts, it cannot be sustained beyond the short term: communitas always decays back into social structure. For the Turners, normal social life is filled with restrictions, scripted activities that allow little freedom of expression and entail burdensome social exchanges, obligatory performances, and many other constraints. This situation may be particularly acute in societies without the escape of travel or recreational opportunities. People everywhere have always sought occasional role release to make the everyday burdens of social life bearable. Communitas can provide that essential release. The Turners embrace the idea proposed by Gennep that pilgrimage is a rite of passage in that it involves separation from the larger society, a period of transition, and a return to society with a new social status.18 It is worth quoting at length the authors’ characterization of this process: If mysticism is an interior pilgrimage, pilgrimage is exteriorized mysticism. The point of it all is to get out, go forth, to a far holy place approved by all. In societies with few economic opportunities for movement away from limited circles of friends, neighbors, and local authorities, all rooted alike in the soil, the only journey possible for those not merchants, peddlers, minstrels, jugglers, tumblers, wandering friars, or outlaws, or their modern equivalents is a holy journey, a pilgrimage or a crusade. On such a journey one gets away from the reiterated “occasions of sin” which make up so much of the human experience of social structure. If one is tied by blood or edict to a given set of people in daily intercourse over the whole gamut of

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human activities—­domestic, economic, jural, ritual, recreational, affinal, neighborly—­small grievances over trivial issues tend to accumulate through the years, until they become major disputes over property, office, or prestige which factionalize the group. One piles up a store of nagging guilts, not all of which can be relieved in a parish confessional, especially when the priest himself may be party to the conflicts. When such a load can no longer be borne, it is time to take to the road as a pilgrim.19

In small remote villages such as Amatlán, people living without priest or confessional may store up even more pressure in their daily lives. In order to clarify the contributions made by the Turners and to better understand the critiques their work has generated, it will be helpful to detail how their approach to rites of passage differs from that presented by Gennep. His monograph is a compendium of ritual examples from around the world illustrating separation, transition, and incorporation. If Gennep is correct, as we feel he is, then a large proportion of ritual life consists of rites of passage, even if anthropologists have been slow to recognize the fact. Gennep writes that “[t]he life of an individual in any society is a series of passages from one stage to another and from one occupation to another.”20 Largely concerning what he calls “semicivilized” societies, he claims that “[i]n such societies every change in a person’s life involves actions and reactions between sacred and profane—­actions and reactions to be regulated and guarded so that society as a whole will suffer no discomfort or injury.”21 Gennep examines a panoply of customs from around the world: how strangers are treated; ceremonies in which people marry trees; periods when laws are suspended and people may freely steal from neighbors; gift exchange; the Catholic Mass; bride capture; the veil; circumcision; whipping; or spitting into a neophyte’s mouth, among other examples. Although the Turners rely on the tripartite scheme that is now so closely associated with his name, Gennep himself does not characterize the specific internal features of each stage in the process. He makes no mention of communitas nor does he elaborate on the betwixt-­ and-­ between nature of the transition phase. Further, it is the Turners who regard rites of passage as a relatively fixed sequence of practices whereas Gennep writes that the three phases are highly variable: “[t]hus, although a complete scheme of rites of passage theoretically includes preliminal rites (rites of separation), liminal rites (rites of transition), and postliminal

rites (rites of incorporation), in specific instances these three types are not always equally important or equally elaborated.”22 He adds, “I want to reiterate that I do not claim an absolute universality or absolute necessity for the pattern of rites of passage.”23 In actual practice one phase may dominate over the others, which may in fact be barely visible or absent altogether.24 Gennep was insistent that examining rites of passage outside of their social context inevitably leads to errors of interpretation, and so he claimed that the “primary purpose of this book is precisely to react against ‘folkloristic’ or ‘anthropological’ procedure, which consists of extracting various rites—­whether positive or negative—­from a set of ceremonies and considering them in isolation, thus removing them from a context which gives them meaning and reveals their position in a dynamic whole.”25 Thus, the Turners skirt Gennep’s cautionary advice when they give the impression that rites of passage stand on their own or when they provide examples of communitas without giving the full cultural context. Compared with the Turners, Gennep sees rites of passage as considerably less structured and rigid. He writes briefly about pilgrimage and, not surprisingly, points out that all rites of passage involve some form of “territorial passage” and that a change of status almost always involves a change in place.26 Generalizing from the pilgrimage to Mecca, he writes, “At departure there are, of course, rites of separation, and upon arrival at the sanctuary there are special rites of pilgrimage, including rites of incorporation into the divine . . . ; these are followed by rites of separation from the sanctuary and return into life of society and the family.”27 Pilgrimages are indeed complicated. In discussing the broader issues surrounding rites of passage, Gennep could be writing about one pragmatic result of Nahua pilgrimages when he claims that “[a]ll those rites whose purpose is the multiplication of animals and plants, the periodicity of fertilizing floods, the fertilization of the earth, the normal growth and ripening of grains and fruits, and so forth, are only a means of securing a desirable economic position.”28 Gennep’s conception of rites of passage surely extends beyond the restricted aspects of the phenomenon selected by the Turners for their model of pilgrimage. We wish to make one final point about the contribution of Gennep to our understanding of pilgrimage. Critics have pointed out that the sacred journey does not really produce a change in social status among returning pilgrims and, therefore, cannot be a true rite of passage. Carlos Bravo Marentes, for example, writes that “the

changes that the pilgrim undergoes are of a moral and spiritual nature and not in social status.”29 It is true that pilgrims from Amatlán did not by virtue of their participation undergo any notable transition to new social statuses or position in the community. They remained Indigenous farmers and still the fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, compadres, or political officeholders of the community; no acknowledged new status was conferred on the returned pilgrims. However, Gennep did not defend such a rigid definition of social status. Although certain of his examples represented clear changes in people’s position relative to others in the system, most simply recorded a subtler shift that may well have been perceived by an individual’s neighbors as moral or spiritual. It requires no strict rules to apply his system for classifying rites of passage (and, by extension, pilgrimages). Instead, what is called for on the part of observers is interpretation and judgment. Morinis rejects the hypothesis of the Turners, arguing that pilgrimage as a social phenomenon is too variable and complex to reduce to simple structural principles. He presents a number of studies that attempt to test their hypothesis and concludes that none confirm it.30 In the pilgrimages to Postectli, we noted that the pilgrims, many coming from surrounding communities, did achieve a high degree of comradeship. When someone faltered from the heat or was overcome and had to stop to rest, no one complained and all went out of the way to be accommodating and help out. We saw younger men take heavy loads from older people, and as the day wore on, there was widespread sharing of water. Their behavior seemed not all that unusual, however, merely customary polite interaction exhibited by the Nahua but now extended to the limit under the most trying of circumstances. As we have indicated, the dedication of ritual offerings and the blood sacrifices were intense emotional experiences for people, many of whom were on the verge of weeping as the ritual specialists chanted and addressed the spirit entities. At the same time, we were unable to observe any notable breakdown of social statuses or transformations of the social order into anything resembling communitas. At no time did people appear to be in a liminal state, and the usual distinctions we could expect to observe—­such as status differences between laypersons and ritual specialists, the division of labor between men and women, or the respect directed toward older members of the group—­appeared to continue as in everyday life. In interviewing people during and after the pilgrimages, no one suggested they had experienced any removal

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of the perceived social barriers. As far as we could tell, people did not change the ways they addressed one another so as to indicate that they were freed of social constraints. It may be that we simply could not recognize the change of status among people, but if communitas and liminality are states as powerful as the Turners describe, it is difficult to imagine not being cognizant of their signals. Morinis generally criticizes anthropological studies of pilgrimage for failing to address the direct experience sought by pilgrims, although one would think that this is precisely what the Turners were attempting to do. He claims, falsely in our view, that anthropologists themselves are not interested in meaning and so overlook this important aspect of the pilgrimage experience. On the contrary, we think that anthropologists are often too invested in studying meaning and, as a consequence, neglect to address the material conditions underlying cultural systems. Morinis presents his own typology of pilgrimages and states that the two invariable components of pilgrimage, regardless of type, are the journey and the goal.31 He recommends that researchers focus more on the journey itself because participants tend to see it as the most important or meaningful part of the experience. The goal (or motivation) of pilgrims is to achieve an enhanced or exaggerated relationship with the divine, according to Morinis, which he sees as an intensification of some cultural ideal.32 Morinis asserts further that pilgrimage can be best understood in terms of its opposition to everyday life. At one pole is the known, human, social, imperfect, and mundane. At the opposite is the mysterious, divine, ideal, perfect, and miraculous. Morinis and coauthor N. Ross Crumrine write that the study of pilgrimage due to its complexity as a social phenomenon must be holistic and linked to other parts of the culture.33 In this view and agreeing with Gennep, Crumrine and Morinis call pilgrimage a “dynamic concrete isolate,” which “at its core is structured interaction of human belief and behavior with particular geographical locations.”34 While each of these schemes and methodological frameworks certainly helps to define pilgrimage and distinguish it from related activities, each also falls short of adequately explaining why the phenomenon is so widespread in the world. On the whole, Morinis’s work on pilgrimage has in­creased our knowledge of a fascinating social phenomenon that transcends specific cultures and promises to bring new understandings of the general human condition. He clearly demonstrates that the complex practice can be viewed from a number of perspectives. Of course,

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the same can be said of most social phenomena such as kinship, political systems, or the economy. In rejecting the Turners’ proposal as too simple he creates an approach to pilgrimage that is so complex and all-­encompassing that hypothesis-­testing and explanation become nearly impossible. Any theoretical explanation inevitably involves the selection of key variables and the neglect of lesser ones. Morinis offers no apparent way to resolve the researcher’s imperative of weighing the many factors that make up the pilgrimage phenomenon. Instead he advocates that we focus attention on the meanings that pilgrims attach to their sacred journey. But he does not go on to specify how researchers are supposed to accomplish this task methodologically nor does he take pains to explain why people, at considerable cost, undertake journeys to culturally significant sites. No social theory to date can take into account all of the levels of analysis outlined by Morinis. In our study of Nahua pilgrimages we purposely focus on the socially shared meanings attached to the altars and to the paper figures themselves. Because there is widespread agreement among the Nahua on the meanings of these ritual items, we feel we are able to analyze them with a high degree of confidence. Apart from possibly psychoanalyzing each of the participants, we do not see how we can describe, much less account for, the meanings that individual pilgrims bring to the trek to the sacred mountain. Morinis admits that pilgrimage participants themselves seldom understand a great deal of the symbolic content of the sacred journey.35 If that is the case, how can it be fruitful to focus on their meanings in developing theories of pilgrimage? How is the ethnographer supposed to uncover and verify them, or evaluate one interpretation of such a meaning system compared to another? The Turners commendably presented a hypothesis about the nature of pilgrimage, and in so doing, helped provide a deeper understanding of the parameters of the phenomenon. In rejecting that hypothesis, Morinis may have provided a needed corrective but does not propose testable alternatives. In 1991 anthropologists John Eade and Michael Sallnow edited a volume on the topic of Christian pilgrimage that takes issue with the Turners, much along the same lines as Morinis. The writing of many of the volume’s contributors reflects the prevailing postmodern tendencies of the post-­1980s era and mostly dismisses deterministic models that seek to explain pilgrimage. Eade and Sallnow argue in their introduction that functionalists following Durkheim (whom they style “correspondence theorists”) overlook individual motivations and local contexts

in their assertion that pilgrimage creates solidarity for local and regional groups. Accordingly, Marxists make the equivalent mistake when they interpret pilgrimage solely as a mechanism for legitimizing domination and oppression. Eade and Sallnow claim that in many ways the Turners present a theory that is the opposite of these approaches; however, in the end their approach falls into the same structuralist trap. For Eade and Sallnow it is the very determinism of these models that limits their usefulness.36 Writing about the sacred center—­the destination of pilgrimage—­they state, “The thrust of our analytic endeavor should be not towards the formulation of ever more inclusive, and consequently ever more vacuous, generalizations, but instead towards the examination of the specific peculiarities of its construction in each instance.”37 Their statement reveals the extreme inductive approach advocated by the editors. We do not follow Eade and Sallnow in abandoning the search for explanatory formulations in the study of pilgrimage (or any other social phenomena, for that matter). Their work may offer a corrective for simplistic theories that overlook or distort important features of social systems; however, they go too far in their rejection of all deterministic or causal models to account for human behavior. To reduce pilgrimage to the motivations and psychology of individuals is to forgo the possibility of explaining systematic change. The Nahua we accompanied on the five pilgrimages made a number of compelling statements about why they participated. The rationales they expressed included recovering from illness oneself or petitioning spiritual powers to aid a sick family member, keeping a promise made long ago, fearing for the welfare of their crops, desiring to increase the number of farm animals, and, certainly, wishing to experience feelings of devotion. In most cases the people we accompanied did not offer any reason for their participation. Going on pilgrimage is simply something that one does in order to respect the earth, the water, and the seeds. It seems to us, following Marvin Harris’s formulations (1968, 1979), that emic and etic perspectives should not be conflated and are most fruitfully kept separate in social analysis. Emic perspectives are important for a complete picture of a cultural phenomenon, while etic perspectives and explanatory analyses are based on shared scientific goals and differ in epistemological status and the ways that concepts are operationalized and verified. Equating or blurring these distinct levels of analysis will insure that pilgrimage behavior remains a mystery and generalizable explanations prove elusive.38

In an insightful article Simon Coleman (2002) warns scholars against taking a too-­simplistic view of theoretical approaches to understand pilgrimage, affirming that each perspective and its attendant methodological commitments must be approached critically. In the end, he says, the approaches that the Turners and Eade and Sallnow have taken are hardly mutually exclusive. The point he develops is that pilgrimage is not an isolate standing apart from history or from other elements of shared culture—­scholars must define it anew each time and show how it connects to various aspects of social life. He writes, “The logic of my argument leads me to conclude that the most valuable work in this area is that which looks outward, making points about human behavior through using ‘pilgrimage’ as a case-­study rather than focusing on the institution itself as a firmly bounded category of action.”39 Holism, of course, is always desirable in the study of any aspect of culture. However, just as with kinship or economic systems, Nahua religious pilgrimage is a complex, densely packed cultural field in its own right. There is much that we do not know about it. Using pilgrimage to study through Nahua culture assumes we thoroughly understand the structure and content of these sacred journeys, which we do not. Until that is the case, we think the best strategy is to focus on individual pilgrimages as analytical categories, moving from there to other aspects of the wider culture and on to other pilgrimage traditions. For comparative purposes, we turn to further examples of pilgrimage throughout the Mesoamerican culture area. The Turners point out that “pilgrimage or something akin to it, was already entrenched in the culture of Middle America before the arrival of Cortés” and that today pilgrimage “lives in Mexico.”40 Some anthropologists even say that “Mexico is a pilgrim country par excellence” and point out how ethnographers often mention pilgrimage but typically treat it superficially.41 We know from archaeological evidence that pilgrimage was an important custom in pre-­Hispanic Mexico. Stanislaw Iwaniszewski (2001a) reports that virtually every mountaintop in the transverse axis of the central highlands of Mexico and fully 20 percent of caves located there have yielded archaeological remains. Because there were few signs of habitation sites nearby, archaeologists assume that they were pilgrimage destinations. He reports that many of these sites are associated in some way with water and in this way bear resemblance to Postectli.42 The sixteenth-­century chroniclers’ record of ritual behavior among the people they encountered in

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New Spain clearly described pilgrimages as an important element in the religious systems. Carlos Martínez Marín determined that early colonial sources recorded the existence of at least eighteen pilgrimages predating the conquest in cultures from the central highlands to the Yucatan and confirms that rituals surviving from that time are predominantly water-­related.43 But what do these archaeological and ethnohistorical records in the region reveal about ancient forms of pilgrimage? Can we assume that they are identical to what ethnographers find among people today? George Kubler (1985) has written an influential article on Mesoamerican pilgrimage in which he claims that pilgrimages of the Old World and New World were of such a different character that they should be called by separate names. He argues that the main difference between the two traditions is that the former are journeys of individuals, while pilgrimages in the Americas are collective, community-­wide endeavors aimed at guaranteeing continuity of the cosmos against dissolution and chaos.44 Kubler claims that following the destruction of the Native American religious system, “Mesoamerican pilgrimages survived the missionaries’ extirpation of idolatry only as scattered shreds of ancient American rituals.”45 We cannot agree with Kubler’s sharp distinction between pilgrimages from different world areas and times. Our own observations in the field show that ritual specialists of the southern Huasteca may travel alone or go with others on pilgrimage journeys on behalf of a sick person or to address a client’s misfortune.46 It strikes us that all such broad generalizations must be scrutinized carefully. We can affirm without qualification that the pilgrimage to Postectli is far more than a “scattered shred” of ancient practice, and we show here that it remains an essential feature of a living tradition. Kubler speculated that the average person during the pre-­ Hispanic era probably traveled to sites relatively close by, while only merchants and people of rank could afford to go to pilgrimage sites at great distances.47 He may well be correct; however, we have found that the people of Amatlán and others in the region do periodically engage in pilgrimages to the distant sacred mountain San Jerónimo in the neighboring state of Puebla. This major endeavor requires an eight-­day trek and nights spent out in the open. One interesting observation that Kubler makes is that the return home from a pilgrimage “is like a rebirth after having suffered alienation both physical and metaphysical.”48 The idea that pilgrims return from their journey renewed or even reborn will be taken up again after we discuss additional case examples.

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Pre-­Hispanic Nahua Pilgrimage to Tlalocan For comparative purposes we would like to offer a description of a pre-­Hispanic pilgrimage recorded by the sixteenth-­ century chronicler Fray Diego Durán.49 The pilgrimage features as part of the principal calendrical feasts called Huey Tozoztli, or “Great Vigil,” which according to Durán was held to honor Tlaloc, god of rain, thunder, and lightning. However, Sahagún, in describing the “fourth month they called Uei toçozli,” records that the observance was directed not toward Tlaloc but rather Cinteotl, god of young maize.50 The main shrine for the rain deity was located atop a high mountain southeast of Texcoco that was called variously Tlaloc, Tlalocatepetl, or Tlalocan. Durán did not himself witness the pilgrimage to this mountain but apparently climbed to the summit and saw the ruins of the Tlaloc temple.51 He was able to piece together the event by questioning people who had direct knowledge of the sacred journey and associated rituals. Although the pilgrimage and rituals described by Durán were undertaken by people living in urban societies with large populations, hereditary nobility, monumental architecture, and other accoutrements of state-­level civilization, we quote his description at length. [Tlaloc] was also held to be a god like the others, and he was honored with as many sacrifices and ceremonies as any. He was worshiped as God of Rain and of Lightning, Thunder, and Thunderbolts and all kinds of storms. . . . The whole country was dedicated to his service—­lords, kings, noblemen, and the common people. . . . This same name of the god [Tlaloc] was given to a lofty mountain. . . . Today this mountain is called Tlalocan,. . . . because on that whole sierra the clouds become cold, and storms of thunder, lightning, thunderbolts, and hail are formed. Therefore it was named Tlalocan, which means Place of Tlaloc. On the summit of the mountain stood a great courtyard surrounded by a finely built wall about eight feet high. . . . It could be seen from a distance of many leagues. On one side of the courtyard was a wooden chamber. . . . In the middle of this room, upon a small platform, stood the stone idol Tlaloc. . . . Around [Tlaloc] were a number of small idols, but he stood in the center as their supreme lord. These little idols represented the other hills and cliffs which surrounded the great mountain. Each one of them was named according to the hill he stood for. These names still exist, for there is no hill lacking its proper designation. Thus the small idols which stood around

the great god Tlaloc had their own names, just like the hills which encircle the great mountain. The feast of this god fell on the twenty-­ninth of April, and it was celebrated in such a solemn way that men came from all parts of the land to commemorate it, to the point that no king or lord great or small failed to bring his offerings. . . . The purpose of this feast was that of asking for a good year, since all maize which had been sown now had sprouted. . . . So everyone came to the mountain of Tlalocan: the entire nobility of the land, princes and kings, and great lords, both from this side of the snowy mountain [Iztaccihuatl] and from the other. . . . For each sovereign and his followers were built, on different parts of the mountain, houses of straw. . . . constructed around the great courtyard . . . at the summit. Just after dawn these kings and lords and their followers left [their shelters]. They took a child of six or seven years and placed him within an enclosed litter . . . placed on the shoulders of the leaders. . . . When they arrived before the image of the god Tlaloc, the men slew the child within the litter. . . . He was slain by this god’s own priests, to the sound of many trumpets, conch shells, and flutes. The dead child, King Moteczoma, together with all his great men and chieftains. . . . entered the place where the image stood, and [Moteczoma] with his own hands placed a headdress of fine feathers on its head. He then covered it with the most costly, splendid mantle to be had, exquisitely worked in feathers and done in designs of snakes. [The idol] was also girded with a great and ample breechcloth, as splendid as the mantle. They threw about his neck valuable stones and golden jewels. Rich earrings of gold and stones were placed upon him, and on his ankles also. [The king] adorned all the smaller idols who stood next [to Tlaloc] in a similar fashion. . . . Thus everyone came in to make his offerings: one of them a mantle, another a jewel, another a precious stone or feathers. . . . leaving the chamber so rich . . . that [this wealth] might enrich many paupers. The idol and smaller images had now been dressed in the manner described. Then was brought forth the sumptuous food which had been prepared for each king [to offer the god]: turkeys and their hens and game and a number of different kinds of bread. Moteczoma himself, acting as steward, entered the chamber where the idol stood, and his great men aided him in the serving of the food. The rest of the chamber was filled to bursting with stews of fowl and game, many small baskets of various breads,

and gourds of chocolate. Everything was beautifully prepared and cooked, and there was such abundance in the room that some of it had to be left outside. . . . They offered so much food that those who tell this story (they are men who actually saw these things) affirm that the food was so plentiful—­stews, breads, and chocolate in the native style—­that most of the courtyard was crowded, and it was a sight to see. It was especially notable that all the pottery was new, and so were the baskets and the vessels—­never used before. When the food had been put in its place, the priests who had slit the throat of the child came in with his blood in a small basin. The high priest wet the hyssop which he held in his hand in that innocent blood and sprinkled the idol [and] all the offerings and food. And if any blood was left, he went to the idol Tlaloc and bathed its face and body with it, together with all the companion idols, and the floor. And it is said that if the blood of that child was not sufficient one or two other children were killed to complete the ceremony and compensate for what had been lacking. When all these rites had terminated, everyone descended to the living quarters to dine . . . Meanwhile, in the neighboring towns down below an abundant and sumptuous repast, for kings, princes, and great lords, had been prepared. . . . When all these things had been done, a company of one hundred soldiers was formed—­the most courageous and valorous to be found, [led by] a commander. They were left to guard the rich offerings and abundant victuals which had been presented. This was done to prevent the foe . . . from robbing and sacking. If by chance [the Mexicas] were neglectful of placing that guard or the sentinels of their watch, the enemy came at night and, having stripped the idol, stole all the wealth that had been offered. . . . Thus the soldier who was careless paid for his neglect with his own life. . . . This guard lasted until all the food, baskets, and gourds rotted and the feathers disintegrated from the moisture. Everything else was buried there, and the chamber was walled in until the next year, for in that place there were no priests or ministers in attendance, only the guard . . . which was changed every six days. . . . After the oblations on the mountain [of Tlaloc] and everything . . . had ended, the lords hastened to descend to the celebration and sanctification of the waters, which were performed on that same day in the lake, streams, springs, and cultivated fields. Here sacrifices and oblations were offered . . . [The sacrifice] and offerings terminated, together with the other ceremonies, . . . the music ended,

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and so did the singing and all the other festivities. In grave silence all returned to the city. In this way, the feast ended. But the ceremonies did not, since the peasants and the common men continued them in their tilling and sowing in the fields, in the rivers, springs, and streams. And since it is very important [to consider this point], I will leave [my warning] for its proper place. It is a most important warning, which must be given so that the ministers and confessors will be on their guard and keep clear consciences. [These ceremonies] are performed today, and I have found them very common, especially in the towns near mountains.52

In a chapter devoted to the goddess of springs and rivers, Chalchiuhcueye, whose name means “She of the Jade Skirt,”53 Durán further describes the calendrical obser­vances: Therefore, on all the feasts of the calendar (which were eighteen) the entire aim in celebrating them . . . everything was directed toward the procuring of food, of prosperous seasons, of the prolonging of human life. In all these they remembered and commemorated the water, the wind, the earth, the fire, and the sun, [not forgetting] to beseech all the other gods’ favor, but especially water.54

And as if to anticipate the situation in Amatlán (where the offering to water takes place beneath an enormous ceiba tree), Durán goes on to mention that “[t]he springs most hallowed were those which sprang from the roots of trees we call sabinas [savins], which in the language is called ahuehuetl.  .  .  . meaning ‘a water drum.’”55 And he adds: [The people] also revered the rivers which emerged from the volcano [Popocatepetl]. In these streams, ravines, and springs he who hungers for riches can find many precious things: gold, rich stones which have been offered up, cast in, by the Indians. These things were offered not only by the people of the local villages but by those from afar, from distant provinces, who came seeking, offering splendid gifts, precious jewels and stones. Even if in their own lands there existed springs, streams, and sources of water, they came in pilgrimage to the waters, to faraway hills, to strange caves, which contained idols. They came to fulfill their vows and promises and pilgrimages as we fulfill ours to Saint James, to [Our Lady of] Guadalupe, and Jerusalem.56

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Without a doubt, the climb to the summit of Tlaloc hill that Durán described fits the definition of a pilgrimage and shows remarkable similarities to the Nahua ritual journeys. We must take note, however, of an obvious difference between the contemporary Nahua pilgrimages that we present and the Mexica pilgrimages to Tlaloc, where the status of the participants and the opulence of the offerings make it an anomalous example. Durán describes an observance executed by the elites of Aztec society and surrounding kingdoms, differing from the contemporary pattern in which pilgrimage is an activity of villagers. We surmise that before the establishment of the kingdoms in the Valley of Mexico the humble denizens of surrounding communities had visited the summit of Mount Tlaloc to dedicate offerings, and that in even more ancient times the site was a destination of pilgrims from distant lands. As these kingdoms grew in power (and, in the case of the Aztecs, developed state-­level institutions), the priests modified religious practices to serve the needs of the sociopolitical system. In other passages not cited here, Durán records that each of the various rulers tried to overwhelm their peers in dedicating ever more elaborate gifts to the rain god. The pilgrimage to Tlaloc, already an established destination, was taken over by elites and transformed into state theater, an arena for displaying wealth and expressing internecine rivalries. We feel certain that the pilgrimage as described failed to break down social barriers among the participants and thereby never achieved anything like a state of communitas. It is hard to imagine that any such ritual practice would have had the power to strip away social pretense and allow its adherents to know the Aztec imperial figures as a real persons. Usurping local ceremonial practice to serve state ends was a common strategy of the ruling elite in the pre-­Hispanic polities,57 and the pilgrimage to the peak of Mount Tlaloc provides an excellent example. If we take into account the fundamental differences between the sophisticated urban civilization of the Aztecs and the small-­village society of the Nahua of Amatlán, however, the correspondences between Durán’s descriptions of this sixteenth-­century pilgrimage and the journey to Postectli are nothing short of remarkable. Both Tlalocan and Postectli are imposing mountains associated with rain, wealth, and well-­being. Among the Aztecs, Tlalocan was conceived to be surrounded by smaller mountains associated with diminutive rain spirits, the tlaloque. Similarly, people confirm in Amatlán that it is the rain dwarfs (pilhuehuentzitzin) who carry water from

the Gulf of Mexico to clefts near the summit of Postectli, the governor of the surrounding hills. The contemporary Nahua say these lesser hills are associated with Catholic saints, which appear to be the rain dwarfs’ alter egos. Rituals in both contexts involve dressing sacred images associated with rain and fertility. For the Aztecs, the king and his minions dressed the statues of Tlaloc as well as the images of the smaller hills. In Amatlán paper images of apanchaneh, male and female aspects of the earth, and the seeds are dressed in finery too. The Aztecs collected human blood in a small basin and dripped it onto the offerings and statues using a sprig of the herb hyssop. In Amatlán practitioners sprinkle the blood of the fowl on the paper figures and also collect some of the precious liquid in a small bowl, painting it on the images using a feather from one of the birds. The ritual performances then and now focused on abundant food and feasting, and in both settings altars were left to weather away undisturbed. The historical connections between the two ritual occasions appear self-­evident, even though they are separated by disparate levels of sociocultural integration and a half millennium of turbulent history. As if to emphasize our point, Durán himself states (and vehemently disapproves of the fact) that these rituals were still being carried out in communities situated near mountains. The pilgrimage and rituals dedicated to the water spirit Chalchiuhcueye in Durán’s text make an even clearer connection between the ancient and contemporary Nahua practices. Efforts directed toward “the water, the wind, the earth, the fire, and the sun” cover the most important of the spirit entities propitiated in the pilgrimage to Postectli.58 Both the ancient and contemporary Nahua dedicate valued commodities to springs and streams, and they organize the pilgrimages so that supplicants experience face-­to-­face encounters with the powers revealed in the most sacred but remote places. In sum, there are numerous points of continuity between pilgrimages carried out in the highlands in the late pre-­Hispanic era and among the contemporary Nahua and neighboring Indigenous groups of the southern Huasteca and Sierra Norte de Puebla. These practices undoubtedly have persisted and need to be documented in other regions of Mesoamerica as well. Our own survey found that beliefs in water spirits are reported widely throughout the culture area.59

Pilgrimages in Mexico Today To extend the scope of the study and provide an ethnological context to frame the Nahua data, we examine very

briefly four contemporary pilgrimages described by other ethnographers and offer some general comparisons with the Huastecan Nahua practices. The four sacred journeys are the Huichol (Wixárika) pilgrimage to Wirikuta, the Tepanec trek to La Lucerna, the Guerrero Nahua pilgrimage to Oztotempan, and the (essentially Catholic) pilgrimage to Chalma. In short, the Huichol pilgrimage to Wirikuta is an occasion to visit the home of the ancestors, gather peyote to use in rituals throughout the year, and dedicate offerings to the sacred mountain Reu’unar to request rain. The Tepanec of Guerrero travel to La Lucerna mountain and make a simple offering there to ask for rain. To appeal for fertile crops and personal vigor, the Guerrero Nahua visit Oztotempan (a sacred hole in the ground believed to connect to a paradisaical realm of abundance and the home of ancestors). And, finally, a largely Mestizo population visits Chalma to receive a blessing from the Black Christ, whose statue is located in a cave at the site.60 Fully recognizing the difficulty (or even impossibility) of clearly distinguishing Indigenous from Christian elements in Mesoamerican religious practice, we arrange for purposes of discussion the four pilgrimages along a continuum from most to least acculturated. The Huichol pilgrimage is the most Native American in character, while the journey to Chalma is the most Spanish Catholic. The pilgrimages to Oztotempan and La Lucerna sites in Guerrero fall somewhere between, and the Huastecan Nahua journeys lie closer to the Native American end in terms of their means and goals.

Huichol (Wixárika) Pilgrimage to Wirikuta Probably the best known contemporary Native American pilgrimage in the literature on Mesoamerica is the peyote hunt of the Huichol (Wixárika). Outsiders have usually been excluded from participating in or documenting the religious rituals of the Huichol, so it has been difficult to get information on their beliefs and practices or on the distribution of pilgrimage sites. Among the first anthropologists to participate in the peyote pilgrimage were Peter Furst and Barbara Myerhoff.61 They accompanied ritual specialist Ramón Medina Silva in 1966 on the sacred journey to Wirikuta, the ancestral homeland of the Huichol and the source of the peyote cactus that is so important to their religion.62 Furst published a brief account of the sacred journey (1972) and filmed a pilgrimage to Wirikuta in a production entitled To Find Our Life: The Peyote Hunt of the Huichols of Mexico (1969), which enjoyed a

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wide viewership and has become a classic ethnographic film. Myerhoff published an ethnographic account of the journey in Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians (1974). Subsequently, other anthropologists have been permitted to participate in the sacred journey to Wirikuta, and we now have a better understanding of Huichol pilgrimage and its relation to the wider religion. The Nahua and Huichol both reflect the Mesoamerican emphasis on pilgrimage as the key component of their religious practice. Nahua and Huichol pilgrimages begin with extensive preparations stretched out over many days and entail significant outlays of valued goods, time, and effort. Both begin with a cleansing ritual to rid the pilgrims and surrounding areas of disorder and pollution.63 The journey itself is a hardship, although more so for the Huichol because the destination of Wirikuta is hundreds of miles away, and most often people traveled there by foot.64 Traversing relatively long distances, both groups travel to exotic, ritually significant, and powerful places—­the sacred mountain Postectli for the Nahua, and the abode of the ancestors for the Huichol. Apparently, the Huichols conduct rituals at a sacred water mountain, at least for some of their pilgrimages.65 As we saw in the Amatlán journey, the Huichol also make numerous stops along the way to dedicate offerings, particularly at water sources. The pilgrimages are organized and led by recognized ritual specialists, and music and chanting are important components of both observances. Blood offerings are also important to each tradition, obtained from fowl by the Nahua and from deer by the Huichol. In the shared belief systems, maize is elusive and threatens to leave the people with no food, and the human body is mapped onto the cosmos. It is interesting that people in both cultures see the deer as sacred and associate it with fertility. For the Nahua, as for the Huichol, the deer may also serve to mark the transition from hunting and gathering to the settled life of horticulture. For each group, pilgrimages restore order to the cosmos through the proper actions of people who demonstrate respect by completing their ritual obligations.66 There are also fundamental differences between Nahua and Huichol pilgrimages. Based on ethnographic reports, it appears that the Huichols are reenacting the original journey taken by the ancestors themselves in primordial times, and the pilgrims actually assume their identities.67 We could find no evidence in Amatlán that the pilgrimage to Postectli was a reenactment of any such ancestral journey, although it does parallel the route taken by Seven Flower as he and his sister escaped the attempts on his

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life (and so we cannot rule that out as a possible interpretation). We saw no evidence that the Nahua assume new identities or take on those of the spirit entities during the pilgrimage. The only exceptions to this statement occurred on the Nahua pilgrimages to the sacred mountains Tres Pozitos and Xomulco, where the Otomí ritual specialist Sofía entered a state of trance and spoke in the high-­pitched voice of apanchaneh.68 While such instances provide evidence of her own shift in identity, the other Nahua participants retained their everyday identities throughout the undertaking. More importantly, the basic mechanisms of the two pilgrimages differ significantly. Huichol pilgrims clearly undergo a clear-­cut rite of passage in completing the journey to Wirikuta. They must be coached beforehand by the ritual specialist so that they will be prepared properly to experience the sacred place. Once having completed the pilgrimage, people do assume a new social status. According to Myerhoff’s interpretation, the pilgrims enter into the Turnerian communitas while in Wirikuta, but it is a kind of communitas experienced not only among the human participants but with the deities inhabiting Wirikuta.69 As previously stated, although we conclude that the pilgrimage to Postectli is a kind of rite of passage, we saw no evidence of the Nahua generally sought to achieve altered states of consciousness. The Nahua pilgrimages involved far more people, the construction of more complex altars, and the dedication of a greater variety and quality of offerings than did the Huichol pilgrimage to Wirikuta. Maize is clearly at the center of el costumbre practices for the Nahua, but less so for the Huichols, who are concerned with the goals of hunting peyote and assuming the personas of ancestors.

Tepanec Pilgrimage to La Lucerna Ethnographer Peter van der Loo was conducting research in April 1984 in the Tepanec community of Malinaltepec in northeastern Guerrero when he was permitted to accompany seven villagers on a pilgrimage to the peak of a nearby mountain in order “to beg for rain.”70 The mountain, known as La Lucerna, is home to a rain deity named Wi’Ku in the Tepanec language, a figure closely associated with the Catholic saint San Marcos. The journey to the summit of La Lucerna is also apparently performed with regularity by neighboring Nahua and Mixtec peoples. Loo quotes villagers as saying that “all the mountains smoke” on the days when offerings are dedicated, meaning that clouds form around the summit.71 The pilgrimage is brief

and involves a trek to the summit, an overnight stay, and a return to the community the next day. The journey and associated rituals and offerings are organized and led by a ritual specialist. While there were no cleansing rituals reported before the pilgrimage, the group sponsoring the event went to church to pray for three days prior to departure. We presume that the act served as a means to purge potential sources of disorder and pollution. The Tepanec ritual clearly shares its purpose and structure with the Nahua pilgrimage to Postectli. Both have as their destination a water mountain, home to spirit entities controlling rain. The Nahua ritual is more complex, time consuming, and costly in resources than its Tepanec counterpart appears to be. The Nahua of the southern Huasteca have incorporated San Juan Bautista as the water owner in place of the Tepanec San Marcos. In Roman Catholic calendrical observance the feast day of San Marcos is set aside for petitions for a good harvest.72 It is interesting to note that people from multiple Native American ethnic groups visit La Lucerna to appeal for rain, just as with Postectli, and that many who observe the clouds gather around the mountain summits see them as predicting the coming rainy season. Like the Nahua, the Tepanec also regard their sacred mountain as located in the periphery outside the safety and order of the center, since there is some danger in traversing the territory between their communities and the sacred peaks. The paper cuttings created in such profusion by the Nahua are absent among the Tepanec, but they do apparently substitute counted bundles of grass in their place to convey specific messages, such as a solicitation for the health of a patient. Despite differences between the two groups, the overall strategies of the pilgrimages and associated rituals are very similar. The idea in each case is to dedicate offerings to the forces in the cosmos responsible for providing crucial rain for the crops.

Nahua Pilgrimage to Oztotempan In 1988 ethnographer Catharine Good Eshelman accompanied a group of Nahua from the Río Balsas community of San Agustín Oapan on their yearly pilgrimage to a remarkable geological formation in the Sierra Madre del  Sur in the state of Guerrero. The destination was a place called Oztotempan, which people described as the navel of the world, a large round hole in the rock so deep that it is impossible to see the bottom.73 The site is where people go to appeal for rain and success in agriculture and to enlist the aid of souls of the dead in giving them

the power to maintain their ability to work. The pilgrimage from San Agustín Oapan is organized each year by a particular family but undertaken to benefit the entire community. Although appearing to be quite distinct, we view the pilgrimages to Postectli and to Oztotempan as sharing a common purpose of influencing the forces of the cosmos responsible for rain, crop fertility, and human well-­being. Like the Huastecan Nahua, the people of the Rio Balsas regard the landscape as sacred, and the many surrounding hills are pilgrimage destinations at different times of the year. What appears notable in this case is that the Guerrero Nahua conduct a major celebration at a remarkable aperture in the rock rather than at the peak of a mountain, although it is not unusual that Indigenous Mesoamericans frequently attach religious significance to such geographic anomalies. In effect, the bottomless hole at Oztotempan is a kind of cave granting access to another world that plays such an important role in the lives of the Nahua. Both the Guerrero and Huastecan Nahua associate winds with the souls of the dead. These winds may appear in the form of disease-­causing agents or as powerful forces that can summon rain clouds to provide for the world of the living. Both groups devise ways to make sure that dangerous winds attracted to disorder and pollution are not brought along on the pilgrimages. Ritual specialists during the Postectli pilgrimage conducted multiple cleansings to rid the participants and their surroundings of these obstacles, while the Oapan pilgrims underwent fasting and a prohibition of sexual relations to achieve the same end. Both pilgrimages involved an arduous journey in which people endured thirst, hunger, and exhaustion. During the Postectli pilgrimage offerings were dedicated and spread out on multitudes of cut-­paper figures, while at Oztotempan people used actual seeds for a similar purpose. Likewise, each of the ritual events involved the dedication of an abundance of the best food. And in both locales the altars constructed by people on pilgrimage were virtually identical to the altars created for other occasions back in their home communities. This practice seems a clear example of the Nahua cultural conception of modularity in general. Both groups share the belief that rain comes from caves within the earth. They also circumambulate sacred sites and ritual displays and share the food and drink offered to the spirit entities among themselves once their aroma and essence have been consumed. Similar concepts of life force or power (fuerza in Spanish, chicahualiztli in Nahuatl) are shared by both groups, and

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for each the purpose of ritual offerings is to increase and harness this precious energetic capacity in humanity’s service. As expected among people separated by such vast distances, there are differences as well. For the Postectli pilgrimage, ritual specialists organized and led the event, while in Guerrero it was a particular extended family that traditionally took on this responsibility. Good Eshelman does not mention the use of blood, so important in Huastecan Nahua pilgrimage, as an offering at Oztotempan. Unlike the Guerrero Nahua, Nahuas of Amatlán do not regard carrion-­eating birds as spirit entities nor do they associate them with souls of dead ancestors. The individualized crosses at Oztotempan apparently evoked these souls for the pilgrims, while in Amatlán the cross is linked to the sun. Finally, Nahuas that Good Eshelman reports on employ Catholic prayers as an important part of their ritual, unlike the Nahua ritual specialists in Amatlán, who create their own chants before altars to plead and bargain with spirit entities.

Pilgrimage to Chalma The present-­day pilgrimages discussed up to this point derive essentially from Native American traditions within Mesoamerica. They incorporate Christian elements to a greater or lesser degree, but the basic structure, spirit entities involved, iconographic elements, and overall strategies are Indigenous in inspiration. Robert Shadow and María Rodríguez-­Shadow (1994b; Rodríguez-­Shadow and Shadow 2000) have published descriptions of the pilgrimage to Chalma, which they see as an example of popular religion largely derived from contemporary Mexican Catholicism.74 Chalma is among the most important pilgrimage sites in Mexico today. Located southwest of the capital, it is visited by millions of pilgrims each year. The central feature of the site is a cave with a statue of the crucified Christ. Pilgrimage to Chalma is a classic example of a religious practice that derives its power and raison d’être from people who occupy the lower levels of the Mexican socioeconomic hierarchy. In their description of the journey to Chalma the Shadows record only a marginal role for a priest or other officiant of the church. Priests made their appearance to say Mass at the sanctuary church at Chalma and at closing ceremonies, but their duties had little to do with the pilgrimage itself. The symbolism and iconography of the pilgrimage was thoroughly saturated with the statues, images, songs, prayers, paraphernalia, and

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ideology of the Catholic tradition, yet this is not to say that pre-­Hispanic elements were completely absent. Chalma originally was a cave dedicated to a manifestation of the rain deity Tlaloc, and the site continues to be associated with cleansing waters. Like the other sacred journeys we have discussed, the Chalma pilgrimage was punctuated by episodes in which cleansings eliminated polluting factors that could interfere with the event. It seems likely that such ritual acts of cleansing, in one form or another, whether abbreviated or extensive, are universal features of pilgrimages throughout the world. Several features distinguish the Chalma pilgrimage from those of the Huastecan Nahua. The home community of the participants was organized to support the pilgrimage by having circulating offices in a cargo-­ like system. The Nahua pilgrimage to Postectli, by contrast, was organized privately by a master ritual specialist holding no office, and Amatlán, it should be noted, does not have any civil-­religious cargo system, or mayordomía. Compared with Nahua el costumbre practices, the pilgrimage to Chalma involved comparatively little ritual action, whereas observances during the Nahua pilgrimage to Postectli were more numerous and prolonged in duration. In general, we would say that the Chalma pilgrimage emphasized community identity over individual religious experience. It is interesting that there was no reported mixing of people from different communities during the pilgrimage.75 This approach seems quite different from that taken by the Nahua of Amatlán, who actively recruited people from neighboring communities and even from other ethnic and language groups. It seems clear that the pilgrimage to Chalma is a rite of passage for the novitiates who participated. Those who were new to the sacred journey were set apart from the rest and given special attention. However, even in this setting the ethnographers give no indication that anything like communitas was achieved by the participants.

Points of Comparison among the Selected Cases Comparing the four contemporary Mexican pilgrimages with the five Nahua pilgrimages reveals some fundamental similarities worth noting. All of them involved people leaving the ordered center of their communities and traveling to the disordered periphery, striving to reach a sacred place where their petitions could be presented and perhaps acted upon by cosmic forces. The participants then returned to their point of origin after having

undergone some transformation of their previous state of being. Each can be interpreted as a rite of passage, although it was only the sacred journey to Wirikuta that provides evidence that communitas was achieved. To varying degrees, the pilgrimages required that people donate significant amounts of valued commodities—­ money, labor, and time—­in order to achieve their goals. In all cases some form of cleansing or sacralizing of the participants was necessary prior to approaching the sacred precinct. Each of the pilgrimages involved a difficult journey and, in some cases, significant suffering. Although few people stated outright that such suffering was a prerequisite for a successful pilgrimage, they all clearly expected to encounter hardship. In each instance people offered widely varying motives for engaging in the sacred journey. Many undoubtedly participated for instrumental motives in which they sought a specific return for their efforts.76 Others felt a higher calling to help reset an unbalanced cosmos. Still others appeared to have little or no idea of the meanings of the rituals and took part for private reasons.77 These variable motivations and states of mind indicate to us that the phenomenon of pilgrimage cannot be explained by probing the psychological states of the pilgrim-­practitioners. The pilgrimages also differed in fundamental ways. The sacred journeys to Postectli, La Lucerna, Wirikuta, Palaxtepetl, Tres Pozitos, and Xomulco were organized

and led by ritual specialists. The trip to Oztotempan was traditionally organized by a single family, and no ritual specialists were apparently involved, while the regular pilgrimages to Chalma were organized by elected officeholders. The overriding goals also differed among the pilgrimages. Those organized by ritual specialists were primarily aimed at removing impediments that are the root cause of disruptions in the cosmos, thereby encouraging rain and a successful harvest. Travel to Wirikuta was primarily undertaken to identify with the Huichol ancestors by retracing their primordial journey to acquire consciousness-­altering peyote for ritual use as well as to appeal for rain and fertility for the milpas. The goal of the Chalma pilgrims appears somewhat mixed, but many people apparently went simply to represent their community before the divine. We judge that the Huastecan Nahua pilgrimages were most similar to those undertaken to Wirikuta, La Lucerna, and Oztotempan. Each journey directly reflected the existential concerns of farmers about rainfall horticulture and crop fertility. They clearly embody Indigenous beliefs that water comes from caves and that human beings are caught up in a complex balancing act with cosmic forces. The sacred journey to Chalma stands out as most distinct from the others, wherein a group of people who, having left behind their agricultural way of life, embrace a more populist, orthodox form of Catholicism.

Notes 1. For a comparison of origin myths, migration stories, and pilgrimages among cultures in Mexico and the Southwest, see Martínez Marín (1972); Kubler (1985); Weaver and Weaver (2007); Palka (2014); and Aguilar Ros (2017). 2. Morinis (1992: 4). 3. Preston (1992). 4. See Cohen (1992) and Coleman (2001: 11, 447) on this point. 5. Morinis (1992: 1). 6. In an ethnographic study Werbner (2003) analyzes journeys by Sufi from the UK and Pakistan to Mecca. Reader (2007) discusses trends in modern pilgrimage; Greenia (2014) summarizes the multidisciplinary focus of research on pilgrimage, including ten premises that underlie the practice; and Albera and Eade (2015) attempt to summarize a burgeoning body of literature worldwide. Mora-­Torres et al. (2016: 17) find that people who participate in this type of journey are often religious tourists as well; the authors advocate for the analytical combining or “dedifferentiation” of tourism and religious pilgrimage. Feldman (2017) also questions the dichotomous characterization of tourists and pilgrims in a critique of theoretical approaches to the problems of mobility and identity in

the recent sociological and anthropological literature. Finally, Durán-­Sánchez et al. (2018) present a bibliometric analysis of the exponential growth of research on religiously motivated tourism and pilgrimage sites since 1968. 7. The observation that pilgrimage is democratic in nature is made by Turner and Turner (1978: 32); Shadow and Rodríguez-­ Shadow (1994b: 83); Rodríguez-­Shadow and Shadow (2000: 180); Clift and Clift (1996: 9, 17); Coleman (2001: 11, 446); Gemzöe (2005: 45); Astor-­Aguilera and Jarvenpa (2008: 492); and Suarez (2008). For an opposing view, see Cámara Barbachano and Reyes Couturier (1972: 38). 8. Morinis (1992: 5–­6). 9. Stoddard (1997: 49). 10. Turner (1973: 211); Eade and Sallnow (1991: 12). 11. Crumrine and Morinis (1991: 2–­3, 9). 12. Nolan (1991: 31); Taylor (2005); see also the typology of sites in Moss and Cappannari (1982). 13. Nolan (1991: 44–­45). 14. See Nolan and Nolan (1997) for statistics on pilgrimage sites, and Velasco Toro (1997) on the Black Christ of Otatitlán, a site in southern Veracruz.

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15. Turner and Turner (1978: 17–­19). 16. Hooft (2007: 108) suggests that anthropologists adopt the phrase “cultural continuity” in place of syncretism when discussing contemporary beliefs and practices, which emphasize the fact that the basic structure of Nahua religion remains evident today despite the number of colonial-­era Catholic elements. 17. Gómez Martínez (2002: 112–­13); translation ours. See also Gómez Martínez (2013: 192). Pacheco (2014: 170) records the same use of a piece of cloth at the base of Postectli to demarcate this gateway. 18. See Turner (1973: 204). 19. Turner and Turner (1978: 7). 20. Gennep (1960 [1909]: 2). 21. Gennep (1960 [1909]: 3). 22. Gennep (1960 [1909]: 11). 23. Gennep (1960 [1909]: 161). 24. Gennep (1960 [1909]: 175). 25. Gennep (1960 [1909]: 89); note that he was reacting to Victorian-­era folklore and anthropology research strategies. 26. Gennep (1960 [1909]: 184, 192). 27. Gennep (1960 [1909]: 185). 28. Gennep (1960 [1909]: 181). 29. Bravo Marentes (1994: 40); translation ours. 30. See Morinis (1992: 8–­9). Eade and Sallnow (1991: 4–­5), among others, also disconfirm the basic paradigm proposed by the Turners; see also Bravo Marentes (1994: 47). 31. Morinis (1992: 10). 32. Morinis (1992: 17–­18). 33. A number of other authors, including Cámara Barbachano (1972), and Cámara Barbachano and Reyes Couturier (1972) discuss Mesoamerican pilgrimage in terms of the complex social groupings and dynamics of modern Mexico. Wheeler (1999: 27) develops a model based on the “principle of confluence” to explain how pilgrims reconcile their conflicting motivations. 34. Crumrine and Morinis (1991: 2–­4, 9). 35. Morinis (1992: 17). 36. Eade and Sallnow (1991: 5). 37. Eade and Sallnow (1991: 9). 38. Oviedo, de  Courcier, and Farias (2013) list a range of sometimes contradictory motivations among pilgrims on the Camino de  Santiago. Magazine (2012) advocates for greater attention to individual subjectivity in Mesoamerican research but offers no methodological correctives to enhance comprehension of the phenomenon of pilgrimage. 39. Coleman (2002: 363); emphasis in original. 40. Turner and Turner (1978: 40); emphasis in original. 41. Shadow and Rodríguez-­Shadow (1994a: 15; translation ours). See Nolan (1973) for a helpful early summary of pilgrimage in Mesoamerica; Garma Navarro and Shadow (1994) provide more detailed accounts, including descriptions by Cramaussel and Álvarez (1994) of the journey to Señor de los Guerreros, the largest pilgrimage site in northern Mexico. 42. See Iwaniszewski (2001a: 17, 27, 31, 35).

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43. See Martínez Marín (1972: 162). Compare the inventory of major pilgrimage sites mentioned by Barba de  Piña Chan (2000). Wells and Nelson (2007) discuss how pre-­Hispanic pilgrimages might account for the distribution of material goods in northwest Mexico. Vail (2012: 241) reports features of Maya pilgrimages described in the Dresden Codex that are remarkably similar to what we have seen in the sacred journey to Postectli. 44. See Bremer (2001: 1) on this point. Turner and Turner (1978: 31) also assert that Christian pilgrimage is undertaken by individuals rather than groups of people. 45. Kubler (1985: 313). A slightly different version of Kubler’s 1985 article appeared first in 1984 in the journal Diogenes, but it makes the same point about Spanish-­Christian models displacing the “harsh, Native American eschatological pilgrimages of endeavor to save the universe” (compare Kubler 1984: 12, and 1985: 313). 46. While we were living in the Tibetan exile community of Dharamsala in northern India for six months in 1980, we witnessed the Tso Pema pilgrimage in the small town of Rewalsar (also in Himachal Pradesh state). The festival, held every twelve years, attracted significant numbers of people from the Tibetan exile community along with many thousands of pilgrims from elsewhere in India, who traveled to this remote venerated site associated with the Tantric master Padmasambhava. During our stay in India we also witnessed people from rural Hindu communities carrying sacred images long distances into city temples in observance of holy days. Each of these pilgrimages was communal in nature, which seems to contradict Kubler’s categorical Old World–­New World distinction. 47. Kubler (1985: 313, 316). 48. Kubler (1985: 315). 49. The description is included in Durán’s Book of the Gods and Rites (completed around 1576–­1579 before his death in 1588) and translated in the English edition by Horcasitas and Heyden (1971). Broda (2015) lists sixteenth-­century pilgrimage and processional sites in the Valley of Mexico, suggesting that the Aztecs used them to extend political control regionally. 50. Sahagún (1950–­82 [1575–­80?]: bk. 2, 7–­8). 51. Horcasitas and Heyden (1971: 17). 52. Durán (1971: 154–­60, 165). It was H.  B. Nicholson (personal communication) who urged us to look more closely at this material and draw parallels with the contemporary ritual offerings. Nicholson (1971) and Broda (1971) are key sources for analyses of Aztec water deities and the pilgrimage to Tlaloc, and Nicholson (2003: 36–­39) also cites this long description from Durán. To draw parallels with the scale of events we witnessed in Amatlán, we have omitted the material in the account that references these more urbanized features of the ritual. The wording in brackets appears in the translation by Horcasitas and Heyden (1971). 53. Durán (1971: 263). 54. Durán (1971: 265). 55. Durán (1971: 267); sabinas in italic, our change to the original.

56. Durán (1971: 268). 57. See Berdan (2017). 58. Durán (1971: 265). 59. Sandstrom (2019). 60. Sources consulted for Huichol pilgrimage descriptions include Furst (1972); Myerhoff (1974); Schaefer and Furst (1996); Lemaistre (1996); Neurath (2000, 2005a, 2005b, 2010); Gutiérrez del Ángel (2002); Schaefer (2005); Tomé Martín (2008); and Boyd and Cox (2016). For Tepanec pilgrimage, see Loo (1982, 1999). For the Nahuas of Guerrero, see Good Eshelman (2001a, 2001b); Broda (2001); Claassen (2011); and Sepúlveda (1973). For sources on Catholic pilgrimage in Mexico, particularly Chalma, see especially Hobgood (1971); Shadow and Rodríguez-­Shadow (1994b); Rodríguez-­Shadow and Shadow (2000); and Giménez Montiel (2013). 61. Furst (1972: 144). 62. Furst (1996: 179). 63. Myerhoff (1974: 132). 64. Myerhoff (1974: 123).

65. See Boyd and Cox (2016: 61) and Neurath (2000: 69, 73; 2005a: 87–­88, 92; 2005b: 593) on this facet of Huichol pilgrimage. 66. Myerhoff (1974: 107). 67. Myerhoff (1974: 21, 127, 241–­42). 68. The trance episodes are described in appendixes B and C. 69. Myerhoff (1974: 240–­64). 70. Loo (1999: 13). 71. Loo (1987: 160–­65; 1999: 213). 72. Loo (1999: 213). 73. Good Eshelman (2001b: 280). Descriptions of ceremonies at Oztotempan (also spelled Ostotempan) also appear in Good Eshelman (2001a); Broda (2001: 189–­94); and Claassen (2011: 494–­97). 74. Rodríguez-­Shadow and Shadow (2000: 19–­20) list the characteristics of popular religion. 75. Shadow and Rodríguez-­Shadow (1994b: 105). 76. Crumrine and Morinis (1991: 14). 77. Morinis (1984: 17).

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9 Conclusions about Mesoamerican Pilgrimage To understand better the Nahua sacred journeys to Postectli and to Palaxtepetl, Tres Pozitos, and Xomulco, we face two problems. The first is to explain or at least illuminate the specific content of these sacred journeys in the context of Nahua culture. We have described the ritual practices of el costumbre that go hand in hand with the pilgrimages, provided ethnographic information on people’s beliefs and behavior, recounted the central myth of chicomexochitl, and presented a number of richly evocative chants delivered by the ritual specialists. What follows is our attempt to summarize and extend the conversation about these remarkable ritual events. The second problem is to clarify the phenomenon of pilgrimage itself outside of the specific meanings attached to it by participants. In our definition Muslims traveling to Mecca are on pilgrimage just as are the Nahua when they trek to Postectli, and yet the meanings that participants attribute to these journeys are quite distinct and depend on local understandings. In short, people engage in pilgrimage for reasons that transcend the culturally specific rationalizations attached to them. To comprehend the phenomenon of pilgrimage, we have to be able to separate it analytically from the set of beliefs associated with any particular expression of the practice. We believe that the maximum effort expended on the pilgrimages by people in Amatlán and nearby communities is largely due to their perception of the magnitude to which the cosmos has become unbalanced. After more than four decades of ethnographic field research in the village, we recognize that changes in the social order originating at the distant periphery are the cause of major disruptions in people’s lives and world view. It is also clear that this transformation of Nahua culture is accelerating at an alarming pace. Once reached only on foot by a network of trails, roadways now connect Amatlán to the arterial road into the region, allowing market trucks to enter the village and residents to travel by vehicle for the first time. A growing number of young men and women have departed to the cities for work and send money back to their families. The result is that once-­proud, largely self-­sufficient villagers are now dependent for their existence on remittances from their children and grandchildren. People continue to farm and raise animals, but they are increasingly dependent on resources coming from outside. Fewer people dress in the traditional style, for the first time children are not learning Nahuatl, and the milpas are being converted into orange groves and cattle pastures.

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Accompanying these dizzying changes over the span of few decades is the fact that half of the villagers have come to embrace Protestant (and, to a lesser extent, orthodox Catholic) beliefs and practices, and many now actively reject the religious traditions of their parents and grandparents. From the perspective of those Nahua who hold fast to their cultural traditions, the world does indeed appear to be diminishing, dominated by non-­Nahua who do not demonstrate the proper respect. In the face of overwhelming change, people cannot but fear loss of their ethnic identity and their dignity as human beings. They are increasingly forced to occupy a place in a world not of their making. Vastly increased effort is clearly required to maintain a balanced relationship between people and the cosmic forces necessary for life and prosperity. Of course the Nahuas of Amatlán are not alone in their struggle to maintain their sense of balance. Villages throughout Mexico and the rest of the world face similar circumstances, usually attributed to rapid technological change and the penetration of global capitalism. However, it should be stated that many people in our own economically developed society are experiencing a similar sense of social disequilibrium and cultural vertigo. We sometimes forget something that anthropologists know only too well: so-­ called economic development is not only about expanding people’s opportunities to earn a living. It also typically foreshadows a loss of cultural diversity and the destruction of beliefs and practices that have persisted in some cases for thousands of years. Economic development is not just about widening horizons; it is also about the impoverishment of cultural worlds. Nahuas who go to the city to find work are not welcomed as equals by urban elites. They enter at the lowest levels of the socioeconomic hierarchy, usually finding housing in sprawling slums, and their own skills and cultural traditions are discounted or dismissed outright by urbanites. And yet most village youth see no opportunities or stable future for themselves by remaining in Amatlán, so depart they must, leaving their traditions behind for urban centers to accept menial or even dangerous work that may at least pay a regular income. It is a sad situation reproduced all over the world that no developed country is addressing effectively. People like Cirilo and others of his aging generation have persisted in relying on Nahua religion to help them comprehend and cope with these complex processes of change. Cirilo often talked in almost apocalyptic terms about abuses suffered by the earth at the hands of people in cities who failed to grasp the true origin of wealth.

Extreme weather fluctuations, inescapably obvious in recent years, proved to him that humans had gotten out of balance with their surroundings—­ cemanahuac tlaltentli—­“everything in the world,” the entire cosmos. The Protestant invasion and Catholic reevangelization movement cemented his view that the whole world is threatened and in serious danger of collapse. At the same time, as we have suggested, the degree of commitment to ritual solutions clearly indicates that the people do not feel helpless. They consider that their efforts and offerings matter and may well tip the balance of forces in their favor. This conviction lends a somewhat optimistic air to the pilgrimage enterprise. Although he was writing about the ancient Aztecs, Maffie could just as well be describing the Nahua of Amatlán: “Aztec ritual does not seek simply to mirror the ordering of the cosmos but rather seeks to participate, contribute to, and thereby sustain, enhance, and regenerate the well-­orderedness of the cosmos.”1 The pilgrimage as a cultural phenomenon is a remarkable, elaborate display of the power of Nahua religion and world view. It entails visiting and experiencing many of the most sacred places in the landscape, and it addresses all of the major spirit entities in the Nahua pantheon. Through the mechanism of the sacred journey and at great physical and material cost to the pilgrims, they dedicate offerings at the very spots where Totiotzin reveals itself in the form of the named spirit entities. The paper figures created for such observances embody the key elements that disclose the power at the core of Nahua religion. By parading their ritual arsenal, pilgrimage participants hope to accomplish at least two goals. First, the generous display of food, drink, tobacco, and blood on highly decorated altars is a magnificent repayment to the sun, earth, seeds, and other elements that are so important to the Nahua and yet so neglected in their changed world. The extravagance of the offerings is an attempt to make up for much that has been lost, and the gifts to the spirit entities are grand in scale because the disruption, disorder, and selfish pursuits of people are so pervasive and overwhelming. Only a major offering can reset the equilibrium of the cosmos. The second goal of the pilgrimages is to showcase the power and correctness of Nahua traditions and—­for those willing to acknowledge it—­the beauty of customary ways of doing things. It puts on public display the adherents’ commitment to a more authentic way to live for those who might be swayed by city incomes, glowing screens, and earnest missionaries from distant lands. Pilgrimages constitute a concrete example of what it means to be

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Nahua and how one should deal with the assaulting forces that would change it all. The sacred journey is of great analytical interest, then, because it records what the Nahua participants themselves think is meaningful. Pilgrimage reveals what it means to show respect and what is crucial, not only in dealing with the spirit entities but also in relations with one’s fellow neighbors, uncovering what those who may stray should realize about what it means to be an Indigenous person. We have no doubt that in pre-­Hispanic times much of the clash between and within ethnic groups occurred over access to resources. In that past time, however, the people of the Mesoamerican culture area shared religious ideas and the same fundamental world view. Indigenous people today face very different situations. Not only do Hispanic and international elites hold a vastly different view of life and set of values, but they also bring technology and an economic system that threatens to disrupt and overthrow the horticultural production system. For the first time since the Spanish conquest, the Nahua face the real possibility that their cultural identity and way of life are coming to an end. What then does the pilgrimage reveal about factors that Nahuas themselves see as important to their religion and cosmovision? Activities associated with the pilgrimage show that the landscape is part of a wider living universe that defines Nahua existence and their way of being. Postectli, the surrounding hills, the springs, streams, forks in the trail, meteorological phenomena, and the earth itself are beings filled with life and energy that interact with the Nahua on a daily basis. The landscape and the larger cosmos are literally alive, part of the overriding and seamless sacred existence that is Totiotzin. The human body is the model for this animation, and so paper images of the vital spirit entities are cut with the human form at the center. Altars are miniaturized windows into the cosmos that reduce its enormity to manageable proportions. As humans attempt to address the unfolding circumstances of ever-­ changing reality, the proper attitude to assume (it bears repeating) is one of respect—­tlatlepanittaliztli, “that which looks upon, sees, or regards things respectfully”—­and what the Nahua point to as its opposite—­axtlatlepanitta, one “does not respect” or “lacks respect for something or someone”—­as a primary cause of human misfortune. One respects by entering into exchange with forces of the living universe through rituals and by making human behavior conform to the delicately balanced system that defines a living cosmos. One disrespects by taking without giving, by acting solely out of self-­interest with no consideration of the consequences

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to others, and by causing disruptions that attract disease and misfortune to the community. There is nothing intrinsically antithetical to the Nahua moral order in dedicating oneself to making a living or accumulating some wealth. What is wrong is to receive something without giving back to the elementary forces that create the conditions that make human gains possible in the first place. In her ethnographic research among Nahua in the state of Guerrero, Good Eshelman makes excellent observations about their complex conceptions of power, work, respect, and love that are relevant to our analysis of the pilgrimage to Postectli.2 As Good Eshelman points out and we can confirm, Nahua rituals are not based on distinctions between the living-­ nonliving, animate-­ inanimate, or human-­nonhuman. Rituals are directed at such beings as saints, dead souls, the earth, water, maize, and astral bodies. During rituals everyone works together to put into circulation chicahualiztli, that is, force or power, and thereby manifest love and respect. Through repeated performances over time, the rituals reinforce a palpable sense of history for the communities of participants. The details of an observance may change over time, but people working in coordination on the rituals create an essential unity that links participants to their ancestors and to generations not yet born. Good Eshelman goes on to explain that the Nahua have a complex understanding of work, or tequitl, and the relation of work to objects and animals. An ear of maize, a stack of steaming tortillas, a clay pot filled with fresh spring water, or pigs raised by the household are all expressions of the lives, work, and above all, the chicahualiztli of people whose efforts created or nurtured them. To give something to someone as a gift or as part of reciprocal relations demonstrates love and respect, a sharing of the energy and life force of the gift giver. The same logic applies to ritual offerings made to nonhuman spirit entities. In this context food is a particularly important offering because it directly conveys the energy of chicahualiztli to the recipient. The Nahua distinguish between notequiuh, “my work,” and tetequiuh, “the work of another” or “someone else’s work.”3 They engage in gift-­ giving and exchange not directly for the goods themselves but for the force or power they embody and convey. These insights from Good Eshelman apply to people living in Amatlán and help explain the intensification of elaborate offerings dedicated during religious pilgrimages. People convey chicahualiztli to the spirit entities through the work of ritual: the food, blood, paper, candles, incense, music, chanting, dancing, flowers, ritual ornaments, and the sheer effort required to undertake the sacred journey. In

return, people receive the force and power of the earth, sun, seeds, and water. The power that is captured, transformed, and recirculated by undertaking important work together with others—­doing it fully and completing it through collective effort—­underscores the wisdom of not merely working hard but of doing work that achieves its goals in spite of everything that might derail one’s individual efforts.4 As we have illustrated, in the Nahua conception, even normally salutary spirit entities will spread disease and death if they are offended or neglected. The Nahua costumbre religion strives to maintain (that is, to keep whole) the intricate system of exchanges characterizing relations between people and the powers of the encompassing cosmos. It acknowledges a kind of delicate, organic harmonic balance between the living universe and the human community. Elements of disorder, disharmony, and pollution are kept at bay by cleansings involving gift exchange via the medium of rituals. Through ritual performances the Nahua are able to specify the spirit entities they wish to influence in order to petition the cosmos to furnish the pragmatic needs of daily life. They share with other world religions a deeply held adherence to anthropomorphism wherein the human form and qualities are diffused throughout the cosmos at large. The ritual specialists cut two-­dimensional (and virtually three-­dimensional) paper images with scissors to embody these forces, and the way they arrange these creative expressions puts on display foundational cultural principles of modularity and scaling. They also incorporate key elements of the sacred landscape that most directly affect their lives. Theirs is not a religion of abstract personal salvation or achievement of enlightenment for its own sake, but rather a system of scales and balances for placing human beings in correct alignment with cosmic forces. It is the conviction, so clearly expressed by the ritual specialists and participants in the religious ceremonies, that working toward such balance will result in a kind of salvation and a form of enlightenment that far transcends selfish interests and quotidian anxieties. From the perspective of Cirilo and his fellow Nahua and Otomí ritual specialists, it is this equitable and ethical positioning of human beings in relation to the sacred that is so dismissively abandoned by those who forsake their Nahua heritage. To those in Amatlán such misalignment presages the disaster of a complete societal breakdown. Without obvious power and wealth, the people of Amatlán are employing the most efficacious means they have to set the world right. These means are the gifts of the antihuameh—­the old ones, the

ancients, the ancestors—­who lived deep in prehistory. In the end, the pilgrimage and associated rituals are a heartfelt search for order in a world characterized by dizzying change and diminishment. In analyzing the essential myths and material matter surrounding the journey to Postectli we have learned a great deal about Nahua culture and perhaps something of the motivations that impel individuals to engage in such an undertaking. The object-­as-­subject orientation of Nahua pilgrimage provides a window into a religious practice and view of reality that is historically independent and radically different from a Euro-­American understanding of the workings of the world and the place in it that human beings occupy. And yet having this deeper awareness of Nahua cultural values still says surprisingly little about the phenomenon of pilgrimage itself. Following the insights provided by Rappaport (in chapter 7), we still are compelled to ask, What does engaging in pilgrimage accomplish apart from its specific meanings and cultural contexts? People from diverse cultures devise their own reasons for going on sacred journeys, and their reasons vary enormously. The people on pilgrimage to Chalma for instance, as described by Rodríguez-­Shadow and Shadow (2000), clearly do so in the context of Roman Catholic traditions; their experience and the ritual content little resemble the journey to Postectli. What each of the pilgrimages described here share in common is only their basic outline: a group of people leave the community, travel to a culturally sacred or significant spot, and return to the point of origin. It was Arnold van Gennep (1960 [1909]) who first suggested that pilgrimage (among many such rites of passage prevalent in all cultures) is the ritual recognition of some change in status. Our findings do not require that we abandon completely the hypothesis of Victor and Edith Turner (1978) about how pilgrimage works for people. But we must recognize the empirical fact that not all pilgrimages (even Christian ones) must produce communitas to be effective. Clearly some level of anti-­structural comradery was achieved in the Huichol pilgrimage to Wirikuta, but not so much in the other sacred journeys we have considered. Some other dynamic is at play here. If we return to the original insights of Gennep and leave out of the analysis the Turnerian requirement concerning communitas, we can move toward a broader, more universal explanation of the phenomenon of pilgrimage. We quoted earlier the Turners’ insight that social life for many (especially for people of lower economic status or those who live in small rural communities) can be

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quite restrictive and confining. Social obligations may dampen the possibility of innovation and trap people in a web of expectations that they are born into but have not chosen. We saw evidence of these constraints in Amatlán on a number of occasions. Most villagers have experienced such impediments in their own lives as they play out a range of social roles dictated by tradition. To review briefly, for the average person there are rules associated with gender, appropriate behavior required of people occupying certain age grades, and strict expectations of loyalty and mutual aid assigned to members of families. In Mesoamerica there are also elaborate rules associated with ties of compadrazgo or ritual kinship. These are all in addition to limiting factors based on ethnic-­group affiliation, social class and wealth, racial identity, language, level of education, and a person’s place in the rural-­ urban continuum. At the center of this complex tangle of social roles, rules, and restraints is an actual person. Individuals have some leeway in how they choose to obey these restrictions but are rarely in a position to evade or re-­create them completely to their liking. Modern, largely impersonal, urban societies may offer more latitude in how a person fulfills the demands of such roles in that they provide more venues for people to escape temporarily (or permanently) the straitjacket of their situation. But it is likely that people of lesser means who live in insular communities feel especially constrained by their social and economic position. Pilgrimage is one response available to people in such circumstances. Pilgrimage viewed under the social-­ structural lens accomplishes two things, regardless of its specific content and where it is practiced. In the first place, it provides a mechanism to move temporarily out of one’s narrow social group and daily routine; in short, it makes people less provincial.5 Its second achievement is to place a person in the context where he or she has a close encounter with the sources of numinous energy, thus providing an intensity of experience that can change one’s awareness, outlook, and position vis-­à-­vis other members of the social group. Pilgrimage thus seen is a mechanism internal to the society, inherited from the past, that loosens the grip of social obligations and allows room for a person to modify or simply maneuver within them.6 Pilgrimage is literally and figuratively a path forward. The change may be temporary, but it is equally likely that it will have a lasting effect; if the effect is short-­lived, one can always go again. To paraphrase Morinis, sacred journeys relate more to people’s social, political, and economic circumstances than their religious intentions.7 The returned pilgrim has

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a new opportunity and validation to accomplish many things: to innovate, to create new relationships, to enjoy enhanced prestige, to contend with constraints, to experience a respite from onerous obligations, to create space in which to operate, to be the center of attention (albeit temporarily), to introduce new topics of conversation, to inject a feeling of excitement or adventure in the daily routine, to report back on impressions of the outside world, and, most importantly, to open the possibility of controlling change at one’s own pace. It is the people lacking avenues of social mobility or who are most constrained by their circumstances who thus have the greatest need for release. “Pilgrimages represent, so to speak, an amplified symbol of the dilemma of choice versus obligation in the midst of a social order where status prevails,” as Turner puts it.8 This observation accounts for the fact that most pilgrimages are organized by people at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid rather than by authorities of recognized religious hierarchies. Returning pilgrims experience, however fleetingly, a modicum of freedom to experiment and to change their position in the system. A far more extreme version of this sense of operating freely accompanies the kind of travel undertaken by refugees or immigrants. People who migrate to a new country, despite looming disadvantages or insecurities, sometimes succeed in their quest for security and prosperity above and beyond the achievements of the local population. In fact, migrants’ level of success can sometimes cause resentment among locals who see the newcomers as interlopers who do not play by the established rules.9 Part of their success, however, can also be attributed to the fact that they operated outside of the negative feedback system that constrained local inhabitants and hampered them from acting independently. In some settings immigrants and displaced persons are freer than local populations precisely because they are not part of the system of obligations and expectations that levels the innovators. It is embedded patterns of discrimination, lack of access to resources, language barriers, and other factors that often militate against their success, but there are plenty of examples in which the newcomers on the scene achieve more positive outcomes than do the locals. Pilgrims are like quasi-­migrants who have managed to shake up the status quo and reset their place in the social system, even if in minor ways. As Morinis puts it, pilgrimage is “a movement toward ideals known but not achieved at home.”10 In practice, religious pilgrimage is generally a nonthreatening means of adjusting the social order. Rarely

does a group of people involved with pilgrimage menace the powers that be or demand a radical overthrow of the system. In fact, we would maintain that it is a highly conservative mechanism that affirms the social order while allowing individuals latitude to make adjustments.11 The pilgrimages to Postectli and the other sacred hills were organized to celebrate traditional Nahua culture, not to overthrow it. The sacred journey fits well within the world view of older generations and celebrated very traditional ideas of respect, reciprocity, and adherence to forces of the cosmos that, from the Nahua perspective, are essential for human life. In a sense, the pilgrim is the antithesis of the villager who goes to the city to find work and ultimately loses his or her identity as a Nahua. The sacred journey to Postectli helps individuals militate against capitulation to coercive external forces. Much the same can be said for the other pilgrimages that we have briefly explored. The journey to the sacred opening at Oztotempan by the Nahua of Guerrero affirmed the existence of a paradisaical world lying beyond this one and the role of ancestral souls in assuring present-­day human welfare. The Tepanec pilgrimage to La Lucerna also fell within the traditional world view, and the trek to the summit to solicit rain for the fields reaffirmed Tepanec definitions of how the cosmos provides. People from Tlautla traveled to Chalma as a demonstration of their commitment to the Catholic faith and to the community that sponsored their trek. The ethnographers report that several younger participants went on the sacred journey simply to escape from the daily routine; it was for them a vacation that served as a release from the humdrum of their lives. The Huichol sacred journey to Wirikuta also affirmed the traditions of the group, but it added a unique feature that sets it apart from all the others. We saw that one purpose of the journey was to obtain peyote and bring it back to the villages for personal and ritual use. Myerhoff (1974) concluded that the peyote had little actual social value but was sought after as an expression of individual freedom, and thus peyote provided a means of escape into a personal space where social obligations were largely reduced. This aspect of the Huichol ritual is strong affirmation of our hypothesis that pilgrimage frees people from overbearing social-­ structural constraints. The sacred journey to Chalma and to Wirikuta were rites of passage that explicitly and consciously altered the social status of the participants and, as such, serve to confirm Gennep’s hypothesis. Pilgrimage is not the only opportunity a person has to loosen the grip of social duty; other lesser means exist

alongside it. We would say that travel typically serves a similar purpose, particularly an extended trip to a distant place. Tourism and pilgrimage often are merged in some writers’ analyses. It is interesting to point out how people in Amatlán (the men particularly) are proud of the long trips that have taken them away from the village, usually to locales in central or southern Veracruz. They enjoyed talking to others about their adventures in such far-­off places. In virtually every case this form of travel by men was undertaken as a member of a work crew hired to complete some task, such as cutting sugarcane, clearing trees and brush, building roads, or other manual labor. Not surprisingly, the ultimate work experience for many Mexican men and women that takes them away from the community may be entering América del Norte as an undocumented immigrant. David Sandell summarizes the experience in an insightful account that explicitly links pilgrimage to migration to the US.12 Another example of travel as a pilgrimage-­like experience, also found in many parts of the world, including the US, is leaving one’s community for military service. Returning members of the military come back with life-­changing experiences that can provide the sought-­after shift in social status and freedom to maneuver and innovate. An extreme example of the impact of pilgrimage can be found in medieval Europe beginning in the eleventh century, when Crusaders made the arduous pilgrimage to the Holy Land and combined warfare and devotion to spreading the Christian faith to powerful effect, altering the course of European history. In our view, however, it is religious pilgrimage tied to the sacred landscape that remains as the form of travel that best achieves all of the same ends. The participant not only leaves the community, has personal adventures, and encounters new ideas and people along the way, but the status of being on a pilgrimage also confers the right to claim intimacy with or at least direct knowledge of a culturally significant place in a person’s environs. The pilgrim returns to the community having encountered, through personal experience and not simply through stories, the truth of the sacred centers that are the very heart of the culture. Another avenue that can free people from conventional constraints is the whole question of personal charisma. A charismatic leader is often one who breaks free from the customary patterns and provides people with innovative strategies for solving problems that allow them to move ahead in life. Charisma by definition frees a leader from structural restrictions and opens up new possibilities for his or her followers. Without a doubt, Nahua ritual

Conclusions about Mesoamerican Pilgrimage  :  331

specialists offer charismatic leadership and thereby gain loyal followings among their neighbors. People like Cirilo in Amatlán and the Otomí ritual master Evaristo also offer noteworthy examples of the role that power of personality plays in revitalizing traditional Indigenous religion. In the face of significant changes in the region, the pilgrimages they sponsored and the rituals they conducted gave people a way to deal with some of the forces that afflict them. Perhaps Amalia Bautista, the young Nahua woman who founded the chicomexochitl revitalization movement in the Huasteca (discussed in chapter 2), qualifies as a truly charismatic leader. It was the force of her presence and personality that convinced so many to follow her. As ethnographer Sitna Quiroz Uría (2008) documented, she appeared on the scene and promised her followers a way out of the chaos largely wrought by the region’s Protestant invasion.13 Can we identify examples of changes experienced by the Postectli pilgrims following their return to Amatlán? This question, not surprisingly, is difficult to answer. People who participated in the pilgrimage seemed satisfied and convinced that they had collectively accomplished something significant that would benefit all people of the region. Some pointed out that when Cirilo conducted a divination upon returning to the village, the signs indicated that the offerings had been successful. People were proud to have gone to Postectli and dedicated their offerings to the spirit entities. Their actions, along with the mere fact that people were able to assemble the considerable resources to pull off a successful pilgrimage, were bold statements that their religion of el costumbre was alive and well. Cirilo seemed visibly to acquire a new sense of self-­confidence and pride in his efforts to demonstrate respect to the critically important forces of life. He became enthusiastic about building a new and larger xochicalli shrine to signal that the Native American religion was still important in Amatlán. He spoke to Sofía Larios León at the University of Veracruz’s Institute of Anthropology (and a participant in the 1998 pilgrimage to Postectli) about the possibility of receiving governmental support for such a construction. We assured Cirilo that we would also work on assembling the funds to contribute to the new xochicalli.14 Some years later, in June 2012, we arrived in Mexico City prepared to fulfill our part of that promise. Shortly afterward, we learned that Cirilo had died only days before our compadre could deliver our contribution. It was a devastating reminder of the capricious nature of a disinterested cosmos that can seem cruel and unyielding. In the meantime, external forces have continued to overtake Amatlán and transform many facets of the past way 332  :  Conclusions about Mesoamerican Pilgrimage

of life. The lasting effects on individuals who have participated in pilgrimages are quickly overshadowed and nearly impossible to document after the fact. It remains for future investigators studying other Indigenous communities to record the impact of sacred journeys. They will need to identify new challenges that organizers face in staging the pilgrimage rituals and learn what local factors determine the survival or abandonment of the costumbre complex. Only long-­term field research will allow ethnographers to pinpoint factors responsible for culture change and formulate universal theories to explain it. Cirilo’s lineage of knowledge did not end with his death. The ritual specialists he trained continue to organize ritual pilgrimages to sacred places. Culture is resilient, far from ephemeral, and its wisdom outlives any individual adherents. Knowledge of a universe in which all elements are organically interrelated—­a fundamental insight of Nahua religion—­has been affirmed time and again by the discoveries of science. Devotional practice and scientific understanding need not follow divergent paths. Up to this point we have endeavored to understand pilgrimage through the logic of its application within the context of Nahua world view as well as through its effects on the life experiences of the villagers. We would now like to extend the discussion and provide insight into the techniques or strategies used by the Nahua themselves to accomplish the work of pilgrimage. How exactly do the people go about achieving the goals of reestablishing harmony with the wider cosmos? Where do the specific strategies employed by the pilgrims come from? Why do participants work the way they do to achieve the goals of a pilgrimage? It is our contention that these techniques and strategies derive from everyday pragmatic experiences of the people who contribute to these sacred journeys. Undoubtedly, many of the structural features of Nahua pilgrimage were developed in prehistory, and information on the origins of the practice is unavailable to us. It is instructive, however, to compare the sacred journeys we record here to the description of the sixteenth-­century Aztec pilgrimage to Tlaloc presented earlier. The similarities are striking. The form of the pilgrimage in the Huasteca clearly can be traced to ancient times and probably reflects what López Austin (2001) calls the núcleo duro (“hard nucleus”) of Mesoamerican cosmovision developed by the first sedentary horticulturalists. While we cannot determine the origins of Nahua pilgrimage, we can instead provide some needed context about the basic strategies employed by their ritual specialists—­strategic choices that we believe are designed to make sense to the participants and to fall within their

particular life experiences. We have focused mainly on the material conditions and daily concerns of the people involved rather than try to reconstruct religious ideology or value systems. Even so, we sometimes find it helpful to stray from empirical observations and enter into the realm of informed speculation. In general we assume that most (but not all) people participate in pilgrimages to address real-­world problems rather than for abstract philosophical or theological reasons. A consistent exception to this assertion would be the ritual specialists, who as people of knowledge know so much more about the workings of the cosmos than the average person on pilgrimage. The master practitioners are surely motivated by a more abstract and complex set of concerns. For the Nahua of Amatlán, the fundamental daily activity—­the one routine set of behaviors that structures much of the rest of life—­is the slash-­and-­burn cycle of horticultural production.15 Milpas are a source of pride for the men and their brothers and sons who create them, and they are the best example of a secure and productive center standing against a disordered periphery. It is in the milpa where a man toils throughout his life and where his effort serves to support his family and establish his reputation among peers. Although it may seem obvious, it is worth repeating that the pilgrimages and the religion system in which they are embedded ought to reflect the concerns of people who make their living through horticulture. Maize, beans, squash, and the other crops are at the center of ritual activities, and people appease the forces that control rain, earth, sun, and plant growth so that the seeds can develop and prosper. The religious orientation to crop productivity reflects worry over the uncertainties of small-­scale farming suited to the extremes of tropical rainfall horticulture. In short, much of the content of Nahua religion is unproblematic: the religion makes a value of what is necessary for life. As it is currently constituted, much of Nahua religion in the southern Huasteca is directed at the specific requirements of producing food, but because of its pantheistic character, the religion could easily be transformed into a universalistic creed compatible with any system of production; Buddhism and Hinduism come to mind. But village-­level religion had the potential to change in a number of directions. In our view, the priests and political elites of sixteenth-­century urban Aztec society were attempting, without really impacting the inhabitants of the villages themselves, to appropriate the original pantheistic systems found there and to forge them into a polytheistic religion that better met the requirements of the developing nation-­state. It was in Tenochtitlan and other imperial capitals where

precisely these religious transformations were underway when the Spaniards arrived. The hierarchy of deities that the invaders encountered reflected the urban-­Aztec social structure with its hereditary nobility and sharply defined social strata, and it certainly fit Spanish expectations of a hierarchically ordered pantheon. The villagers were left to themselves, by and large, to continue the observance of age-­old traditions, and despite the addition of Christian elements, they continue to do so to this day. Nahua religious practices such as we find in Amatlán would have little meaning to most people living in a modern nation-­state like the US. Fewer and fewer people in any technologically advanced nation grow food, and there are international trading systems to address the shortfalls that are routinely disastrous for small-­scale farmers who rely on rainfall horticulture and slash-­and-­burn technology. However, we should not forget that even universalistic religions such as Christianity have been repeatedly forced to adapt to new circumstances. The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century can be understood as a response to fundamental changes in the socioeconomic systems of Europe. The coming of Protestantism to Amatlán and Indigenous communities throughout Latin America is undoubtedly caused by similar unsettling circumstances. Today the world’s developed and developing nations are undergoing rapid and relentless technological change in which older systems of production and social organization are being undermined and increasingly made irrelevant. Under conditions of such fundamental change, mainline Christian church membership is diminishing rapidly. It is interesting to observe that in the US and Europe, as people increasingly abandon traditional Christian beliefs, Buddhism (a universalist pantheistic religion, albeit not a proselytizing one) is finding so many new adherents. Beyond the content of Nahua ritual and its direct relationship to milpa horticulture, the pilgrimages reveal some additional connections to the experiences of daily life in Amatlán. It is our contention that many aspects of Nahua ritual behavior are projections of common patterns that define life in small horticultural communities extended to include wider cosmic forces. The most obvious example of this process is the system of reciprocity that defines the relationship between humans and the spirit pantheon. Generalized reciprocity underlies virtually all human interaction, although it is rarely formalized or quantified. The give-­and-­take of interaction among people must achieve some kind of balance, or otherwise the system becomes unstable and disintegrates. There are, of course, systems for lending and borrowing, such as Conclusions about Mesoamerican Pilgrimage  :  333

barter, gift-­giving, or the exchange of favors or hospitality, wherein people maintain at least a rough calculation of value. For the Nahua this informal system includes labor exchange or mano vuelta in the agricultural cycle, reciprocal support among women for preparation of food for village-­wide celebrations, mutual help in house building and repair, more or less formal exchanges among ritual kinsmen, the faena obligation for village-­wide work, plus many additional examples. It seems clear to us that such social reciprocity has been elaborated and expanded by the Nahua beyond the human community to admit spirit entities such as water, earth, and sun into the equation. Even acts of curing meant to restore health and banish polluting agents are based on exchanges with the disease-­ causing wind spirits. That a gift creates an obligation is a cultural universal and a basic principle of social interaction. Balancing reciprocity and gift-­giving between the human and spirit realms makes perfect sense because these adjustments underlie the sociability and respect relations familiar to all villagers. The Nahua, like the followers of religions all over the world, create and re-­create that sense of quid pro quo with spirit entities by making vows or giving gifts to them, and, in so doing, they incorporate these forces into human social life. At the same time, many Nahua practices regarding cleansing and purification reflect the difficulties of living in small communities based on tight-­knit family relations and ritual kinship. Procedures to counter disease and pollution are similarly a kind of projection from everyday experiences to include entities from the spirit realm. As we have shown, disease is caused by disorder and disruption that results from acts of disrespect. Disrespect occurs in the form of antisocial acts, such as lying, cheating, stealing, sorcery, or acting on envious thoughts, that clearly violate the rules of conduct required to live in harmony with other people. Nahua ideas about pollution and disease are linked to violations of cultural definitions of order, whether in social interaction or in one’s relations with the earth or any other aspect of the living universe. In pantheistic religions evil is not intrinsic but defined as any disturbance in such a system, and because excess of any kind leads to disequilibrium and eventually to disorder or death, social values encourage people to follow a path of moderation and balance in their lives. Curing and healing in pantheistic systems are based on returning a person to a state of balance with his or her social and physical environments: to cure and cleanse is to sweep away polluting disorder and get rid of disease-­causing tlazolli—­filth or refuse—­that holds the power to sicken or kill.

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The people of Amatlán are generally pragmatic and are attracted to techniques that work and have the intended effect. Everyone we talked to affirmed that a cleansing-­ curing procedure does make a person feel better, so much so that ritual healing is efficacious and at some level accomplishes what it sets out to do. The Nahua procedure serves forcibly and visibly to clear away the disturbances that cause so much suffering. By extension, the disorder that intrudes between humans and the wider cosmos requires rituals in which reciprocity is restored and orderly relations are reestablished. Major ritual occasions such as the pilgrimages are essentially elaborated cleansing-­curing ceremonies in that they restore disturbed relations in the natural order through gift-­giving and reciprocal exchange. This corpus of belief and practice can be traced back to the requirements of life in any community where a person is in face-­to-­face interaction with the same group of people throughout his or her entire life. The milpa as an ordered center was once part of the disordered periphery, and its fertility derives both from the earth and its forest origin. That basic fact informs Nahua observations of how what we call the natural world works. It is the tlazolli or forest litter and brush being burned that, along with water, sunlight, and fertile seeds, makes the crops grow. After a few years of producing food, the milpa will return to its wild state as it is allowed to go fallow and recharge, and then once again it will be transformed into a milpa. These are the facts of the productive life of a Nahua family. The Nahua altar at the very center of ritual life embodies the cosmos, but at a more specific level it embodies the milpa. The milpa as the source of food is the most important aspect of tlaltepactli, the surface of planet Earth. It is at the altar where ritual specialists align the delicate paper petates holding the images of spirit entities counted out in units of twenty, thus graphically reproducing the ancient as well as modern system of usufruct rights and control over the land. That which lies above the milpa-­altar is the sky, signified by the flower-­bedecked arch of greenery. What lies below the milpa-­altar is the interior earth and place of the ancestors, embodied in the array beneath the altar table. The altar with its offering is the point of order at the center of the Nahua religious system, just as the milpa cut from the tropical forest is the point of order in the Nahua productive system. Nahua rituals create a direct connection between milpa and altar, between ordered center and disordered periphery, between human endeavor and cosmic processes. In sum, the rituals are so powerful and have such a hold on people precisely because they are firmly rooted in the everyday

experiences and in the material conditions of traditional Nahua life. Pilgrimage, with its focus on the range of spirit entities connected to growing food mirrors the worries and hopes of the people who lead this kind of agrarian life. Failure of the crop means diminished energy, starvation, and death. Despite Nahua crop-­growing expertise gained over thousands of years, producing a successful milpa in this region remains tenuous and increasingly uncertain as global climate changes become ever more extreme. The most effective way to counteract uncertainty for the people is to intensify their hard work in their milpas. And as we can affirm after decades of field research in Amatlán, Nahua men and women work extraordinarily hard under trying conditions. All labor in the horticultural process is supplied by human beings. There is virtually no use of farm machinery in Amatlán, and animals do not supply labor to prepare the fields, plant, or harvest the crop. People unfamiliar with the work entailed in this type of swidden horticulture (really gardening on a grand scale) may not realize how highly repetitive and demanding it is and how much patience and fortitude it requires. In fact, working horticultural fields and dealing with the harvest has, ironically, the quality of a factory assembly line. The fields are laboriously cleared using a machete, the cut trees and brush are burned, the seeds are planted by hand using a dibble stick, the crop is weeded several times throughout the season through stoop labor under a tropical sun, and then it is harvested and carried back to the house and stored for future use. Even the daily process of shucking and shelling native varieties of maize, the primary staple food, is labor intensive, as is the process of cooking the grain for consumption.16 Fields are tended with extreme care throughout the growing season. Individual farmers free plants from weeds, mound dirt at the base of each stalk to conserve water, guard against pests including birds and other animals, and watch for signs of rain with worried anticipation. The making of sugarloaf from sugarcane, one of the few local activities that earns significant money, requires the same repetition of labor as the industrial assembly line.17 The productive activities of men and women alike involve tremendous tolerance of both repetitive body motion and cyclical performance of the same tasks over and over. As we have emphasized, one feature of Nahua rituals that stands out, especially to outsiders, is the enormous expenditure of effort required to organize a successful offering. It is not simply work that is intense but, like everything, also highly repetitive work, fully analogous

to the toil in the milpas. Following Roy Rappaport (1979, 1999), we might generally consider ritual to be repetitive by definition, but the Nahua take this characteristic to an extreme. Dozens of people fold the paper and the adepts cut thousands or even tens of thousands of paper images. Once cut, they are counted out and their eyes, mouth, and distinguishing cuts meticulously folded opened, and they are methodically aligned on their petates. Helpers construct thousands of the coyol palm adornments, also counting them out precisely and gathering them into bundles. Stacks of the preserved paper figures of the seeds are undressed, and then again dressed with clothing that has been washed and dried, while an array of new figures is created and similarly dressed in hand-­sewn garments. Once everything is assembled for the pilgrimage, participants must construct a sequence of complex altars and decorate them in approximately the same way. The rituals surrounding the offerings are characterized by lilting violin and guitar music that repeats itself over and over until the sleep-­deprived participants are practically in a daze. The accompanying chanting by the ritual specialists can go on for great length in a wild cacophony of voices. All of this activity goes on continuously and often simultaneously in a resolute manner and with little pause. People work undeterred but bleary-­eyed so that after two or three days of such enterprise, the whole affair begins to take on an otherworldly atmosphere. And it was not just those of us who were outsiders who felt this way. The Nahua and Otomí participants themselves acknowledged that they felt intoxicated, even though few drank to excess. We believe that it is no accident that the rituals associated with the pilgrimage to Postectli mimic the repetitive and exhausting human labor that takes place in the milpa. Because reciprocity is the core feature of Nahua interactional strategies with one another and with spirit entities, Nahua religion is based on carefully gauged interactions. As we hope we have demonstrated, disequilibrium in these relations from whatever cause can lead to disaster. Disorder rapidly grows out of hand and becomes a self-­perpetuating cycle, like the deviation-­amplification model articulated by Rappaport (1984 [1968]) that illuminates the ecological bases of ritual practice. The pilgrimages to Postectli and other mountains in the sacred landscape are essentially a transfer of value in the forms of offerings and labor to the spirit entities. The Nahua know full well that they are not able to ensure a bountiful harvest simply by dedicating an offering, no matter how heartfelt. They are perfectly aware that they must labor in the milpas and likewise employ all of their knowledge and intelligence to make the crops

Conclusions about Mesoamerican Pilgrimage  :  335

productive and provide nourishment. Pleasing the spirit entities or reducing their ire and merely redressing the asymmetrical relation with them does not remove the need to clear brush or plant maize seed in the ground. Work in the milpa sets the stage for a fruitful harvest, while the work of ritual removes impediments and obstacles to the smoothly running cosmos that makes the harvest possible. The repetitive labor in the fields is matched by the repetitive labor involved in making ritual offerings. Neither activity guarantees that people will get what they require, but in the daily experience of the Nahua repetitious, intensive hard work is the only strategy that has been shown to assure success, and so they employ it with great energy in multiple arenas of their lives. The altar embodies the world so that people can engage with it. Postectli itself is the preeminent sacred mountain in a landscape replete with revered mountains. This remarkable prominence is an obvious embodiment of a gigantic altar that reflects not only the tiered structure of the cosmos but a monumental reminder of the way the Nahua people successfully engage with an unforgiving world. Our ethnographic pilgrimage has come to an end. Through the openness and generosity of our Nahua

friends we have been introduced into a world that we could only partly experience over the years spent in Amatlán. To see that world come alive on the pilgrimage trail has been a life-­changing experience for all of us involved. Who can observe the mountains, sun, rain, earth, and seeds and not recognize that they all exist because they are sacred, and that they are sacred because they exist. They express the common ground of being that the Nahua call Totiotzin, and they demand one thing of us: respect. Anyone who cannot see that simple fact has slipped off the trail, lured into the illusion that human beings are independent of the fundamental forces that structure and energize the cosmos. The religion of el costumbre is an enduring yet flexible means to counter the chaos, disorder, and disintegration that relentlessly threaten our existence. At the same time, its rituals and precepts celebrate life, reveal beauty, and demonstrate the very best of what human beings are capable of. The trail twists and turns, frequently skimming the edge of the precipice. But the pilgrims are stalwart and carry on for the benefit of themselves and for us all. Time may be running out for people to heal the earth and the atmosphere. We must begin our own sacred journeys to cultivate respect for the things of this world.

Notes 1. Maffie (2014: 106). 2. In particular, see Good Eshelman (2004b: 154–­55; 2004c: 139–­42). 3. Good Eshelman (2004c: 141). 4. As articulated in the chant by ritual specialist Juan Antonio (Lino) Hernández in chapter 3 (Chant 3, line 33), the Nahua verb cēnquīza (conjugated cenquiztoc) tells us that Nahua self-­identity entails doing the kind of work that requires people “to join together,” “to assemble,” “to finish a task in one sitting” in order “for everything to be together.” In sum, this is the cultural imperative behind the collective enterprise of going on pilgrimage. 5. Preston (1992: 41). 6. See Shadow and Rodríguez-­Shadow (1994b: 117) on this point. Oviedo, de  Courcier, and Farias (2013: 123) state that a common set of meanings pilgrims bring to the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Europe is “an almost mystical sense of nature—­a desire to recover a sense of identity through detachment from everyday life and relationships.” According to Gutiérrez del Ángel (2002: 33, 219–­22), the Huichol pilgrims come back from Wirikuta with new social statuses, notably changed by the sacred journey. 7. Morinis (1992: 19). 8. Turner (1973: 200). 9. On a personal note, the Tibetan refugees we came to know who lived in exile in India and neighboring countries in the 1980s were highly successful entrepreneurs compared with

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many of their local Indian counterparts. The Tibetans, having fled their homeland to escape Chinese occupation, were of course in a desperate situation, and so they were highly motivated to find a way to make a living in their new circumstances. Their adaptation to the new conditions can be attributed to generous accommodations by the Indian government, to effective policies by the Tibetan government in exile, and to donations from nongovernmental organizations and other charitable supporters worldwide (Norbu 2001). 10. Morinis (1992: ix). 11. As Cohen (1992: 51) puts it, travel in a traditional society threatens the social order, but pilgrimage legitimizes it. Loveland (2008) shows that Catholics who participate in pilgrimages are more likely to support official Church positions on birth control and a celibate priesthood. 12. See Sandell (2013); also Johnstone (1978), who offers a philosopher’s insights into the effects of travel on the individual self. 13. Dow and Sandstrom (2001). 14. See the introduction to the 2007 pilgrimage to Tres Pozitos in appendix B for further details. 15. Local observers affirming this connection include Medina Hernández (2008: 194); Gómez Martínez (2009: 271); and Nava Vite (2009: 141), among others. 16. See Sandstrom (1991: 119–­27). 17. Sandstrom (1991: 137–­39).

Appendix A

Pilgrimage to Palaxtepetl In March 2007 we were in Amatlán pursuing ethnographic research when the Nahua ritual specialist Encarnación (Cirilo) Téllez Hernández announced that he was planning a pilgrimage to the sacred mountain Palaxtepetl. We looked forward to visiting a different site and seeing to what extent the ritual sequence and offerings were similar to what we had witnessed at Postectli; see figure 1.1 for a schematic map of the episodes of this trek and the other pilgrimages we undertook with our Nahua hosts over the period from 1998 to 2007. The name Palaxtepetl means “Male Turkey Mountain” and lies within sight of the village. The pilgrimage was to begin from the community of Cacahuatengo, about an hour’s walk from Amatlán and home to Teófilo Jiménez Hernández, the ritual specialist and apprentice of Cirilo who accompanied us on both treks to Postectli. It was clear from the patterns of interaction we witnessed that Cirilo was the grand master, but Teófilo would organize and lead the pilgrimage, perhaps as part of his apprenticeship. We asked why we were going to Palaxtepetl, and Cirilo stated that good wind (cualli ehecatl) comes from the sacred peak and that it clears the path for the clouds and rain that will water the fields. This explanation did not impress us very much at the time because it is basically what he always said when questioned about the significant prominences in the sacred landscape. It is most likely that he (or perhaps Teófilo) had had a dream about the mountain and determined that it was time to dedicate ritual attention to it in the form of pilgrimage and its requisite offering. Teófilo is a skilled carpenter, and his spacious xochicalli was particularly well built and freshly whitewashed. It was he who sent the word out to neighboring communities for people to join in the pilgrimage, and he sought the permissions from municipio authorities to make the trek. In the end, about forty participants joined in the sacred journey, which lasted two days, including preparations. Several days previously we had traveled to the town of Tuxpan, Veracruz, on the Gulf Coast to pick up a French-­Mexican anthropology student who wanted to experience field research for herself. She was the only outsider to accompany us on the journey. In all, ritual specialists cut thousands of paper figures while helpers fashioned (we estimated) about 5,000 adornments of coyol palm and marigold blossoms. In addition, they assembled thirteen sacred bundles to embody the male and female aspects of maize. The sequence of events, with some exceptions noted below, followed very closely what we had witnessed in the two treks to Postectli. It is clear that, despite some variations, the ritual specialists followed a predetermined plan for the pilgrimage and its associated rituals. Volunteers sat around for many hours outside the shrine constructing the altar adornments en masse. Inside

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Left to Right Photo A.1. Participants gather in the Nahua community of Cacahuatengo, Ixhuatlán de Madero, Mexico, to prepare the palm and floral adornments for the pilgrimage to the sacred mountain Palaxtepetl. The ethnographers’ four-­wheel-­drive vehicle is in the background. Photo A.2. Outside the xochicalli shrine, helpers continue to make the thousands of adornments that will be used during the pilgrimage. Palm leaves and flowers have been placed on plastic sheets to keep them off the ground.

the shrine helpers removed old decorations and set about refurbishing the main altar while ritual specialists cut the paper figures. Helpers erected an outside cross altar (cruz afuera), dedicated to the sun, and connected it physically to the main altar by a vine to which they attached marigold blossoms. Along with the flowers, they strung numerous paper figures of witnesses (tlamocuitlahuihquetl, singular) at about three-­foot intervals, connecting them to the vine by means of a string passed through a hole in the headdress of each cutting (similar to exemplar figure E-25). While all of this work was ongoing, there were many additional activities to observe: the ritual specialists cleansed a participant with candles; women undressed the clothed paper figures of the seeds, washed their clothing, and later redressed them again; ritual specialists cut new, large paper figures of the seeds for later distribution to the participants; helpers prepared the folded-­paper “bones” of the skeletal armature that reinforces these seed figures; outside, a group of men manufactured the sacred maize bundles under direction of a female ritual specialist; onlookers danced before the altar holding on to ritual items such as bells, incense braziers, and walking sticks (photos A.1–­A.45). Just as during the pilgrimage to Postectli, the enterprise began with a ritual cleansing of the area of dangerous and polluting wind spirits. The cleansing included the sequence when the participants

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and musicians as well as the sacred objects passed fourteen times through a vine-­and-­marigold flower loop and also beneath a stinging-­nettle arch before reentering the shrine (photos A.46–­A.59). The stinging nettle (visible in photo A.57) served to remove any adhering wind spirits from a person’s body. After ritual specialists carefully laid out the completed paper figures on the altar, the next episode consisted of delivering the sacrificial fowl, cutting the birds’ throats with scissors, and making the blood offering (photos A.60–­A.66). Helpers then completed the decoration of the altar (photos A.67–­A.73). The all-­night vigil followed the ritual action, punctuated by episodes during which people received cleansings from the ritual specialists (photo A.74). While some sat by quietly, others took turns dancing before the altar and parading the dressed seed figures, sacred walking sticks, and maize bundles. In the hours before dawn people continued to present their subdued devotions before the altar, and the musicians played the ritual sones. At daybreak everyone packed up for the trek to the sacred mountain. Along the way, they stopped at the community’s main water source and smaller springs to dedicate offerings (photos A.75–­A.84). Upon arriving at the summit of Palaxtepetl, the pilgrims cleaned up the area and set up an altar similar to the one in the Cacahuatengo xochicalli (photos A.85–­A.94). Helpers brought out sacrificial fowl and conducted a blood offering over the paper figures, after which Cirilo signed his name in blood (photos A.95–­ A.99). Participants proceeded to decorate the altar and place offerings directly over the blood-­drenched paper images (photos A.100 and A.101). Simultaneously women cooked the sacrificial fowl, the ritual specialists chanted before the altar, and a group of women sat nearby fashioning additional paper figures of the seeds (photos A.102–­A.107). Helpers constructed a circular altar to the sun while others made a special offering to the cloud by interring a live white chicken in a hole

dug in the earth (photos A.108–­A.119). Following the dedication of the altar to the sun and smaller offerings, the pilgrims packed up all of the food offerings and sacred items and headed back to the village of Cacahuatengo. There they made a final visit to the altar in the shrine, after which they headed back to their own communities with a renewed sense of confidence that, for the time being, the cosmos had been put back in balance. Examination of the photographs reveals that the pilgrimage to Palaxtepetl follows very closely the familiar sequence of events we encountered for the journeys to Postectli. There were, however, three episodes that we had never witnessed before. When we first arrived in Cacahuatengo late in the afternoon with Cirilo in our company, people gathered around him as he stepped from the vehicle, and he delivered a short speech to the crowd. With his voice rising in emotion, he stated in Nahuatl that everything of value comes from the earth. He gave examples mentioning water (atl), maize (cintli), and even

Left to Right Photo A.3. Cirilo begins the process of cutting the sacred paper images. Photo A.4. Cirilo (right) and a helper darken cut-­paper figures with charcoal from the cooking fire. The figures embody dangerous underworld spirit entities that lead forces of disease, misfortune, and death from mictlan, the underworld. Photo A.5. The rib holes of the darkened figures identify them with the underworld, disease, and death.

money (tomin). With rapt attention people listened as Cirilo explained that tlaltepactli, the earth’s surface, is the source of all that is sacred and necessary for human lives. After making his statement, which lasted just a few minutes, people murmured among themselves and went back to their tasks of preparing for the pilgrimage. A second novel episode occurred as we descended the sacred mountain at the end of the second day and were preparing to

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Left to Right Photo A.6. Helpers manufacture the many hundreds of adornments needed for the Palaxtepetl pilgrimage. Photo A.7. These coyol palm and marigold adornments have been counted out and tied in bundles of twenty, ready for the ritual offering and trek to the sacred mountain. Photo A.8. A man makes a pinwheel-­like adornment from coyol palm and marigolds. Invoking a star, several such adornments are attached to the arch over the altar table.

Photo A.9. Ritual specialists and helpers at work cutting the paper figures. The small colored sheets will be used to cut images of disease-­causing wind spirits.

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Photo A.10. A paper image of the earth spirit being unfolded.

Left to Right Photo A.11. A man (seated, at center) ties coyol palm and marigold adornments onto a sacred walking stick, to be placed with the others on the altar. People say that the colorful ribbons tied to these staffs of authority depict the seeds or, alternately, the light at sunrise. Photo A.12. Women sort through the previously washed and dried clothing belonging to the collection of large paper figures of the seeds. Photo A.13. Some of the dressed paper figures, embodiments of the earth and seeds. Photo A.14. A helper finishes decorating a sacred walking stick. He has wrapped a new cloth handkerchief around the stick that will be doused with perfume.

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Left to Right Photo A.15. Women, respectfully facing the altar, perform a swaying dance to the sacred violin and guitar music. Photo A.16. Catalina (left) and a helper complete the task of tying paper bones on the large cuttings of the earth. Photo A.17. The cruz afuera (“outside cross”) altar is connected to the main altar inside the shrine by a vine decorated with marigold blossoms. Photo A.18. View of the marigold-­decorated vine linking the altar outside to the main altar inside, which is surrounded by lit candles. Photo A.19. Witness-­guardian paper figures attached to the vine that connects the two altars.

Photo A.20. An altar adornment depicting a star.

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Photo A.21. Pamela Sandstrom and another helper count out coyol adornments into bundles of twenty.

Photo A.22. Men make adornments from coyol palm leaves and marigold flowers. Called chicomexochitl (“seven flower”) and macuilli xochitl (“five flower”), these wands evoke the male and female aspects of cintli or maize.

Photo A.23. A view of the main altar inside the shrine as helpers decorate it. Note the small paper figures of witness-­guardians (upper left) hanging from a string of marigold flowers connecting the inside and outside altars. Left to Right Photo A.24. A cut-paper sheet called ventana (“window”) hanging above the altar presents a pair of anthropomorphic figures. Photo A.25. A different style of paper window through which spirit entities approach the altar. Photo A.26. Ritual specialist Catarina (foreground, right) rings a bell to awaken the spirit entities as women plait ribbons to form the paper figures’ tresses. Photo A.27. Partially dressed image of the water dweller, apanchaneh.

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Left to Right Photo A.28. A woman dresses one of the paper figures of the seeds (probably blue or purple maize, visible on the top layer), while another arranges its jewelry. Photo A.29. Helpers selecting perfect ears of maize before preparing the sacred maize bundles. Photo A.30. The men tie the ears of maize together. Photo A.31. Helpers working in coordination to cut string and decorate the ears of maize tied into bundles.

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Left to Right Photo A.32. Everyone discusses the construction, wrapping, and decoration of the maize bundles. Photo A.33. The maize bundles are nearly completed. Photo A.34. Cirilo (center) looks over the assembled maize bundles. Photo A.35. Women dancing before the main altar. Ritual specialists Catalina (background, right) and Catarina (foreground, left), ring bells to rouse the spirit entities. Two women (center) hold dressed paper figures of the seeds while another (on the right) holds apanchaneh. Photo A.36. The women rest after dancing. Note the clay pots evoking the water realm. Photo A.37. Women examine the new clothing on paper images of the seeds.

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Left to Right Photo A.38. A paper figure of apanchaneh in her water pot. Photo A.39. Two women hold up smoking incense braziers as people crowd inside the xochicalli. Photo A.40. A woman cradles the dressed paper figures of the seeds as everyone faces the altar.

Photo A.41. A woman (left) holds a sisal carrying bag filled with dressed paper figures while another woman (right) holds the water pot containing apanchaneh. Cirilo, partly obscured in the background, and another man next to him are holding decorated walking sticks.

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Photo A.42. Palm mat containing the paper figures that will be used throughout the ritual occasion.

Left to Right Photo A.43. A woman places lighted candles before the altar. Photo A.44. The maize bundles, with seven-­flower and five-­flower palm and marigold wands in the foreground. Note the rings of bread placed on some of the bundles as an offering. Photo A.45. A woman censes the sacred maize bundles.

Photo A.46. Teófilo lays out paper figures of disease-­causing spirit entities preparatory to a cleansing ritual. The object of the ritual is to rid the area of these dangerous wind spirits so they will not benefit from the offerings dedicated inside the shrine.

Photo A.47. Women help lay out the array of disease-­causing spirit entities. They are organizing the blackened images of figures from the underworld, including man owl, man owl woman, and death.

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Left to Right Photo A.48. The charcoal-­blackened paper figures of dangerous denizens of the underworld. Photo A.49. The display of malevolent winds is surrounded by a circular vine decorated with marigold flowers. Paper figures tied to bundles of leaves are soldiers guarding the perimeter who keep the dangerous forces contained. The colorful square-­shaped paper figures outside the display are to protect from attack by sorcerers. The white candle (upper right), made from pig fat, is associated with the underworld. Photo A.50. Ritual specialists Cirilo, Catarina, and Teófilo (seated, left to right) chant to dangerous wind spirits as a helper places a white tallow candle at the head of the display. Photo A.51. Women hold dressed paper figures of the seeds near the cleansing display. Photo A.52. A man carries photos of family members so that they can benefit from the cleansing. Photo A.53. A man carries the shirt of an absent family member so that the person can receive a cleansing at a distance.

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Left to Right Photo A.54. Cirilo dedicates the offerings of food and drink by spreading them out directly on the paper figures in the display. Photo A.55. Teófilo (right) chants before the cleansing array as Cirilo looks on in the background. The woman at the left holds a decorated sacred walking stick. Photo A.56. Participants pass through the flowered loop, raised seven times and lowered seven times, to remove the dangerous wind spirits. Photo A.57. A man holds branches of the stinging nettle plant near the shrine’s entrance to remove any lingering winds from people as they pass beneath. Photo A.58. The musicians pass through the cleansing loop.

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Left to Right Photo A.59. Lead ritual specialist Cirilo receives a special cleansing with sacred herbs from his colleague Catarina. Photo A.60. During the entregada (“delivery”) episode, participants hold up coyol adornments before the main altar. Photo A.61. Sacrificial fowl are brought before the altar. Photo A.62. Chickens and turkeys are fed small amounts of soft drink as a show of respect and then brushed against each other in a show of mock combat. Photo A.63. Sacrificial fowl are made to engage in mock combat until they squawk.

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Left to Right Photo A.64. Blood is sprinkled on the paper figures on the altar table and on the four bundles of petates lying on the earth beneath. The bundle at lower left is labeled el agua (“the water”). Photo A.65. Teófilo carefully paints blood on each paper figure with a feather. Photo A.66. Teófilo begins the process of decorating the altar directly on top of the bloodied paper figures. Photo A.67. Generously laden with offerings, the completed altar reveals three layers of the cosmos. Note the dressed figure of apanchaneh in the pot on the floor, revealing the water realm. Photo A.68. The water dweller apanchaneh is positioned upright in a water pot along with candles and food offerings.

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Left to Right Photo A.69. Sisal carrying bags filled with dressed paper figures of the seeds and decorated walking sticks lean against the wall beneath the arch. Candles, coyol palm adornments, bottles of soft drinks and beer, prepared food, and packaged crackers and cookies are placed over the bloodied paper figures. Photo A.70. On the floor in front of the altar is a display linking apanchaneh to water. The coyol and flower adornments emerging from a water pot (right) have been tied to the paper figure of this spirit entity, who rests in her own water pot. Photo A.71. One of the paper windows, smeared with blood, welcomes the spirit entities. Photo A.72. The other bloodied paper window hangs above the altar.

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Left to Right Photo A.73. Behind the water pots and the paper figure of apanchaneh are offerings dedicated to the earth, including a whole cooked turkey. Placed alongside it is the emptied bowl that contained blood used to anoint the paper figures. Photo A.74. Teófilo cleanses a participant by rubbing her with candles.

Left to Right Photo A.75. Participants load up with adornments and offerings as they prepare to begin the pilgrimage. Photo A.76. A participant censes the people with copal in anticipation of beginning the pilgrimage.

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Left to Right Photo A.77. Ritual specialists Cirilo (center, in white hat), Teófilo (to his left), and Catalina (right) carry sacred walking sticks, ring bells, and hold lighted candles as they lead the entourage. A woman (far left) fills the air with copal incense from a smoking brazier. Photo A.78. Several participants shake rattles as they proceed to Palaxtepetl. Photo A.79. The pilgrims leave the community carrying all of the offerings and adornments that will be needed for the ritual at the sacred mountain’s peak. Photo A.80. Participants lean sacred walking sticks against the village water tank. Photo A.81. Women pass the water pot containing the paper figure of apanchaneh to place it on the altar by the water tank.

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Left to Right Photo A.82. Ritual specialists Teófilo (in front, second from left) and Cirilo (far right) chant before the altar at the village water supply. Photo A.83. Our first clear view of the summit of Palaxtepetl. Photo A.84. After several hours on the trail to Palaxtepetl, the participants walk in close procession and everyone is in good spirits. Photo A.85. The pilgrims reach the summit of Palaxtepetl and unload their burdens. The ritual specialists had been here the day before and decorated the arch by the wooden cross with greenery.

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Left to Right Photo A.86. Teófilo places stacks of paper figures on the altar table. Each stack is labeled corte del cerro de arriba (“cutting for the upper hill”). Photo A.87. Beneath the altar Teófilo carefully spreads out the scraps left over from cutting the thousands of paper figures. Photo A.88. Ritual specialists Catarina (right) and Teófilo (left) hold the adornments and paper figures over the altar as they chant. They implore the spirit entities to provide rain and fertility for the crops. Photo A.89. Teófilo and Catarina chant before the altar. Photo A.90. Catarina (left) and Catalina (right) lay out paper figures beneath the altar.

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Left to Right Photo A.91. Teófilo carefully and respectfully lays out beds of paper figures on the altar. Photo A.92. Teófilo makes certain that the paper figures are in their proper places on the altar. Photo A.93. The top of the altar, with twenty-­eight petates containing twenty figures each; another twenty-­eight petates are arranged on the earth below the altar. Photo A.94. Participants rest as the paper figures are arranged precisely on the altar. Photo A.95. Teófilo pours some libation down the throats of the birds as a show of respect.

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Left to Right Photo A.96. Cirilo chants over the paper figures before they are sprinkled with blood. Photo A.97. The altar after the blood sacrifice is completed. Photo A.98. People take up the coyol and marigold flower adornments and, facing the altar, sway gently to the ritual music. The rhythmic motion evokes the growing maize plant. Photo A.99. Cirilo signs his name with a feather dipped in blood, taking responsibility for the pilgrimage and associated rituals.

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Left to Right Photo A.100. Helpers complete the task of decorating the altar at the summit of Palaxtepetl. Photo A.101. Two pairs of dressed paper images of grandfather earth and grandmother earth, the male and female aspects of tlalli, the earth. Photo A.102. Cirilo (center) and Teófilo (left) inspect the altar after the offerings of food and drink have been arranged. Photo A.103. Women and girls work to clean and cook the chickens as food offerings to the spirit entities.

Photo A.104. The laden altar at the summit of Palaxtepetl.

Photo A.105. Women fold paper rods to serve as bones for the large paper figures (stacked at left) embodying the seeds.

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Left to Right Photo A.106. Ritual specialist Catalina holding a paper figure of white maize. Photo A.107. Ritual specialist Catarina inspects the bundle of paper figures embodying the seeds. Three (or sometimes four) figures are stacked and tied together before being dressed.

Right and below, left to right Photo A.108. Participants construct a circular altar dedicated to the sun. Photo A.109. Helpers tie paper streamers to the sun altar. Photo A.110. Helpers finish decorating the pole holding the sun altar.

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Left to Right Photo A.111. The offering dedicated to the cloud is completed as crackers, bread, coffee, soft drinks, and candles are placed over the bloodied paper figures and white cloth that covers the hole containing a live chicken. Photo A.112. A participant sacralizes the offering to the cloud with copal incense. Photo A.113. Helpers attach colorful paper streamers, soft drinks, and food offerings to the sun altar. Photo A.114. Coyol and marigold adornments are tied onto the petates of paper figures on the sun altar.

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Left to Right Photo A.115. Helpers tie the pole holding the sun altar to a nearby tree. Photo A.116. Participants grab hold of the paper streamers tied to the sun altar. Photo A.117. Colorful paper streamers extend over the participants, evoking the light radiating from the sun. Photo A.118. A smoking copal incense brazier and small offering, with some floral adornments, are placed at the base of the altar to the sun. Photo A.119. Participants slowly circumambulate the altar to the sun before packing up and heading back to Cacahuatengo.

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return to Amatlán. As the now-­exhausted pilgrims gathered around Cirilo, he cleansed many of them with a candle. Everyone fell silent as Cirilo again addressed them with an impassioned speech delivered mostly in Nahuatl. He spoke about the value of the costumbres. He stated that the world is beautiful—­yehyectzin—­and that el costumbre is the correct religion for setting everything right with the world. He spoke about how important it is to make the customary ritual offerings, and as he neared the conclusion, he broke down in tears. Cirilo repeated his earlier message that wealth and life itself derive from tlaltepactli, admonishing everyone to go on living with respect for the things of the earth. At this point the ritual specialist looked over toward Pamela and me and announced that we were strong supporters of the religion. Cirilo directed everyone to step up and shake our hands, and we were surprised and gratified as they approached and gently touched our fingertips with theirs in the customary Nahua handshake. One of the men had tears streaming down his face as he thanked us for being there with them. It was obvious in talking to people that they felt a real fear that the costumbres would be forsaken as the younger people continue to leave the community to seek employment elsewhere. The final episode that surprised us occurred before the pilgrimage proper as helpers carefully positioned in the middle of the floor the bundle of paper figures wrapped in their fresh palm petate. People brought their children into the shrine and instructed them to stand near the bundle containing the neatly stacked paper cuttings. Once they were all gathered together, the adults began to circumambulate as the guitarist and violinist played the xochisones or sacred flower sounds continuously. The adults swirled around the children and the bundled paper figures in a tight circle for about fifteen minutes. Afterward the helpers positioned the bundle in front of the altar. There was a real effort to include the children in the ritual, perhaps with the hope that they would be compelled to continue to respect the traditional religion. Cirilo made comments at different points during the pilgrimage to Palaxtepetl that amplified statements we had recorded during the earlier treks to Postectli. For instance, he told us that he signed the paper figures in

blood following the offerings “because the ancient one, la antigua, knows me,” referring to the earth. When we probed again to explain how he knew which figures to cut for each offering, he responded to the effect that he selects “the ones we want to feed.” He repeated that he dreamed of the entities that particularly demanded ritual attention, adding that the spirits are “just like children—­just as you give children food, they grow, they demand food.” He pointed to the paper figures and made the following pronouncement (in Spanish, here paraphrased from our 2007 field notes): If it were not for these we would not be here. They are like children. They ask for clothes, they ask for food so they can grow. The earth has tastes just like us. It is alive and talks to us. We make the offerings so that the earth is content. It needs food so that it can have good blood. We feed it and it gives back life. It gives your blood its chicahualiztli—­its life, its force. La santa semilla—­the holy seed—­is what we eat. We feed the earth chocolate, [meat] soup, and good blood to eat.

He went on to explain that “la sirena comes to see el costumbre, to see if it is okay, then she goes and brings rain. The costumbre rituals produce cualli eztli, good blood.” We observed that the dressed seed figures played key roles in all the offerings and were prominent at episodes when people sat around and manufactured them as souvenirs of the pilgrimage event. As described in chapter 5 but more clearly documented in the Palaxtepetl pilgrimage photographs here, each bundled set of (typically) four paper cuttings was tied together and reinforced by an armature of folded-­paper bones, and the whole assembly was clothed in a colorful, single-­piece dress like that worn by young girls. Cirilo told us that the bundle, forming a single entity, contained what he called a surtido (“assortment”) of selected crops. Generally the bundle of seed figures includes the staples of the Nahua diet: yellow, white and/or purple maize; beans and/or bean chili; and sometimes ayotli, squash, or camote—­a tropical sweet potato (again, see the sequence of crops depicted in paper figures 17-­04a to 17-­05d). Women and girls cared for these seed figures throughout the pilgrimage, treating them with great reverence and acting as if they were real infants.

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Appendix B

Pilgrimage to Tres Pozitos In the spring of 2007, months before he organized people to go there, Cirilo began to talk about a pilgrimage to a place called Tres Pozitos (“Three Little Wells”). During the first pilgrimage to Postectli in 1998, we introduced Cirilo to anthropologist Sofía Larios León (who later served as director of the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Veracruz). She let him know that a governmental source had set aside funds to support local costumbre practices. Cirilo was keenly interested in pursuing funding for the pilgrimage and composed a letter, had it typed by one of the schoolmasters, and brought it to be signed by the president of the municipio. He wanted us to deliver it to Sofía in hopes that she could find the money. We were headed for Xalapa, Veracruz, and agreed to deliver the letter. We returned with the letter she had written to Cirilo, and he asked his granddaughter to read it to him. Because of the promise of government funding to support Indigenous communities, Sofía wrote that she continued to have hope that the money would be forthcoming and confirmed that she had requested money to build a larger and proper xochicalli shrine in Amatlán. She tried her best but was never able to secure the funding, and, sadly, Cirilo was disappointed. It was at this point that Cirilo agreed to cut a complete set of paper figures for the Postectli pilgrimage for us as a collection to analyze so that we could better understand the deeper content of the ritual occasion. We agreed to pay 20,000 pesos for his efforts to produce the set (the equivalent of about US$1,800 at the 2007 exchange rate—­an exorbitant amount by local standards). Our purpose for paying so much was, first and foremost, to demonstrate the high value we held for the ritual specialists’ work and, in part, to compensate for the promised governmental backing that never materialized. We were also helping to provide up front some money to support the pilgrimage to Tres Pozitos. At the time, Alan Sandstrom’s sister, Joanne Peppas, was visiting, and she joined us as the only other outsider on the pilgrimage trek. A young Nahua man from Amatlán—­Luis Morales, who had never before been on a pilgrimage—­also asked permission to go along. He was welcomed by Cirilo, and later he turned out to be of great help in documenting the sacred journey. Cirilo said that there is a place called Tres Crucitos (“Three Little Crosses”) on Tres Pozitos mountain. He described it as a cave where the winds originate, clearing the way for clouds and rain to come to the fields. The reason he gave for organizing the pilgrimage was to deliver offerings to key spirit entities that control rain and crop fertility. The ritual specialist sent word out to his supporters in the usual way, inviting them to gather in Amatlán. On March 15, 2007, people began to show up to help with the preparations. The procedure

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closely followed the events we documented during the pilgrimages to Postectli and Palaxtepetl. People decorated the sacred walking sticks and sat around and manufactured the coyol palm adornments; ritual specialists cut the thousands of paper figures that would be required. As helpers constructed an outside cross altar to the sun,

and in preparation for the altar offering in the xochicalli, women removed the clothing of the seed figures stored in the box, washed the items in the arroyo, and put them back on the paper figures (photos B.1–­B.7). Cirilo began the event by conducting a divination to determine whether the time was indeed right for the

Left to Right Photo B.1. Men preparing palm and marigold adornments for the altars. Photo B.2. The violinist and the guitarist who played the sacred music continuously throughout the pilgrimage preparations and proceedings. Photo B.3. Paper figure embodiment of the water dweller apanchaneh, before being assembled and dressed. The new palm mats will be used to carry the paper figures on the pilgrimage.

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Left to Right Photo B.4. A helper discusses the maize kernels that have been selected for divination. The kernels must be without flaws. Photo B.5. The washed clothing of the seed figures are drying near the xochicalli shrine. Photo B.6. A second image of apanchaneh is positioned in another clay water pot. Photo B.7. The apanchaneh figures in their water pots prior to the offering.

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ritual to begin (photo B.8). The helpers worked quietly and deliberately to dress the paper figures, decorate the walking sticks, and make final arrangements in the shrine (photos B.9–­B.11). Just before 9:00  p.m., participants picked up the walking sticks and other sacred items and began dancing before the altar, which, oddly, had remained undecorated. Cirilo cleansed an Otomí ritual specialist, Sofía, who had come to Amatlán from the village of Mirador (and who, it turned out, was the organizer of the pilgrimage later that spring to Xomulco, described in appendix C). Following her cleansing, Sofía began to sing in a loud, high-­pitched voice that followed closely the cadence and even the melody of the xochisones played by the musicians. After a short time, while grasping a walking stick and a lighted candle, she appeared to go into a trance. Cirilo posed a question to her about the Protestant converts, and

speaking in Spanish, sometimes indistinctly, she gave a long soliloquy about them. She said that the Protestants lacked respect and that they were causing great harm to Indigenous people. In between utterances she made a throaty, hissing sound that seemed to indicate that she has been taken over by apanchaneh and that it was water dweller’s own voice that issued from her. As the music paused briefly, we could hear Sofia say clearly in Spanish, “I am the hill. I am the water. I am the wind. I am hungry. There is no money, no food, no water. You have not been able to bathe.” Cirilo called us over to explain that apanchaneh and the antiguas—­the ancient ones or antihuameh—­were speaking through her. Sofía continued to speak in this trance-­like state for more than a half hour (photo B.12). Abruptly, she resumed her normal demeanor and passed around the shrine, blessing everybody with the sacred walking stick.

Left to Right Photo B.8. Ritual specialist Catalina (right) discusses the items of clothing with a woman helping to dress the paper figures. In the background, Cirilo conducts a divination to determine if the time is right for the ritual to commence. Photo B.9. A woman holds up a freshly dressed paper figure of grandmother earth, tlalli. Photo B.10. A woman and her husband help to distribute the newly decorated sacred walking sticks.

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Following Sofía’s contact with the ancient ones, Cirilo took up stacks of colorful cut-­paper figures and proceeded to lay out his customary cleansing array on the earth outside (photos B.13 and B.14). People followed him out of the xochicalli, carrying the sacred items with them. We noted an unusual occurrence at this point in the ritual sequence. One young man from Amatlán arrived along with a few of his friends, all college students enrolled in the new branch campus of the University of Veracruz in Ixhuatlán de Madero. He approached Cirilo and asked if they might observe the cleansing ritual. Cirilo agreed and gave them a stern but welcoming lecture on how important it is to respect the things of this world. Speaking in Nahuatl, he mentioned that there were strangers here—­coyomeh, referring to the three of us—­ whom he said showed proper respect and that they should do so as well. He then conducted a cleansing to remove dangerous wind and

Left to Right Photo B.11. Participants holding walking sticks dance to the sounds of the sacred guitar and violin music. Paper figures of witness-­ guardians (visible at top) are tied to a vine decorated with marigold flowers that connects the main altar in the xochicalli with the cruz afuera altar on the patio outside.

Photo B.13. Participants carry dressed paper figures, water pots, and walking sticks as Cirilo (seated, foreground) conducts a preliminary cleansing to remove dangerous underworld and wind spirits from the area.

Photo B.14. The cleansing array to remove dangerous disease-­ causing spirit entities. Cirilo dedicated the offerings of beer and soft drinks by pouring everything directly on the paper figures. The images placed in a circle around the periphery of the display are soldiers that keep dangerous winds from escaping.

Photo B.12. Otomí ritual specialist Sofía (left) enters into a trance, channeling apanchaneh and speaking in the high-­pitched voice of the water dweller.

underworld spirit entities that might be attracted to the offerings that he was about to dedicate. Everyone present passed through the vine-­and-­marigold flower loop as part of the ritual cleansing—­it was raised and lowered seven times in each direction as small groups stepped into the sacralized zone. At that point, people returned to the shrine, but the students departed, and we did not see them again.

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Helpers prepared a rooster and three chickens to be killed, sacrificed them, and sprinkled their blood on the paper figures laid out on the altar. After this sequence of acts, helpers decorated the altar by placing adornments directly over the bloodied paper figures (photos B.15–­B.17). Helpers next decorated the altar to the outside cross and left offerings there intended for the sun (photo B.18). Early the next morning, a contingent of helpers walked to the nearby spring in Amatlán to dedicate an offering

Left to Right Photo B.15. The decorated altar following the blood sacrifice. Blood-­ spattered paper can be seen through the coyol adornments. The pair of apanchaneh figures are in clay water pots flanking the altar. Photo B.16. Cirilo adds some offerings to the display beneath the altar table. Photo B.17. Offerings placed beneath the main altar in the shrine. The dressed paper figures seated in the tiny chair are grandmother earth and grandfather earth. Photo B.18. Cirilo decorates the cruz afuera altar. Note the vine decorated with marigolds connecting the outside cross with the altar inside.

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to apanchaneh. Afterward they returned to the shrine and proceeded to circumambulate the outside cross altar in a counterclockwise direction (photos B.19–­B.27). Next, they left an offering to the fire in the kitchen of Cirilo’s house where the food had been cooked. The guitarist and violinist performed throughout these episodes (photo B.28), and people spent the entire day and the next night preparing adornments. The chain of events closely follows events witnessed in the Postectli pilgrimages.

Left to Right Photo B.19. The pilgrims dedicate an offering to apanchaneh at a nearby spring. Photo B.20. A helper hands Teófilo the figure of apanchaneh to place by the water. Photo B.21. A woman leaves a small offering by the arroyo that flows around Amatlán. The candle and food are dedicated to the clouds, the helpers of apanchaneh. Photo B.22. Participants hold the image of apanchaneh over the spring that flows from the base of an enormous ceiba tree. Photo B.23. Women hold up the dressed figure of apanchaneh in her water pot.

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Left to Right Photo B.24. As Catalina and Teófilo chant before the spring, people ring bells and shake rattles alongside the image of apanchaneh. Photo B.25. Paper figures of seeds, walking sticks, adornments, and offerings that participants have placed at the spring-­fed water tank. Photo B.26. Catalina and Teófilo, carrying sacred walking sticks, lead the pilgrims back to the Amatlán xochicalli. Photo B.27. As they circumambulate the cruz afuera altar to the cross and sun, people carry pots of water, rattles, walking sticks, and other implements. Photo B.28. The musicians perform inside the xochicalli while the participants dedicate offerings at the spring and cooking fire.

On the morning of the third day, additional fresh coyol leaves and flower blossoms were delivered, and people spent time making more of the adornments. Late in the afternoon the participants boarded two pickup trucks hired for the occasion. They were driven to a place called La Reforma, near Colatlán in the municipio of Ixhuatlán

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de  Madero, where the actual pilgrimage to Tres Pozitos commenced. Just as during the pilgrimages to Postectli and Palaxtepetl, the group stopped occasionally to leave small displays of paper figures and adornments as offerings at springs and other water sources (photos B.29–­B.33).

Left to Right Photo B.29. The pilgrims begin the trek up the sacred mountain. The long poles emerging from the carrying basket are attached to rockets that will be set off along the way. Photo B.30. Musicians play continuously on the trail leading to the sacred mountain. Photo B.31. The pilgrims pass through dense tropical foliage as they make their way up the mountain. Photo B.32. Teófilo unpacks some paper figures as he prepares to make an offering at a spring along the trail to Tres Pozitos. The petate on top holds twenty figures of apanchaneh, the water dweller. Photo B.33. Teófilo takes up one of the large, dressed images of apanchaneh as he dedicates the offering at the spring.

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After several hours, walking with heavy loads over the steep, overgrown trails, the group arrived at a place called Teyahual, meaning “stone mound” or “round rock.” The site, whose name describes its shape, is a pre-­Hispanic platform mound obscured by dense vegetation that offered a magnificent view of the Sierra Madre Oriental range. Atop this ancient structure a wooden platform was already in place to serve as an altar for the major offering. Lying all about were the remains of previous offerings in various states of decay. People unloaded their burdens,

cleaned up the area with machetes, and made repairs to the platform. Several men disappeared into the forest with a large metal cooking pot and returned with it filled with water to cook the sacrificial fowl, while another man set up three stones near the mound and started a fire. Men made coffee over the fire, and women passed out cups to each of the participants. Musicians played continuously as the ritual specialists cleansed some of the pilgrims with walking sticks, sacred herbs, and coyol palm adornments (photos B.34–­B.37).

Left to Right Photo B.34. The pilgrims repair the altar at Teyahual and clean up the dried remains of past offerings. Photo B.35. A pre-­Hispanic platform mound overlooking a vast panorama of mountains.The pilgrims stopped here to make offerings and rest for the night. Photo B.36. Helpers prepare to lay out beds of paper figures on and beneath the altar. Photo B.37. Teófilo cleanses his fellow ritual specialists and receives a cleansing in turn.

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We observed an uncommon ritual act just following the cleansings when the several ritual specialists in attendance forcibly shook the walking sticks in the direction of the dense forest, as if to dislodge the polluting wind spirits. Helpers extracted the paper figures from the large palm-­mat bundle, and Cirilo’s student and colleague Teófilo, after examining each petate carefully, laid out his selection of them on the altar. The ritual specialists killed the birds in the usual manner and sprinkled their blood on the paper figures. Women plucked and boiled

the fowl in the large cooking pot as helpers layered coyol palm adornments over the bloodied paper images, followed by the offerings and, eventually, the cooked meat. Hardly managing to catch any sleep, the pilgrims spent a cold, windy night on the exposed mound while the musicians continued to play until about 1:00 a.m., when they dozed off as well. Occasionally, a few people would rouse themselves and take up the walking sticks and other ritual items, dancing slowly before the altar. The vigil continued until dawn (photos B.38–­B.39). With the early-­morning light everyone awakened groggily but soon renewed their ritual activities before the altar (photos B.40 and B.41). Shortly after, people began to load up for the rest of the journey to the sacred mountain. The climb along the rugged, steep trail took more than an hour and a half (photos B.42 and B.43). The sacred precinct of Tres Pozitos was another ancient stone platform mound, larger and at a higher elevation than Teyahual and built on a spur of the mountain that led upward to an even-­ higher peak at the summit. At its center was an altar constructed from heavy, smoothly finished stone planks over a meter (about four feet) in length and five to eight centimeters (two or three inches) thick. As we entered the site, we noticed a trio of lichen-­covered stone shafts standing erect in a line at the base of the platform mound—­three

plain, uncarved stelae that ranged in height from under a meter to more than a meter and a half (about two to five feet), the tallest about twenty-five centimeters (ten or more inches) in width. A short distance away from these pre-­Hispanic stone monuments were three round holes in the ground—­the shallow but distinct, rock-­lined wells that gave Tres Pozitos its name. These stone wells now appear to be dry, but as people asserted, once held water. The first order of business was to repair the altar. Participants told us that certain Protestants had occasionally vandalized the

Left to Right Photo B.38. Before constructing the altar, the pilgrims face east and kneel on the platform mound as the sun sets behind them. Alan Sandstrom’s sister, Joanne Peppas, is seated in the foreground. Photo B.39. As darkness falls, Teófilo lays out the petates, each containing twenty paper figures. The figures in his hands are Santa Juanita (or her companion, Santa Rita) with their characteristic foliated-­cross headdresses. The other petate in the foreground holds paper images of the altar itself.

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Left to Right Photo B.40. Cirilo (center) and Teófilo (right) chant at dawn before the completed altar. Earlier, chickens had been sacrificed and their blood sprinkled on the paper figures. The birds were cooked during the night and placed on the altar with the adornments and other food items. Photo B.41. The pilgrims prepare to walk to the summit of Tres Pozitos. Photo B.42. The trail to the summit of Tres Pozitos is steep and choked with tropical vegetation. Photo B.43. The pilgrims approach the sacred precinct near the summit of Tres Pozitos. Photo B.44. Uncarved stone stelae at Tres Pozitos. Participants have leaned candles against the monuments, and in the distance Cirilo leans over an ancient stone platform that serves as an altar.

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ritual site in their misguided effort to destroy the ancient traditions. In about an hour and with great effort the men reconstructed the dismantled altar. Just as at Teyahual, the view from Tres Pozitos was spectacular. The pilgrims cleaned up the grounds around the platform mound, the stelae, and the wells (photos B.44–­B.46). Helpers unpacked the paper figures and offerings as Teófilo carefully set out large, decorated paper sheets on the altar stones. His manner, as we had observed on numerous occasions, was supremely respectful; he moved slowly, gracefully, and deliberately (photo B.47). As people worked to assemble the altar and place offerings on it, Cirilo and his fellow ritual specialist Catarina sat off to the side cutting out oversized paper images of seeds from the colorful paper sheets they had carried with them. The musicians played the sacred melodies as some people danced and rang bells and others prepared the altar for the offering. After ritual specialists had chanted before the altar, holding the paper figures and the coyol palm and

Left to Right Photo B.45. Men reconstruct the ancient altar, formed by heavy stone slabs that have been disturbed by vandals.

Photo B.47. Teófilo lays out decorated paper sheets that will hold the paper figures, adornments, and offerings.

Photo B.48. Paper sheets, called manteles in Spanish (“tablecloths”), are placed on the altar stones.

Photo B.46. The stones provide a flat surface that will hold the adornments and offerings.

flower adornments in their outstretched arms, Teófilo laid out the petates of paper images to be addressed in the ritual (photos B.48–­B.51). As the sacrificial fowl were brought out, Cirilo blew a clay whistle to awaken the spirit entities (photo B.52). The chickens were paraded before the altar during the delivery (entregada) sequence, and people stood in attendance. The ritual specialists then cut the throats of the birds and sprinkled their blood over the paper images, after which Teófilo signed his name in blood on the display (photos B.53 and B.54). At this point in the ritual, we observed that people threw the bodies of the chickens over the side of the mountain. Cirilo commented, obscurely,

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Left to Right Photo B.49. Teófilo unpacks and selects particular petates of paper figures. Those on the top appear to be images of cualli ehecatl (“good wind”). Scraps produced in cutting the figures have been collected to be placed beneath the altar at the summit. Photo B.50. Teófilo prepares to decorate the altar with the petates of paper figures stacked neatly beneath coyol palm and marigold adornments. Photo B.51. Teófilo methodically lays out the paper figure petates. Pamela Sandstrom observes from the background. Photo B.52. Cirilo blows a clay whistle to rouse the spirit entities.

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Left to Right Photo B.53. A helper dances with a chicken, engaging it in mock combat. The woman in the foreground holds a sisal carrying bag filled with clothed seed figures. Photo B.54. Teófilo signs his name in blood on the paper figures. Photo B.55. Bloodied stacks of paper figures that embody the water spirit have been placed alongside the main altar. Each stack is labeled el agua (“the water”). Photo B.56. People arrange floral adornments on the altar. Photo B.57. Otomí ritual specialist Sofía stoops before the altar to light a copal incense brazier as a man lays out food and drink offerings over the floral adornments.

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Left to Right Photo B.58. The completed altar. Photo B.59. A man leans a sacred walking stick against the altar.

that because of the site’s close association with water, fire was not permitted at Tres Pozitos and thus they were unable to cook the birds. Helpers placed the altar decorations over the blood-­spattered paper images and set out offerings of food and drink on top of it all (photos B.55–­B.59). As the mezah at the stone altar proceeded, helpers placed arrays of coyol palm adornments and other offerings at the bases of the stelae marking the three stone wells. They carried the petates of bloodied paper figures (visible in previous photos) from the main altar display

Left to Right Photo B.60. Teófilo and a helper lay out beds of paper figures, candles, and floral adornments by each well. Photo B.61. The three little wells, each with an offering of coyol palm and marigold adornments atop a petate of paper figures.

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to lay at the tallest of the three stelae and at the wells. Offerings included bottled soft drinks and beer, cups of coffee, bread, and unopened packs of cigarettes, the gift of tobacco being an especially valued commodity (photos B.60–­B.67). A group of people danced before the main altar holding walking sticks and ringing bells to awaken the spirit entities. Every so often, as he sat cutting the large paper figures of the seeds, Cirilo would pause to blow a clay whistle to achieve the same end. Once again we observed the Otomí ritual specialist Sofía enter into a trance, articulating the voice of apanchaneh. She announced in Spanish that the Protestants were disrespectful and that those who did not believe in and observe the costumbres would pay a terrible price for their neglect.

Left to Right Photo B.62. Teófilo chants before the largest of the three stelae holding petates of adorned paper figures. The women hold bread offerings and a smoking copal incense brazier. Photo B.63. Offerings at the base of the largest of three stone monuments standing near the wells. Photo B.64. Offerings left at the two smaller stelae at Tres Pozitos. Photo B.65. As a small group of the pilgrims sacralize the wells and stone monuments, others gather by the altar on the ancient platform mound. Photo B.66. Teófilo (left) and Catalina (with bell) dedicate offerings to the wells.

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Left to Right Photo B.67. One of the offerings at the wells. Photo B.68. As Cirilo chants, a helper places a bread offering on the altar array. Photo B.69. Cirilo weeps as he delivers his heartfelt chant before the altar.

Between sentences she emitted a strange hissing sound that mimicked the utterances of the water dweller. Cirilo stood up and placed himself directly in front of the laden altar, where he delivered a chant that lasted more than a half hour. Near the end of it, he became openly emotional and wept. Teófilo and several others approached to comfort him (photos B.68 and B.69). At this point in the Tres Pozitos pilgrimage, people began to pack up to head for the final destination, the place called Tres Cruzitos, farther up the ridge at the summit. As mentioned earlier, Cirilo informed us that the good wind emerges from a cave at this site to blow in the rain clouds. He said that he would leave a white chicken there as a gift to the wind and clouds. Unfortunately, we were unable to accompany the party any further and had to miss the concluding offerings. We left our video camera with the young man from Amatlán, Luis Morales, and he agreed to record the remaining proceedings for us. The final five photographs (photos B.70–­B.75) are low-resolution still

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images extracted from that video footage, which allows us to provide a brief summation of the ritual activities. These research materials are presently being curated to ensure their preservation and future access. On the ridge leading to the summit of the sacred mountain, pilgrims had previously erected a large wooden cross. As before, the first act of the participants was to tidy up the sacred precinct by clearing away brush (photo B.70). The pilgrims deposited on the ground in front of the cross the load of scraps left from cutting the paper figures. As before, helpers moving slowly and respectfully layered the remaining beds of paper figures directly on top of the mound of scraps. Participants can be seen kneeling before the cross and paper figures while holding bundles of coyol palm adornments, paper figures, and candles, while a man is seen holding a bundle of paper figures of seed spirits and dancing as musicians played the sacred melodies (photos B.71 and B.72). Cirilo was recorded ringing a bell before the completed altar array in front of the wooden cross (photo B.73). The final still image from the video shows the altar to the sun at the peak of Tres Pozitos (photo B.74). The procedures recorded by the videographer follow very closely those that we documented for the previous four pilgrimages.

Top to Bottom Photo B.70. Men clear the brush around the wooden cross erected near the summit of Tres Pozitos. Photo B.71. People kneel with sheaves of coyol palm and flower adornments in front of paper figures laid out before the cross. Photo B.72. A man dances at the summit, holding a bundle of sacred paper figures of seed spirits. Photo B.73. Cirilo, seated in front of the decorated altar laid out beneath the cross, rings a bell to awaken the spirit entities. Photo B.74. People dance before the altar to the sun at the summit of Tres Pozitos.

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Appendix C

Pilgrimage to Xomulco The destination of the final Nahua pilgrimage we will describe is a sacred mountain called Xomulco. Preparations began on April 14, 2007, in the shrine in Amatlán, as Cirilo began preparing the required paper cuttings while three women who had come to help with the preparations handstitched cloth dresses for the seed figures. The trek ended in the evening two days later. Besides Pamela and Alan, the other outsider who accompanied the pilgrims on this trek was Jeff Kaufman, a documentary filmmaker from Los Angeles. Kaufman had been to Amatlán once previously to record other rituals with Cirilo’s permission. The lead ritual specialist agreed that he should accompany the group to Xomulco and document the proceedings. It all began with a conversation with Cirilo. We asked, “Why are we going to Xomulco?” Cirilo replied, “¿Quien sabe?” (“Who knows?”), whereupon everyone broke out in laughter. The answer to the question was patently obvious. As Cirilo has said on many other occasions, those who follow the practices of el costumbre go to the mountains because that is where the gentle winds, clouds, and rain originate. This time he went on to say that “the rich people” and “the secretaries” (by which we think he meant government officials) had deceived everyone. He stated that “God already has riches” and suggested that these officials wanted money above all and that is why Indigenous people struggle with them. As he sat cutting the paper figures, Cirilo explained his premise further, speaking in Spanish: México is called Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs of long ago ate meat, just meat. The antiguos [the ancient ones, or ancestors] also wanted meat to make themselves content. That is why we put chicken blood on the altar. A long time ago, they used to sacrifice small children and drink their blood. The Aztecs spoke Mexicano [Nahuatl] and they were Mexicah. The Huastecs speak Huasteco [Teenek], a different language.1

When he finished this rare explication, we asked whether young people were learning the costumbres. He answered in the negative, adding, “They no longer respect—­neither God nor the ancestors. They do not know anything, just what is in books.” He then turned his full attention to the preparations for the pilgrimage to Xomulco. On that first day Cirilo’s confrerie of ritual specialists and assistants made their appearance at the door of the shrine, coming from other villages to lend their help in producing the requisite paper cuttings. Occasionally they inspected the folder of templates (described in chapter 5) that Cirilo kept on hand as models for cutting the figures. Cirilo confirmed that his mentor, the Otomí ritual specialist Evaristo, had given him these examples so that he could teach others how to cut the figures correctly. As more people gathered, we all sat

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around and folded open the eyes, mouths, and other elements of the finished figures to ready them for alignment on their cut-­paper petates. The next morning we loaded up our four-­wheel-­drive vehicle and, taking as many people as could fit, drove over the new concrete bridge that crossed the Río Vinazco at Oxitempa, Ixhuatlán de  Madero, heading in the direction of the village of El Mirador. Passing El Mirador, we traveled by vehicle as far as we could go in the direction of the small village of Xomulco, named after the nearby sacred mountain that we were to climb the next day. The place is the home of Otomí ritual specialist Sofía, who had accompanied us on previous sacred journeys. We continued on by foot to Sofía’s house and greeted the people gathered there, whereupon Cirilo rolled out a new palm sleeping mat in the center of the room, placed a supply of paper sheets on it, and directed everyone to continue the work of cutting the paper figures. At one point Cirilo delivered a long soliloquy that seemed directed at Sofía, who was learning from him the techniques to be a ritual specialist. He said that the main problem faced by ritual specialists today is the lack of support by the people. He told how, when he walks by some people’s dwellings, they would close their doors out of fear, adding, “The evangelists [the Protestant converts] may reject the costumbres, but they will regret it when they get worms in their maize crop.” He passionately averred, “We must not lose our ancient customs.” Sofía then entered the conversation, and they talked quietly, agreeing that the Protestants can typically read and write but that fact did not, in their opinion, make them any smarter. They then discussed which communities had been contacted and who could be counted on to come help with the preparations. Interestingly, they singled out the catequistas—­the laypeople who advocated for a more orthodox, urban form of Catholicism—­as the group speaking out most vehemently against them. Late in the evening Sofía stood before the altar, gently swaying back and forth. She soon began to enter into a trance, as we had witnessed twice before. The shrine was dimly lit, with candles on the altar and on the floor beneath, and the air was thick with copal incense. As we described earlier, she again spoke in the high-­pitched voice of apanchaneh, with the characteristic hisses between audible segments. People gathered around and listened closely

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for guidance from her. There was no question in anybody’s mind that the ritual specialist had made direct contact with the spirit entity. Sofía mumbled and spoke incoherently for a time, but then in clear Spanish announced, “I am hungry. I want chicken and mole. Evangelists laugh, others laugh at us. I will make the seeds hide themselves. People dirty the earth and have no respect.” Following her proclamation, the women present embraced Sofía, and the men came up to touch her hand. The sequence of events we witnessed on the Xomulco pilgrimage also closely matches the other sacred journeys that we have undertaken with our Nahua companions. Participants spent a majority of their time and effort preparing for the trek to the sacred mountain. Activities included the familiar tasks: cutting, folding, and counting out multitudes of paper images of the relevant spirit entities; preparing coyol palm adornments; removing and washing the clothing of the permanently kept seed figures and preparing new ones outfitted with folded-­paper bones and miniature cloth dresses; decorating the altar; performing a general cleansing to remove polluting underworld wind spirits from the area; sacrificing fowl and spreading their blood over the paper figures; and ritually cleansing individual participants (photos C.1–­C.7). Early in the morning on the following day, the pilgrims left the house to begin the trek to the sacred mountain. Just as in the previous pilgrimages, the group stopped at sources of water along the way to leave offerings for the water dweller (photos C.8–­C.16). Following these offerings the pilgrims resumed hiking over the overgrown trails to the summit of Xomulco (photos C.17 and C.18). Upon arriving there, helpers set upon cleaning up the area, and afterward they began to decorate the platform that was already in place. They quietly laid out the petates of paper figures on top of and beneath the platform, and thus reproduced the layered cosmos. As the altar was being created, participants danced slowly to the music, some holding sacred items and others shaking rattles. Helpers brought out the sacrificial fowl, fed them as a sign of respect, faced them off against one another in mock combat, and finally cut the birds’ throats and sprinkled their blood over the paper figures. Following these customary steps the people put adornments and offerings in place over the bloodied array of paper cuttings (photos C.19–­C.27).

Left to Right Photo C.1. Musicians play as helpers fold paper and construct adornments of palm and marigold blossoms. Note the large number of paper figures stacked in front of Cirilo (seated, center). Photo C.2. Participants fold paper bones to be tied to the seed figures. Photo C.3. Large paper figures that will be dressed in preparation for the ritual offering. The figures appear to be the water dweller, apanchaneh, and male and female aspects of tlalli, the earth.

Photo C.4. The altar prior to being decorated. The ears of maize will be used to create sacred maize bundles. Note the open box revealing the permanent collection of paper figures of the seeds. Photo C.5. Ritual specialist Sofia’s collection of dressed seed figures on her altar. Photo C.6. Helpers decorate the arch of the altar. The paper figures to be used during the pilgrimage rituals are safely stored in the folded palm mat lying in front.

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Left to Right Photo C.7. The altar after the paper images have been laid out, sprinkled with chicken blood, and the offerings placed on top of them. The sky, earth’s surface, and earth/underworld layers of the cosmos are clearly visible. Photo C.8. The pilgrims begin their walk to the summit of the sacred mountain Xomulco. Photo C.9. The pilgrims head for the sacred mountain. Photo C.10. At the base of Xomulco, the pilgrims stop at a spring adjacent to a flowing arroyo. Cirilo and helpers clear out the remains of old offerings. Photo C.11. A helper ties palm and marigold stars to an arch over the altar structure to convey the presence of the sky realm.

388  :  Pilgrimage to Xomulco

Left to Right Photo C.12. Helpers lay out an offering with adornments by the spring. Photo C.13. The violinist, one of the two musicians who played throughout the pilgrimage. Photo C.14. Cirilo chants before the spring. Photo C.15. Cirilo blows a clay whistle to awaken the spirit entities, particularly apanchaneh. A woman holds a plastic bin containing the dressed seed figures.

Pilgrimage to Xomulco  :  389

Left to Right Photo C.16. The ritual specialist pours a soft drink into the arroyo as a libation to the cloud. Photo C.17. A man carries the palm mat securely wrapped around the thousands of paper figures used in the pilgrimage ritual offerings. Photo C.18. Deteriorated remains of previous offerings at the summit of Xomulco. Filmmaker Jeff Kaufman (center, in background) can be seen recording the activities. Photo C.19. People begin to arrange paper figures on the altar, which is surmounted by an arch decorated with stars made of coyol palm leaves and marigold blossoms.

390  :  Pilgrimage to Xomulco

Left to Right Photo C.20. Candles and copal incense to the side of the altar sacralize the area. Photo C.21. Ritual specialist Catalina and a helper lay out the paper figures while a participant holds a sacred walking stick. Photo C.22. The costumbre practitioners methodically and neatly arrange the petates of paper cuttings on the altar platform.

Photo C.23. Catalina and a man helping her distribute the petates beneath the altar. Photo C.24. Sofía, the Otomí ritual specialist, contemplates the altar. Photo C.25. The musicians playing at the summit of Xomulco.

Pilgrimage to Xomulco  :  391

Left to Right Photo C.26. The completed altar with its abundant offerings: plastic cups containing coffee and pieces of bread, tamales, steamed ears of young maize, and other packaged and prepared foods. A woman arranges the dressed images of grandmother earth and grandfather earth beneath the altar. Photo C.27. Male and female aspects of tlalli, the earth, placed beneath the altar. As the spirit entities partake of the offering, the Xomulco pilgrims rest quietly nearby.

At this point in the pilgrimage, we once again had to depart before its conclusion in order to race down the Gulf Coast so the filmmaker could catch his flight from the Veracruz airport. We were dismayed at the interruption but knew from experience that keeping a timetable is the one impossible expectation of ethnographic research. Because we missed the last few hours of the pilgrimage, we asked about it on our return to Amatlán. People told us that the offering at the summit of the mountain had in fact been the end of the observance and that there were no additional offerings or any mezah to the sun. No further explanation was given, but it seemed to us that the pilgrimage may have been truncated as it was part of the

training to prepare Sofía to lead her own sacred journeys. We had not witnessed any obvious periods of instruction or attempts to give her verbal guidance, with the possible exception of the formal statements by Cirilo following our arrival at her house. But the neophyte ritual specialist was a prominent actor in each ritual episode, and we noted that she closely observed all activities. As we were departing, she made a point of coming over to thank us for participating in the pilgrimage. We had never before been thanked for playing any part in a ritual observance, and her action made us aware that the pilgrimage had likely been undertaken for her benefit. Like previous pilgrimages we had been privileged to witness, the true beneficiaries of this event—­and the entire ritual complex of el costumbre—­included not only Sofía and the community of believers but all beings, whether or not they are aware of the wisdom of maintaining equilibrium in an increasingly imbalanced cosmos.

Notes 1. We recorded Cirilo’s statement in our written fieldnotes as people sat conversing. Note how his explanation of the warrant for sacrificing children accords with Diego Durán’s account of

392  :  Pilgrimage to Xomulco

the sixteenth-­century Aztec pilgrimage to Tlaloc hill described in chapter 8.

Appendix D

Huastecan Nahua Spirit Entities, A–­Z This appendix summarizes ethnographic information about the prominent spirit entities that Nahua ritual specialists in Amatlán portray in paper, elaborate in oral narratives, and address in chants. These animate beings of the Nahua spirit pantheon include what Euro-­ Americans would call elements of nature, such as clouds, rain, lightning, thunder, earth, fire, or gentle winds. They also include disease-­causing winds, seeds, sacred hills (often associated with the Catholic saints), notable geographic features such as rock formations, and bodies of still and flowing water, as well as sacralized ritual objects such as the altar, walking stick, and key. Taken together, they form the pantheon of Huastecan Nahua spirit entities addressed during el costumbre cleansing-­curing ceremonies, ritual offerings, and religious pilgrimages. Not all of these entities are routinely cut from paper, however. We also include in the inventory places (villages, towns, and other locales) named by the ritual specialists in their ritual chants, which they regard as important in the sacred landscape of the southern Huasteca.1 We consulted Mapcarta at https://​mapcarta​.com/ to confirm as many geographic placenames as possible, but unless the context in which a name is mentioned clarifies whether it refers to a sacred hill, a community, or other identifiable geographic feature, numerous toponyms are uncertain (indicated with a question mark). Information on the significance of Catholic saints in Amatlán is harder to come by and thus far less systematic than we would like. We assembled what we know with confidence from our own research, checked entries in then-current 1999 edition of the popular almanac Calendario del más Antiguo Galván, and added information from the publications of other investigators who write about the Huasteca region and the bordering Sierra Norte de Puebla. For the sake of brevity, we key the sources (cited in full in the references and listed chronologically in the inventory) to the following letter-­date abbreviations: B 1998

Báez-­Jorge, Félix, and Arturo Gómez Martínez (1998)

B 2000

Báez-­Jorge, Félix, and Arturo Gómez Martínez (2000)

B 2004

Báez, Lourdes (2004)

Calendario

Calendario Galván (1999)

G 1999

Gómez Martínez, Arturo (1999a)

G 2002

Gómez Martínez, Arturo (2002)

G 2007

González González, Mauricio, and Sofía Medellín Urquiaga (2007)

https://​doi​.org​/​10​.5876​/​9781646423309​.a004

 : 393

G 2009

Gómez Martínez, Arturo (2009)

H 2007

Hooft, Anuschka van ’t (2007)

L 1995

Lupo, Alessandro (1995)

P 2014

Pacheco, Veronica Sofía (2014)

R 1976

Reyes García, Luis (1976)

S 1986

Sandstrom, Alan R., and Pamela Effrein Sandstrom (1986)

S 1991

Sandstrom, Alan R. (1991)

S 2004

Sandstrom, Alan R., and Arturo Gómez Martínez (2004)

S 2003

Sandstrom, Alan R. (2003)

S 2021

Sandstrom, Alan R., and Pamela Effrein Sandstrom (2021)

W 1957

Williams García, Roberto (1957)

Recall that in chapter 6 we designated particular cuttings as fine examples (or exemplars) of their type within the corpus of Nahua paper figures. The inventory thus cross-­ references the drawings of the disease-­ causing winds addressed in cleansing rituals (paper figures 00-­ 01 to 00-­21), the major spirit entities addressed in the sequence of altar offerings that constitute the pilgrimage proper (exemplar figures E-1 to E-25), and the cuttings illustrated for comparative purposes (paper figures X-1 to X-32, in table X.1). The inventory is our attempt to bring together what is currently known about the pantheon of contemporary Huastecan Nahua spirit entities and their associations with the cognized environment of the sacred landscape. Achichipic: village in Veracruz. Sources: G 2002: 11; S 2004: 358. Agua Linda: hill in Puebla Aguacatepetl, Aguacatehtepetl: hill in Puebla Aguaro: hill Ahuacapa, Ahuacapan, Ahuacapatepeyacapan: hill Ahuacatehtepetl: hill Alahualtitlan: hill. Sources: G 2002: 106. Álamo: hill, also ÁLAMO TEMAPACHE, municipality in Veracruz altar (exemplar figure E-1) and upper altar (exemplar figure E-2): mesa in Spanish, tlaixpamitl in Nahuatl, the altar as an embodiment of God-­Totiotzin (exemplar figure E-10) reflects the structure of the cosmos and the position of the milpa within it. A living being in its own right, the altar is regarded as an intermediary between the human community and the spirit pantheon. This unelaborate paper figure is portrayed without a headdress, with four V-cuts delineating the earth’s surface and the milpa’s boundaries. The prominent jowls are a feature common to nearly all Nahua anthropomorphic paper figures of el costumbre practice that links them with the toad, a creature associated with moisture and fertility. Sources: S 1986: 43–­51, 103-­6, 128; S 2003. Alvarado: hill?

394  : Huastecan Nahua Spirit Entities, A–­Z

Amatlán: village in Veracruz, “place of amate paper” (or paper trees): the pseudonymous Nahua community in the municipality of Ixhuatlán de Madero, the focus of the ethnographic study Corn Is Our Blood. Sources: S 1991. Antigua, La Antigua: hill Apachoa, Apachohualtepetl: hill Apailan: hill; possibly a reference to a mythic place or a whirlpool said to communicate with the ocean. apanchaneh: see water dweller. Apulco: hill Ateyohual: hill, possibly a specific sacred site where there is a stone well; see Tres Pozitos. Ayacachtepec, Ayacachtli: hill. Sources: G 2002: 106. Ayochipic: hill bad wind (paper figures 00-­05a,b); compare good wind (exemplar figure E-20): mal aire in Spanish, ehecatl in Nahuatl, the generalized disease-­causing winds are associated with destructive hurricanes, whirlwinds, seashells, Santa Rosa, San Juan Bautista, San Cristóbal, death (miquiliztli), the angry crone (tzitzimitl, mother of tonantzin), and man owl (tlacatecolotl and his female counterpart, tlacatecolotl cihuatl). Cirilo described bad wind as the close companion of death (paper figures 00-­03a,b,) and corpses wind (00-­04a,b,c); the rib holes indicate its threatening nature as it searches around for victims to sicken or kill. A large, squarish head unadorned by an identifying headdress incorporates the creature’s truncated arms and its wing-­like hands, which facilitate flight through the air. Sources: S 1986: 39–­43, 79–­103, 288; S 1991: 252–­53, 256, 269–­74, 301–­13; G 2002: 90, 93, 110, 121; S 2021: 86–­96. bean (exemplar figure E-3), bean chili (exemplar figure E-4), bean (paper figure X-28): frijol in Spanish, etl in Nahuatl, this important staple of the Nahua diet figures prominently among the paper cuttings prepared for pilgrimages. The design exhibits probably more variation than any other spirit entity portrayed in paper, presenting challenges for identification. The iconography of bean is often combined with chili to create a composite image and may be bundled with other images of seeds to form what Cirilo described as a complete meal, reflecting how people actually consume these foods. Sources: S 1986: 114, 122; S 1991: 122, 126. bell (exemplar figure E-5): the Spanish loanword campana is used by ritual specialists to refer to this spirit entity, a concept probably borrowed from Spanish culture. Bells are prominently associated with towns and churches as religious centers, and small, hand-­held metal bells are rung during rituals to attract the notice of the spirit entities. The irregular shape cut in the middle reveals the bell itself or an elaborate clapper. Sources: S 1986: 43–­44, 46. Boca del Río, Boca del Río Sagrado: hill, also city in Veracruz? Cacahuatengo, Cacahuatenco: hill, village in Veracruz; also the archaeological site of La Mesa Cacahuatenco. Sources: G 2002: 107; S 1991: 243, map 6.1; S 2004: 358. Cajete, La Mesa Cajete: hill

Camiotipan, Camotipantepec: hill Castillo: hill Cazones: river Cerro: hill, also Cerro Azul, town in Veracruz. Sources: S 2004: 243, map 6.1, 358. Cervantes: hill? Chacahtepetl: hill Chahuantla, Chahuantlan: village in Veracruz Chiapas: hill (mirror-­mountain) in state of Chiapas. Sources: S 2004: 354. chicome rramal: see Ramaltepetl chicomexochitl: see little maize, Seven Flower Chicontepec: hill (paper figure 10-­17), “place of seven hills,” also Chicón, Chicontepec de Tejada, municipality in Veracruz; see also under hill entry: the municipality in which the sacred mountain Postectli is located. Sources: S 1991: 243, map 6.1; G 2002. Chijolillo: hill Cintiazco: hill? community? Citlaltepec: hill, town in Veracruz. Sources: S 1991: 243, map 6.1. cloud (paper figure X-22): nube in Spanish, mixtli in Nahuatl, associated with water, rain in all forms (mists, fog, “smoke” or vapor), rain dwarfs (pilhuehuentzitzin), lightning, thunder, and the hills. Based on our analysis of photographs of the 1998 and 2001 Postectli pilgrimages, this cutting appeared on several altars, but for unknown reasons Cirilo and his colleagues did not include it in the collection they prepared for us. An interesting element of the design is the small protuberances beneath the arms and above the legs; these are said to be muscles, which give clouds great strength. Sources: S 1991: 250; G: 2002: 86, 92. Colatlan, Colatlán: town in Veracruz Colmelo: hill Copalhuayo: hill Coroneltepetl, La Mesa Coroneltepetl: hill corpses wind (paper figures 00-­04a,b,c): viento de cadáveres in Spanish, miccatzitzin ehecatl in Nahuatl, this dangerous spirit entity emanates from the bones of dead people. Its arms point downward toward mictlan, and the hands are wing-­like because it can fly through the air, making people sick and bringing tragedy. Like death (paper figures 00-­03a,b), this creature is social, and is a close companion of earth wind (00-­07a,b,c) and the generalized bad wind (00-­05a,b). Sources: S 1991: 271, 280. Coztantepetl: hill Coyoltenango: hill cross (exemplar figure E-6); compare cross wind (paper figures 00-­06a,b,c), sun (X-29), moon (X-30): in Spanish, cruz, borrowed into Nahuatl as caruz, this figure is associated with sun (tonatiuh), light, heat, fire, fertility, moon (mētztli), masculinity, soul (tonalli), Jesús, Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), San Simón, San Lorenzo, and man owl (tlacatecolotl). The cross is a complex conception that involves the physical sun, an important figure in the Nahua panthe-

on, combined with Nahua understandings of Jesus Christ. The Nahua believe that the sun animates the sacred cosmos with its heat, making all life, including human life, possible. The cross is itself a sacred object that reflects the shape of the human body and is also interpreted as a quincunx tracing the points on the horizon where the sun comes up at the extremes of the annual solstices. Sources: S 1986: 36, 49; S 1991: 278–­79, fig. 34. cross wind (paper figures 00-­06a,b,c); compare cross (exemplar figure E-6): mal aire de la cruz in Spanish, caruz ehecatl in Nahuatl, the cross offers an excellent example of the dualistic nature of Nahua religious thought. This figure is an anti-­cross, a disease-­causing wind that emanates from within the earth instead of the sky and thus does not share the associations with the life-­giving sun (tonatiuh) or Jesus Christ. The ritual specialist cuts a cross design for the headdress, thus distinguishing it from cross (exemplar figure E-6), its salutary counterpart, which has the cross emblem cut in the center of the body. Rib holes confirm that it is a death-­dealing, dangerous manifestation of the cross. Cruz Blanca: hill, town in Veracruz. Sources: G 2002: 107. Cuamixtepec: hill Cuamiztepetl: hill Cuatzapotitla, Cuatzapotitlan: hill, village in Veracruz. Sources: G 2002: 11, 22, 106. Cuenta Chica, La Cuenta Chica: hill? community? Cueva, La Cueva: hill (paper figure 01-­21, compare X-15); see also under hill entry: associated with cave sites México Chiquito in Hidalgo and José La Cueva at San José Naranjal in Veracruz. Sources: S 1991: 243, map 6.1. death (paper figures 00-­03a,b), little dead one wind (00-­03c); compare death (X-­12), death bone skirts (X-­11): muerte in Spanish, miquiliztli in Nahuatl, associated with dead souls, human bones, place of the dead (mictlan), man owl (tlacatecolotl), wrath (tlaheuliloc), San Lucas, San Jerónimo, earth, and fire. The portrayal of death is one of two distinctive designs, cut from colored paper to indicate that it comes from any direction. Death particularly menaces people as they walk along trails, flying in the air on truncated, wing-­like arms. With upright arms in place of wings, the second cutting of death (paper figure 00-­03c) is a large figure that flanks man owl (00-­01) and man owl woman (00-­ 02) in the cleansing display. Like them, death is regarded as dangerous, not evil, because it can be enticed into exchanges with humans. This social creature likes to travel around with the generalized bad wind (paper figures 00-­05a,b) and corpses wind (00-­04a,b,c). Sources: S 1986: 79, 82, 91, 100; S 1991: 254, 256, 267–­68, figs. 13–­14, 269, 280–­81, 312, 320–­21; G 2002: 89, 91, 110, 121; S 2021: 88–­89, fig. 3.1. devil (paper figure X-10): in Spanish, diablo, associated with bad wind (ejecatl), death (miquiliztli), darkness, night, place of the dead (mictlan), pre-­Hispanic ruins, solid rock, human bones, and sorcery. The devil in Nahua thought is a complicated creature, conflated by the Spanish friars with Indigenous conceptions of the disease-­causing winds (ehecameh), man owl (tlacatecolotl), and wrath (tlahueliloc). Portrayed in

Huastecan Nahua Spirit Entities, A–­Z  :  395

black paper by ritual specialist María Dolores Hernández as a fearsome animal with horns, teeth, a tail, and identifiable wings, she asserted that diablo is the brother of miquiliztli, death (paper figure X-12), one of seven malevolent winds that travel together at night. Sources: S 1986: 75, 79, 126, 207, 282, 297; S 1991: 186, 266, figs. 9–­10, 267, fig. 12. earth (exemplar figure E-7), earth’s surface (paper figure X-18, tlaltepactli in Nahuatl); compare earth wind (00-­07a,b,c): tierra in Spanish, tlalli in Nahuatl, associated with Five Flower (macuilli xochitl), Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), moon (mētztli), water, the Virgin of Guadalupe (tonantzin), San Isidro Labrador, Santa Catalina de Alejandría, montezuma, and death (miquiliztli). The earth is such an important spirit entity that the Nahua equate it with the sacred cosmos, God-­Totiotzin (exemplar figure E-10). Paper embodiments of the sacred earth are placed on altars in every pilgrimage location, and people lovingly embrace grandmother earth (paper figure 17-­02) and grandfather earth (17-­03), embodied as infant-­sized, clothed paper figures. Nahua say that people are indebted to the earth for their existence and that all wealth, especially water, comes from the earth; ominously; it is also the place of dead souls (mictlan). Sources: S 1986: 36, 75–­78, 82, 109–­13, 129, 290; S 1991: 240, 256, 262, fig. 1; L 1995: 218–­19; G 2002: 64, 85, 88–­89. earth wind (paper figures 00-­07a,b,c); compare earth (exemplar figure E-7): viento de la tierra in Spanish, tlalli ehecatl in Nahuatl. This paper figure portrays the earth as dangerous wind, confirming the Nahua belief that all spirit entities have malevolent or threatening aspects. The rib holes demonstrate that it is a killer, but its headdress resembles that of the beneficent earth with emerging vegetation. Like other ehecatl figures, its multiple colors indicate that it is widespread and comes from many directions. Sources: S 1986: 84, 88, 92–­93, 290; S 1991: 253, 256. ehecatl: see bad wind, good wind fire (exemplar figure E-8): lumbre in Spanish, tlitl or tlixihuantzin in Nahuatl; associated with heat, water, death (miquiliztli), sun (tonatiuh), moon (mētztli), San José, the milpa, cooking, Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), San Simón, San Lorenzo, San Antonio, and femininity. As told in the myth of Tlixihuantzin (and often Hispanized Juan Flojo or Juan Ceniza), fire is of paramount importance in Nahua life. Portrayed in paper, its rectangular body is the earth’s surface (or a section of the earth, such as a milpa); compare earth (exemplar figure E-7). The elongated ears may be earrings, linking fire to women’s and girls’ roles in food preparation, or possibly wrinkles, associating the paper image with the Aztec Old God fire deity, Huehueteotl. Sources: R 1976: 128; S 1986: 36, 38, 45, 76, 103, 129, 289; S 1991: 249, 256, 265; L 1995: 171–­86; G 2002: 81, 89, 141. Five Flower; compare Seven Flower (paper figure X-8), little maize (exemplar figure E-15): siete flor in Spanish, macuilli xochitl in Nahuatl, associated with Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), maize and other crops, flowers, women and girls, childbirth, the deer, old people, moon (mētztli),

396  : Huastecan Nahua Spirit Entities, A–­Z

San Juan Bautista, the Virgin of Guadalupe (tonantzin), Juan Diego, and Santa Rosa. As told in Nahua myth, Five Flower is Seven Flower’s twin, understood as the female aspect of maize. Ritual specialists in Amatlán do not apparently portray this spirit entity in paper but routinely embody Five Flower in maize bundles and flower adornments. Sources: S 1986: 284; S 1991: 264, fig. 5; G 2002: 83–­84; S 2004. flag (exemplar figure E-9): bandera in Spanish, pantli in Nahuatl, associated with sun (tonatiuh), seeds, thunder, lightning, the territory of Mexico, and Indigenous ethnicity. When speaking Nahuatl, people generally use the Spanish loanword bandera for this paper figure of the flag. In Nahua thought, the flag is the sun standing guard over the milpa or the entire earth’s surface. This association explains the design similarity evident in paper images of the flag and earth (exemplar figure E-7), with the same nine V-cuts arranged in a shape that suggests sacred hills. Their headdresses distinguish the two cuttings, however, with that of the flag resembling the sun’s rays rather than vegetation; compare the radiant sun (paper figure X-29) design created for other ritual occasions. People also identified the eagle and snake design at the center of the Mexican flag as a sun motif, an association that may be pre-­Hispanic in origin. Sources: G 2002: 81–­82. flower wind (paper figure X-13); compare bad wind (00-­05a,b), something cut smaller (tlacotontli) (00-­09 to 00-­21): xochiehecatl in Nahuatl. This embodiment of a nonspecific flower (or flowery) wind exhibits the rake-­like headdress usually associated with the earth. Cirilo confirmed that this particular wind has the power to adversely affect the seed reserved for planting. Like other winds, it is attracted to social disorder or disruptive behavior. Sources: S 1986: 81–­100; S 2021: 94; S 1991: 272–­73. Galera, La Galera: hill. Sources: S 2004: 357. God (exemplar figure E-10 and paper figure X-32); compare San Antonio (exemplar figure E-16), Santa Juanita (E-­17), Santa Panchita (E-­18), Santa Rita (E-­19), and Santa Rosa (E-­20): Dios in Spanish, Totiotzin in Nahuatl. This image of sacredness itself is associated with mountains, lightning, fire, and the sun’s heat, as well as cold and night, masculinity and femininity, water dweller (apanchaneh), Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), and animals, especially cattle. Ethnographers working in other Nahua communities have reported on associations between this cluster of spirit entities and the sacred hills; however, Cirilo asserted that this paper figure is not a hill but instead a saint, identifying it definitively as San Antonio and Dios or diocito. This kind of composite figure with multiple associations is common in Nahua religious thought. Like Santa Juanita and Santa Rita, the figure is portrayed with a foliated-­cross headdress. Sources: R 1976: 128; S 1986: 75, 128; S 1991: 246–­47, 278; L 1995: 141, 179–­80; B 1998: 38; G 1999: 35; G 2002: 80–­81, 83; P 2014: 51. good wind (exemplar figure E-11), also bad wind (paper figures 00-­05a,b): viento bueno in Spanish, cualli ehecatl in Nahuatl. This spirit entity is associated with Seven Flower (chicomexochitl) and San Martín de Porres. The good winds

blow in the rain-­producing clouds to fertilize the milpas and are not to be confused with the class of disease-­causing winds. In its paper embodiment good wind is typically portrayed with a hat-­like headdress that resembles a cross; this example, like upper altar (exemplar figure E-2), has three V-cuts in the body, pointing to the sky realm from which it originates. Sources: G 2002: 90, 142. Guayabo, El Guayabo: village in Veracruz Guitarra: hill (paper figure 09-­23); see also under hill entry: associated with earth, water. hill (exemplar figure E-12); compare hill lady (paper figure X-1), hill (X-­2), Postectli (X-­31): cerro in Spanish, tepetl in Nahuatl, associated with Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), San Jerónimo, San Isidro Labrador, and food and water storage. Indigenous people throughout Mesoamerica from earliest times have considered hills to be powerful, part of the sacred earth and the origin of water, wealth, and protection. Cirilo produced four petates of cuttings that embody a generalized hill (cualquier cerro, “any hill”). He also cut numerous specific hills: three petates of San Bartolo (paper figures 04-­21, 07-­04, 12-­08; compare X-20) and a petate each of twelve other named hills, including La Cueva (paper figure 01-­21; X-15), Xihuiyoh (07-­22; compare X-21), Santa Úrsula (09-­09; compare X-23), Guitarra (09-­23), San Gregorio (09-­24), Jonotál (10-­14, 12-­21), Chicontepec (10-­17), Teyahual (11-­04a,b), Lindero (11-­05), Huitzitzilco (11-­11), Xochicualaloya (11-­12), and San Estéban (11-­16). To el costumbre practitioners, hills are the saints (santos) or “hill persons” (tepetlacameh, singular, tepetlacatl)—­the sacred beings instrumental in the creation of the current age and who are today responsible for the conditions for life. Sources: S 1986: 77, 110–­13; S 1991: 256, 262–­63, figs. 1–­4; G 2002: 90–­91, 102–­7. Huactepec: hill Huauchinango, Huauchinanco: hill (mirror-­mountain), municipality in Puebla. Sources: S 2004. Huautla: hill? community? Huaya, Huayacocotla: hill? municipality in Veracruz Huehuetla, Huehuetlan: hill? municipality in Hidalgo Hueitlaltepetl: hill. Sources: S 2004: 359. Huejutla: hill? municipality in Hidalgo Huetztitlan: hill? community? Huexotitla, Huexotitlan: village in Veracruz Huextlahua, Huextlahuac: hill Hueyicuatitlan: hill Huichcahualtepetl: hill Huichintepetl: hill Huitzitzilco: hill (paper figure 11-­11): see under hill entry. Huitzmalotepetl: hill Huitztlantepetl: hill Ichcacuatitla: town in Veracruz, Ixcacuatitla in Spanish (the official designation on government maps), Ichcacuati­ tlan in Nahuatl (“place of cotton trees,” probably the ceiba or silk-­cotton tree, the source of kapok): the Nahua community

at the base of Postectli in the municipality of Chicontepec. Sources: W 1957; S 1991: 230–­31; G 2002: 11, 24, 28, 31. Ixhuatlán de Madero: municipality in Veracruz, Ixhuatlan in Nahuatl (“place where plants are born or where seeds sprout,” known for its abundant hoja de papatla or platanillo, Canna indica L., the leaves of which are used to make tamales): the municipality in which the Nahua village of Amatlán is located. Sources: S 1991: 60–­61; G 2002: 17, 31, 35n13. Ixhuatlantepetl: hill Iztaccihuatl: hill (mirror-­mountain) in Mexico and Puebla states. Sources: S 2004: 354. Iztlantepetl: hill Jesus, Jesús, Jesus Christ, Jesucristo; see cross (exemplar figure E-6), flag (E-­9), sun (paper figure X-26): associated with sun (tonatiuh). Sources: S 1986: 75, 81, 291–­92; S 1991: 186, 236, 242, 248; L 1995: 260, 266–­67; G 2002: 81, 141. Jonotál: hill (paper figures 10-­14, 12-­21); see also under hill entry. Sources: S 1991: 243, map 6.1. Juan Diego: associated with Seven Flower (chicomexochitl). This historic figure encountered the Virgin of Guadalupe at Tepeyac in 1531 and, although not technically a saint, has acquired sacred attributes according to some Nahua. Sources: Calendario, December 9; G 2002: 84. key (exemplar figure E-13): llave in Spanish, no equivalent name in Nahuatl. Spanish Catholic friars convinced Indigenous people that God the Father and the Virgin Mary can be approached only by using a key to enter a church building; for many Nahua today the key offers entrance to sacred precincts and treasure held inside mountains. While there is some variation in how the ritual specialists depict this spirit entity, it generally has a topknot-­like headdress and the distinctive jagged profile along the flanks of its body (resembling the tip and shoulder cuts of an actual key). Laberinta, Laberinto: hill, village in Puebla? Laguna, La Laguna, Laguna Verde: hill, water body: also see water dweller. Sources: S 1991: 243, map 6.1; 2004: 358. Lechcuatitlan: hill lightning (exemplar figure E-14): rayo or relámpago in Spanish, tlapetlani in Nahuatl, associated with water dweller (apanchaneh), San Juan Bautista (zahhuan), thunder (tlatomoni), San Pedro, San Pablo, and Santiago Apóstol. For the Nahua, lightning and thunder are forces that serve zahhuan from his watery dwelling. In the myth of Chicomexochitl–­Seven Flower, the maize spirit cuts out the flickering tongue of his grandmother, the reptilian earth monster, and swinging it around, produces the first lightning. As they haul rainwater to the cave at the summit of Postectli, the rain dwarfs (pilhuehuentzitzin) strike the implements they carry and are said to cause thunder and lightning. Sources: S 1986: 36, 41, 48, 50, 77, 288; S 1991: 247, 256; G 2002: 142; S 2004: 350, 351, 354, 364; H 2007: 203–­5. Limón, El Limón, Limóntepetl, Ilimontepetl: hill, village in Veracruz Lindero, El Lindero: village in Veracruz, also Lindero, hill (paper figure 11-­05); see under hill entry.

Huastecan Nahua Spirit Entities, A–­Z  :  397

little maize (exemplar figure E-15); compare Seven Flower (paper figure X-8), little maize (X-­27): maizito in Spanish, pilcintzin in Nahuatl. This unassuming figure is the young ear of maize (at its tender and sweet phase in the growth cycle) or “maize child,” addressed as the honorific “beloved little maize” in chants, an aspect of Seven Flower (chicomexochitl). Paper figures of little maize are prevalent on pilgrimage altars, while maize is also present in the sacred bundles and dressed paper figures that pilgrimage participants carry throughout the journey to the sacred mountain. Sources: S 1986: 77, 114–­21, 129, 283, 286, 297–­98; S 1991: 245–­46, 256, 264, 292–­96; G 2002: 82–­84, 86. Llave, La Llave: hill; see also key. Maciahtla: hill Maciaza: hill macuilli xochitl: see Five Flower. maize: see little maize, Five Flower, Seven Flower. Malacatehtepetl: hill man owl (paper figure 00-­01) and man owl woman (00-­02): hombre búho and hombre búho mujer in Spanish, tlacate­ colotl and tlacatecolotl cihuatl in Nahuatl, associated with owl (tecolotl), the angry crone (tzitzimitl), death (miquiliztli), place of the dead (mictlan), bad wind (ehecatl), wrath (tlaheuliloc), sun (tonatiuh), moon (mētztli), witchcraft, discord, misfortune, wealth, curing-­cleansing rituals, the Christian Devil, San Ramón, San Andrés Olmos, Santiago Apóstal, Santa Cecilia, and Santa Catalina. Man owl and his female counterpart inhabit the dreary underworld (mictlan) from which they lead the disease-­causing winds (ehecameh). Information by ethnographers confirms that these beings are sometimes equated with the Christian Devil, a connection made by the Spanish friars. Báez-­Jorge and Gómez Martínez recount a myth about man owl told in Ichcacuatitla (B 1998: 91–­99) and link contemporary beliefs about tlacatecolotl with the Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca. These figures are portrayed in paper as larger than other cuttings to emphasize their greater power; blackened with charcoal, they evoke the disorder and pollution underlying disaster and misfortune. The male figure has the suggestion of horns and a tail to indicate it belongs to the realm of animals. People associate these spirit entities with another wrathful character, tlahueliloc, who exemplifies personal disorderliness and social discord. During Carnival (nanahuatilli), masked dancers (mecos, also mēcoz) led by tlacatecolotl are purported to emerge from mictlan to rampage throughout the village, unsettling people’s orderly lives and wreaking chaos. Sources: S 1986: 79–­82, 139, 207, 281; S 1991: 152, 251, 256, 266–­67, figs. 9–­10, 312; B 1998, 2001; G 2002: 81, 87–­88, 90, 110, 131; H 2007: 56–­57; G 2009; S 2021: 88–­89, fig. 3.1, 91. María, Mary: see Virgin of Guadalupe Mecapalapa, Mecapalapan: hill Meci: hill Mesa, La Mesa, Mesilla: hill? community? Metlaltoyuca, La Mesa de Metlaltoyuca: hill, archaeological site, town in Puebla. Sources: S 1991: 243, map 6.1; G 2002: 107. 398  : Huastecan Nahua Spirit Entities, A–­Z

Mirador, El Mirador: hill, village in Veracruz. Sources: S 2004: 358. Mixtitlan: hill? Montezon: hill in Amatlán, Veracruz. Sources: S 2004: 354. Montezoma, Montezuma, Montezon: hill: associated with earth, hills, probably related to the Aztec emperor Motecuhzoma; a derivation of the name, Montezon is a sacred hill within the boundaries of the village of Amatlán. People say the many ruins that dot the southern Huasteca region were created by this spirit entity. Sources: S 1986: 77, 290; S 1991: 82, 240, 242–­43, map 6.1, 248; G 2002: 89. moon (paper figure X-30): luna in Spanish, mētztli in Nahuatl, associated with night, cold, femininity, misfortune, man owl (tlacatecolotl), the Milky Way or star-­skirt (citlalcueitl) and stars generally, the planet Venus (tonquetl), Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), earth, fire, sun (tonatiuh), and the Virgin of Guadalupe (tonantzin). Sources: S 1986: 75, 129, 292; B 1998: 38; S 1991: 248, 278; G 2002: 81–­82, 85, 141. Motoltepec, Motoltepetl: hill, village in Hidalgo. Sources: G 2002: 107. Nechcuatitlan: hill Nopaltepetl: hill Ormero: hill Pachtlan, Pachtli: hill. Sources: S 2004. Pahuara: hill Palaxtepetl, Palachtepetl: hill; in English, Male Turkey Mountain, the destination of the pilgrimage described in appendix A. Sources: S 1991: 243, map 6.1; G 2002: 107; S 2004: 358. Panuco, Pánuco: municipality in Veracruz Papalotepetl: hill Papantla, Papantlan: city in Veracruz Papatlayo: hill Pastoria: village in Veracruz. Sources: G 2002: 22. Pemochtitlan, Pemuchtitlan: hill Peña, La Peña: hill Pita, Pitah, La Pita: village in Veracruz Polatla la Mesa: hill Portezuelo: hill Postectli, Postectitla: hill (mirror-­mountain) (paper figure X-31); compare the generalized hill (exemplar figure E-12): Poztectli or Poztectitlan in Nahuatl, meaning Broken Mountain in English. This significant pilgrimage destination is located in the municipality of Chicontepec, Veracruz. Said to be the governor of the surrounding sacred hills, Postectli is associated with sun (tonatiuh), thunder, lightning, water dweller (apanchaneh), San Juan Bautista (zahhuan), the Virgin of Guadalupe (tonantzin), Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), Five Flower (macuilli xochitl), and seeds generally. Sources: S 1991: 241–­42, 250; G 2002: 11, 18, 22, 86–­87, 104–­6, 143–­44; S 2004: 350, 351, 352,358, 365. Poza Rica: town in Veracruz Puyecaco: village in Veracruz. Sources: G 2002: 35n13.

Ramaltepetl, El Ramal, chicome rramal, siete ramales: birthplace of the hills. Sources: S 2004: 359, 360. saint: see under names of Spanish Catholic saints; regarded as santos unless specified as hills. San Agustín, San Agostin tepetl: hill, also San Agustín Melgos, saint, probably the martyr. Sources: Calendario, May 7; S 2004: 358. San Alejo: saint. Sources: Calendario, multiple entries. San Andrés, San Andrés Olmos: saint, associated with water, fish, and fishermen. San Andrés was probably an early evangelist of the Huasteca, said to counsel man owl (tlacatecolotl). The saint’s day ends the observance of All Saints’ Day or Todos Santos, at which time San Andrés ushers the dead back to the underworld. Acting as an intermediary between human beings and spirit entities, the spirit entity is also believed to transmit fertility from the underworld to the seeds. Sources: Calendario, November 30; L 1995: 149, 252, 260, 267; B 1998: 38; G 2002: 43–­44, 142; B 2004: 92–­93; G 2009: 290. San Antonio (exemplar figure E-16), San Antonio de Pádua, Santo de la Páuida, Santo de Pádua: saint, associated with water, rain, water dweller (apanchaneh), fire, and lightning, Cirilo identified the two cuttings of this paper figure as San Antonio and also Santo de la Páuida (San Antonio de Padua). He associated it with the similar image of God-­Totiotzin (exemplar figure E-10) and asserted that it is a saint, not a hill. To clarify some distinction among variant designs, Cirilo added the designations dios mexicano, dios huasteco, the Mexican God or Huastecan God. Sources: Calendario, June 13; S 1991: 294; L 1995: 179–­80; G 2002: 83, 87, 142; S 2004: 364. San Antonio Abad: patron saint of Mexico City, associated with animal care. Sources: Calendario, January 17. San Antorcha: saint. Sources: S 2004: 364; compare Taggart (2007: 44–­45) on the agrarian movement of the same name. San Bartolo: hill (paper figures 04-­21, 07-­04, 12-­08; compare paper figure X-20); see also under hill entry; associated with earth and water; probably San Bartolo Tutotepec, a municipality in Hidalgo. Sources: Calendario, December 13; S 2004: 353, 360. San Benito: saint. Sources: Calendario, multiple entries; S 2004: 353, 361. San Cristóbal: associated with the history of Ixhuatlán de Madero, wind, and water dweller (apanchaneh); said to aid people as they cross rivers. Sources: Calendario, July 25; L 1995: 260, 267; G 1999: 34; G 2002: 31, 87, 90; S 2004: 353, 361. San Curandera, also styled Santo San Curandera: we have no ethnographic information about this saint, mentioned in a chant by Silveria Hernández Hernández. Sources: S 2004: 364. San Diego: hill San Estéban: hill (paper figure 11-­16); see also under hill entry. Sources: Calendario, multiple entries. San Francisco: hill, possibly the male aspect of Santa Panchita (exemplar figure E-18): associated with the history of Zontecomatlán, Veracruz. Sources: Calendario, multiple entries; G 2002: 31.

San Gregorio: hill (paper figure 09-­24); see also under hill entry: associated with water. Sources: Calendario, multiple entries. San Hipólito: probably the Roman martyr Hippolytus. Sources: Calendario, August 13. San Isidro: associated with water dweller (apanchaneh), rain, earth, sacred hills or mountains, and Seven Flower (chicomexochitl); probably San Isidro Labrador, patron saint of rural farmers (campesinos). Sources: Calendario, May 15; B 1998: 38; G 2002: 83, 87, 89, 91, 142; S 2004: 365. San Jerónimo: hill; see also key to San Jerónimo hill (paper figure 01-­02): associated with water, water dweller (apanchaneh), sacred hills or mountains, the origin of Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), and death (miquiliztli). Sources: Calendario, September 30; S 1991: 243, map 6.1; G 1999: 35; G 2002: 83, 87, 91, 110; S 2004: 352, 358. San Jorge. Sources: Calendario, multiple entries; S 2004: 364. San José (Joseph, husband of Mary), San Josén: hill; associated with fire and sun (tonatiuh). Sources: Calendario, March 20; R 1976: 128. San Juan, San Juan Bautista: hill, saint; compare water dweller (exemplar figure E-24): “water owner” in English, zahhuan in Nahuatl, associated with the fishing apostle Saint John the Baptist, water, thunder, lightning, rain, wind, storms, the sea or Gulf of Mexico, Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), and rain dwarfs (pilhuehuentzitzin). San Juan is guardian of the riches within hills, and Santa Juanita (exemplar figure E-17) is likely a female aspect. Sources: Calendario, June 24; R 1976: 128; S 1986: 80–­81, 289; S 1991: 249–­50, 316; L 1995: 149, 194, 252–­55, 260–­61, 267; B 1998: 38; G 1999: 34; G 2002: 83, 87, 90, 142; S 2004: 350, 353, 354, 359, 360, 362, 364; H 2007: 197–­201. San Judas Tadeo: probably the apostle. Sources: Calendario, October 28. San Lorenzo: hill; associated with fire (tlitl), sun (tonatiuh). Sources: Calendario, multiple entries; S 1991: 243, map 6.1; G 2002: 81, 89, 141. San Lucas: associated with death (miquiliztli), serves as a guide for dead souls and animals. Sources: Calendario, October 18 (the day beginning Todos Santos); S 1991: 280; G 2002: 142. San Martín, San Martín de Porres: hill: associated with patron of curers, good wind, and counter-­sorcery. Sources: Calendario, November 3; L 1995: 122; G 2002: 142; S 2004: 365; P 2014: 51. San Miguel: associated with the Chicontepec sacred mountain. Sources: G 2002: 31. San Nicolás: associated with death (miquiliztli). Sources: Calendario, multiple entries; S 2004: 365. San Pablo: probably the apostle Paul; associated with lightning, thunder. Sources: Calendario, June 29; S 2004: 364. San Pedro: hill; probably the apostle Peter, “fisher of men”; associated with lightning, thunder, and water. Sources: Calendario, June 29; L 1995: 149, 260, 267; S 2004: 364. San Rafael, San Rafael Colón: possibly the archangel Rafael; associated with water. Sources: Calendario, September 29; L 1995: 260, 267; S 2004: 353, 361. Huastecan Nahua Spirit Entities, A–­Z  :  399

San Ramón: associated with hills, a protector of domestic animals, the owner or advocate of winds that bring clouds; possibly associated with Palm Sunday (Domingo de Ramos) and with Jesús, who bears crossed palm leaves and calms damaging winds. Sources: L 1995: 167, 227–­31, 261, 267; B 1998: 38; G 2002: 142; S 2004: 364; G 2009: 290; not in Calendario. San Sebastián, Santo Vacián, Santo Vaciano: probably the martyr; associated with hills and rain. Sources: Calendario, January 20. San Simón: probably the apostle and martyr; associated with fire and sun (tonatiuh). Sources: Calendario, October 28; G 2002: 81, 89, 141. Santa Balbina, also styled San Balbina. Sources: Calendario, March 31; S 2004: 364. Santa Carmela: saint. Sources: S 2004: 364; not in Calendario. Santa Carmen: saint. Sources: S 2004: 364; not in Calendario. Santa Catalina: probably Santa Catalina de Alejandría, associated with earth, harvest, Seven Flower (chicomexochitl); counsels man owl (tlacatecolotl). Sources: Calendario, November 25; B 1998: 38; G 2002: 83, 89, 141–­42; G 2009: 290. Santa Catarina: a saint associated with curers and the history of Chicontepec. Santa Clemencia: saint. Sources: Calendario, multiple entries; S 2004: 364. Santa Cecilia, associated with music, counsels man owl (tlacatecolotl). Sources: Calendario, September 16; G 2002: 142; G 2009: 290; P 2014: 52. Santa Francisca: see Santa Panchita. Santa Juanita (exemplar figure E-17; compare paper figure X-17): a companion of Santa Rita (exemplar figure E-19), associated with gentle rainfall and bodies of water as the peaceful female aspect of San Juan (zahhuan). The foliated-­ cross headdress motif (found also at ancient Maya sites and in the central highlands) is an expression of fertility and the four cardinal directions. Unlike many of the Catholic saints, she is associated with water and the Gulf of Mexico, not the sacred hills. Sources: Calendario, multiple entries under “Juana,” but none confirming the diminutive or honorific form “Juanita.” Santa Magdalena: associated with water. Sources: Calendario, multiple entries. Santa Maria Chontla: community? Santa Marta: saint. Sources: Calendario, multiple entries. Santa Panchita (exemplar figure E-18): probably the female aspect of San Francisco, although we have no ethnographic information on her associations. Sources: Calendario, multiple entries. Santa Rita (exemplar figure E-19): associated with water, clouds, rain; a companion of Santa Juanita (exemplar figure E-17), both have the same foliated-­cross headdress. Cirilo asserted that Santa Rita “raises the clouds” in advance of a rainstorm; he frequently confused the paper cuttings of Santa Rita and Santa Juanita. Sources: Calendario, May 22; S 2004: 364.

400  : Huastecan Nahua Spirit Entities, A–­Z

Santa Rosa (exemplar figure E-20), Santa Rosita; compare Santa Rosa cimarrón (paper figure X-19): associated with water, water dweller (apanchaneh), Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), marijuana, bad wind (ehecatl), trance, and wisdom. The spirit entity is another manifestation of water that invokes Saint Rose of Lima, a sixteenth-­century Peruvian ascetic and patron saint of Indigenous Latin America. Santa Rosa takes the form of the marijuana plant that ritual specialists sometimes ingest to channel apanchaneh and speak in her voice. The figure’s bud-­like vegetative design resembles the tassel of young maize and/or the marijuana plant. Sources: Calendario, August 30; S 1986: 80, 83, 289; S 1991: 250, 294; B 1998: 38; G 2002: 60, 84, 90, 142; S 2004: 364. Santa Teresa: saint. Sources: Calendario, multiple entries; S 2004: 364. Santa Úrsula: hill (paper figure 09-­09; compare X-23); see also under hill entry; associated with rain, water dweller (apanchaneh), and Seven Flower (chicomexochitl). Sources: Calendario, October 21; G 1999: 35; G 2002: 83, 87, 142. Santiago: probably Santiago Apostal, Saint James the Apostle; counsels man owl (tlacatecolotl); associated with hills, water, rain, lightning, thunder, wind, animals, and the history of Ilamatlán, Veracruz. Sources: Calendario, July 25; L 1995: 122, 149, 260, 267; B 1998: 38; B 2004: 100; G 2002: 31, 142; S 2004: 365; G 2009: 290; P 2014: 51. Santo de la Páuida, Santo de Pádua: see San Antonio. Santo Vacián, Santo Vaciano: see San Sebastián. Sasaltitla, Sasaltitlan: hill, river, village in Veracruz. Sources: G 2002: 22,106. Seven Flower (paper figure X-8); compare little maize (exemplar figure E-15, paper figure X-27): siete flor in Spanish, chicomexochitl in Nahuatl, also styled Chicomexochitzin, Chicomexochiuh in chants; associated specifically with maize, all crops and flowers generally, the deer, water dweller (apanchaneh), good wind (cualli ehecatl), hill, sun (tonatiuh), moon (mētztli), the Virgin of Guadalupe (tonantzin), Santa Catalina de Alejandría, San Isidro Labrador, San Juan Bautista, Santa Úrsula, and San Antonio de Padua. Seven Flower is the sacred maize, the male aspect or twin of Five Flower (macuilli xochitl). No paper figure specifically embodying Seven Flower was created for the pilgrimages, but maize is omnipresent in the dressed seed figures, maize bundles, and flower adornments. Ritual specialist Silveria Hernández Hernández created this anthropomorphic cutting for use in crop-­increase rituals and identified it as chicomexochitl. Sources: S 1986: 77, 114–­16; S 1991: 133, 245–­47, 264, 293; G 2002: 79, 82–­85, 141–­42; S 2004. Siete Palmas: hill, village in Veracruz. Sources: G 2002: 107. soldier wind (paper figure X-14): viento in Spanish, ehecatl in Nahuatl; associated with cleansing-­curing rituals. Paper cuttings of this specialized wind spirit are often placed on piles of amate leaves surrounding the display of disease-­ causing winds. It serves as a guard to confine the bad winds within the display and prevent them from infecting people in attendance. Sources: S 1991: 71, fig. 19.

Soltepec, Sultepec, Zoltepec: hill, village in Veracruz. Sources: G 2002: 11, 22. Sombrerete: hill. Sources: G 2002: 107. something cut smaller (paper figures 00-­09 to 00-­21): cosa cortada o reducida in Spanish, tlacotontli in Nahuatl; associated with sorcery, bad wind (ejecatl), and cleansing-­curing rituals. The selection of cuttings prepared for the pilgrimages illustrates some of the range of diminutive figures cut by ritual specialists to counteract sorcery. The spirit entity embodied in a tlacotontli cutting is literally “something cut smaller,” although this class of winds includes some of the most powerful and dangerous spirit entities in the Nahua pantheon. They are portrayed in paper in different colors (or white) to indicate that the danger they present is widespread. Sources: S 1986: 81–­100; G 2002: 121; S 2021: 93–­95, fig. 3.2. soul; compare soul of a child (paper figure X-4), soul of a man (X-­5), soul of a woman (X-­6), soul of a male-­female pair (X-­7): tonalli in Nahuatl, the heat soul (compare yollotl or “heart soul”) derives its energy from the sun (tonatiuh). This soul is the medium through which the sun animates the cosmos and it is directly linked to human destiny. In Huastecan Nahua belief, every object and being in the cosmos possesses a tonalli soul and it is this entity or property that ritual specialists capture in their paper figures. Sources: S 1991: 257–­60, 276, figs. 29–­30; L 1995: 113; G 2002: 77–­78, 123; H 2007: 238–­46. star (exemplar figure E-21): estrella in Spanish, citlalin in Nahuatl. People say that the stars act as guardians after the sun (tonatiuh) has set. The cutting selected as the exemplar (one of three petates of star prepared for the pilgrimage) was designed by Cirilo as “seven star” (chicome citlalin); he also called it “many” (miacquetl), referencing the Pleiades (estrellas cabrillas or Pléyades in Spanish). The cuts in the body are five quatrefoil stars arranged in a quincunx pattern. Sources: S 1986: 76, 125, 293; S 1991: 248–­49, 256, 264; G 2002: 82. sun (paper figure X-29); compare cross (exemplar figure E-6), flag (E-­9), God-­Totiotzin (E-­10): sol in Spanish, tonatiuh in Nahuatl; the sun is associated with Jesús, the soul (tonalli) connected to heat, the lonely soul in Purgatory (anima sola), San Simón, San Lorenzo, all crops but particularly maize, domesticated animals, technical knowledge, and work. Sources: R 1976: 128; S 1986: 49, 75, 128, 279, 282–­83; S 1991: 236, 242, 247, 258, 278, fig. 33; L 1995: 266; B 1998: 38; G 2002: 81–­82, 141. Tampico: hill, municipality in Tamaulipas Tantoyuca: town in Veracruz Tecajete: hill Tecalco: hill, village in Veracruz Tecruz, Tecaruz, Tecoroz, Tecuroz: hill? community in Hidalgo? Teixtlantepetl: hill Temapache: hill (mirror-­mountain), village in Veracruz. Sources: S 2004: 354, 357. Temazolintlan, Temazolintli: hill

Tepenahuac: hill, village in Veracruz. Sources: G 2002: 11, 106. Tepetzintla, Tepetzintlan: hill, village in Veracruz. Sources: G 2002: 11, 22, 106. Tepeyacapan: hill Tepisquimi: hill Tepoxteco: hill, village in Veracruz Tepozcalco: village in Veracruz Teyahual: hill (paper figures 11-­04a,b); see also under hill entry: the location is an ancient platform mound en route to the pilgrimage destination of Tres Pozitos, described in appendix B. Tezcatepetl: hill. Sources: G 2002: 107. thunder (exemplar figure E-22): trueno in Spanish, tlatomoni in Nahuatl, associated with water dweller (apanchaneh), lightning (tlapetlani), water owner (zahhuan, San Juan Bautista), San Pedro, San Pablo, and Santiago Apóstol. The paper figure of thunder is distinguished by a hatchet or small ax cut from the center of the body, a feature shared by its companion, lightning. The rain dwarfs (pilhuehuentzitzin) are believed to cause the sound of thunder by striking the implements they carry. The function of thunder and lightning is to announce the coming of rain. Sources: S 1986: 36, 77, 288; S 1991: 247, 256; G 2002: 142; S 2004: 350, 351, 354, 364. Tierra Zamora: community? Tihuatlan, Tihuatlán: hill, municipality in Veracruz Tiopancahuatl: hill Tizatl, Tizal: village in Veracruz tlacatecolotl: see man owl; also man owl woman. Tlachichilco: hill. Sources: S 2004: 358. Tlacolula: community? tlacotontli: see something cut smaller. tlahueliloc: see wrath. Tlalpan: community? Tlaltempan: hill. Sources: S 2004: 359. Tlaquextla: hill Tlatahco: hill tonalli: see soul. tonantzin: see Virgin of Guadalupe. Totiotzin: see God. Totoltepetl, Toltepec: hill. Sources: S 2004: 358. Tres Pozitos: hill, archaeological site: “Three Little Wells,” the destination of the pilgrimage described in appendix B; see also Ateyohual. Sources: S 1991: 243, map 6.1. Tulancingo: municipality in Hidalgo Tuxpan: hill (mirror-­mountain), municipality in Veracruz. Sources: S 2004: 354. Tzacualtipan, Tzacualtipantepec: hill Tzayacaltipan: hill Tzilacatipan: hill? community? Tzintiazco: hill? community?

Huastecan Nahua Spirit Entities, A–­Z  :  401

tzitzimitl: the angry crone, mother of tonantzin and grandmother of Seven Flower, associated with Postectli. In oral narratives the tzitzimitl is the origin of lightning, stinging insects, and poisonous snakes, and she transforms into the reptilian surface of the earth. Sources: B 2000: 94; G 2002: 87, 90, 110; G 2009; S 2021: 88–­89, fig. 3.1, 90–­91. Tzocohuite: hill Tzohuahalli: hill Tzonte: hill Velazco: hill Vinazcotepetl, Lomas de Vinazco: hill, village in Veracruz Virgin of Guadalupe, Virgin Mary, Virgen de Guadalupe, María purísima, María santísima, Our Honored Mother Tonantzin, also Virgen de San Juan de los Lagos (the focus of a pilgrimage destination in Jalisco): associated with earth, fertility, old age, midwives, moon (mētztli), seeds, Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), water, and water dweller (apanchaneh). Sources: Calendario, December 12; S 1986: 76, 80, 114, 286, 293; S 1991: 242, 244–­48, 282–­86; L 1995: 260; B 1998: 38; G 1999: 35; G 2002: 82, 84–­85, 87, 89, 141. walking stick (exemplar figure E-23): bastón in Spanish, tlanahuatilcuatopilli in Nahuatl, associated with rain, thunder, lightning, rain dwarfs (pilhuehuentzitzin), government offices, and the ritual specialists’ authority. The design cut in the middle of the paper figure’s body is the head of a wooden walking stick bedecked with ribbons. Cirilo asserted that the walking stick allows him to see clearly and to speak authoritatively in his chanting. During the pilgrimage proceedings ritual specialists carried them at the front and rear of the group of pilgrims, demarcating a moving sacred space. Sources: S 1986: 41, 45, 294; S 1991: 250, 300. water dweller (exemplar figure E-24); compare La Laguna (paper figure X-3), water dweller (X-­16), water wind (00-­08a,b,c): la sirena or agua in Spanish, apanchaneh or atl (also apanxinolah, apanquixtianoh, achanehqueh) in Nahuatl, associated with still or flowing water (springs, lakes, streams, etc.), the siren or mermaid (la sirena–­el sireno in female-­male aspects), lightning, thunder, Postectli, seeds, salt, food from the water, earth, freshwater and marine animals, Juan Flojo (Lazy John), fire (tlitl), cloud (mixtli), wind (ehecatl), drowned people, water-­related diseases, Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), the Virgin of Guadalupe (tonantzin), San Juan Bautista (zahhuan or San Juan), Santa Juanita, Santa Rita, Santa Rosa, San Antonio de Padua, Santa Úrsula, San Jerónimo, San Cristóbal, San Isidro, Virgen de Guadalupe, Virgen de San Juan de los Lagos, Santiago Apóstol, and Santa Magdalena. Clearly one of the most powerful and important spirit entities in the Nahua pantheon, water (commonly in the form of apanchaneh, the water dweller) takes on a great variety of guises and alter egos. The element of water is manifested in the two zigzag lines on the image’s chest. The rectangular arrangement of the four V-cuts evinces the surface of the earth where springs, arroyos, rivers, lakes, and ponds abound. The image of water dweller

402  : Huastecan Nahua Spirit Entities, A–­Z

(or its dressed embodiment) is incorporated into each mezah in the sequence of altar offerings throughout the pilgrimage rituals. Sources: S 1986: 36, 75, 80–­81, 288–­89; S 1991: 249–­50, 265; G 1999: 34–­35; G 2002: 85–­87, 108–­13, 142; S 2004: 353, 354, 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 364; H 2007: 213–­15, 234–­42. water owner: see San Juan Bautista. water wind (paper figures 00-­08a,b,c); compare water dweller (exemplar figure E-24): viento del agua in Spanish, atl ehecatl in Nahuatl, associated with disease-­causing winds. Water wind embodies the negative features of precious water (atl) that is so important for the Nahua and all living beings. It grabs people when they are bathing in the arroyo and is associated with the tendency to pay heed to bad counsel. The headgear resembles animal horns, and rib holes are evident, linking it to death. Sources: S 1986: 80; S 1991: 253. wind: see bad wind, good wind. witness (exemplar figure E-25); compare witnesses (paper figures X-24, X-26), flower carrier (X-­25), also soldier wind (X-­14): testigo in Spanish, tlamocuitlahuihquetl in Nahuatl. As a guardian, this spirit entity protects people from danger and, as an intermediary, acts to communicate offerings to the sacred hills and other spirit entities. There are several types of witness-­guardian figures, all of which guard against the interference of malevolent spirits. The exemplar version is cut with a hole in the headdress so it can be hung at intervals on the vine-­and-­marigold line connecting the outside cross (cruz afuera) with the main altar inside the shrine. Sources: S 1986: 77, 103–­4, 106, 108–­13, 286; S 1991: 254, 256, 317. wrath (paper figure X-9): tlahueliloc in Nahuatl, associated with bad winds, man owl (tlacatecolotl), death (miquiliztli), place of the dead (mictlan), and cleansing-­curing rituals. We recorded contradictory explanations about the identity of this pre-­Hispanic figure, sometimes conflated with man owl (paper figure 00-­01). The horned headgear and animal tail reveal its wild, uncontrolled nature. Sources: S 1986: 79, 82; S 1991: 242, 248, 251, 253–­54, 256, 266–­67, figs. 9–­11, 267, fig. 11, 312; B 1998; G 2002: 88; S 2021: 88–­92. Xalapa, Xalapan, Jalapa: hill (mirror-­mountain), capital city of Veracruz state. Sources: S 2004: 354. Xaltepetl: hill Xicoh: hill? community? Xihuitepetl: hill Xihuiyoh: hill (paper figure 07-­22; compare X-21); see also under hill entry: associated with earth, water. Sources: S 1991: 243, map 6.1; S 2004: 358. Xilotlan: hill? community? Xochiatipan: hill? community? Xochiatlahco: hill. Sources: S 2004: 358. Xochiatlauhco: hill. Sources: S 2004: 358. Xochiatzin: hill? community? Xochicualaloya: hill (paper figure 11-­12): see under hill entry.

Xochicuatepec: hill, village in Veracruz. Sources: G 2002: 106. xochiehecatl: see flower wind. Xochipahpatlan: hill? community? Xochipatlayoh: hill. Sources: S 2004: 358.

Xomulco: village in Veracruz; the destination of the pilgrimage described in appendix C. Yahualican, Yahualica: hill? municipality in Hidalgo zahhuan: see San Juan Bautista.

Notes 1. Recall that the full collection of Nahuatl orations and stories recorded in Amatlán is preserved in the AILLA repository at http://​www​.ailla​.utexas​.org/. Names of localities omitted from the text but included here in the inventory come from

lengthy chants delivered by ritual specialists Juan Antonio (Lino) Hernández and Silveria Hernández Hernández, as we have noted, and from Silveria’s chant in Sandstrom and Gómez Martínez (2004).

Huastecan Nahua Spirit Entities, A–­Z  :  403

A Coda on Monism, Pantheism, and the Infinity of Images Comparative Paper Figures To appreciate the potentially limitless range of styles and iconographic elements employed by the Nahua paper cutters of Amatlán, we present thirty-­two additional paper figures created during our 1985–­86 and 1997–­98 fieldwork seasons that are not part of the Postectli collection. We have provided ethnographic information about these works of religious art in notes throughout the book (and rely on appendix D and the index to collocate our comments about them). But for ease of visual comparison we list the paper figures in table X.1 alphabetically by English name and assemble the illustrations by ID number. All but one of the figures was cut by the huehuetlacatl–­master ritual specialist Encarnación (Cirilo) Téllez Hernández or his Amatlán colleagues, Silveria Hernández Hernández and María Dolores Hernández. The exception is the image of the sacred mountain Postectli itself (paper figure X-31), which was created in 1990 by Nahua ritual specialist Efrén Hernández Flores from the village of Xalatla in the municipio of Chicontepec. The cutting was obtained by Arturo Gómez Martínez, who generously gave it to us in 1998 and is here reproduced with his permission. Among the cuttings itemized in the table are some especially fine examples that reveal Cirilo’s vision of how the world works. One of our favorites is his image of mixtli, the cloud (paper figure X-22), which figured prominently on altars in the 1998 and 2001 Postectli pilgrimages, although he omitted it from our sample collection in 2007. The figure’s bulging muscles indicate the power of storms. His artistic style is also evident in the witness-­guardian or tlamocuitlahuihquetl (paper figure X-26) that he produced in 1998 to protect us as we traveled to the US on our return from Amatlán. Cirilo produced virtually identical cuttings of this spirit entity over a period of many decades, a testament to the consistency and endurance of his talent as a master paper cutter. These beautifully cut paper figures (tlatecmeh) have been central in our efforts to understand Huastecan Nahua religion and world view. They illustrate how the Indigenous people of this region of Mexico use the fragile medium of paper to express directly and forcefully what are the enduring truths of their pantheistic religion. Little constrained by theological orthodoxy or the strict artistic conventions of many world religions, the expert paper cutters of el costumbre provide clear evidence of the monistic philosophy that underlies their world view. Despite the great variety of forms they take, these paper images with the human body at the core are, as the ritual specialists insist, “all the same.” They embrace pantheism’s validating message

https://​doi​.org​/​10​.5876​/​9781646423309​.c010

 : 405

that the objects and beings of the world constitute a fabric of inclusive social relations. What the religion of el costumbre lacks in dogma it makes up for in universality. Based on reciprocal exchanges with the things and powers that sustain life, its followers constantly appraise and adjust their behavior in response to the demands of these animated entities. People are reminded through the ritual offerings and stories to be moderate in thought and behavior and not to exploit to excess their natural and social environments.

For the Indigenous people of the Huasteca Veracruzana the work of life and the work of ritual are deeply intertwined as the sources of prosperity, success, and human dignity. Table X.1 presents thirty-­two drawings of Nahua paper cuttings of spirit entities with figure ID numbers listed alphabetically by English name, followed by the Spanish and/or Nahuatl name supplied by the ritual specialist who created it (and alternate names in brackets).

Table X.1. Comparative Paper Figures Paper Figure ID

English / Spanish / Nahuatl Name of Spirit Entity [and Variants]

X-­28

bean / frijol / etl

X-­22

cloud / nube / mixtli

X-­10

devil / diablo

X-­12

death / muerte / miquiliztli

X-­11

death [bone skirts] / muerte / miquiliztli

X-­18

earth [earth’s surface] / tierra / tlalli [tlaltepactli]

X-­13

flower wind / xochiehecatl

X-­32

God / Dios / Totiotzin

X-­2

hill / cerro / tepetl

X-­15

hill [La Cueva hill] / cerro de La Cueva / tepetl

X-­31

hill [Postectli hill] / cerro de Postectli / tepetl

X-­20

hill [San Bartolo hill] / cerro de San Bartolo / tepetl

X-­23

hill [Santa Úrsula hill] / cerro de Santa Úrsula / tepetl

X-­21

hill [Xihuiyoh hill] / cerro de Xihuiyoh / tepetl

X-­1

hill lady [lady of the hill] / señora del cerro / tepexinolah

X-­27

little maize / maizito / pilcintzin

X-­30

moon / luna / mētztli

X-­17

Santa Juanita

X-­19

Santa Rosa [wild Santa Rosa] / Santa Rosa cimarrón

X-­8

Seven Flower / siete flor / chicomexochitl

X-­14

soldier wind / ehecatl

X-­4

soul of a child / tonalli

X-­7

soul of a male-­female pair / tonalli

X-­5

soul of a man / tonalli

X-­6

soul of a woman / tonalli

X-­29

sun / sol / tonatiuh

X-­3

water [La Laguna] / agua [La Laguna] / atl

X-­16

water dweller [siren] / agua [la sirena] / apanchaneh [atl, aserenah]

X-­24

witness / testigo / tlamocuitlahuihquetl

X-­26

witness / testigo / tlamocuitlahuihquetl

X-­25

witness [flower carrier] / testigo / tlamocuitlahuihquetl [xochitlalanquetl]

X-­9

wrath / tlahueliloc

406  :  A Coda on Monism, Pantheism, and the Infinity of Images

X-1 Hill Lady

X-5 Soul of a Man

X-9 Wrath

X-2 Hill

X-6 Soul of a Woman

X-10 Devil

X-3 Water La Laguna

X-7 Soul of Male-Female Pair

X-11 Death Bone Skirts

X-4 Soul of a Child

X-8 Seven Flower

X-12 Death

A Coda on Monism, Pantheism, and the Infinity of Images  :  407

X-13 Flower Wind

X-14 Soldier Wind

X-15 Hill La Cueva

X-16 Water Dweller

X-17 Santa Juanita

X-18 Earth Earth’s Surface

X-19 Santa Rosa Cimarrón

X-20 Hill San Bartolo

X-21 Hill Xihuiyoh

X-22 Cloud

X-23 Hill Santa Úrsula

X-24 Witness

408  :  A Coda on Monism, Pantheism, and the Infinity of Images

X-25 Witness Flower Carrier

X-26 Witness

X-29 Sun

X-30 Moon

The Elements Conjoined We would like to present our final attempt to comprehend the iconography of Cirilo’s paper figures, and perhaps suggest a way forward to analyzing the graphic communication system of el costumbre. We fully acknowledge the limitations of the data set, aware that it is the product of one ritual specialist aided by a small group of colleagues, and hence, that our generalizations may not apply to other paper-­cutting traditions in the region or even other Nahua practitioners. Nonetheless, some summary observations are in order, if only to stimulate further empirical research and ethnological comparison. Our approach to analyzing the paper figures has mainly focused on identifying the many individual cuttings, describing their use in particular contexts, and explaining how they are key to understanding the reciprocity that is at the core of Nahua

X-27 Little Maize

X-31 Hill Postectli

X-28 Bean

X-32 God-Totiotzin

religious belief and ritual strategies. But to conclude this study we think it would be fruitful to examine the design elements of the cuttings to reveal something of the structure and substance of the cosmic order as expressed in the medium of paper by a master Nahua ritual specialist. To proceed, we identified the distinctive iconographic elements in Cirilo’s sample of cuttings.1 Graphic artist Ana Laura Ávila-­Myers extracted 102 unique headdress and body components from the drawings, which we reassembled into chart form in table X.2. The printed chart allows us to examine these ordering principles. Table X.2. The elements conjoined. Drawing by Ana Laura ÁvilaMyers. The printed tabular chart is folded into a pocket in the back of the book and available in digital format, for closer inspection (https://​doi​.org​/​10​.5876​/​9781646423309​.c010​.f001).

A Coda on Monism, Pantheism, and the Infinity of Images  :  409

00-04b Corpses Wind

A10 D10 E10 F10

G5

6 4

G8

G10

B9 H5

16 6

I10

E-19 Santa Rita

E-16 San Antonio

I1

H8

I9

J10

01-03 Earth of the Altar

Cross & Foliated-Cross Headdress Single Solar-Disk Headdress

3

J1

H3

J8 K2 L2 E-9 = 13-01 Flag

E-11 Good Wind

13-04 Flag

E-17 Santa Juanita

12-14b Good Wind

08-01 Good Wind

L

13-04 Flag

5-Pronged Solar-Ray Headdress

2

4

10-17 Hill Chicontepec

I2 01-03 Earth of the Altar

X-17 Santa Juanita

10-14 Hill Jonotál

5

E-11 = 04-08 Good Wind

08-01 Good Wind

12-23 Earth Over There

9-Pronged Headdress

K

01-21 Hill La Cueva

11

17-02b Grandmother Earth

07-09 Earth Changes

01-09 Earth Over There

04-02 Altar

WATER–EARTH REALM

E-12 = 01-13 Hill (Any Hill)

X-20 Hill San Bartolo

H2 E-7 = 06-04 Earth

7

J

07-15b San Antonio

02-04 Earth

04-01 Earth Over There

11-11 Hill Huisisilco

09-19 Upper Altar

04-05 Earth Over There

11-16 Hill Estéban

11-17 Walking Stick

11-05 Hill Lindero

E-25 = 09-18 Witness

E-8 = 06-05 Fire

10-12b Altar

E-1 = 06-03 Altar

E-15 Little Maize

07-15a San Antonio

G3 E-7 Earth

E-16 = 07-16 San Antonio

3

11-12 Hill Xochicualaloya

09-23 Hill Guitarra

09-24 Hill San Gregorio

09-09 Hill Santa Úrsula

H1

E-19 = 01-15 Santa Rita

E-5 = 01-24 Bell

07-22 Hill Xihuiyoh

B2

17-05a Little Maize

17-04g Bean Chili

17-04e Bean

01-10 Bean

X-22 Cloud

17-03b Grandfather Earth

F1

01-23 Star (Pleiades)

C8 E-15 = 01-11 Little Maize

17-04d Little Maize

01-04 Little Maize

17-05c Squash

17-05b Bean Chili

10-09b Maize Bean Chili

09-03 Bean Chili

07-04 Hill San Bartolo

04-21 Hill San Bartolo

X-15 Hill La Cueva

11-08c Upper Altar

2

04-12 Santa Rita

F5

7-Pronged Headdress

E-17 = 01-05 Santa Juanita

C7 17-01b Water Dweller

D5 04-01 Earth Over There

X-17 Santa Juanita

B6 07-01 Water Dweller

2

X-3 Water La Laguna

7

04-17b Water Dweller

04-17c Water Dweller

04-17c Water Dweller

3

E-3 = 04-18 Bean

2

E-24 = 06-01 Water Dweller

C4

5-Pronged Headdress

X-19 Santa Rosa Cimarrón

7 6

F3

07-19 Santa Rosa

8

04-15b Key

01-02 Key to San Jerónimo Hill

E3

E-12 Hill

00-01 Man Owl

X-26 Witness

C5

E1 E-10 God–Totiotzin

I

00-06c Cross Wind

E-21 Star 2

E-20 Santa Rosa

00-11 Something Cut Smaller

00-03b Death Wind

B3

E-24 Water Dweller

00-06a Cross Wind

B8

C1 3-Pronged Headdress

H

00-06b Cross Wind

00-06b Cross Wind

B5

X-26 Witness

E-19 Santa Rita 4

07-20 Bean Chili

01-17 Bean

2-Pronged Headdress

G

00-08c Earth Wind

E-16 San Antonio

E-4 = 09-11 Bean Chili

E-3 Bean

09-13 Maize

E-4 Bean Chili

01-17 Bean

01-10 Bean

07-03 Bean Chili

B4

Single-Bar Headdress 10-09b Maize Bean Chili

00-21 Something Cut Smaller

10-10 God–Totiotzin X-19 Santa Rosa Cimarrón 6

X-22 Cloud

00-07a Earth Wind

E-20 Santa Rosa

Single-Knob Headdress

01-10 Bean

00-07b Earth Wind

E-10 God–Totiotzin

B7

E-22 Thunder

E-3 Bean

E-10 = 07-06 God–Totiotzin

E-23 Walking Stick E-13 Key

E-4 Bean Chili

07-04 Hill San Bartolo

00-16 Something Cut Smaller

5

07-08 Walking Stick

F

00-21 Something Cut Smaller

E-18 Santa Panchita X-17 Santa Juanita

X-23 Hill Santa Úrsula

B1

E-20 = 04-23 Santa Rosa

07-24 Water Dweller Aserenoh

01-02 Key to San Jerónimo

04-21 Hill San Bartolo

00-13 Something Cut Smaller

07-15a San Antonio 3

E-13 Key

E-5 Bell

E-23 Walking Stick 01-17 Bean

00-08c Water Wind

E-24 Water Dweller

00-17 Something Cut Smaller

E-6 Cross

(No Headdress) Salutary Entities

11-05 Hill Lindero

E

00-20 Something Cut Smaller

E-22 Thunder E-8 Fire

04-15b Key

00-10 Something Cut Smaller

E-14 Lightning

E-2 = 09-16 Upper Altar

E-18 Santa Panchita

D

04-17a Water Dweller

17-05b Bean Chili

00-08a 00-08b Water Wind Water Wind

04-17a Water Dweller

C

00-14 Something Cut Smaller

09-20 Bean Chili

00-15 Something Cut Smaller

17-01b Water Dweller 07-23 Bell

17-04f Maize

17-05a Little Maize

E-25 Witness

07-08 Walking Stick

E-15 Little Maize

COMPLEMENTARITIES

10-06 Witness

04-15b Key

UNDERWORLD REALM

E-23 = 01-08 Walking Stick

E-13 Key

07-23 Bell

01-02 Key to San Jeronimo

17-05d Maize

11-04b Hill Teyahual

B

E-22 = 12-09 Thunder

X-3 Water La Laguna 17-03b Grandfather Earth

07-24 Water Dweller Aserenoh

09-09 Hill Santa Úrsula

E-14 = 02-01 Lightning

04-17b Water Dweller 3

10-10 God–Totiotzin

17-05c Squash 04-02 Altar 5

01-20b Star (Venus)

Earth

17-02b Grandmother

10-15 Other Earth

Altar Entities

00-05b Bad Wind

00-02 Man Owl Woman

11-04a Hill Teyahual

11-04a Hill Teyahual

07-22 Hill Xihuiyoh

11-04b Hill Teyahual

X-15 Hill La Cueva

07-14 Key

09-23 Hill Guitarra

E-6 = 01-01 Cross

X-20 Hill San Bartolo

E-18 = 07-10 Santa Panchita

09-13 Maize 10-12b Altar

01-20a Star (Venus)

17-05d Maize

(No Headdress) Dangerous Winds

00-19 Something Cut Smaller

09-24 Hill San Gregorio

07-07 Water Dweller Aserenoh

07-04 Hill San Bartolo

E-21 = 01-22 Star (Pleiades)

01-21 Hill La Cueva

Something Cut Smaller

04-21 Hill San Bartolo

00-12

10-17 Hill Chicontepec

00-18 Something Cut Smaller

X-23 Hill Santa Úrsula

Bad Wind

E-12 Hill

00-05a

01-03 Earth of the Altar

Bad Wind

Earth Entities 07-09 Earth Changes

00-03c Dead Little One Wind

Hill Entities

E-7 Earth

00-05b

10 Hill Auxiliary

BODY ICONOGRAPHY

00-04c Corpses Wind

00-03a Death Wind

9 11-08c Upper Altar

00-03b Death Wind

8 E-1 Altar

00-04a CorpsesWind

7 E-2 Upper Altar

00-04b Corpses Wind

6 Seed Entities

5

Water Entities

4

Water Auxiliary

3

Celestial Entities

2

Celestial Aux.

1

Dangerous Winds

HEADRESS ICONOGRAPHY

A M N

SKY–CELESTIAL REALM UNDERWORLD REALM

07-15a San Antonio E-9 Flag

K3

00-01 Man Owl

7-Pronged Solar-Ray Headdress Horned Headdress

13

2

K1 2

M2

M3

2

F4

9

2

4 2

I5

F6

E7

3

K8

M9

Table X.2. The Elements Conjoined. Drawing by Ana Laura Ávila-Myers. From Alan R. Sandstrom and Pamela Effrein Sandstrom, Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain: Nahua Sacred Journeys in Mexico’s Huasteca Veracruzana (Denver: University Press of Colorado, 2022).

N10

The chart arranges the sample’s thirty-­ seven headdress icons in columns labeled A to N, and its sixty-­five body icons in rows labeled 1 to 10. The cells (e.g., B1, B2, C1, etc., whose column-­row designations are in the lower right-­hand corner of the cell) present 135 paper figures that exhibit distinctive headdress-­body combinations to show the range of Cirilo’s design vocabulary (at least for this sample). Cuttings judged to be identical (or nearly so) we assigned to the same cell. Relying on Cirilo’s explanations, we organized the body icons of paper figures of altar, earth, and the sacred hills in rows 1–­3 (shaded gray to join the subdivisions within this broad category of earth-­related entities). The body icons of paper figures associated with the seed crops and water-­related entities appear in rows 5 and 6. Those in row 8 consist of celestial entities such as the cross-­sun and saints. Interspersed in rows 4, 7, and 9 are the embodied spirit entities of key, bell, thunder-­lightning, walking stick, the stars, and witness-­guardians, which we regard as auxiliary to the other categories (and are shaded accordingly to highlight these associations). The dangerous winds of the underworld realm—­the disease-­causing ehecameh—­can be seen in row 10 at the bottom of the chart. The column headings summarize stylistic differences in headdresses, collocating similar-­looking types that we found reasonably easy to classify. The columns range from no headdress at all (columns A and B), to singular, knob-­ like topknots (column C) and flat-topped or bar-like shapes (column D), to headdresses with multiple prongs differentiated by number of elements (columns E–­N). The headdresses are arranged into three broad categories associated with different realms of the cosmos: mictlan, the underworld (columns A and N); apan and tlalli, water and earth combined (columns D–­I); and ilhuicactli, the sky or celestial region (columns J–­M). Inside these subdivisions the icons are ordered from simple (or relatively stylized) to elaborate (and sometimes more naturalistic) forms. Column A groups together the numerous disease-­causing underworld winds that Cirilo portrayed bare-­ headed. Column B presents the salutary spirit entities, also without headdresses, constituting a sort of transitional category that we label “Complementarities.”2 This column is crowded with images and offers clues to how we might begin to decipher the graphic communication system of the paper-­figure complex. The tabular arrangement shows that Cirilo and his colleagues operate within an iconographic system that is spare and efficient. We can appreciate how the practical constraints (namely, the physical and organizational

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challenges of producing thousands upon thousands of the cuttings for a single ritual event) would favor concise, easy-­to-­cut designs. The distinct headdress with the human body at the core is immediately apparent, illustrating how the diversity of the Nahua spirit pantheon is based on the structure of a single, sacred, vivified form identified with the animating power of Totiotzin. Cursory examination of the chart, however, shows that the distribution of these anthropomorphic beings is not uniform. Some zones are crowded with visually similar cuttings, but others are completely vacant.3 Certain spirit entities seemingly unrelated to each other are seen to cluster together (like the images of altar and fire in cell B1). Others that are connected by name and appearance stand apart, in apparent opposition, like Venus and the Pleiades constellation in cells B9 and L9. Despite being a limited sample of the repertoire of one master paper cutter, the assembly of Cirilo’s ritual paper figures helps to visualize the Nahua cosmos as the social collectivity it is. In our census of the population of spirit entities we can see how the identities, number, and iconography of the figures taken as a whole illuminate their relationships and roles within the sacred unity. The surprise for us has been not that are there so many different entities but that so many iterations of them must be produced, even for the simplest ritual. The entire assembly is called for, even if the scale of the undertaking is seemingly moderate. The ritual specialists differentiate among the diversity of beings in their spirit pantheon, but never select out merely some portion of the inventory to achieve desired ends. Such an assembly is organized for social action, like the social organization of human society with its specialized roles and bonds of kinship. The overall impression of the chart might suggest that Nahua religion is polytheistic and its organizing principle is ontological dualism. However, this network of paired complementarities instead offers evidence of pantheism based on ontological monism, or unity of being. As we have discussed, it is important not to confuse Mesoamerican duality and dual-­aspect monism with the tendency of Western metaphysics to distinguish between appearance and reality, representation and the thing presented, or symbol and that which is symbolized. To point out the relationships among these entities we initially thought of drawing lines as in the ancient codices, where a cord tethers a glyph to its identifying icon. However, the chart soon became tangled so we have marked only a selection of such connectors and leave it to readers to trace for themselves the many links that can be discerned, especially within horizontal rows. Where identical-­looking

images are concentrated with others bearing the same name, they are enclosed within a cartouche shape accompanied by a number that indicates how many petates there are in the total collection of that particular spirit entity. The images not so encircled constitute a single petate or present a singular example (either the large dressed figures or one of Cirilo’s earlier cuttings). Recall that the images labeled E-1 to E-25 are the exemplar types previously illustrated and listed in table 6.2. For example, cell B1 contains six paper images named “altar,” “upper altar,” and “fire.” The first, labeled “E-1 = 06-­03 Altar,” indicates that it is the exemplar figure E-1. (And table 6.2 confirms that E-1 is paper figure 06-­03, which forms part of Altar Set 06 deployed in Amatlán.) The designation “13” inside the cartouche indicates that the collection has a total of thirteen petates holding cuttings of figures with the same name and similar iconography. Ideally, each of these paper beds holds a total of twenty pairs of identical cuttings folded together and arranged in two overlapping rows. But as we have taken care to point out, the paper cutters sometimes combine figures of more than one design or even spirit entity on the same petate, so an astute reader may notice slight discrepancies between the total number of spirit entities organized by name in table 6.2 and the tallies in table X.2, which differentiate among entities based on their headdress-­ body configurations. The layout makes it apparent just where, and in what density, different classes of spirit entities are concentrated and where idiosyncratic types stand apart. Important figures appear multiple times throughout the pilgrimage, so altar’s appearance on thirteen petates is significant. The cuttings of cross are more numerous yet, occupying sixteen petates in the collection (cell B8). An even larger number of petates were identified by Cirilo simply as earth, with its nine V-cuts in the body revealing the landscape of sacred hills. Images of the earth total eighteen petates if we combine the cuttings that bear a seven-­pronged headdress design and those distinguished by nine prongs (cells H2 and I2). The concentrations that next stand out in the center of the chart include nine petates of bean chili sporting a flat, bar-­like headdress (cell D5). Next in overall frequency and rounding out the water-­related entities in row 7 are eight petates of thunder and seven of walking stick (cell C7). Additional clusters of spirit entities include seven petates of apanchaneh, the water dweller (cell F6), with its characteristic three-­pronged headdress, a design also shared by clusters of seed figures above it (cell F5). Row 8 presents celestial entities, including Santa Rosa (cell G8) and Santa Juanita (cell J8), which each occupy six

petates. Further iterations of spirit entities congregated on five, four, or fewer petates can be observed across the chart. Here, then, we have visual affirmation of the most important spirit entities cut for the pilgrimage: earth, cross, altar, bean chili (among the seeds), thunder, water dweller, walking stick, Santa Rosa, and Santa Juanita. In addition to the uniformity observed among these clusters of spirit entities, it seems that variability of design is also a hallmark of the paper-­figure complex. Of fundamental importance to this system of graphic communication is the diversity of cuts folded open in every conceivable pattern. Visible across rows 1–­3 are the many simple arrangements of two, three, four, five, six, eight, and nine V-cuts characteristic of altar, earth, and hill entities. It is interesting that the numerous cuttings of particular named hills and mountains are among the most individualistic designs. This characteristic may be the visual analog of the extreme specificity and locality noted in the ritual specialists’ chants, in which they itemize the inventory of sacred prominences repeatedly. The bodies and headdress designs of the seed figures in row 5 are cut to distinguish the species and growth stages of the plantings. The paper cutters, for example, differentiate among bean, chili, maize, and squash through elaborate patterns of side cuts and body perforations, and they sometimes use color to denote the varietal types embodied in the large paper figures that are dressed and bundled together. Where cuttings of the seeds share water dweller’s characteristic three-­pronged headdress (cell F5), multiple concentrations of bean and bean chili (along with large cuttings of both, plus squash) are visible, along with a petate containing a unique figure that melds the iconography of maize, bean, and chili. Flanking the center, the paper seeds have headdresses of both simpler and more complex designs. To the left, a single petate of cintli, or maize in its mature state (cell D5), shares with clusters of bean or bean chili the same, single-­bar headdress design. The motif likely indicates mature crops in the field, ready to harvest. To the right, the multi-­pronged headdresses of pilcintzin, or little maize (cells G5, H5, and I5), show the crop in its young, vigorous stage of development. The vegetative growth emerging from the figure’s head show it to be an earth-­related entity. Recall also the unusual nonanthropomorphic image of pilcintzin (paper figure X-27, in table X.1), whose lush greenery reinforces this reading of the iconography. The combination of iconic elements reveals not only the phases of growth and diversity of plantings, but also demonstrates that these distinctions arise from the single substance of Totiotzin.

A Coda on Monism, Pantheism, and the Infinity of Images  :  411

The frequency of water icons in the paper figures also reinforces the way that water connects the different realms of the cosmos just as it does in the natural world. The water-­related spirit entities in rows 6 and 7 display a compact and concise system of iconography. Water’s crucial role is conveyed by the design of water dweller’s three-­pronged headdress (cell F6), mirrored in the similarly shaped zigzag patterns cut within the body. Many cuttings have this design element associating them with water, particularly the hill spirits in row 3. Water is also the central element in many of the celestial entities that span the breadth of the cosmos. Several figures visible in row 8 illustrate how the motif itself is fluid (with two, three, or even four inverted Vs), ranging from the simple zigzags in the body designs of Santa Juanita (cell J8), Santa Panchita (cell B8), and God-­Totiotzin (cell B8), to an elaborated version of the motif in another version of God-­Totiotzin (cell G8). These paper figures are the ones the ritual specialist called “saints” and averred are “not the hills.” The category includes Santa Rosa and Santa Juanita (cell J8) and San Antonio (cell K8), and in portraying these entities Cirilo combined iconographic components into distinctive designs that express the role these figures play as mediators between human beings and Totiotzin. The iconography yields images that are at once earthly and otherworldly. Their foliated crosses, flower buds, and other vegetal designs (elaborations of water paired with solar motifs) indicate their ordering, generative powers. The cuts in several variant designs of these saints reveal celestial bodies (a motif that is fully developed in the paper figures of constellations in row 9). The cruciform body design of cross (cell B8, in row 8) establishes the universal importance of this cross-­sun entity as the source of heat and light that powers a living cosmos. We have so far identified the categories of salutary spirit entities organized in horizontal rows linked by body iconography. Viewing the collection in tabular form makes it apparent that similar headdresses link certain spirit entities along the vertical dimension as well. We do not have ethnographic information to explain some of these ties but hope that pointing them out may help direct future study. The cuttings called “earth over there” (cells F1, H1, and I1) have four V-cuts in the body identical to that of altar, but they form a series distinguished only by their three-­, seven-­, and nine-­pronged headdresses. Reading down the columns, we can see this device links them to the seven-­and nine-­pronged headdresses of the generalized earth (cells H2 and I2). Earth, in turn, is linked to several named hills (cells G3 and H3), to pilcintzin

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or maize in its youthful incarnation (cells G5, H5, and I5), and to Santa Rosa in her customary and “wild, untamed” guises (cells G8 and H8). All of these figures feature headdresses of five or seven elements by which the ritual specialist clearly indicates important qualitative differences among aspects of the spirit entities. The single example we include of the large witness figure (cell I9) is an outlier by virtue of its pair of pockets resembling church windows (discussed previously), but its nine-­pronged headdress and larger size makes it the match of the dressed figures of little maize (cell I5) and grandmother earth (in cell I2). We can also discern that figures of flag (cells L2 and M2) form a series, like earth, with their five-­and seven-­pronged headdresses conveying rays of solar energy. While their earth body design places them in the far corner of the chart, it is the headdress that connects them to the cluster of sacred hills (cell M3) as well as the Pleiades constellation (cell M9). Flag is an entity with sacred landscape associations, as we have explained, and the shared iconography draws attention to this earthly-­celestial bond. Likewise, the series of good winds (cells J1 and K1) relate to saints Rita, Juanita, and Antonio (cells J8 and K8) by virtue of their headdresses of foliated crosses and solar disks. A close inspection reveals many similar matches across the tabular structure (although, again, we have not drawn lines among them all). The grid view shows that the designs of bodies tend to unite the cut-­paper figures across domains, while headdresses differentiate among types within domains. The dangerous winds emanating from the underworld in row 10 illustrate additional cross-­domain linkages, particularly the colorful cuttings called tlacotontli (“something cut smaller”). These spirit entities occupy nearly all the cells of the horizontal band, where their headdress iconography aligns them unambiguously with other disease-­ causing winds associated with water (cell F10), earth (cell I10), and cross (cell J10). The system’s inherent complementarity is revealed by the number of dangerous winds lacking headdresses.4 These embodiments of death (in cell A10) find their matches elsewhere in the underworld: the bareheaded man owl woman is matched to her consort, the horned image of man owl (cell N10), for instance. But Cirilo emphasized that the malignant, misfortune-­ spreading entities with names like cross wind, corpses wind, or death wind prefer to travel about in pairs or in threesomes. Why and how these agents are so social and coordinate their activities is something requiring further investigation. We know that in cleansing-­curing rituals six distinct types of disease-­causing winds are placed on

the four petates lying at the center of ritual action in neatly aligned units of twelve (as shown in figure 6.2). They are produced in six sets of four identical paired figures cut from white paper, and another six sets cut from colored paper, as illustrated in the chart (cells A10, F10, I10, and J10). The ritual specialist arranges the larger wind figures cut from white paper directly on the ground, flanking the figures of tlacatecolotl and tlacatecolotl cihuatl. The layout of these dangerous forces presents an impressive display that contrasts with the multitudes of salutary spirit entities in units of twenty presented on petates placed atop and beneath raised altars. These arrangements may point out subtle differences in what is essentially a uniform strategy through which the ritual specialist attempts to redress imbalance in the ordering of the cosmos. We can observe, for instance, that water wind is opposite water dweller in the chart (cells F10 and F6), and earth wind lies opposite earth (cells I10 and I2). These spirit entities span the underworld and water-­earth realms of the layered cosmos. However, the position of cross wind presents a paradox in the celestial realm. In the logic of this semasiographic system, cross wind should be the match of the bareheaded salutary cross (cell B8). However, because they have similar cross-­shaped headdresses and thus occupy the same column (cells J1 and J10), we have to consider that it is good wind, not cross, that is the agonistic partner of cross wind. We think it is probable that both connections are correct and that they form a triad of opposing forces. In effect, the naming conventions coupled with the iconographic clues reveal an otherwise hidden connection between cross and good wind, pointing out three two-­way struggles among the powerful cross-­sun spirit entity and the beneficial and harmful winds. This complex relationship, affirmed graphically, underscores the dynamism, flexibility, and nonhierarchic ordering of Nahua monistic thought. A glance at the underworld characters reveals pronounced rib holes and facial features composed of open, diamond-­shaped cuts, giving them a lifeless appearance. They lack the manipulatable paper flaps, a notable feature of the upper-­world’s pantheon of spirit entities, whose patterns of V-cuts, folded open, give them the appearance of alertness and even three-­dimensionality. In stark contrast to these underworld figures and harbingers of death, the many hills and mountains punctuating the earth’s surface are shown to be part of the universe of living creatures. The underworld winds may be animated, but they lack the attributes of engaged living beings. These design conventions challenge us to consider how such

disordering forces pair with the assembly of spirit entities in their more salutary aspects. In some cases the headdresses may indicate gender of a spirit entity. We see this convention in the figures of man owl–­man owl woman, grandfather earth–­grandmother earth (cells B2 and I2), and the male-­female sireno-­sirena dyad (cells B6 and F6). This contrastive device seems to mark other distinctions as well. Looking across rows, we can see numerous pairs of cuttings distinguished by nothing other than the presence or absence of headgear—­for example, multiple variants of upper altar (cells B1 and F1) and the cuttings of Santa Úrsula hill (cells B3 and F3), key (cells B4 and C4), or bell (cells B4 and F4). The clothed images of bareheaded mature maize (cell B5) is the match of maize with the knob-­like headdress (cell C5), but that pair is matched also by figures of little maize (cells G5 and I5). Where Cirilo portrays other earth without a headdress (cell B2), in contrast to earth with its customary rake-­like headdresses (cells H2 and I2), we must suspect that the iconic marker reveals one entity to be inamic to the other—­polarities of some sort, akin to gender binaries. The enigmatic names Cirilo gave to cuttings he called “earth changes” (cell I2) and “earth of the altar” (cell K2) suggest that paper cutters sometimes employ wholly novel designs by pairing an uncommon headdress with an uncommon body icon as a means to reveal the many transformational aspects of the fertile earth. Only after scrutinizing the chart one final time did we realize that the cluster of Santa Rosa cuttings (cell H8) exhibit the identical body iconography as this unique “earth changes” entity, which should have placed them together (by our method of classifying body types) on the same horizontal row alongside other earth or celestial entities. Our connector links them design-­wise across the realms, but their actual associations remain to be explained through further ethnographic study. Certain matched pairs are actually obscured by the naming conventions but revealed iconographically. Row 1 contains many cuttings of the altar image in its various aspects, along with similar-­looking earth and hill images with the same body designs. Here we see one variant image of altar with six body V-cuts (cell B1) matched by Estéban hill (cell E1) and another with the intriguing name “earth over there” (cell H1). Similarly, another atypical instance of upper altar (cell B1) exhibits the typical arrangement of three V-cuts plus an unusual fourth cut in the lower body, which makes it the match of Lindero hill (cell C1). It also resembles the cutting of God-­Totiotzin (cell B8), placed in row 8 because of its distinctive

A Coda on Monism, Pantheism, and the Infinity of Images  :  413

water-­related icon in place of the V-cut as its heart. All three cuttings, however, share the same pattern of three lower V-cuts. As we surmised earlier, the device might be a makeshift pocket in a woman’s traditional garb and thus a marker of gender, but the nature of the relationship among these entities remains unclear. Additional cuttings created with five V-cuts in the body include one of altar (cell B1), which is mirrored in the iconography of good wind (cell J1) and Jonotál hill (cell K1), two seemingly unrelated spirit entities that share the quincunx pattern. The same body icon can be spotted in a nonstandard portrayal of walking stick (cell C1), but Cirilo confirmed that this particular configuration was produced in error by an assistant. We take the admission as proof of just how closely he sought to control the iconography of these creations. Interpreting the relationships among complementary pairings is a problem that must be resolved through further ethnographic research on the paper cutters’ intentions as well as how the figures are used in rituals. We regret never being able to find out, for example, how Cirilo’s images of altar and fire (cell B1) might be connected conceptually, with their shared iconography of four V-cuts and lack of headdress. The evolution of a particular ritual specialist’s understanding and craft is highly variable, we realize, and not easily reduced to a system of general rules. The inherent dynamism of the cosmos and constantly shifting balance among agonistic forces being addressed by ritual practitioners may indeed explain the flexibility of the apparent connections among spirit entities. The iconography of these figures is often multivalent. Why the inventory of diminutive tlacotontli cuttings depicted by Cirilo lack personal names remains a mystery, even as they share the headdress designs of other dangerous and salutary entities. That they span the full range of design variations affirms their ubiquity in the environment and the universal threat they pose to people. We can say for certain that the Nahua naming conventions coupled with their modular design principles are an effective mechanism by which el costumbre practitioners both distinguish and draw connections among the profusion of spirit entities. As noted, the most individualistic images within the pantheon of spirit entities are those of the hills, nearly all of which present some unique headdress-­body pairing and whose identities interlink rows 1 and 3. Similarly, the spirit entity providing access to the sacred hills and Totiotzin that Cirilo identified as the key (row 4) features numerous, small stylistic variations in much the same way that actual keys vary ever so slightly. Among

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the spirit entities classified as auxiliary to water in row 7, the shapes cut within or alongside the body of lightning, thunder, and walking stick exhibit relatively little differentiation. They share a straightforward design that clearly associates them with one another through recognizable lightning flashes, thunderbolts, and the beribboned head of the ceremonial staff carried by the rain dwarfs. It is certainly plausible that lightning (lacking a headdress) finds its partner or inamic in thunder (with its range of hammer-­like headdress designs), but its body-­cut designs also make it the match of key and walking stick. All of these figures are closely associated with rain. We also notice that the dressed image of maize cut from red paper (embodying that variety) has a headdress resembling that of walking stick, which raises the question of whether the preeminent crop and this staff of authority share some sort of direct association. The standout in row 7 is the image of cloud (cell E7), which Cirilo cut for the 1998 Postectli pilgrimage. Its double-­ pronged headdress and unusual plain body embellished with musculature is mirrored in the design of San Bartolo hill (cell E3), cut in 2007. Both share the basic body form but it is the distinctive bifurcate headdress that associates this particular hill with clouds, the all-­important harbingers of rain. Such instances of congruity and contrast are common. We have one final observation to offer: the two petates of witness figures (tlamocuitlahuihquetl) in the collection (cells C1 and C8) are an obvious matched pair in that they share identical names and headdresses, and both are part of the major offering on Postectli just below the summit. In his organization of the sample collection Cirilo intended one to be placed on the altar top and the other on the earth beneath the altar (even though their headdress design also allow the cutouts to be strung on a cord, as we previously described). The witness figure in row 1 exhibits the identical triangular body design of upper altar (cell B1), and their headdress–­no headdress composition makes them plausible matches. The witness in row 8 has the same triangular arrangement of body cuts, but its central zigzag water motif aligns it with the celestial entities and makes it Santa Panchita’s (cell B8) presumed inamic. It is their opposition to the adjacent entities and their shared role as witness-­guardians over the ritual proceedings that reinforces our understanding of agonistic relationships as more complex than the binary dualities or three-­way paired oppositions that may be easier to decipher. The property of twoness and symmetry has been well documented in Mesoamerican art and ritual, and it

may very well unfold as series of multiple pairings in a dual-­aspect monistic system. The ephemeral paper creations of el costumbre religion tell a significant part of the story of how the Nahua cosmos works and how its parts articulate. These pictographs cut from paper (and not merely drawn upon it) pack a great deal of the content of Nahua Oral Tradition into a compact vehicle. Much of the imagery is based on close empirical observations of nature. As we hope we have made clear throughout the book, it is a mistake to

Notes 1. The headdress and body icons are derived from the full 2007 Postectli sample collection and from eight of Cirilo’s earlier paper cuttings (paper figures X-3, X-15, X-17, X-19, X-20, X-22, X-23, and X-26, illustrated in table X.1). 2. Following Maffie’s discussion of “complementary polarities” and “polar opposites” (2014: 12–­13, 137–­38, 143–­48). 3. This lack of uniformity (and insufficiency in the supply of corporeal forms) is one conclusion of the Sonata ritual research team reported in chapter 2; see Trejo Barrientos et al. (2014). 4. Again, the nature of such duality is best understood as agonism or polarity (i.e., “agonistic inamic unity”), as Maffie (2014: 137–­83) develops the argument.

define these iconographic devices as symbolic or representational. Instead, we must recognize that our own, often-­unconscious dualistic assumptions easily distort their meaning. The economy of artistic expression in the contemporary paper-­figure complex demonstrates sacred truths that underpin the beliefs and religious practices of the Huastecan Nahua and their neighbors. The graphic communication system of el costumbre offers us another angle from which to engage the remarkable sweep of the Mesoamerican world view across time and space.5

5. As we completed our study, Gordon Whittaker published his lavishly illustrated Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphics: A Guide to Nahuatl Writing (2021). The work interprets the ancient Aztec graphic communication system and distinguishes among its three subsystems of iconography, writing, and notation. The present analysis of contemporary Indigenous Mesoamerican religion offers a challenge to a new generation of scholars to find fruitful avenues for research collaborations that span these parallel universes.

A Coda on Monism, Pantheism, and the Infinity of Images  :  415

Nahuatl Glossary and Terminology Note on Translation and Orthography For the benefit of nonspecialist readers we offer a selective glossary of Nahuatl vocabulary pertaining to religious pilgrimage, with spellings and definitions based on authoritative ethnographic sources and reference works. We have chosen to adopt the orthography for spoken Huastecan Nahuatl only recently standardized in the monolingual dictionary Tlahtolxitlauhcayotl: Chicontepec, Veracruz, published in 2016 through the auspices of the Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ) and compiled (in coordination with intensive language revitalization efforts) by John Sullivan and eight Indigenous coauthors, Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz, Abelardo de la Cruz de la Cruz, Delfina de  la  Cruz de  la  Cruz, Victoriano de  la  Cruz Cruz, Sabina Cruz de  la  Cruz, Ofelia Cruz Morales, Catalina Cruz de  la  Cruz, and Manuel de  la  Cruz Cruz. Where applicable, we also reference the glosses in An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (1983) compiled by Frances Karttunen, based on attestations in the Classical Nahuatl sources. We have taken pains to point out variant spellings that we have used in previous publications; compare notes on that orthographic system in Sandstrom (1991: xxv). Departing from past practice, for example, we now use double ll instead of single l (in words such as cualli, tlalli, or xochicalli) and substitute z in place of s in some words (as in eztli, tlazolli, chicahualiztli). We are abandoning the convention of Richard Beller and Patricia Beller (1984–­85) for marking the Huastecan Nahuatl glottal stop (or aspiration) with the letter j and now use h instead (as in apanchanej, now apanchaneh), following the IDIEZ system. As a concession to generalist readers we choose not to mark long vowels (with a few exceptions, for homonyms that might be confusing, e.g., mētztli, “moon”), a decision that may concern linguists; however, the glossary provides authoritative spellings from sources that employ the macron (ā, ē, ī, ō) to indicate vowel length. For readers who would like to hear Nahuatl words pronounced, many examples of morphemes parsed by the IDIEZ team can be played using the audio tool built into the freely accessible Online Nahuatl Dictionary, available at https://​nahuatl​.wired​-humanities​.org/. This invaluable resource, edited by Stephanie Wood, is continuously updated by contributors to the University of Oregon’s Wired Humanities Project. We consulted it for each entry, finding that helpful English translations are continuously being added for contemporary Huastecan Nahuatl terms, augmenting the printed edition of the monolingual IDIEZ dictionary. We are especially indebted to Abelardo de la Cruz, Alberta Martínez Cruz, Brisa Sánchez Zavala, and Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz for helping to confirm the morphology and contemporary regional

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usage of this study’s specialized vocabulary. For spellings of English words (and words that have come into English and no longer are italicized) we rely on the Merriam-­Webster Unabridged website at http://​unabridged​.merriam​-webster​ .com/. For example, the entry “chili” confirms the preferred American English spelling of the Spanish word chile, derived from the Nahuatl chilli.

Sources for Glosses of Nahuatl Words References in the glossary (marked by a letter in parentheses) are keyed to major dictionaries or to the language experts we consulted with personally; the published sources (marked by a letter-­date combination) are listed chronologically, cited in full in the references, as follows: A

Abelardo de la Cruz, Nahuatl speaker and IDIEZ dictionary coauthor

A 2017

Cruz, Abelardo de la (2017)

B 1984–­85

Beller, Ricardo, and Patricia Cowan de Beller (1984–­85)

B 1998

Báez-­Jorge, Félix, and Arturo Gómez Martínez (1998)

B 2000

Báez-­Jorge, Félix, and Arturo Gómez Martínez (2000)

C 1982

Cruz Hernández, Juan de la (1982)

E

Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz, Nahuatl speaker and IDIEZ dictionary coauthor; director, Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas

G

Arturo Gómez Martínez, Nahuatl speaker and INAH staff member (Subdirección de Etnografía, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Ciudad de México)

G 2002

Gómez Martínez, Arturo (2002)

H 1982

Hernández Cuellar, Rosendo (1982)

I

IDIEZ dictionary; see John Sullivan et al. (2016)

K

Karttunen, Frances (1983)

M

Molina, Alonso de (1944 [1571])

M 2000

Martínez de la Cruz, Rafael (2000)

N 2009

Nava Vite, Rafael (2009)

S 1986

Sandstrom, Alan R., and Pamela Effrein Sandstrom (1986)

S 1991

Sandstrom, Alan R. (1991)

S 2003

Sandstrom, Alan R. (2003)

S 2004

Sandstrom, Alan R., and Arturo Gómez Martínez (2004)

T 2014

Trejo Barrientos, Leopoldo, et al. (2014)

Nahuatl Terms Used in the Pilgrimage Study amatl (B 1985; S 1991: 271), āmatl (I; K): paper made from the paper fig or mulberry tree (family Ficus, genus Moraceae; in Spanish, amate) or the tree itself.

418  : Nahuatl Glossary and Terminology

amatlatectli, also āmatlatehtectli (I), teoamatlatectli (G 2002: 75), “sacred paper cutting”: ritual paper cutting; see also tlatectli. antihuatl (plural, antihuameh), (S 1991: 247), from the Spanish antigua (antiguas): ancient one or ancient ones, referring to the ancestors; see also huahcapatlahtolli. apan (S 1991: 238), also āpān (I), from ātl, “water” (I; K) + -­pan (K), “on the surface of the water,” “where water issues from a spring”: the water realm, referring to bodies of water and sources such as rivers, springs, or wells. apanchaneh, sometimes styled Apanchaneh, also apan­ chanej (S 1991: 250; S 2003: 59), āpānchaneh (I), from āpān + chāneh, combining chāntli + eh, “head of a household”: water dweller, the spirit entity who lives in still or flowing water. apanquixtianoh, from the Nahuatl āpān, “water realm” + Spanish cristiano, understood locally to mean “lord, human being, or being”: water being. aserenah / aserenoh, from the Nahuatl ātl, “water” + Spanish la sirena / el sireno, “siren” (female and male aspects): water siren. atl (B 1985), also ātl (I; K): water. atlatlacualtiliztli (B 2000: 89; G 2002: 108; A 2017: 270; E), also atlatlakualtilistli (N 2009: 153), “feeding the water,” from the verbs tlacualtiā (K), tlatlacualtiā (I), “to feed someone,” combining ātl, “water” (I; K) + tlacuāliztli (I), “something edible,” also tlātlacuāliztli (K), “feast”: ritual offering to petition rain; see also tlamanaliztli. axtlatlepanitta, a verb construction meaning “[he, she, it] does not respect something or someone” (A): lack of respect, disrespect; see also tlatlepanittaliztli. campeca (A 2017: 270): ritual, ceremony. caruz, from the Spanish cruz, “cross.” cemanahuac tlaltentli, also semanahuac tlaltentle (S 1991: 240), semanahuac tlaltentli (G 2002: 61), from cemanāhuatl (K), “the world,” combining (A) cem, “complete” + ā-, “water” + nāhuac, “adjacent to” (K) + tlālli (I; K), “earth” + tēntli (I; K), “edge”: everything in the world, signifying the sacred cosmos. chicahualiztli, also chicahualistli (S 1991: 258; S 2003: 57), chicāhualiztli (I; K), chikawalistli (T 2014: 83): strength, power, energy, life force, vigor. chicomexochitl, sometimes styled Chicomexochitl (S 1991: 245; G 2002: 62; S 2003: 58), also chicōmexōchitl (I), chi­ komexochitl (T 2014: 96), “seven flower”: a male aspect of the maize spirit; see also macuilli xochitl, pilcintzin. chilli, also chīlli (I; K): chili pepper (in Spanish, chile). cihuatl (plural, cihuameh), also sihuatl (B 1985; S 1991: 266), siuatl (S 1986: 88), cihuātl (plural, cihuāmeh) (I; K): woman (or if possessive form, wife). cintli (I; K), also sintli (S 1991: 122): dried ears of mature maize; see also chicomexochitl, pilcintzin. citlalin (plural, citlalimeh), also sitlalij (plural, sitlali­ mej) (S 1991: 248; S 2003: 58), cītlalin (I; K), cītlalimeh

(I), but rarely pluralized, as in chicome citlalin, “seven star”: a general term for star; specifically, the Pleiades constellation (in Spanish, estrellas cabrillas, Pléyades). comalli, also comali (B 1985; S 2003: 58), comālli (I; K): clay tortilla griddle. copalmihtotihquetl, also copalmijtotijquetl (S 1991: 283), from copalli (I; K) “copal incense” + mihtōtihquētl (I), “dancer”: one who dances with copal incense (in Spanish, copalera). costumbre (usually el costumbre) (S 1986: 63; S 1991: 215; A 2017), also coztumbreh (I): Nahua religion, ritual practices; see also tlaneltoquilli. coyolcitlalin: star adornment made from coyol palm leaves and flowers. coyolxochitl (G 2002: 134n23), also coyolij (S 1986: 37; S 1991: 281), from coyolli (plural, coyolmeh) (I): altar adornment made from coyol palm leaves and flowers. cuatlapechtli (I): platform made of wooden sticks or bamboo poles, serving as an altar; see also tlapechtli. ehecahuil, literally, “wind-­shade,” from ēcahuīlli (I), “shade underneath a tree,” ecahuīlli (K), “shadow, shade,” also iecahuil (A), “one’s shade,” in the sense of “soul,” or ecahuil­ tzin, combining “shade” + -­tzin, honorific ending: refuge. ehecatl (plural, ehecameh), also ejecatl (ejecame, ejecamej) (S 1986: 81–­100; S 1991: 252–­57, 269–­74, 302, 304; G 2002: 90), ehēcatl (ehēcameh) (I; K): wind; see also tlazolli ehecatl, xochiehecatl. elotl (S 1991: 124), also ēlōtl (I; K): young, tender, and sweet ear of maize (in Spanish, elote). etl, also ētl (I; K): bean. eztli (I; K), also estli (B 1985; S 1991: 247): blood. huahcapatlahtolli (A; E; G), “ancient discourse,” “ancestral words or advice”: myth. ilhuicactli (S 1991: 247; S 2003: 58), also elhuicatl (I), ilhuicatl (K): celestial realm, sky, heavens. macehualli (plural, macehualmeh), also masehualmej (S 1991: 68): Indigenous person. macuilli xochitl (sometimes styled Macuilli Xochitl), also macuili xochitl (S 1991: 245), macuilixochitl (G 2002: 62; T 2014: 96), from mācuīlli (I; K) + xōchitl (I; K) “five flower”: a female aspect of the maize spirit; see also chicomexochitl, pilcintzin. malhuilli (A 2017: 217), also malhuīlli (I; K): something sacred, hallowed, and protected that should be cared for with respect. mecaxochitl (G 2002: 134n22), from mecatl (I; K) + xōchitl (I; K), “flowered vine”: a marigold-­skewered vine used as a ritual implement connecting altars; see also xochicoztli. mezah (plural, mezaz) (A), from the Spanish mesa, “table, altar”: altar offering, connoting both the altar table and the sacralized ritual offerings laid upon it; see also tlaixpamitl. mētztli (B 1985; I; K), also metstli, metsli (S 1986: 75; S 1991: 248), meetztli (G 2002: 82): moon. miccatzitzin, also mijcatsitsij (S 1991: 271), miccātzin (I),

from micca-­(K), pertaining to death or dying, derived from the noun micqui (K), from the verb miqui-­(I; K), “to die”: corpse, dead person. mictlan (S 2003: 58) or mictlāntli (K), from the verb miqui (I; K), “to die” + -­tlān, locative ending, “place of the dead”: the underworld realm. miquiliztli, also miquilistli (B 1985; S 1991: 251, 254, 268), mikiliztli (G 2002: 91), from the verb miqui (I; K), “to die” + -­liztli, noun ending: death. mixtli (S 2003: 66): cloud. nehnemiliztli (G; I; K), also nehnemitiliztli (E), “the act of walking about, travel”: pilgrimage. nehnenquetl (A), “one who walked”; compare nehnenqui, “walker, foot traveler, pilgrim, one who comes to a fiesta from a distance” (K); from the verb nehnemi, “to walk” (I), “to wander, to go about” (K) + -­quetl, noun ending: pilgrim, a person on pilgrimage. nepantlah (K), “in the middle of something,” also nepāntlah (I), “the border areas of a plot of land”: between, in the middle, the earth realm. ochpantli (S 1986: 106; S 1991: 302), also tlaochpantli (T 2014: 85), from the verbs ochpāniliā (I), ochpāna (I; K), “to sweep something,” also ochpantli (M), “road,” suggesting a road swept clean; see ichpāna (in K): sweeping, referring to a cleansing-­curing ritual (in Spanish, barrida or limpia). pahchiuhquetl, also pajchijquetl (S 1991: 233), pajchijketl (H 1982: 116), from the verb pahchīhuiā (K), “to avail oneself of something as medicine,” combining pahtli, “medicine” + chīhua, “to do” + -­quetl, noun ending: medicine person, curer. petlaquimilli, also petlakimilli (G 2002: 73; T 2014: 90–­91): bundle of sacred paper figures wrapped (for carrying) in a woven palm sleeping mat; see also tlaquimilolli. petlatl (plural, petlameh) (B 1985; I; K): woven palm sleeping mat or bed, referring to a paper bed typically holding twenty cut-paper figures (in Spanish, petate); see also tlapechtli. pilhuehuentzitzin, also pilhuehuentzin, pilhuehuen­ tsitsij (S 1991: 246; S 2003: 58), “honored little old ones”: rain dwarfs, referring collectively to thunder and lightning spirit entities. pilcintzin, also pilsintsij (S 1991: 245), “beloved little maize”: little maize, referring to the young maize plant and tender, sweet ear of maize (in Spanish, maizito); see also chicomexochitl, cintli, elotl. tecamac, also tecamaehecayoh, from tetl (I; K), “rock” + camac, “mouth” (I) or “abundance of” (K) + ehēcayoh (I; K), “full of wind”; also tecamayoli, from tecamac + yōli (I; K) “to live, to come alive”; tecamanotzal, from tecamac + nōtza (I; K) “to call or summon someone, to talk to someone”: gossip or envious talk. teocuahuitl (S 2003: 63): sacred wood, used in the construction of the tropical cedar box that preserves the dressed seed figures. teotl, also teōtl (K), tiōtl (I; K): God/god, a deity, the divinity; see also Totiotzin.

Nahuatl Glossary and Terminology  :  419

teotlacoyoctli (G), also tlacoyoctli (I; K): sacred hole, referring to a cavity or cave where a ritual offering is made. tepetl (plural, tepemeh), also tepētl (tepēmeh) (I; K): hill or mountain. tepexinolah (plural, tepexinolaz), from the Nahuatl tepetl, “hill” + Spanish señora, “lady”: mountain lady. tepexitzintlan (A; G), from tepexitl (I), also tepehxitl (K), “precipice, large rock, cliff, ravine” + tzīntlan (I; K), “beneath”: beneath the precipice, referring to the site of the first ritual offerings on the sacred mountain Postectli. tezcatl, also tescatl (S 1991: 235), tēzcatl (I; K): mirror or glass. tezcatepetl: mirror-­mountain, connoting sacred mountain. tlacatecolotl (S 1991: 251, 266), also tlācatecolōtl (I; K): man owl. tlacatecolotl cihuatl (S 1991: 266), tlācatecolōtl + cihuātl (I; K): man owl woman. tlacatl (plural, tlacameh), also tlācatl (tlācameh) (I; K): man, a person. tlachixquetl (S 1991: 233), also tlachixketl (G 2002: 98–­102), tlachīxquētl (I) “healer, shaman,” from tlachīx (A), past tense of tlachīya (I), “to see something” + -­quetl, noun ending: diviner, seer. tlachixcahuilli (G 2002: 99; illustrated in S 1991: 237, fig. 6.1), from tlachīxca, “one’s vision” (A): maize-­kernel divination. tlacopalhuiā (E), also tlacopaluiya (C 1982: 87), from the verbs copalhuiā, copalhuiliā (I): to cense something with copal incense. tlacotontli (M), also tlacotōntli (I): something cut smaller, referring to the diminutive four-­figure paper cuttings created for cleansing-­curing rituals; alternately, a type of preventive ritual or ritual episode. tlacualtiliztli, also tlacuāltiliztli (I), tlatlacualtiliztli (M 2000: 35–­36), tlatlakualtia (T 2014: 81), “the act of feeding someone or a spirit entity,” from the verbs tlacualtiā (K), “to feed someone,” tlatlacualtiā (I), “to make an offering of food”: ritual offering; see also atlatlacualtiliztli, tlamanaliztli, tlatzicuintli. tlahcopoztectli (A), also tlacopostectli (G), from tlahco (I; K), “middle, center, half”: middle of Postectli, referring to site of ritual offerings just below the summit of the sacred mountain. tlahueliloc (S 1991: 251,267), also tlahuēlīlōc (I; K), “someone malicious,” combining tlahuēlli, “rage, fury, indignation” + -­lō, passive voice + -­c, past tense (A), “someone who rages or who is furious and wrathful”: wrathful one, wrath, anger. tlaixpamitl (S 2003: 52), also tlaīxpāmitl (I), tlaīxpān [I], “altar,” tlaīxpan [K], “before, in front of,” from īxtli (K), “face,” literally, “something faced,” “something one stands in front of”: altar, referring to the altar table laden with ritual offerings (in Spanish, mesa); see also mezah.

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tlalli, also tlali (B 1985; S 1991: 238; S 2003: 58), tlālli (I; K): earth, land, property; referring to the earth realm, in the sense of the earth as a whole. tlaltenanan (A), also tlaltenana (S 1986: 129; S 1991: 240), tlalilamatzi (S 2004): earth mother, referring to the female aspect of the earth, the ancient one or grandmother earth (often called by the Spanish abuela); see also tonantzin, antihuatl. tlaltepactli (S 1986: 169; S 1991: 240–­41; S 2003: 58), also tlāl­tepactli, tlāltipactli (I), tlālticpac (K), “the earth, on the earth, of the earth.” from tlālli, “earth” + -icpac (K), “on or at the head of, above”: earth’s surface, equated with the altar tabletop. tlaltetatah (A), also tlaltetata (S 1986: 129; S 1991: 240), tlalxahuantzi (S 2004: 355): earth father, referring to the male aspect of the earth, the ancient one or grandfather earth (often called by the Spanish abuelo); see also antihuatl. tlaltzintlan, also tlaltzintla (G), tlāltzīntlan (I): below the earth, the underworld. tlamanaliztli (I), also tlamaniliztli, tlamanilistli (S 1991: 287; S 2003: 60), “the spreading out of something,” “something spread out,” from tlamaniliā (K), “to set things in order with respect to one another, to lay things out for someone”; also mana [K], “to spread something out . . . to ‘make an offering,’ presumably by laying something out on a surface”: ritual offering (in Spanish, ofrenda, “offering,” or promesa, “promise, vow”); see also atlatlacualtiliztli, mezah, tlacualtiliztli. tlamantli (I), “thing,” or “a separate entity, a member of a class or set. . . . [and] compounds with quantifiers for counting numbers of an arbitrary class of objects that includes but is not limited to flat things that can be folded or layered one on top of another” (K): thing, entity. tlamatiquetl (S 2003: 52) (plural, tlamatinimeh) (T 2014: 83), also tlamatihquetl [E] (but sometimes pronounced tlamatquetl in Huastecan Nahuatl), tlamatqui (K), “someone wise, prudent,” from tlamati, “to be intelligent, to be a healer” (I), “someone who knows something” (A), from mati (I), “to know something,” “to know the way” + -­quetl, noun ending: person of knowledge, ritual specialist. tlamocuitlahuihquetl (plural, tlamocuitlahuianeh) (B 2000: 83), also tlamocuitlahuijquetl (S 1991: 274–­75), tlamocuitlahuiketl (G 2002: 92), tlamocuitlahuih­ quētl (I), “one who takes care of or watches over something”: witness, witness-­guardian, protector. tlanahuatilcuatopilli (G 2002: 109): walking stick of command (in Spanish, bastón de mando). tlanahuatilquixtihquetl, “one who commands and finishes something” (A), combining tla-­+ nahuatiā (K), “to give orders to someone” + the verb quīxtiā (K), “to discharge one’s obligation,” from quīza (K), “to conclude or finish” + -­quetl, noun ending: master ritual specialist. tlaneltoquilli (I), also tlaneltokilli (G 2002: 11; A 2017: 270–71), tlaneltoquiliztli (I; K), from the verb neltoca, “to believe in something” + -­liztli, noun ending: religion, faith, belief, devotion, ritual practices; see also costumbre.

tlanohnotzcayotl, also tlanojnotskayotl (H 1982: 141), from tlanohnōtzca, “a conversation, interaction, or dialogue with someone” (A), from the verb nohnōtza (I; K), “to speak with someone, to have a conversation” + -­yotl, noun ending: chant, oration, invocation. tlapechtli (plural, tlapechmeh) (S 1991: 260; I; K), “litter, stretcher, bed, platform”: bed (in Spanish, cama); see also cuatlapechtli, petlatl. tlapetlani (S 1991: 247), also tlapetlānilli (K), from the verb tlapetlāni (I; K), “for lightning to flash”: lightning. tlaquimilolli, from quimilli (I; K), “bundle of clothes, blankets,” from the verbs quimiloā, tlaquimiloā (I; K), “to wrap someone or something in a blanket”: bundle or sacred bundle, referring to a wrapped ritual item; see also petlaquimilli. tlatectli (plural, tlatecmeh) (S 1991: 260; G 2002: 75), also tlatehtectli (I): something cut, referring to a ritual paper cutting (in Spanish, muñeco de papel, “paper doll,” or recorte “cutting”); see also amatlatectli. tlatoctli, also tlatōctli (I; K), “a planted seed,” “something planted, sown, buried”: the sown crop, particularly the maize planting. tlatomoni (S 1991: 247), also tlatomōni (I), tlatopōni (I; K) “for it to thunder”: thunder. tlatlepanittaliztli, also tlatlepanitalistli (S 1991: 255), from the verb tlepanitta (I), “to respect or be proud of someone,” “to think much of oneself,” combining tlen, “that, which” + ipān, “on, upon” + itta, “to see, to look” + -­liztli, noun ending (A), “that which looks upon, sees, or regards things respectfully”: respect, respectfulness; see also axtlatlepanitta. tlatzicuintli, from the verbs tzicuīniā or tzicuīniliā (I), “to splatter food or liquid,” understood to mean a liquid offering that is sprinkled or spread out: ritual offering; see also tlacualtiliztli. tlayahualolli (G), from the verb tlayahualoā, “to go around something” (I), or “to go in a procession around something” (K), understood as a religious procession (A): procession. tlazolli, also tlasoli (S 1991: 312), tlazolli (I), tlahzolli (K), tlaçolli (M): refuse, trash, pollution, filth, disorder. tlazolli ehecatl (plural, ehecameh), also tlasoli ejecatl (S 1991: 272–­73, 304, 312), tlasolehecatl (tlasolehecameh) (G 2002: 90, 92, 110): filth wind; see also ehecatl. tlitl (S 1991: 249; I), also tletl (K): fire. tlixihuantzin, also tlixihuantsij (S 1991: 249), tlixihuantzi (G), tlitl xahuantzi (G 2002: 141), tlixahuantzin (A), xihuantzin (I), combining tlitl (I), “fire” + the verb xahuāni (I), also xihuāni (A), “to ignite” or “for wood to burn well” + -­tzin, honorific ending, “honored fire”: the fire spirit. tonalli, also tonali (S 1986: 74; S 1991: 247, 258), tōnalli (I; K): sun, heat soul, life force.

tonalmilli, also tonamili (S 1991: 57; G 2002: 108), tōnalmīlli (I), “hot cultivated field”: dry-­season planting. tonantzin, sometimes styled Tonantzin, also tonantsi (S 1991: 242; S 2003: 53), tonāntzin (I), “Our Honored Mother”: the earth mother, equated with the Virgin of Guadalupe. tonatiuh, also tonatij (S 2003: 53, 58), tonatih (G 2002: 80), tōnatiuh (I; K): the sun, equated with Jesus Christ. tonquetl (S 1991: 249): shining one, first big star, morning star, referring to the planet Venus (in Spanish, estrella lucero, primera estrella grande, Venus). totiotzin, here styled Totiotzin, also toteotsi, toteotsij, totiotsij (S 1986: 98; S 1991: 186; S 2003: 56), totiōtzin (I), totiotzitzin (A 2017: 270, 287n4), a possessive-­honorific form of teōtl (K), tiōtl (I), “Our Honored Divinity”: the cosmos, equated by Spanish friars with the Christian God. tzitzimitl (I) (plural tzitzimimeh) (B 2000: 94), also tsitsimitl (S 1991: 187): angry crone. tzonteconpoztectli (A; G), “head of Postectli”: summit, referring to the site of ritual offerings at the peak of the sacred mountain. xinachtli, also xināchtli (I; K): seed ready for planting. xochicalli, also xochikali (H 1982), xochikalli (T 2014: 85), combining xōchitl (I; K), “flower” + calli (I; K), “house,” “flower house”: shrine, chapel, or private dwelling that serves as a center for costumbre ritual practices. xochicopincayahualli (G 2002: 111), “flowered circle to remove harm”: ritual implement used in cleansing; see also xochicoztli. xochicoztli, also xochicostli (S 1986: 37), xochicoscatl (G 2002: 110), xōchicōzcatl (I), combining xōchitl (I; K), “flower” + cōztli (I; K), “necklace”: flower (or flowered) necklace, ritual implement used in cleansing; see also mecaxochitl. xochiehecatl (plural, xochiehecameh), also xochiejecatl (S 1986: 83–­100; S 1991: 272–­73): flower (or flowery) wind; see also ehecatl. xochitlalia (S 1986: 35–­51; S 1991: 287; S 2003: 60), also xōchitlāliā (I), “flowery earth,” “to place flowers on the earth,” “to put down flowers”: a general term for ritual or ritual episode. xochison (usually plural, xochisonis) (S 2003: 57), “flower sounds”: ritual music. xopanmilli, also xopajmili (S 1991: 57), xōpānmilli (I), “rainy cultivated field”: rainy-­season planting. yollotl (S 1991: 258), also yōllōtl (I; K): heart, heart soul. zahhuan, sometimes styled Zahhuan (I), Totiotzin San Juan (A), also sa hua, sahua (S 1991: 316; S 2003: 59): water owner, the spirit entity who lives in the sea, equated with San Juan Bautista. zanilli, also zānīlli (I; K), zazanilli (M), sanilli, sasanilli (A): conversation, spoken words, but also understood as an oral narrative or story.

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Index Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Numbers followed by t indicate tables; those followed by n indicate endnote numbers. Numbers in boldface are main sections. See definitions of Nahuatl terms in the glossary. Aakhus, Michael K., xvi, 25, 27–30, 32–35, 37–38 adornments: construction of, 91, 183–85, 338, 366, 387; coyol palm–marigold stars (coyolcitlalin), 100, 142, 184, 340, 342, 388, 390; coyol palm–marigold seven-flower and five-flower wands, 184–85, 286, 343, 347; manufacture and numbers of, 58, 182, 184, 335, 337, 338, 340; provisions for making ornaments, 289t; types and uses of, 101, 102, 246. See also bundles; flowers; ritual objects agency: nonhuman, 64–67; as pragmatics-based approach, 64. See also human beings agon or struggle. See balance alcohol or aguardiente, 95, 289, 296; and alcoholism, 74, 302 almanacs. See calendars, codices, or almanacs altar: associations of, as spirit entity, 394; design of, 190, 230, 234–35, 240, 245, 257 (see also arms and hands); as foundational, 224, 244–45, as mediator, connecting cross-sky and earth realms, 224; names for, as earth below (tierra de abajo), 101, 188, 227, 234–35, 237 (see also variants under earth); as something faced (tlaixpamitl), 17, 227, 257; and upper altar, juxtaposed, 189–90, 262, 283n57. See also altars or altar tables; iconography altar offering or mezah: in Amatlán, to seeds, earth, and water, 100–8, 233–46; defined as mesa or strategy, 17, 43n67, 207 (see also altars or altar tables); defined as telephone communication, 164, 283n60; enumerated as ritual arrays or altar sets, 195–99, 223; focus of ritual episodes and locations, 82, 197t, 181, 225–26, 278–80; in Ichcacuatitla, to seeds and hills, 140–46, 246–52; and sequence of procedures, 279; at tepexitzintlan, to earth and clouds, 146–56, 252–57; thematic content of, as nonhierarchical ordering on Postectli ascent, 304–5 (see also semasiography); at tlahcopoztectli, to water dweller apanchaneh and lightning-thunder, 156–67, 257–66; at tzonteconpoztectli, to San Juan-zahhuan, cross, moon, and sun, 167–74, 263, 267–74. See also Nahua paper figures; Nahua spirit entities altars or altar tables: and arch construction, 90, 100–1, 189–90, 192–93, 304; circular sun, at Postectli, Palaxtepetl, and Tres Pozitos, 168, 170, 171–72, 191, 197, 271, 338–39, 360–62, 366, 382, 383; defined as tlaixpamitl, something faced, 17; as mediator between realms, 224; as seats of exchange, 290; shown laden with objects and offerings, 151–52, 158, 171, 351–52, 356–59, 370, 380, 382–83, 387–88, 391–92; vandalism of, 72, 375, 377. See also altar offering or mezah; outside cross or cruz afuera altar; ritual objects amaranth seeds, 12, 31, 33, 36, 48 amate bark paper. See papermaking Amatlán village, xi, 5, 7, 12–15, 197, 394; and constraints of village life, as image of limited good, 14, 40, 330 (see also ritual kinship or compadrazgo); disruptions in, xii, 6, 23, 64, 72, 84, 300, 326–27; electrical service in, 10, 13, 91, 179n24, 184; and Nahua identity affirmed by pilgrimage journey,

 : 445

174, 327–36; as pseudonym, in municipality of Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz, 5, 394; and religious traditions in crisis, 8, 186, 288; and remittance economy, 13, 326; and rural-urban disequilibrium, 64, 297, 301–2, 318, 327, 333. See also under altar offering or mezah; Nahua paper figures Amazonia, 67; Achuar people in, 66 analogism, 66–67 ancient ones: addressed in chants, 118; as ancestors, xi, 50, 52, 290, 385; in myth, 36, 40, 49, 74, 130, 304; as speaking through ritual specialist, 368–69. See also saints or santos; trance animals: farm, 39, 107; paper images of, 158; raised for food, 12; raised for sale, 15 animism, 66–67, 79n85 anthropomorphism, 291–94; and ontological monism, 67; and religion’s focus on human form and qualities, 329; stance or posture of, 189, 190, 191, 194, 234. See also figurines; human beings; human body; Nahua paper figures apanchaneh. See water dweller or apanchaneh Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA), xvii, 24, 41n3, 43n48, 132n38 arms and hands: downward pointing, 217, 282n49, 408; outstretched, 142, 243, 377; upraised, 190, 193, 205n32, 226, 234, 282n45, 283n57. See also human body Australia: and dream tracks, 295; totemism in, 66; Walbiri people in, 192, 194 Ávila-Myers, Ana Laura, xvi, 409 axes or hatchets: copper, 36, 242, 286; design motif, of thunder, 250, 401 Aztecs or Mexica: deity impersonator (ixiptla), 59, 194–95, 202–3, 205n53; empire, 11–12, 80n93, 225; ethnonym, 11; and flowers, 184; heart or blood offerings, 185, 204n15, 288, 317; 385; human sacrifice, 10–11, 128, 288; New Fire ceremony, 245; Templo Mayor caches, 185, 286. See also Aztec under subjects; Nahuatl language Báez-Jorge, Félix, 44n80, 54, 280n2, 393, 418 balance: as agonistic inamic unity or polarity, 133n50, 222, 413, 414, 415n4; and cosmic forces, in equilibrium, xii, 39, 59, 63, 64, 67, 77n26, 82, 111, 174, 281n25, 286, 295, 306, 307n52, 326–29; and debt, 39, 289–90 (see also reciprocity); and duality, 62; by encircling, 120; and imbalance, as delicate or precarious, 16, 53, 71, 198, 222, 246, 326, 392, 413; restoring, 222 (see also cleansing-curing rituals); scales, Mazatec, 205n32; and moderation, 40, 334; and music, 183; in social or political relations, 6, 15, 199. See also order and disorder; respect Bassett, Molly, 179n13, 195 Bautista, Amalia, 72, 332 Bautista Hernández, Jesús, 24–25, 41; on ancient time, 76n1; on San Juan-zahhuan, 81n144; on Seven Flower-chicomexochitl, 45n101 bean: associations of, and ubiquity, 257, 263, 279, 282n51, 394; basic designs of, and variants, 230, 241, 264, 277–78; and bean chili, as composite, 241, 246–47, 250, 251, 257, 262, 263, 270 (see also iconography); or bean chili, with maize, 232, 262,

446 : Index

275; crop, importance in diet, 12, 39, 241, 246–47, 290, 363; names for, 227, 232 beds or petates. See paper beds or petates bell: associations of, 187, 257, 282n42, 394; design of, 226, 230, 241, 243, 255, 269; names for, 227; ringing, to summon spirit entities, 91, 92, 95, 142, 150, 168; and Santa Campana observance, 241 Beller, Ricardo, and Patricia Beller, 417, 418 Berdan, Frances, 43n43, 306n9 Beyer, Hermann, 60 Bible, 44n71, 90, 128, 224 birds: and blood sacrifice, 287 (see also ritual economy); eagle, 177; hummingbird, 50; living, interred, 152, 153 (see also chickens or turkeys); vulture, 50; who aid Seven Flower, 31, 33, 35; and wings of corpses wind, 217; woodpeckers, 36, 40 birth: of hills, 57; rituals for newborns, 19, 240, 283n60; of seeds, 26, 36, 174, 303; of sun, 49 blood: in Christian ritual, 23; as conveying or circulating life force, 52, 103, 328, 363; as gift, share, or payment, 290, 298, 327; as good (cualli eztli), for the earth, 60, 363; in Huichol ritual, 320; as integrating water–earth–maize–human body connections, 12–13, 23, 119, 161, 224, 303, 304; in preHispanic ritual, 288, 317, 319, 385; sacrifice, in Nahua ritual, 103, 109, 128, 136, 142, 157–59, 164, 167, 245–46, 252, 262, 278–79, 287, 290, 298, 313, 338, 370, 375, 385, 386; shown as offering, 104, 143, 151, 351–53, 358–59, 370, 379; signature, by ritual specialists, 150, 169, 338, 358, 363, 377, 379; vow, as formal petition, 17, 107. See also altar offering or mezah; power or energy as chicahualiztli) Boilès, Charles, and Cristina Boilès, xvii, 203n4, 282n51 bones: armature of huesitos or little, 88, 92, 93, 157, 338, 342, 359, 363, 386, 387; and bonesetters, 19; rock as earth’s, 303; quest for father’s, 31, 46n116; from underworld or graveyard, 210, 217; white color of, as death, 219, 223, 280n5, 280n10. See also death or miquiliztli Boone, Elizabeth, 194, 199–202, 205n54 Braakhuis, H. E. M., 40, 44n86 Bravo Marentes, Carlos, 313 Broda, Johanna, 51, 324n49, 324n52 bundles: corn or maize, 144, 151, 152, 174, 178n13, 289t, 337–38, 344–45, 347; cut-paper, tied as altar sets, 244–46, 252; of dressed seeds, 274–75, 277, 360; and wrapping or dressing, as sign of respect, 151, 191, 195. See also beds or petates; modularity; Nahua paper figures Burkhart, Louise, 80n129, 81n135, 286, 308n71 Cacahuatengo, Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz, xv, 84, 86, 138, 337–39, 362, 394 calendars, codices, or almanacs: ancient, 186, 201, 224, 225, 410; Borgia and Vaticano B, 40; Calendario del más Antiguo Galván, 240, 393; divinatory, 205n54, 224, 240; Dresden, 324n43. See also Mesoamerican graphic communication systems; pictographs and picture writing camote, 12, 19, 39, 290, 363 candles, 15, 20, 60, 73, 183–84, 289t

cannibalism, 10, 48, 49, 128 Carnival, 23, 44n87, 210, 216, 300 caves, clefts, or crevices: as focus of ritual activity, 77n43, 118, 164, 165–67, 262, 319; at La Cueva, 179n15, 240, 282n40, 395, 408; as portals, 55, 179n25, 204n27, 283n60. See also hills; windows Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, Mexico (CIESAS), xvi, 51, 146 Chalchiuhcueye, 318, 319 chants or chanting: as bargaining with spirit entities, 278, 291, 294, 322; by Catarina, 100, 110, 111, 113–20, 149, 153, 155; by Cirilo, 109–10, 96–98, 142, 149, 151, 161, 120–28, 165, 355, 376, 382; defined, as conversation or dialogue, 16, 96, 174; delivered simultaneously, not synchronized, 95, 98, 110, 111, 144, 145, 159, 335; inventory of spirit entities and places named in, 393–415, 403n1, 411; by Lino, 105–8, 109, 151, 295–96, 336n4, 403n1; memorized, 18, 107, 279 (see also memory); as power to summon spirit entities, banish wealthy assassins, exhort dangerous winds to depart, 107–8, 208 (see also words or tlahtolli); by Raymundo, 159, 161; by Silveria, 110, 111, 161–64, 179n23, 179n24, 279, 284n68, 403n1; and sitting or standing expressions, 57, 79n61, 98, 113; transcription and translation of Nahuatl, xvi, 4, 16, 21–22, 44n80; by unidentified speakers, 98–100, 111–13, 153–55, 159–61. See also Nahua Oral Tradition; names of ritual specialists chickens or turkeys: interred, as cloud–good wind offering; 148, 152, 153, 257, 283n56, 361, 382; in mock combat, 103, 133n50, 142, 278, 350, 379; as sacrificial fowl, 101–3, 136, 157, 164, 168, 278–79, 287, 289, 338, 357. See also birds; blood; ritual economy Chicomexochitl. See Seven Flower or chicomexochitl Chicontepec de Tejada, Veracruz: church bell, 241; municipality (municipio), 197, 395; religious history, 179n26 Chicontepec hill, 229, 259, 262, 265, 395. See also hills children: of apanchaneh, as water creatures, 107, 175, 176, 177, 178; and child rearing, 19–20, 127, 134n74, 279; as costumbre participants, 363; death of, 19, 217, 224; ear-blowing ritual for, 54; eating their mother, 48–49; of God (see human beings); and godparents (see ritual kinship or compadrazgo); and maize, 12, 26, 36, 45n93, 72–73; as model for plant growth, 127, 131n27; and neglect, 198; not learning Nahuatl, 326; paper figures as, 44n86, 90; sacrifice of, 10, 317, 385 (see also Aztecs or Mexica); spirit entities as, 292, 363 (see also Nahua spirit entities) chili (Capsicum). See under bean Christenson, Allen, 66 Cihuacoatl Ilamatecuhtli, 40 Cirilo (master ritual specialist). See Téllez Hernández, Encarnación (Cirilo) cleansing-curing rituals, 94–100, 207–25; array, as ordered center to restore balance, 143, 208, 218–20, 221, 300; as collapsed, two-dimensional altar, 223–24 (see also altars or altar tables); and disease-causing agents of infection, as dangerous, contagious, or malignant, 95, 195, 198, 334,

412–13; and disease-causing winds as embodied, not symbolic or representative, 222–23 (see also monism); and importance of disposing of cleansing bundle at periphery, 96, 198; as magnifying glass, 222; paper figures for, 88, 209–11, 212–16, 394, 412–13, folded insert (table X.2) (see also Nahua paper figures); to sacralize ritual area, 140, 143–44, 145, 149, 323, 347–49, 369; as sweeping (ochpantli), 54, 94, 95, 147, 161, 207, 299–300, 334, 350; as symbolic healing, 225. See also chants or chanting; sorcery or sorcerers; wind or winds Clendinnen, Inga, 195 clothing: of apanchaneh, 53, 58; of deity impersonator (ixiptla), 194–95 (see also under Aztecs or Mexica); implied by rectangular design (e.g., jorongo or poncho), 134n75, 191, 205n37, 240, 241; manufacture of, for girls, 275, 289t, 335, 363; and rain dwarfs’ black rubber sleeves, 36, 57, 75; of ritual specialist, transformed into ancestors, 66; and significance of costume, dress, regalia, or apparel, 69, 185, 191, 195, 217, 247, 274–75, 302; as vegetation of changing earth, 93, 253. See also bundles; iconography; Nahua paper figures cloud or mixtli: associations of, as smoke, vapor, orderliness, 52, 107, 118, 128, 242, 320, 395; as aspect of apanchaneh, 109, 304; design of, 283n56, 408; and good wind, 257 (see also wind or winds); offering of live fowl, 152, 153, 146–56, 197t (see also chickens or turkeys); origin of, 54. See also rain or rainfall; water cognitive psychology, 80n128, 292 Coleman, Simon, 77n39, 315 colors: associations of, 57–59, 191, 201, 216–18, 219, 283n66; as iridescence or cult of brilliance, 286; of maize varieties (see under maize) copal incense: of aromatic copalli tree bark or resin, 18, 93, 101, 119, 137, 225, 386; braziers, 85, 90, 110, 184, 221, 222, 391; consumed by San Juan-zahhuan, 74; dancer, 131n23; Mexica statues, 59; and ritual music, 182; spiraling smoke, 90, 118; Totonac talakšin figures, 69 corpses. See wind or winds cosmos: conception of Nahua, 48–81 (see also divinity or the sacred); dynamism of, 414; eras of, 49; as everything in the entire world (cemanahuac), 6–7, 52, 118, 182, 327; and hills or altars, exemplifying nonhierarchical ordering, 304 (see also order and disorder); and layers, realms, or structure of, 52–54, 101, 192–93, 223, 388 (see also altars or altar tables); manifested in properly arranged paper figures, 187, 192, 246, 270 (see also God-Totiotzin); as middle (nepantlah), 52; as opposing forces or polarity, 222 (see also balance); revealed in tiered altar design, 199, 246; as single, homogeneous, vivified entity or singularity, 190, 194 (see also anthropomorphism); as social collectivity, 405. See also earth realm or tlalli; sky–celestial realm or ilhuicactli; underworld realm or mictlan; water realm or apan costumbre beliefs and practices: challenges to, 71–72; as correct path, 3; as cult of maize, 23, 38; defined, as customs or religion (tlaneltoquilli), 16, 51–55, 59–64; documenting and decoding content of, 181–82, 207 (see also semasiography); dressing or wrapping in, 274–75 (see also bundles); as

Index : 447

exchange of energy, 103 (see also blood); earth and water in, 61; as fail-safe mechanism, 300; and importance of ritual objects, 285–87 (see also Nahua paper figures); as Indigenous identity, xiii, 13, 15, 19, 174, 252; and inventory of pilgrimage rituals and locations, 54, 182–83, 197t, 207, 278–80; as monistic philosophy of pantheism, 67, 70; as reciprocal interactions, 287–90 (see also altar offerings or mezah); reinforced by storytellers, 25, 38, 48; as vows or promises, 17, 39, 85, 107, 127, 318, 334. See also divinity or the sacred; monism; pantheism; ritual practitioners coyol palm. See adornments coyote or coyotl, as non-Indigenous outsider, xi, 8, 41n1, 107, 139 crop-fertility rituals: chanting for, 22; and paper cutting, as heart of costumbre practices, 185; as pilgrimage rationale, 6, 101, 237, 257, 290, 321, 323, 365 (see also Postectli); as social exchanges, 40; and tlazolli, as source of fertile earth, 300 (see also order and disorder); and paradoxical role of tzitzimitl, 25. See also under Seven Flower or chicomexochitl cross: associations of cross-sun-Jesús, 52, 57, 119, 134n71, 299, 305, 395, 397, 401, 410, 412, 413; concrete Roman, atop Postectli, 10, 168, 243; design of, as disease-causing cross wind, 209, 214, 217, 218, 395, 412–13 (see also wind or winds); design of, as salutary cross, 87, 230, 243, 245; as foundational, 224, 244–45; foliated or cruciform icons (see iconography); names for, 227; offerings to, 167–74, 197t, 263, 270. See also Jesus Christ or Jesús; outside cross or cruz afuera altar; sun Crumrine, N. Ross, 314 Cruz, Abelardo de la: on fire, 134n77, 282n50; on flood myth, 76n5; on maize and chicomexochitl, 23, 151; on myth as ancient discourse, 45n96; on nature as homogenous whole and sacred (malhuilli), 61, 178; on Nahuatl translations or transcriptions, xvi, 43n48, 44n67, 132n38, 132n39, 133n54, 133n66, 178n7, 283n60, 307n26, 417–18; on prayer as dialogue, 174; on respect, 46n120; on sun’s face, 303; on water rituals, 135, 176, 306n16 Cruz, Evaristo de la: as master Otomí curer, xv, 87, 89, 101, 102, 139, 141, 146, 332; as mentor, 8, 18, 128, 301; figures cut by, as models, 8, 187–88, 195, 240, 385 Cruz, Nicolás de la: on Seven Flower-chicomexochitl, 45n101 Cruz Blanca, Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz, xv, 8, 42n16, 395 Cruz Cruz, Eduardo de la: on ancestral advice, 45n96; on flower house (xochicalli), 44n73; on maize and chicomexochitl, 55; on Nahuatl translations or transcriptions, xvi, 43n48, 46n113, 132n38, 133n54, 133n56, 134n74, 417–18; on numbers, 79n69; on rain, 77n30, 133n62; on spirit entities, 133n55; on water phenomena and landforms, 133n65 Cruz Cruz, Victoriano de la, 45n89, 77n33, 77n38, 79n69, 103, 417 Cruz Hernández, Juan de la, 45n93, 76n9, 131n23, 418 Cruz Reina, Átalo, 54 curing. See cleansing-curing rituals dancing: before altars, 120, 135, 143, 150, 152, 158; as rhythmic swaying of growing maize plant, 102, 358 Day of the Dead (xantolon) or Todos Santos, 54, 69, 184, 223, 292 death or miquiliztli: associations of, 53, 62, 70, 95, 113, 210, 216–18, 280n4, 395; as bone skirts, 280n5, 407 (see also bones); design

448 : Index

of, as death wind or dead little one wind (muertito), 212, 216, 218, 220, 280n4, 339, 347–48, 407. See also souls; wind or winds deer or mazatl: associations of, with Seven Flower–Five Flower or fertility, 320, 396, 400; in chants, 119; as father of maize, 26, 31, 35, 36, 40; hunted for meat, 46n119; in paper, 89 Dehouve, Danièle, 67n43, 203 deity. See divinity or the sacred Descola, Philippe, 66–67 Devil (Christian) or Satan, 54, 70–71, 216, 280n5, 395, 407 directions: cardinal, 53, 54, 58, 77n33, 120, 280n9, 282n44, 400; and circumambulation, 87, 89, 119, 120, 287, 321, 362, 363, 370, 372. See also colors disease. See cleansing-curing rituals divination: crystals or crystal gazing, 26, 56, 94, 132n28, 286; to determine timing or outcome of pilgrimage rituals, 94, 174, 196, 197t, 278, 332, 366, 367–68; maize-kernel, xi, 46n116, 93–94, 132n28, 179n21, 286; and names for diviners, xi, 16; paper, 185. See also codices or almanacs divinity or the sacred: conceived anthropomorphically, 191–94; concept of, as all-encompassing and mutable, 51–55, 59–64; as envelope of the divine, 194; as nonhierarchical or seamless, 305; as protected or hallowed (malhuilli), 17, 178; revealed in ritual objects, 285–87. See also cosmos; GodTotiotzin; sacred landscape Dow, James, 42n16, 79n57, 179n15, 225, 281n34 dreams: and Australian dream tracks, 295; as calling to a profession, 18, 19–20; of Otomí ritual specialists, 70; of pilgrimages to Postectli or Palaxtepetl, by Cirilo, 22, 84, 196, 197, 278, 305, 337, 363; as spirit contact, 43n59, 44n78, 131n4, 292, 298. See also trance dualism: contrasted to monism, as symbol, representation, or metaphor, 202; as culture-nature distinction, 66; as presumed animate-inanimate divide, 18, 195, 328; as signifier-signified distinction, 18, 90, 192, 203, 205n49; in theistic religions, as creator-creation divide, 60; viewed as complementary-contrastive binaries, 62, 217, 413. See also monism; pantheism Durán, Diego, 316–19, 392n1 Eade, John, 306n17, 314–15 earrings: of dressed paper figures, 39, 226; of fire spirit, 129, 131, 245; and jewelry worn by women and girls, 12, 275; of Tlaloc, 317 earth: associations of, 396; design of, 189, 230, 235, 245, 411, 412, 413 (see also earth realm or tlalli); as earth changes, 228, 252–53, 257, 413; as earth below or beneath (tlaltzintlan) or house of night, 52, 76n23, 101, 178n7, 192–93, 227, 234–35, 357 (see also underworld realm or mictlan); as earth of the altar, 188, 189, 228, 235, 236, 243, 244, 413 (see also under altar); as earth over there, 188, 189, 228, 236, 240, 243, 244, 246, 248, 252, 260, 270, 273, 283n62, 287, 305, 412; as Earth-Trinity, 61; as earth wind, 210, 214, 217, 218, 396 (see also wind or winds); embodied as sacred, 188–89, 192–93, 217, 240, 245, 284n69, 305; as foundational, 224, 244–45; interior, 52, 53, 132n32, 148, 189, 190, 192–93, 234, 290, 302, 334; as moist energy, 52 (see

also horticultural production); mother/grandmother–father/ grandfather, 90–91, 88–89, 101, 104, 274–75, 276, 290, 359, 368, 370, 392; names for, 188, 228, 275, 284n68, 420; offerings to, 18, 100–8, 146–56, 168, 169, 182, 197t, 288; as rectilinear space (see under iconography); as source of wealth, 217 (see also hills) earth realm or tlalli, 52, 224, 262, 299, 306, 413; as earthly realm, in the middle (nepantlah), 52, 101, 138, 151, 189, 192–93, 396; as earth’s face (tlalixtli), 127; as earth’s surface (tlatepactli) or human realm, 52, 189, 192–93, 223, 243, 282n49, 396, 408 economics: and economic development, 14–15, 327; and infrastructural changes, 10, 179n24; neoclassical, 191. See also ritual economy envy. See sorcery or sorcerers equilibrium or disequilibrium. See balance; order and disorder ethnocentrism, xii, 24, 199 ethnography: as collaboration and participation, 8–9, 287; methods and research strategies of, xii, 21–26, 43n45, 52, 54, 67, 332. See also pilgrimage evangelism. See under religion evil or malevolence, 70–71; ambiguity of, in pantheism, 53, 80n129, 334. See also cleansing-curing rituals; wind or winds figurines: ancient clay or stone, 94, 140, 186, 204n20, 286, 302; corn dough, 65; Neolithic, 308n85; rubber, 225 fire: associations of, as embodiment of hearth, sun, sun’s face, 52, 223, 245, 302, 303, 396 (see also candles); as element, 52, 59; as hearth or fire spirit tlixihuantzin, honored fire, 52, 108, 129–31, 228, 238, 245, 282n50; as Huehueteotl, Old God, 129, 245; as kindling, for cooking, 56, 134n74, 374; as mythic challenge or immolation, 31, 48, 177; as mythic Postectli inferno, 36; offering, 108–28, 140, 197t, 233–34, 244–46, 279, 298, 370; in paper, designs of, 230, 234, 238, 245, 410, 411, 414; and paper figures, charcoal-blackened, 54, 95, 143, 201, 210, 220, 300, 339, 348; and smoke from wildfires, 50, 83, 139, 141 (see also spiraling smoke under copal incense; clouds or mixtli); at Tres Pozitos, prohibition on, 380 fireworks or rockets, 136, 289, 373 fishing, 46n119, 175, 177; net, 26, 31 Five Flower or macuilli xochitl: associations of, 39, 396; birth of, 26, 28; as three maize ears, 151, 174 (see also bundles); twin sister of Seven Flower (chicomexochitl), 26, 31, 36, 58, 62, 118–19; as Xochipilli, 40, 324n44. See also adornments; maize flag or bandera: associations of, 283n66, 396; design of, 220, 230, 259, 270, 271, 274, 306; as pamitl or line of work, 128; names for, 228; and sun altar 169; as Totiotzin or earth-sun duality, 304–5 floods or flooding: as aspect of water spirit, 62; as fertilizing, 313; and San Juan or zahhuan as troublemaker, 73, 74, 75; universal, 48, 49, 50–51; and vengeful apanchaneh, 176 flowers: as Aztec or Indigenous flower world, as place of brilliance, 184, 203n8, 286–87; as flower carrier or witness, 283n60, 402, 409; as flower house (xochicalli), chapel, or shrine, 18, 44n73, 100, 289 (see also under names of ritual specialists); as flower sounds or ritual music (see music or xochisones); as flowered necklace (xochicoztli), 95, 183, 184; as

flowered vine (mecaxochitl) (see outside cross or cruz afuera altar); as foliated cross (see iconography); marigold, as twenty-flower (cempoalxochitl), 184, 289. See also adornments; Five Flower or macuilli xochitl; Seven Flower or chicomexochitl food. See reciprocity Foster, George, 14 Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerica Research (FAMSI), xvii, 83 Frassani, Alessia, 202–3, 205n54 Furst, Peter, 319–20 Galinier, Jacques 42n16, 68, 204n18, 204n29, 282n42, 282n48 García Garagarza, León, 22, 55–56, 77n39, 78n51, 150, 301 García Valencia, E. Hugo, xvi, 20, 79n62, 83 Garma Navarro, Carlos, 85 Gelb, I. J., 199, 200, 201, 206n59 gender: and clothing, 39, 90; as complementary or opposing, 251, 252; and male-female binaries, 62, 88, 188, 208, 217, 413; of mountains, 56; of pronoun yohual, 132n41; and social roles, 330; and storytelling, 45; of Totiotzin, 258, 262 Gennep, Arnold van, 295, 311–13, 314, 329, 331 Gillespie, Susan, 223 God-Totiotzin: in altar design, 119, 234 (see also modularity); associations of, 52, 76n17, 127, 270–71, 396, 401; authority of, as law, 127–28; as Christian God or Dios, xiii, 45n88, 217; and church precinct, 241 (see also religion; saints or santos); Euro-American compared to Aztec concept of supernatural beings, 63 (see also divinity or the sacred); design of, in paper, 195, 258, 230, 253, 258, 262, 264, 270, 304, 305; disclosed in places, 199, 222–23, 327 (see also sacred landscape); embodied or unconcealed, in disease-causing agents, 222–24; expressed as temporary, 63; as expression of pantheism and monism, 203; as ground of existence, 245; as multitudes of entities, yet united as one, 61, 62, 63, 71, 101, 186; names for, as Our Honored Divinity or diocito, xiii, 51–52, 228, 253, 257, 258, 304, 396; and sacrificial blood, as energy transfer, 103; as saints, not hills, 256, 396, 399; as seen in shiny or colorful objects, 286; as sun (tonatiuh) or earth-sun duality, 52, 217, 305; as two deity (ometotiotzin), 61, 79n84 Gómez Martínez, Arturo: on animism or pantheism, 61; and anthropological study of Nahua communities in Chicontepec, 54, 68, 77n35, 418; on apanchaneh, 179n27, 179n35; on aspects of water, 131n8, 308n92; on color and number associations, 58; on costumbre religion (tlaneltoquilli), 16, 43n56; on fire, 282n50; interviewing pilgrimage participants in Nahuatl, 19, 20, 77n28; on myths and narratives, 24, 45n94, 76n2; on Postectli pilgrimage, 11, 83, 93, 139, 140, 164, 308n92, 311; on realms of cosmos, 77n29, 190; on ritual music, 182; on ritual objects, 286; on sacred landscape, 77n39; on tlacatecolotl, 54, 210; on tlacotontli, 219; on tlatomonianih thunder spirits, 233; on tlaxtlahuilli offerings as payments, 288; on tlixihuantzin, 129; on tzitzimitl, 45n102; on wandering winds, 132n30 González González, Mauricio, 62, 68, 393; on clothing, 205n37; on colors, 79n63, 131n21, 179n30, 284n66; on dreams, 131n4;

Index : 449

on fowl sacrifice, 179n15; on narratives, 45n93, 81n144; on Postectli pilgrimage, 42n33; on walking sticks, 131n20; on winds, 132n30 Good Eshelman, Catherine, 133n53, 204n22, 321–22, 328 Guadalupe. See Tonanztin Guernsey, Julia, 151, 204n27 Guerrero Robledo, Claudia, 68 Guitarra hill, 229, 257–58, 261, 397. See also hills Gulf Coast Mexico, 5, 11, 36, 74, 164, 242, 319; ethnography, 40, 42n34, 68; rainfall or storms, 57, 75, 76, 83, 175; seawater, 135. See also rain dwarfs; San Juan Bautista or zahhuan Guthrie, Stewart, 292–94 hair: blonde, as cornsilk, 23, 36; combs or pins, 39; earth’s, 191; as hairy animal tail, 280n4, 407; as maize tassel, 56; of tonalli soul, 78n57, 191, 407; of tzitzimitl, removing lice and her scalp, 31, 32; of water dweller, producing fish, 18, 175–76, 282n43, 408; woven in braids, or ribbons, 12, 39, 53, 275 Harris, Marvin, 315 headdresses: absence or lack of, 188, 208, 217, 219–20, 234, 243, 245, 257, 258, 262, 281n32, 282n40, 410, 414; bifurcate or double-pronged, 220, 251, 283n56, 414; and complementarity or polarity, 243, 251, 410, 412, 424, folded insert (table X.2); counting numbers of elements in, 244, 251, 257, 412; cruciform or cross-shaped, 412, 413; five-, seven-, or nine-pronged rake-like, 191, 244, 251, 252, 257, 270, 271, 283n62, 305, 411, 412; flat-topped or bar-like, 188, 220, 235, 242, 250, 259, 410, 411; spiky crown (corona), 78n49, 78n57, 240; sunburst, solar-disk, or solar-ray, 259, 271, 303, 412; tassel-like crown, 241, 307n43; three-pronged, hat-like crown, 241, 250, 257, 258, 262, 411, 412. See also iconography hearth or fire table. See fire Heiras Rodríguez, Carlos, 76n8, 282n48 Hernández, Juan Antonio (Lino), xv, 105, 108, 149, 151. See also under chants or chanting Hernández, María Dolores, xv, 90, 110, 111, 152; on calling as curer, 19–20; on flowered vine, 120; on house with seven doors, 241; paper figures cut by, 78n59, 280n4, 280n5, 282n49, 283n60, 307n43, 405 Hernández, Raymundo; xv, 12–13, 88–89, 91, 92, 159; on calling as curer, 20; on costumbres, 72; on maize, 12–13, 24; on pilgrimage, 84, 159; on saints, 226, 233; on tlacatecolotl, 210. See also under chants or chanting Hernández Antonia, Cirilo (Valente), xv Hernández Cuellar, Rosendo, 131n8, 418 Hernández Hernández, Bartolo, xv: on Postectli, 40, 47n122; on Seven Flower-chicomexochitl, 45n101; on water dweller apanchaneh, 180n36; on San Juan-zahhuan, 81n144 Hernández Hernández, Efrén: on ancient time, 76n1; on fire spirit tlixihuantzin, 134n76; on Seven Flower-chicomexochitl, 45n101, 47n122; on water dweller apanchaneh, 180n36; on San Juan-zahhuan, 81n144 Hernández Hernández, Juvencio: on fire spirit tlixihuantzin, 134n76; on Seven Flower-chicomexochitl, 45n101; on water dweller apanchaneh, 180n36; on San Juan-zahhuan, 81n144

450 : Index

Hernández Hernández, Silveria, xv, 85, 102, 145, 152; on contacting spirit realm, 179n24; and divination, 179n21; paper figures cut by, 78n49, 78n57, 179n32, 280n2, 282n43, 283n60, 400, 407–9; on Seven Flower-chicomexochitl, 45n101, 179n23, 279, 284n68, 403n1; on San Juan-zahhuan, 81n144; on water dweller apanchaneh, 111, 180n36. See also under chants or chanting Hernández Magdalena, José Luis (Carlos): on Seven Flowerchicomexochitl, 45n101, 47n122; on water dweller apanchaneh, 180n36 Hernández Morales, Francisca, xv, 72 hills: associations of, as advocates or counselors, 55–56, 303, 397; birthplace of, at seven branches, 57, 118, 133n66; importance of, 78n44; and mountain ranges or cordillera (tepemecatl), 57; design of generalized, as hill lady or any hill, 78n49, 220, 230, 240, 259, 407, 410, 411, 412, 413–14; embodied in paper, as witnesses or advocates, 153; as guardians, 56, 150; named, as concrete expressions of spirit entities, 128, 228–29; offerings to, 140–46, 182; ranking of, as government offices, 56; as real father, or summit of Postectli, 303–4. See also Postectli; names of hills or mountains Hooft, Anuschka van ’t, 11, 51, 324n16, 394 horticultural production: as basis for costumbre world view, 182, 184, 199, 333; and cash crops or remittances, 13, 15, 326; and controlled burning, 245 (see also fire); and hunting-gathering transition, 40, 320; and labor exchange (maño vuelta), 290, 334 (see also work or tequitl); and rainy-season planting, 53, 54, 62, 75, 83, 258, 321; and slash-and-burn or swidden technology, xi, 12, 13, 39–40, 51, 57, 71, 108, 218, 335. See also earth; rain or rainfall; water Houston, Stephen, 66, 205n54 Huastec Maya (Teenek) peoples, 9–10, 42n20, 185, 256, 385 Huasteca region: of Gulf Coast Veracruz, 5, 9, 186; Indigenous population of, xii, xiii, 12, 51, 68; Nahua history and settlement in, 11–12, 185 (see also Nahua peoples); pilgrimage in, 9–11 Huehueteotl. See fire Huitzitzilco, 228–29, 267, 268, 270, 397. See also hills human behavioral ecology, 294, 296–97 human beings: and God-Totiotzin, as convergence with cosmos, 60; and interiority, 66; and nonhumans, 64–67, 290, 292, 293, 308n84, 328 (see also miniaturization); and perspectivism, 67; and relational personhood, 65–66, 70, 79n74, 80n100 (see also agency); as sprouts or children of God, xiii, 12, 16, 93, 98 human body: and corpomorphosis, 68–70 (see also anthropomorphism); and cross shape, 243 (see also arms and hands); as graphic model of animated cosmos, 56, 186, 187, 188, 190, 192–93, 234, 294, 298, 303, 328; revealed in maize plant, 203, 307n43. See also modularity; Nahua paper figures; scaling Hunt, Eva, 60, 79n70, 184 Ichcacuatitla town: authorities of, 86; at base of Postectli, xv, 5, 82, 173; chapel or shrine (xochicalli), 140, 44n73, 141–42, 145;

as earth over there, 240; named Ixcacuatitla on maps, in municipality of Chicontepec, Veracruz, 42n10. See also under altar offering or mezah; Nahua paper figures Ichon, Alain, 51, 68, 77n33, 79n61, 79n63, 79n65, 90, 132n32, 133n59, 179n29 iconography: of central cut, as heart (corozón) or crown (corona), 78n49, 78n57, 242, 252, 258; of core-adjunct composition, 194, 201; of cross or cruciform shape, 169, 170, 219, 242, 243, 300, 395, 412, 413; and comparison of headdress-body elements, 305–6, 405–15, folded insert (table X.2); of diamond shape, 78n49, 78n57, 217, 234, 250, 258, 282n49, 413; as discontinuous versus continuous meaning, 194; as elementary and composite categories, 193; of floral or foliated-cross motif, 191, 242, 256, 257, 282n44, 283n58, 375, 412; as iconic versus conventional semasiographic systems, 200; as icons versus symbols, 192; of quatrefoil, 89, 188, 204n27, 223, 235, 242, 401; of quincunx, 17, 204n27, 223, 243, 251, 256, 259, 262, 395, 401, 414; of rake-like, multi-pronged shape, 179n32, 188, 191, 193, 217, 240, 251, 281n17, 413; and reading of paper figures, 199–203, 208; of rectangular shape or rectilinear space, 17, 53, 76n19, 89, 188, 189, 190, 193, 194, 217, 218, 219, 220, 223, 234, 235, 241, 245, 300; of rib holes or open incisions, as lifeless, 234, 413; of solar disk, 256, 303, 412; of toad-like jowls, 234, 394; of triangular or arch-like shape, 189–90, 205n32, 234, 251, 257, 262, 285, 414; of V-cut chevrons, with flaps folded open, 86, 189, 193, 195, 226, 234, 241–42, 245, 413; of zigzag or M-shaped cut, 78n49, 150, 241–42, 256, 257, 258, 262, 282n40, 306, 402, 412, 414. See also beds or petates; headdresses; Nahua paper figures incense. See copal incense Indigenous peoples, 3–15; and Nahua identity as macehualli, xvi, 11, 133n56, 178; in opposition to Mestizos or Hispanic elites, xii, 14, 15, 16, 51, 64, 84, 107–8, 185, 208, 252, 295; and use of Native American, xiii, 11–12, 14, 21, 41n2, 71. See also names of ethnic groups Inka miniatures, 308n84 Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ), xvi, 133n66, 307n26, 417, 418 Iwaniszewski, Stanislaw, 43n59, 315 Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz: and church of San Cristóbal, 240; headtown (cabecera), 85; municipality (municipio), 5, 182, 197, 225, 287, 338, 372, 386, 397; University of Veracruz in, 369 Jackson, Sarah, 65–66 Jesus Christ or Jesús: and Black Christ of Chalma, 319; and church precinct, 241; and San Juan (zahhuan), 73, 74, 75; and Tonaztzin’s son Tonatiuh, associated by Mesoamericans with sun, 49–51. See also under cross; sun or tonatiuh jewelry, 157, 194, 247, 275, 289, 302, 317, 344 Jiménez Hernández, Teófilo, xv, 86; blessing Postectli pilgrims, 171, 173; as lead organizer of pilgrimage to Palaxtepetl, 337, 347–49, 351, 353–57, 359, 376; and major role on pilgrimage to Tres Pozitos, 371–82; paper figures cut by, 181, 195–96; xochicalli shrine of, 337, 346 Jonotál hill, 229, 259, 262, 265, 270, 273, 303, 397. See also hills

Juan Ceniza (John Ashes) or Juan Flojo (Lazy John), 129, 396 Juan Oso (John Bear), 50 Kanter, John, 296 Karttunen, Frances, 17, 46n120, 79n78, 132n27, 133n56, 178n7, 281n16, 297, 417, 418 Kaufman, Jeff, 41n3, 385, 390 Kehoe, Alice, 43n59, 71 key: associations of, 397; design of, 231, 240, 251–52; to house with seven doors, 241, 282n53; names for, 229; to Postectli, 282n41. See also San Jerónimo hill; San Sebastián hill Klein, Cecelia, 81n133, 300 Köhler, Ulrich, 282n47 Kubler, George, 310, 316 Laack, Isabel, 61, 202, 205n49 Lagos Hernández, Domingo: on fire spirit tlixihuantzin, 134n76; on San Juan-zahhuan, 81n144; on Seven Flower-chicomexochitl, 45n101, 47n122; on water dweller apanchaneh, 180n36 Larios León, Sofia, xvi, 83, 332, 365 Lazcarro Salgado, Israel, 68 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 66 lightning and thunder: associations of, 243, 397, 401; caves of, 164, 167, 262; in chants, 107, 118; design of, as composite, 231, 241, 242, 250; names for, as mirror-thunder or mirrorlightning, 118, 164, 229, 232 (see also mirror or tezcatl); offerings to, 36, 41–40, 156–67, 183, 197t. See also rain dwarfs Lindero hill, 57, 229, 258, 267, 268, 270, 397, 413. See also hills life force. See power or energy as chicahualiztli lizard: as aquetzpalin crocodilian, Seven Flower’s tzitzimitl grandmother, 52, 34; blood, 177–78; tongue, associated with lightning, 31, 46n108, 397; as water dweller, 53 Lockhart, James, 281n16, 297–99 Loo, Peter van der, 320–21 López Austín, Alfredo, 56, 76n12, 78n57, 194, 288, 294, 332 Lorente Fernández, David, 77n25, 77n27, 78n44, 79n57, 281n25, 308n84 Lupo, Alessandro, 61, 77n27, 79n57, 80n129, 132n40, 179n15, 288, 394 Macuilli Xochitl. See Five Flower or macuilli xochitl Maffie, James: on animism, 306n6; on Aztec deity pairs, 63; on energy exchange, 306n21; on inamic polarity, 133n50, 204n27, 222–23, 415n2; on ixiptla-teixiptla, 194–95; on monism, 65, 187, 225, 281n25; on pantheism, 64, 80n85; on reciprocal (olin) motion, 79n62, 204n27; on spiraling motion, 90; on teotl, 61, 178n3, 195, 205n44, 286, 306n6; on well-rootedness, 203n8 maize: associations of and names for, as little, new (elotl), or young (pilcintzin), 72, 179n32, 229, 241, 253, 258, 398, 400; as atole (atolli) beverage, 19, 112, 113, 241; corn or maize bundles (see bundles); crop, importance in diet, 12–13, 39, 241, 290, 363; design of, 192–93, 231, 277–78, 409; growth cycle of, 54–55; and maize-kernel divination (see under divination); names for, as mature (cintli), or composite maize-bean-chili, 232, 258, 262, 264, 275, 277; origins of, 5; wands as male-

Index : 451

female, 343 (see also flowers); white, yellow, or black-purple colors of, 36, 40, 46n116, 58, 185, 363. See also costumbre beliefs and practices; Seven Flower or chicomexochitl Maldonado Jiménez, Druzo, 283n66, 284n66 man owl (tlacatecolotl): design of, 143, 212, 218, 221, 281n12, 347; equated by missionaries with Christian Devil, 54, 216; and man owl woman (tlacatecolotl cihuatl), associations of, 53, 77n34, 95, 147, 187, 208, 210, 216, 217, 300, 398; as matched pair, 412, 413; names for, 210–11, 280n1, 280n4; as palpable threat, disclosing Totiotzin, 222–23. See also wind or winds marigolds. See flowers marijuana, 4, 135, 178n1, 251, 281n18, 282n52, 400. See also Santa Rosa Marín López, Benjamin, xvi, 43n48, 46n113, 83, 132n39 Martínez Cruz, Alberta, xvi, 43n48, 132n38, 132n39, 133n54, 417 Martínez de la Cruz, Rafael: on apanchaneh, 174, 176, 179n27, 179n35, 180n39, 180n44; on aspects of water, 131n8, 308n92, 418; on dreams, 131n5; on myth, 24, 45n94; on Postectli pilgrimage, 11, 308n92; on ritual variability, 133n47 Martínez Hernández, Catalina, xv, 144, 152, 345, 354, 356, 368, 372, 381, 391; paper figures prepared by, 181, 342, 360. See also under chants or chanting Martínez Marín, Carlos, 316, 323n1 Maya: Classic-era painting or bas-relief, 65–66, 223; concept of God-Totiotzin or teotl, 61, 66; empire, 10; miniatures, 308n81, 308n84; Palenque world tree, 282n44; pilgrimage, xvi, 309, 324n43; sacred hills and mountains, 78n44; Santiago Atitlán K’iche’ ritual practice, 66; Tzeltal, 204n27. See also Huastec Maya (Teenek) peoples McAnany, Patricia A., 288 McKeever Furst, Jill, 57, 62 Medellín Zenil, Alfonso, 43n43, 46n115, 51 Medina Silva, Ramón, 319 memory: as calendrical commemoration, 179n13, 317, 318; and communitas, 312; of creation, 56; and Mesoamerican spirit entities, as having histories or memorable roles, 61, 240, 223; names for, as ancient or ancestral words, 45n96; and picture writing, as collective system for recording, 202, 205n54; as recitation or performance, 107, 279; as written in blood, 150. See also Nahua Oral Tradition; pictographs and picture writing Mesoamerican graphic communication systems, 199–203, 205n54, 409–15; as pictographic, not glottographic writing, 199; principles of abstraction and metaphor in, 202–3. See also semasiography; tabularity metaphor or metonym, 65, 66, 71, 202–3, 286, 293. See also dualism meteors or comets, 52, 54, 134n77, 164. See also stars Mikulska, Katarzyna, 46n118, 79n62, 79n69, 200, 202, 205n54, 223–24, 283n66 Milky Way, 52, 191, 398 miniaturization: of chairs, as seats for spirit entities, 53, 90, 104, 244, 289, 370; of clothing or shoes, 39, 91, 191, 274, 386; as co-activity or dimensionality, 302–3; of cuartillo box, as tiny altar used for divination, 112; of disease-causing paper

452 : Index

figures (see something cut smaller or tlacotontli); of Totiotzin or cosmos, as human-altar structures, 140, 199, 220, 328. See also scaling milpa. See horticultural production mirror or tezcatl: defined, as sacred or sacredly, 134n68 (see also divinity or the sacred); as mirror-mountain (tepetezcatl), 164; as sky vault, 303 (see also human body); as world’s radiant beauty, xiii, 127 Mirador, Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz, xv, 368, 386, 398 Mixe peoples, 64–65, 302–3 Mixtec peoples, 307n52, 320; and pictographs, 200 modularity: of altar design or offerings, as cellular and nonhierarchical, 198, 297–99, 306, 321, 329, 414; of foundational altar-cross-earth, 244, 245, 262–63, 299; and number, 20, as ownership, 223, 298; in storytelling, 41. See also bundles; numbers; specificity and locality Molina, Alonso de, 219, 418 Monaghan, John, 17, 79n74, 80n100, 307n24, 307n52, 308n66 monism: and anthropology’s ontological turn, 66; compared to dualism, as embodiment, not symbol, 18, 60, 65–66, 202; defined, as single, sacred substance of reality, 4, 71; and energy, as physical-metaphysical transformation, 52; Mesoamerican duality as dual-aspect, 62, 222, 275, 281n25, 410, 415. See also dualism; pantheism; words or tlahtolli monkeys, 50, 59, 76n5 Montezoma, associations of, 398; as Tonantzin’s son, 49 moon: associations of, 50, 52, 54, 76n4, 398; design of, 307n43, 409; offerings to, 167–74, 197t, 263, 270 Morales, Guadalupe: on Amatlán, 72–73; on Seven Flowerchicomexochitl, 45n101, 47n122, 81n143 Morales, Luis, 365, 382 Morante López, Rubén, 56–57 Morinis, Alan, 309, 314 Munn, Nancy, 192–94 music or xochisones: guitar and violin, as sacred sounds, 18, 95–96, 101, 140, 182–83, 279, 368; and musicians leading processions, 89, 108, 120, 156, 338; and musicians shown playing, 86–87, 108–10, 119, 136, 142, 147, 158, 349, 372–73, 387, 389, 391; wind or brass band, 21, 86, 107, 287, 289. See also chants or chanting Myerhoff, Barbara, 46n119, 178n4, 319–20, 331 Nahua myths and narratives: analysis of, 23–25, 45n93; components or versions of, 40, 41, 45n101, 48, 76n1, 81n144, 134n76, 180n36; of fire spirit Tlixihuantzin, 129–31; and Legend of the Suns, 46n116, 51; of maize spirit Seven Flower– Chicomexochitl, 25–41; of time before the current era, 48–51; of water dweller Apanchaneh, 174–78; of water owner Zahhuan–San Juan Bautista, 73–76. See also names of spirit entities Nahua Oral Tradition, xiii, 4, 56, 59, 73, 279, 415; as conversation or spoken word (zanilli), 24, 16. See also chants or chanting; Nahuatl language; words or tlahtolli Nahua paper figures: in Amatlán altar sets, 233–46, 235–39t; as anthropomorphic or embodied spirit entities, 69, 70, 88,

187, 190, 207–84 (see also human body); arranged or ordered in groups, 195–99 (see also altar offering or mezah; paper beds or petates); as aspects of the sacred, not intercessors, 291–92; commissioned, as Postectli pilgrimage altar sets, 3, 22–23, 181, 197t, 196–97, 207–8; compared and conjoined, 405–6, 406–9t, 409–15, folded insert (table X.2); as core of costumbre religion, 185–95; dimensions of, 88, 218, 275; dressed or wrapped in freshly washed clothes, 91–92, 274–75, 276–78t, 341–46, 363 (see also clothing); as ephemeral and fragile, 226, 246; as exemplars of their type, 208, 209–16t, 226, 227–23t; and frontal or front-facing portrayal, 88, 189, 194, 201, 205n32, 234; as heat soul, 22 (see also souls); in Ichcacuatitla altar sets, 246–52, 247–50t; as iconographic system, 405–15 (see also iconography); as inanimateanimate transformation, 195; nonanthropomorphic or theriomorphic, 187, 194, 307n43, 411; and paper cutters’ mnemonic tools, notes, patterns, etc., 63, 187, 195, 244 (see also memory); and paper cutters’ style or skill, 61, 188, 197, 226, 240, 241, 242, 279, 414 (see also iconography); and paper types, 86, 191; produced as paired, two-ply cuttings, 88, 195, 233; scraps preserved from cuttings, 87–88, 90, 148, 150, 156, 157, 168, 378; shown stacked and bundled, 87, 91, 141, 148, 150, 165, 171, 303, 346, 378–79, 387 (see also bundles); in tepexitzintlan altar sets, 252–57, 253–56t; in tlahcopoztectli altar sets, 257–63, 259–61, 263–66t; in tzonteconpoztectli altar sets, 263, 267–74, 267–69, 271–74t Nahua peoples, xi, 3–4, 11–12; in Amatlán, northern Veracruz, 12–15; and ethnonyms Mexicano or macehualmeh, 11, 41n1, 133n56, 178 (see also Indigenous peoples); in Guerrero, 203, 319, 320–22, 328, 331; in Sierra Norte de Puebla, 11, 61, 288, 393; as storytellers, 23–25. See also Nahuatl language Nahua spirit entities: anthropomorphic nature of, 291–94; categories of, 209–16t, 227–33t; defined as beings in the everyday world, versus gods, deities, spirits, or owners (duenos), 16–17, 59–64; defined as saints and subjects of myth, with histories, xiii, 24, 36, 223 (see also saints or santos); and empirical observations of natural world, 56–59; as infectious/malevolent versus salutary/benevolent, not good-evil dichotomy, 70–71, 198, 199 (see also wind or winds); and mutability of the Huastecan Nahua pantheon, as social collectivity, 39, 59, 60, 62, 79n70, 233, 235, 246, 298, 327, 410. See also Nahua myths and narratives; Nahua paper figures; pantheism Nahuatl language: and challenges of translation, xvi, 16–18, 24, 41, 61, 79n60, 132n38; glossary of terms, 417–21; orthography and terms of address, xiii, 43n67, 44n88; 133n66, 307n26; speakers, 3, 11–12, 256, 385 Native American Journalists Association, 41n2 naturalism, 66–67; as design principle, 307n43, 410 Nava Vite, Rafael, 45n93, 54–55, 131n21, 182–83, 204n10, 418 Nicolás, José: on ancient time, 76n1 Nicholson, H. R., 280n9 night or nighttime: associations of, 54, 94, 132n41, 210, 217, 218, 280n4, 282n49 Nolan, Mary Lee, 310

numbers: significance of, 58–59; and twenty, in vigesimal system, 85, 87, 88, 91, 184, 195, 201, 223, 297–99, 340, 342, 357, 411, 413. See also modularity objects. See ritual objects Offner, Jerome, xvi, 10, 42n28, 205n54 Olivier, Guilhem, 59 Olko, Justyna, 78n57, 191 ontology. See monism order and disorder: as agonistic inamic unity, 222 (see also balance); and center-periphery tension, 76, 131, 187, 198–99, 208, 222, 279, 301–2, 322–23, 369; exemplified by Nahua milpa, 290, 333, 334 (see also horticulture production); as nonhierarchical ordering, 205n53, 244, 302–5, 413 (see also scaling); and pollution, trash, or filth (tlazolli), 52, 107, 178n8, 199, 281n17, 299–301, 334; and sources of antisocial disruption, 23, 95, 98, 130, 198, 208, 218, 296, 300, 326–27, 334 (see also respect); and tecpana, to arrange or put in order, 279. See also balance Otomí (Ñähñu) peoples, 10, 42n16; and paper-figure complex, 44n81, 68–70, 189, 191–92, 240; and papermaking, in Sierra Norte de Puebla, 185, 225; pilgrimage destinations of, 6, 18–19, 84, 118, 134n67, 241, 320. See also ritual specialists outside cross or cruz afuera altar: associations of, with sun or crucifixion, 119–20, 134n71, 119, 233, 395, 402; and flowered vine (mecaxochitl), as antenna, or telegraph wire, 119–20, 143, 183, 258, 342, 369–70; offerings to, 108–28, 143, 197t, 245–46, 298, 372. See also altars or altar tables; cross; flowers Overholtzer, Lisa, 64 owls, 208. See also man owl or tlacatecolotl pantheism: and corpomorphosis, 68–70; as highly abstract, 59, 63, 64, 186, 288, 305; and Judeo-Christian good-evil dichotomy, 70–71, 334; as Mesoamerican religious system, 4, 18, 59–64, 65–66, 67, 79n74; and nonhuman agency, 64–67; and polytheism, 4, 22, 61, 63, 64, 71, 304, 333, 410; and theism or nontheism, 4, 59, 61, 71; as water and sun, at the apex, 170. See also costumbre beliefs and practices; religion paper beds or petates: design and size of, 87, 220, 234; inventory of, 197t; names for, 22; tabular layout of, 223–24 papermaking: amate or amatl (bark paper), 22, 185, 186, 191, 201, 204n14, 204n18, 204n22, 224, 286; and history of paper use, 185–86. See also Nahua paper figures Paso y Troncoso, Francisco del, and Relación de Uexutla, 10 Pérez Zevallos, Juan Manuel, 51 pictographs and picture writing: Aztec and Mixtec, 200, 415n5; defined, 199–203; Nahua paper-figure complex as, 4, 186, 225, 252, 415. See also iconography; memory; Mesoamerican graphic communication systems; semasiography pilgrimage: autochthonous, 310–11; case studies of, 309–16, 319; Catholic, to Chalma, 310, 319, 322, 323, 329, 331; Catholic, to Ocotlán, Tepeyac, or Zopopan, 4, 310, 397; Christian or European, 306n17, 309, 310–11, 314, 324n38, 324n44, 331, 336n6; as conservative, 331; as costly signaling, 296–97; definition of, and scope of study, 3–11, 17, 21–23,

Index : 453

309 (see also ethnography); emotional value of, 138; goals for organizing, 82, 84, 326–36; Guerrero Nahua, to Oztotempan, 319, 321–22, 323, 331; as highest expression of Nahua religion and philosophy, 170, 181, 278–80 (see also costumbre beliefs and practices); Huichol (Wixárika), to Wirikuta, 140, 319–20, 323, 329, 331; as individual journey versus community undertaking, 316, 336n4; as interethnic, 11, 131n7; to La Laguna, 20, 78n49, 241, 397, 407; to Mecca, 309, 313, 323n6, 326; to México Chiquito, Mexico Grande, or Mayónníjä, 118, 134n67, 395; to Palaxtepetl, 6, 7 (map), 185, 224, 310, 323, 337–63; permission to undertake, 18, 21, 83, 85–86, 150, 337, 365, 385 (see also Postectli sacred mountain); pre-Hispanic Nahua (Aztec or Mexica), to Tlalocan, 316–19; Protestant, 4; provisions and outlays for, 86, 93, 279, 289t (see also work or tequitl); as rite of passage, 311, 312, 313, 320, 322, 323, 329, 331; routes, on the trek or trail, 7, 136–38, 145–47, 155–56, 165–68, 353–55, 373, 376, 388, 390; as search for order, 329; sites, of historical or archaeological significance, 164, 310, 316, 323n6, 324n43, 323n1; souvenirs or mementos of, 140, 172, 179n31, 196, 274, 296, 309, 363; stages of, 131n1; Tepanec, to La Lucerna, 319, 320–21, 323; to Tres Positos, 6, 7, 118, 134n67, 267, 310, 320, 323, 365–92; and Turnerian model of antistructure or communitas, 311–12, 313–14, 318, 320, 322–23, 329; to Xomulco, 6, 7, 310, 320, 323, 393–415 Pitrou, Perig, 64–65, 302–3 Pleiades. See under stars pockets: as body joints, 242, 256; as makeshift purse, in woman’s blouse, 258, 283n61, 346, 414; as paper V-cuts, 134n75, 191, 194, 240, 250, 283n60; as portals or windows, 412; and rectangular arrangement, as earth’s surface, 245; as suggesting cloth garments, 134n75; versus open cuts, as rib holes, 217. See also clothing; iconography Popol Vuh (Quiché Maya text), 46n105, 46n107, 46n116, 76n3. See also Nahua myths and narratives Postectli sacred mountain, xi, 5, 10, 118, 128, 135–80; associations of, as hill of the siren or mirror-mountain, 23, 282n41, 164, 398; as broken, 5–6, 36, 40, 41, 45n93, 46n116, 174, 304; cave dwellings, 36, 53, 56, 164, 287, 301 (see also Tonantzin; water dweller or apanchaneh); as container of life force, 40; embodied in paper, 282n41, 308n88, 409; as gigantic altar, 257, 336; as governor, 5, 56, 79n60, 259, 319, 303; locations and focus of pilgrimage offerings, 82, 197t, 225, 227–29t, 257, 275; and permission to undertake pilgrimage, 85; as refuge or place of exile, 36, 37, 39 (see also Seven Flower or chicomexochitl); as template for cosmos, 192–93; viewed on trek to, 137–38, 141, 145–47; views from, 155–56; witness or advocate for, 153. See also hills; pilgrimage power or energy as chicahualiztli: concentrated on altars, 286; as heat of sun, 119, 127, 271; as life force, circulating in cosmos, 17, 294; as life force, in food sharing, 295, 306n21, 321–22, 363; as life force, of seeds, 274; as love and respect, 328–29; retained in paper scraps, 90; as vigor or strength carried in blood, 52, 103. See also human body; reciprocity; sun or tonatiuh; work or tequitl

454 : Index

Protestants. See religion Provost, Paul J., 44n87, 131n14 rain or rainfall: associations of, as erratic San Juan or gentle Santa Juanita, 40, 242, 399, 400; as blessing, 82, 159; cycle of, and relationship to hills, 57; and drought, as impetus for ritual appeals, 63, 64, 83, 84, 100, 118, 155, 300, 303; enacted by sprinkling water, 36, 57, 120; and forms of moisture, as balanced or adequate, 77n30, 112, 118, 133n62, 174, 242; as insecure and uncertain, 40, 178, 323, 333; and roles of water dweller apanchaneh or water owner zahhuan, 73–76, 174–78; and water pots, 87, 132n32, 182. See also horticultural production; water; water realm or apan rain dwarfs: associations of, as honored little old ones (pilhuehuentzitzin), 31, 36, 57, 242, 243, 397, 401; and Tlaloc or tlaloques, 185; as water carriers, 52, 79n58, 242, 304. See also cloud or mixtli; lightning and thunder; walking stick rainbows, 58, 182, 220, 293; as walking stick’s colorful ribbons, 92, 131n21 Rappaport, Roy, 294–97, 329, 335 realms or levels, cosmic. See cosmos reciprocity: and altar design, 234; as center-periphery tension, 301–2 (see also sacred landscape); as costly or difficult to fulfill, 296–97; as dynamic of human-spirit interaction, 291, 306n24 (see also Nahua spirit entities); of food, as gift of love, 17, 307n52, 328; generalized, as core feature of Nahua religion, 333–35, 406, 409; as moral-ethical conduct, 199, 295, 306n21, 328 (see also respect); as strategy of social exchange or obligation, 4, 17, 98, 118, 226, 285, 287–90, 306, 331 Reilly, F. Kent, 151 relational personhood. See human beings religion: as ancestral belief (tlaneltoquilli) or customs, 16, 51–55 (see also costumbre beliefs and practices); Buddhism, 60, 186, 286, 293, 310, 333; Catholicism, and catechists or priests, 72, 84, 127, 240, 386; and Catholic observances, 54, 69, 292, 300 (see also saints or santos); and Catholic reevangelization, 8, 10, 128, 280, 297, 327, 386; as economic exchange, 290; (see also ritual economy); and Indigenous incorporation of Christianity, 8, 10, 23, 72, 80n129, 174, 240, 280, 301, 320; and Judeo-Christian or Euro-American concept of, 16, 17, 56, 60, 63, 67, 70–71, 310; and liturgy or canon, as invariant, 23, 54, 83, 279, 294–96; Pentecostal or evangelical, 44n71, 78n44, 301, 386; and Protestant conversion, 8, 19, 71–72, 128, 297, 301, 327, 333, 386; and Spanish Catholic friars, missionaries, or Inquisition in New Spain, 11, 52, 61, 63, 70–71, 73, 155, 187, 243; state-level Mesoamerican, 64, 310, 316, 318; and syncretism or cultural continuity, 54, 69, 192, 292, 300, 310, 324n16; as theism, 4, 59–64. See also pantheism repetition, replication, or reduplication: of malevolent winds, to reiterate mortal threat, 218; as mechanized production of paper cuttings, 195; as reinforcing reciprocal exchange between human-spirit realms, 234–35; reiterated, in ritual specialist–paper cutters’ repertoire, 188, 244, 286, 305, 410; in repetitive acts of ritual, rite, or ceremony, 17; in repetitive and labor-intensive work of horticulturists, 335–36; as reply

or answer (réplica) from spirit entities, 69; as self-replicating pattern of animated cosmos, 190, 220; as tiny replicas, in co-activity linking human-spirit realms, 303. See also modularity; scaling; specificity and locality respect: defined, as tlatlepanittaliztli, 40, 46n120, 151, 328 (see also costumbre beliefs and practices); and disrespect (axtlatlepanitta), 40, 53, 64, 71, 84, 130–31, 176–77, 199, 286, 290, 328, 334 (see also order and disorder); and etiquette, 89, 295, 299; in Indigenous or costumbre religion, 13, 128, 163–64, 290; for objects made of maize, 151 (see also bundles); pilgrimage, as ultimate act of, 39, 172, 280, 331; as reciprocal or countervailing force 199, 222 (see also balance; reciprocity); for ritual specialists, 18, 84; shown by feeding sacrificial fowl, 103, 182, 350, 357 (see also chickens or turkeys); for things of this world (cemanahuac tlaltentli), 3, 6–7, 336, 363 (see also cosmos) ritual economy, 287–90; as bargaining with spirits, 291; and behavioral economics, 291; and cognitive psychology, 292 ritual kinship or compadrazgo, 8, 14, 72, 157, 290, 330, 334 ritual objects: additive function of, 286 (see also altars or altar tables); as embodying, revealing, or disclosing, not symbolizing, 60; as idol worship or idolatry, 10, 90, 285, 316–18; metaphysical nature of, 195; as subjects and agents in social interactions, 285–87, 329, 393. See also rituals ritual specialists: Catalina (see Martínez Hernández, Catalina); Catarina, xv, 147, 149, 153–55, 343, 345, 348, 350, 356, 360, 395; Cirilo (see Téllez Hernández, Encarnación); Cortino Pasiano, 181; defined as person of knowledge (tlamatiquetl), 7–8, 16, 20–21, 85, 128, 208, 216, 222, 322, 405; defined as shaman, use of term, 43n59, 56, 68, 204n32, 225 (see also divination; trance); Lino (see Hernández, Juan Antonio); María Dolores (see Hernández, María Dolores); and Otomí costumbre practitioners, xv, 8, 87, 92, 136, 158, 159, 185, 251, 329 (see also Cruz, Evaristo de la); Raymundo (see Hernández, Raymundo); Silveria (see Hernández Hernández, Silveria); Sofía (Otomí vision specialist), xv, 320, 368, 369, 379, 380, 386, 391, 392 (see also pilgrimage to Xomulco); Teófilo (see Jiménez Hernández, Teófilo); Timoteo, xv, 138, 144, 171, 172, 173, 303–4, 305; role and authority of, 16, 90, 91, 128, 172, 243; tasks of, in preparation for pilgrimage, 135, 198; training of, and mentor-acolyte lineages, 18–21, 69, 88–89, 188, 194, 196, 240, 241, 301, 332. See also names under chants or chanting rituals: defined, as spreading out (tlamanaliztli) and sprinkling (tlatzicuintli) offerings or putting down flowers (xochitlalia), 17, 190, 306n21 (see also illustrated under altar offering or mezah; altars or altar tables; blood; cleansing-curing rituals). See also rituals under subjects Rodríguez-Shadow, María, 322, 323n7, 329 Romero, Isabel, xvi, 83 rubber or latex, 36, 57, 59, 185, 195, 204n21, 225 Ruvalcaba Mercado, Jesús, 51, 81n142, 203n9 sacred landscape: 55–56, 77n39; associations, as earthlycelestial bond, 271, 412; and Aztec ceremonial circuit, 301; as cognized environment, 6, 394; and correspondences to Postectli mezah episodes, 196; as cosmovision of a living

universe, 328; and impact of religious pilgrimage, as form of travel, 331; of mountains and hills, as pilgrimage destinations, 7, 40, 78n49, 105, 107, 133n55, 252, 303, 337; as pantheon of spirit entities, sacred hills, sacralized objects, 133n55, 393. See also divinity or the sacred; hills; specificity and locality sacrifice. See under Aztecs or Mexica; blood; chickens or turkeys Sahlins, Marshall, 67 saints or santos: in Calendario del más Antiguo Galván, 240; as hills, 56; as mediators, 412; in myth, 36, 73–75; in Mesoamerican pantheon, 233; in paper, 187, 232, 256; in sky home, 52; statues or images of, 60, 90, 286, 289. See also ancient ones; costumbre beliefs and practices; names of saints Sallnow, Michael, 306n17, 314–15 San Antonio de Pádua: associations of, as God-Totiotzin or diocito, 253, 256, 257, 304, 396, 399; design of, 226, 231, 253, 255, 256, 305, 412; names for, as Santo de Páuida, 232, 253. See also saints or santos San Bartolo: associations of, 56, 251, 303, 397, 399; design of, 148, 220, 249, 254, 272, 283, 408, 414; names for, 229; and San Bartolo Tutotepec, 203, 241, 282n53. See also hills San Estéban hill, 220, 229, 269, 270, 283n56, 397, 399. See also hills San Gregorio hill, 229, 257–58, 261, 397, 399. See also hills San Jerónimo hill: associations of, 15, 56, 244, 397, 399; key to, 229, 236, 240, 244–45, 251–52; as palace of the governor, in chants, 105; pilgrimage site in Puebla, 20, 45n89, 241, 316. See also hills; key San José, 60, 399 San Juan Bautista or zahhuan: associations of, as water owner, 36, 40, 41, 53, 84, 133n65, 164, 242, 321, 399; and baptism, 62, 73; feast day of, 54; as male aspect of apanchaneh and Santa Juanita, 84, 164, 174–75, 242, 304; in myth, 37, 53, 73–76, 300–1; names for, 62, 73; offerings to, 167–74, 197t, 263, 270, 304; as toad master, 88–89; as Tonantzin’s son, 49, 73; washing statues of, 176. See also water; water dweller or apanchaneh San Lucas, 54, 399 San Sebastián hill: key to, 229, 252, 267, 268, 270, 400; martyr, 100. See also Santo Vacían Sandel, David, 331 Sandstrom, Michael, xi, xv, 5, 83, 139 Santa Cecilia, 182, 400 Santa María Magdalena, 241, 258, 400 Santa Juanita: associations of, 242, 256, 270, 304, 306, 400; design of, 231, 244, 259, 282n45, 375, 408, 411, 412; as female aspect of San Juan-zahhuan, 242; names for, 232, 256. See also saints or santos Santa Panchita: associations of, 256, 257, 306, 400; design of, 231, 256, 262, 412, 414; names for, 232. See also saints or santos Santa Rita: associations of, 242, 244, 246, 252, 256, 258, 270, 400; design of, 231, 242, 375, 256, 412; names for, 232. See also saints or santos Santa Rosa: associations of, as Saint Rose of Lima, 134n69, 135, 178n1, 251, 400, 412, 413; design of, 220, 226, 231, 232, 408, 411;

Index : 455

names for, as white, 119, 232; wild (cimarrón), 281n18, 282n52, 218, 412. See also marijuana; saints or santos Santa Úrsula hill: associations of, 258, 397, 400; design of, 257–58, 260, 283n58, 408, 413; names for, 229. See also hills Santo Vacián: associations of, 100, 400; as sacred thunderer, in chants, 118, 119, 155. See also San Sebastián scaling, 302–5; and altar design, as scaled-down arrays, 101, 190, 192–93, 244; in paper-figure complex, 188, 198, 329. See also cosmos scissors, 85, 88, 188, 242, 289, 329; history of, 185–86, 225; used to cut throats of sacrificial fowl, 103, 159, 160, 278, 338 seeds: bundled into sisal carrying bags, 91, 94, 102, 104, 110, 136, 144, 157, 174; dressed figures of, 39, 58, 274–75, 277–78, 341, 344, 345, 346, 348, 352, 359–60, 375, 387; offerings to, 100–8, 140–46, 197t; undressing, 89, 90–91, 335, 338. See also bundling; clothing; names of crops; wooden box seeing: equated with respect or regard, 40, 46n120; Mesoamerican way of, as revealing dimensionality, 223; and open eyes of paper figures, 193, 234; and sensory impact of pictographic systems, 202; and visual message of blackened paper figures, 216 semasiography: defined, 200–3; of paper-figure complex, 224, 225, 243–44, 247, 252, 413. See also iconography; Mesoamerican graphic communication systems; pictographs and picture writing Seven Flower or chicomexochitl: associations of, 23, 39, 151, 400; birth of twins, 26, 28, 241; carried on turtle’s back, 30; as four maize ears or maize child, 151, 174 (see also bundles); and crop fertility, 101, 195, 283n59; ground and fed to fish, 28; murderous tzitzimitl as grandmother of, 25, 27, 32, 34, 40, 71, 81, 301, 402 (see also under deer; sorcery and sorcerers; toads); in myth, 24–41, 326; as revitalization movement, 45n89, 72, 332; and ritual music, 182–83; trials of, 33. See also adornments; maize Shadow, Robert, 322, 323n7, 329 Sharon, Douglas, 43n67, 61 shrine or chapel, as flower house (xochicalli). See under flowers Sierra Madre Oriental, 5, 57, 68, 136, 139, 186, 374 Sierra Norte de Puebla, 11, 22, 61, 185, 186, 225, 288, 319, 393 skeleton. See bones sky–celestial realm or ilhuicactli, 52, 54, 59, 101, 189, 192–93, 262, 303, 388, 410. See also cosmos social exchange. See reciprocity social relations. See order and disorder solstice or equinox, 19, 72, 188, 243; and cross, 395. See also iconography something cut smaller or tlacotontli: associations and designs of, as dangerous entities lacking histories and individual names, 95, 208, 211, 215–16, 218–20, 401; layout in cleansing array, 94, 221, 222, 224, 348. See also cleansing-curing rituals; Nahua paper figures; wind or winds songs or singing: as cellular, 297; of deity impersonator, 202–3; of flowers, 184, 296. See also chants or chanting sorcery or sorcerers, 40–41, 53, 58, 90, 219, 300, 334; as angry crone or hag (tzitzimitl), 25, 39, 40, 45n102, 71, 81n133, 402

456 : Index

(see also under Seven Flower); and counter-sorcery, against envy, 51, 95, 219, 218n11, 222. See also cleansing-curing rituals; Nahua spirit entities; something cut smaller or tlacotontli Sosa Fuentes, Sylvia Maribel, 68 souls: of ancestors, 292, 331; animal, 39; dead, 23, 53, 143, 208, 210, 321, 328; drowned, 53, 178; fate of, 71; as ihyotl (breath soul), 78n57; as revengeful or wandering, 77n27, 198, 223; of Maya ritual specialists, 66; of Texcoco rain spirits, 46n112; of Totonac images, 90; as tonalli (heat soul), 22, 26, 52, 57, 59, 78n57, 191, 234, 242, 401, 407; as yolotl (heart soul), 57. See also Nahua spirit entities; power or energy as chicahualiztli; sun or tonatiuh specificity and locality: embodied in paper figures, 188, 240, 244, 287; of entities or places named in chanting, 133n55, 306, 393–403, 411; in sacred music, 183. See also sacred landscape springs. See under water squash, 232, 275, 278, 363. See also beans; maize Starr, Frederick, 51, 185 stars: associations of, as morning star or planet Venus (tonquetl) or Pleiades constellation (chicome citlalin), 52, 244, 401, 410, 412; coyol palm (see under adornments); as guardians, 54, 59, 77n31 (see also witness); names for, or design of, 226, 231, 232, 237, 242–43; and Quetzalcoatl, 59. See also meteors or comets stone stelae, at Tres Pozitos, 375, 376, 377, 380–81 Stresser-Péan, Claude: 46n112; and Fundación Stresser-Péan, xvii Stresser-Péan, Guy, xvii, 41n1, 46n108, 46n112, 79n57, 80n123, 185–86, 225 Stuart, David, 66, 78n44 Sullivan, John, 43n67, 134n68, 417, 418 sun or tonatiuh: associations of, as earth-sun duality or cross-sun-Jesus, 51, 52, 57, 243, 305, 401 (see also under cross; Jesus Christ or Jesús); design of, 307n43, 409; as energy, animated and life-giving, 10, 60, 103, 119, 127 (see also divinity or the sacred); face of, 303; as guardian, 243; as hearth spirit (tlixihuantzin), 108; offerings to, 170, 171–72, 167–74, 197t, 270–71, 412; and solar light rays, 119, 170, 172–73, 184, 306, 412 (see also headdresses); and sun’s heat energy (see power or energy as chicahualiztli); as Tonantzin’s son, 49. See also altars and altar tables; candles; outside cross or cruz afuera altar sweatbath or temazcalli, 31, 33, 36, 300 sweeping (ochpantli). See under cleansing-curing rituals symbolic healing. See under cleansing-curing rituals symbols or symbolism. See monism tabularity, and tabular organization, 223–24, 225, 410, 412. See also rectangular/rectilinear under iconography Taggart, James M., xvi, 41n1, 45n93, 46n116, 46n120, 76n2, 180n41, 307n52 Tamiahua, Veracruz, 73 Tellez Hernández, Encarnación (Cirilo), 85, 94, 149, 173; on calling as curer, 18–19; on cleansing-curing, 207–25; and commission of Postectli collection of paper cuttings, 22–23, 181, 226, 365; on costumbre religion and culture change, 6–8, 68; death

of, 332; as interlocutor, 16 (see also chants or chanting); on human beings, 60; on maize, 12; on poor people versus rich (los ricos), 3, 6, 15, 128, 385; on rain cycle and sacred hills, 57; on religion, 61; on San Juan-zahhuan, 81n144; on Seven Flowerchicomexochitl, 45n101; as source of information on ritual practices, 3, 181, 207, 242, 244, 258 (see also ethnography); xochicalli shrine of, 13, 89, 101–2, 104, 332, 365, 367 Téllez Martínez, Angelina, xv Tepehua (Hamasipini) peoples, 10, 51, 68–70, 76n8; and music, 203n4; and narratives, 45n93; and paper use, 44n81, 185, 189, 191–92, 194, 195, 199, 204n14, 205n32, 282n51; and pilgrimage sites, 241 Teyahual, 229, 267, 268, 397, 401; platform mound, 374–75. See also hills; pilgrimage to Tres Pozitos Tezcatlipoca or Smoking Mirror, 54, 280n2 Thaler, Richard, 291, 292 thunder. See lightning and thunder tiotl or teotl. See God-Totiotzin tlacotontli. See something cut smaller or tlacotontli Tlahueliloc: associations of, as death, devil, or wrath, xvi, 62, 210, 280n2, 395, 398, 402; as death’s brother, 208n4; design of, 407; and disease-causing winds (ehecameh), 53; and man owl (tlacatecolotl), 280n2; as Tonantzin’s son, 49 Tlaloc, 147, 185, 316–19, 322, 332, 392n1. See also rain dwarfs Tlazolteotl, 202 toads: 31, 34, 40; and fertility, 88–89, 193, 234; jowls of, 234, 394; physiology of, 131n15 tobacco, as offering, 62, 95, 103, 144, 198, 289, 380 Toltec, 3, 10, 12, 164 Tonantzin: addressed as God, 98, 127, 142n43; associations of, as Our Honored Mother, Virgin Mary or Virgen de Guadalupe, 36, 52, 60, 89, 90, 91, 112, 119, 402; and church precinct, 241; as earth mother, of seeds, maize, or Seven Flower, 39, 40, 46n110, 52, 53, 71, 85, 301, 303; sons of, as four eras, 49; as Xochiquetzal, 40; as water dweller (apanchaneh), 39, 56, 73, 164, 174, 287. See also Postectli sacred mountain totemism, 66 Totiotzin (teotl or tiotl). See God-Totiotzin Totonac peoples, 51, 68–69, 76n8; and beliefs, 46n110, 76n23, 77n33, 79n61, 79n63, 79n65, 131n20, 133n59, 132n32, 134n76, 179n29; and monism, 90; and narratives, 45n93, 46n119, 76n2, 81n144, 179n35; and paper cutting or talakšin figures, 69, 80n123, 194; and pilgrimage sites, 10 trance, 134n69, 251, 320, 368, 369, 380, 382, 386. See also water dweller or apanchaneh Trejo Barrientos, Leopoldo, 418; on bundles, 178n10; on cleansing, 132n29, and collaborative ethnological work, 68–70, 418; on colors, 58, 79n63, 131n21, 179n30, 284n66; on corpomorphosis, 68–70, 415n3; on music, 86; on rituals as interethnic, 131n7 twistedness, 281n16, 300; and clouds, 128; and twisted face of Tlaloc, 185 Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner, 310–15, 323n7, 329, 330, 342n44; on communitas (see pilgrimage) turtle who carries Seven Flower, 30, 31, 40

underworld realm or mictlan: associations of, 208, 217, 218; as hidden third dimension, 223; as impoverished domain, 224; as interior earth, 49, 52–53, 302 (see also earth); and masked dancers (mecos), 210, 300; realm, or place of the dead, 53–54, 58, 143, 190–91, 198, 208, 223, 244, 410. See also cleansingcuring rituals; wind or winds Vaughn, Kevin, 296 Venus. See under stars Virgin Mary or Virgen de Guadalupe. See Tonantzin Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo, 67 Vogt, Evon, 302, 308n60 walking stick: associations of, as staff of authority (tlanahuatilcuatopilli), 90, 98, 262, 402; carried by ritual specialists, 36, 92, 109–10, 131n20, 135, 136, 142, 289, 368–69, 372; carried by spirit entities, 242, 243; decorated wooden bastón, 341; design of, 231; names for, 232. See also rain dwarfs water: casting of, 120; design of, as disease-causing water wind, 211, 215, 218, 402 (see also wind or winds); design of, as salutary (see water dweller or apanchaneh); and feeding the water (atlatlacualtiliztli), as focus of pilgrimage, 84, 187, 242, 259, 283n56; and forms or sources of moisture, 77n30, 112, 146, 241, 242 (see also rain or rainfall); as mediator, connecting earth-underworld realms, 224 (see also water realm or apan); as smoke or water vapor, 57, 107, 118 (see also clouds); in springs, or village water supply, 108–28, 137, 146, 233, 354–55, 371; as untamed or wild (cimarrón), 218 water dweller or apanchaneh: associations of, 36, 39, 53, 73, 84, 109, 111, 128, 133n65, 178, 226, 402; cave of, on Postectli, 36, 164, 165–66, 303; design of, 219, 231, 241, 253, 257, 282n43, 408, 412; as dressed figure, 88, 93, 152, 274–75, 276, 284n67, 346, 351, 366–67, 369–71, 373, 387; as male siren (aserenoh) and aspect of zahhuan, 53, 233, 249, 251, 254–255, 268, 413; as mermaid, 53, 282n43, 283n55; messages from, xv, 134n69, 164, 166 (see also dreams; trance); and mother of maize, 39, 174 (see also Tonantzin); in myth, 174–78; names for, 53, 62, 107, 113, 118, 119, 164, 233; offerings to, 100–8, 108–28, 138, 156–67, 182, 197t, 245, 371–72; payments to, 306n16; as water-earth duality, 306; and water wind, as antithesis, 218 water owner. See San Juan Bautista or zahhuan water realm or apan: associations of, 53, 76, 242, 262, 302; as bubbling paradise or afterlife, 53, 178; invoked, in water pots, 87, 101, 102, 345–46, 351. See also colors; rain or rainfall Wells, E. Christian, 288 whistles, 91, 286, 289, 377, 378, 380, 389 Whittaker, Gordon, 205n54, 415n5 Williams García, Roberto, 45, 51, 68, 307n52, 394 wind or winds: associations of, as dangerous ehecameh, 53, 207–25, 281n17, 394, 396; associations of, as salutary, 107, 109, 217, 228, 250–51, 257, 337, 396–97 (see also cloud or mixtli; rain or rainfall); as bad wind (mal aire or viento), 209, 213, 217; corpses, 190–91, 209, 213, 217, 218, 395; design of diseasecausing ehecatl, or flowery (xochiehecatl), 212–16, 221, 347–48, 408, 410; design of good (cualli ehecatl), 148, 230; soldier, 224,

Index : 457

281n32, 348, 369, 400, 408; as souls of the dead (see souls); as wild (cimarrón), 219. See also cleansing-curing rituals; death or miquiliztli; man owl or tlacatecolotl; underworld realm or mictlan windows: altars as, 328; or doors, as paper portals, 18, 164, 283n60, 343, 352, 412; stained glass, 200 winter solstice, 19, 72 witness: associations of, 258, 283n60, 402, 410, 414; design of, as guardian who cares for or watches (tlamoquitlahuihquetl), or flower carrier, 233, 258, 262, 264, 283n60, 338, 342–43, 369, 405, 408, 409; and God-Totiotzin, Totahtzin–San José, and Tonantzin-Guadalupe, as protectors, 60; as interlocutors among celestial, earthly, water realms, 262. See also hills; stars; sun or tonatiuh wooden box: containing sacred seeds, 39, 85, 102, 140, 275, 289, 387; in mythic flood, 50; of cedar (teocuahuitl), 89, 419. See also seeds words or tlahtolli: and ancient discourse or myth, 24, 45n96; encoded in liturgy, as sequence of rituals (see under religion);

458 : Index

and gossip, idle talk, or lying, generating social disorder, 98, 100, 164, 334; power of, 16, 100, 164. See also chanting; Nahua Oral Tradition work or tequitl: and beekeeping, 183; and hardship, 20, 139, 320, 323; as marker of Indigenous identity, 295; and migration or migrants, 12, 67, 323n1, 330, 331; in myth, 129–30, 175; of pilgrimage, as collective effort, 23, 84–85, 88, 107, 128, 155, 161, 328–29, 335; as recirculating energy, 52, 328–29. See also horticultural production; ritual economy Xihuiyoh hill, 78n48, 229, 255, 256, 282n54, 397, 402, 408. See also hills Xochicualaloya hill, 78n48, 229, 268, 270, 397, 402. See also hills Xochiquetzal, 40 Xochipilli, 40 Zavala, Brisa Sánchez, xvi, 132n38, 133n56, 134n74, 417 Zorita, Francisco de, 36

About the Authors Alan R. Sandstrom is professor emeritus of anthropology at Purdue University Fort Wayne (formerly Indiana University–­Purdue University Fort Wayne). Alan and Pamela have conducted long-­term ethnographic field research among the Nahua people of northern Veracruz, Mexico, and together they coauthored Traditional Papermaking and Paper Cult Figures of Mexico (1986). In addition to serving as editor of the Nahua Newsletter from 1990 to 2011, Alan has written Corn Is Our Blood: Culture and Ethnic Identity in a Contemporary Aztec Indian Village (1991, and a Spanish translation, El maíz es nuestra sangre, 2010) and Ethnic Identity in Nahua Mesoamerica: The View from Archaeology, Art History, Ethnohistory, and Contemporary Ethnography (coauthored with Frances Berdan, John Chance, Barbara Stark, James Taggart, and Emily Umberger, 2008). Edited works include Native Peoples of the Gulf Coast of Mexico (coedited with E. Hugo García Valencia, 2005), Holy Saints and Fiery Preachers: The Anthropology of Protestantism in Mexico and Central America (coedited with James W. Dow, 2001), and Mesoamerican Healers (coedited with Brad R. Huber, 2001). Pamela Effrein Sandstrom is associate librarian emerita and former head of reference and information services (1998–­2011) at Purdue University Fort Wayne. She has worked as reference book review editor (2014–­2017) for the American Library Association’s Choice magazine and serves as archivist (1996 to present) for the Central States Anthropological Society. Pamela holds MLS and PhD degrees in library and information science, has pioneered the application of optimal foraging models to analyze the information-­seeking behavior of scholars in the specialty of human behavioral ecology, and has published articles in Library Quarterly, Scientometrics, and Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.

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