Re-envisioning the Spanish Conquest

Contemporary Mixe Indians

My tour guide in Oaxaca gave me a piece of information that altered my understanding of the Spanish Conquest.  He told me that there was an indigenous group, the Mixes, that had not known about the Spanish Conquest until 150 years after the event.  This group, or at least a part of this group, had been hiding from the marauding Mexica (Aztecs) in the mountains and were so well sequestered that they had missed the big news.

Aztec sacrifice

We all have heard of the Aztecs, but most of our education about the Conquest has been limited and because of this, distorted. What we term the Aztecs (more properly called Mexicas), were a group of relative newcomers to the scene that had emerged as political victors by the time Cortes arrived.  In truth, they had only been top dogs for some one hundred years.   These Nahua speakers had started off centuries earlier as a nomadic group from the north,  as "Chichimecas"( the Mesoamerican equivalent of barbarians), and had migrated to central Mexico, adopting the customs of the more sophisticated peoples they encountered.  They became politically ascendant in 1427 through the "Triple Alliance" they created with two other groups and became severe overlords  exacting tribute both material and human ( sacrificial victims) from those they conquered.  Although many Mesoamerican groups had practiced human sacrifice, the Aztecs, by their own account, brought the practice to new heights.   The statistics cannot be verified, but one report has it that in 1487 for the reconsecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan some 84,000 prisoners were sacrificed over a period of four days.  That's a lot of blood.  

Tlaxcalans fighting alongside Spanish

As you can imagine, the Aztecs had made numerous enemies and some of them, most notably the Tlaxcalans but others as well, played an important role in the Spanish victory.  There is a book entitled "Indian Conquistadors"  which explores the indigenous 
participation in the Conquest.  Sources indicate that everyone was happy to be rid of the Aztecs, although the Spanish victory presented them with a whole new set of challenges.  It is these challenges and the many sorts of resolutions and compromises that evolved that have been the focus of this blog.

Oaxacan Baroque: Environment and Architecture

I just returned from Oaxaca, Mexico which is about five hours southeast of Mexico City.  Everything about this diverse region- churches, customs, handicrafts, is phenomenal.  It is an area of Mexico in which the indigenous peoples, largely Zapotec Indians, but Mixtec, as well,  have kept their customs and identities alive.  These are the same groups that Cortes encountered during the conquest.  

Apart from seeing all of the unique churches in Oaxaca City and the nearby valleys, there was one thing I wanted to clarify on my trip. This was, what exactly was  "Oaxacan Baroque"?  It was a term I had come across in my pre-trip reading and for some reason it  intrigued me.  

 The Cathedral of the Virgin of the Assumption in Oaxaca is a prime example of Oaxacan Baroque architecture.

Oaxaca Cathedral

There is nothing delicate about this building or any of the churches you will see below. Oaxaca is not a land of tall elegant bell-towers or spires.  The Oaxaca Cathedral is robust, almost stocky, with wide short towers.  Compare it to the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City below.  The architectural difference is dramatic.

Metropolitan Cathedral, Mexico City

Take a look at two more examples of Oaxacan Baroque style:

Convento of Santo Domingo, Oaxaca

Teotitlan de Valle, Oaxaca

Teotitlan del Valle, side view

In all Oaxacan churches bell towers, if they are present, are short, broad and connected for all or most of their length to the main body of the church.  All have significant side buttresses, a feature designed to support the church nave's vaulted ceiling.  The buttresses in Oaxaca are not the delicate flying buttresses of European medieval churches, but are solid, functional affairs.  Some Oaxacan churches, such as San Augustin seen below, do not have bell towers at all.

San Augustin, Oaxaca

The greenish cantera stone, a volcanic rock,  seen in the above photo is characteristic of Oaxaca's churches. The side view of the same church shows the solidity of the buttress work. 

San Augustin, Oaxaca, side view

I learned that another name for Oaxacan Baroque is "Earthquake Baroque".  Oaxaca is an area, with a considerable amount of seismic activity and the robustness of the church design is an adaptation to the needs of building in an area that is subject to fairly frequent earthquakes.  In the 17th and 18th centuries there were severe earthquakes that required rebuilding in many churches including both the Oaxaca Cathedral and Santo Domingo,which you saw above.   While I was there, one of the churches I had wanted to see, La Merced, was closed for repairs from a recent earthquake.  Advances in engineering have made the churches more earth-quake resistant, but their capacity to survive these has depended upon the basic design features.  

Mestizo Baroque: the Mexican Church's Magnet

 It was the Baroque style that initially drew me to the art and architecture of the Colonial Latin American World.  I loved the elaborate paintings of the Cusco School in Peru at first sight
(I will have more to say about these paintings in a future post)

"Andean Virgin"

and the incredible gilded altarpieces like the one below that are found throughout Mexico and the rest of the Colonial Latin American world:

Altar of Pardon, Metropolitan Cathedral, Mexico City

 What I did not know then was that my fascination with the Baroque was proof that it "worked", that it was doing what the Church had originally intended for it to do.  Let me explain what I mean.  To do this we have to take a quick look at the history of the Church in Mexico.

By the late 1500's Mexico was no longer Mexico of the Conquest.  The idealistic friars who had spear-headed the evangelization of Mexico were dying-off and with a growing population, the era of cities and cathedrals was starting.  There had also been a significant change in the Church in Europe - a schism in the Catholic Church in Europe that was brought to a head by the 1517 posting of Martin Luther's 95 Theses.   As a result,  the Catholic church was under attack by  Protestants and in danger of losing its sovereignty.  It summoned a council, the Council of Trent, which met from 1545-63 in Trento, Italy and it was from the changes initiated by this council, that the Catholic Counter-Reformation emerged;  Baroque style was one off-shoot of this. 

Faced by the Protestant threat, the Church was under pressure to sell itself and the Baroque style in architecture, music and liturgy was what it needed.  The Church knew how inspirational art could be and spared no costs in building churches that would overwhelm the viewer with complexity and extravagance. The  visually beautiful  spaces, in conjunction with elaborate music and ceremony, kept people coming back for more. The Baroque visual style with its intricate design and curving lines was meant to evoke emotion and to keep people within the church; it worked.   As time went on the Baroque style, as with all artistic styles, became detached from its original purpose and became the standard aesthetic of that time and place.

Let's take a quick tour of the baroque in Mexico and it's antecedents.  The Plateresque is the direct antecedent of the Baroque.  It means in the style of the silversmith and is ornate, but does not have the curving surfaces and movement seen in the Baroque.  This altar is a wonderful example of the Plateresque style in Mexico:

Main Altar, San Bernardino de Siena, Xochimilco, MX 

There were two types of columns seen in Baroque architecture that define its style. 
The first and older of the two is the Solomonic Baroque, whose characteristic are the curving, sinuous columns first seen in Italy in the work the sculptor and architect Bernini and shown in photo below in the magnificent ex-convento of San Juan Bautista in Coyoacan, MX.                       .

San Juan Bautista church, Coyoacan,  MX 

The second and later type of Baroque is defined by the estipite column which is narrower at the base than at the top and is associated with the later, even more elaborate Ultra-Baroque style. 

Side altar, San Bernardino de Siena, Xochimilco, MX 

The Altar of the Kings in the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City seen below is probably the pinnacle of the baroque or ultra-baroque in Mexico.  It needs to be seen in person, because photos can never completely  capture it.

Altar of the Kings, Mexico City

In the title of this post, I used the term "Mestizo-Baroque", which is the way  the Baroque in Mexico is usually referenced.   "Mestizo" refers to the admixture of European and indigenous elements present in these buildings as a result of the fact that they were largely built by indigenous workers whose imprint is unmistakeable in various details.  I will be writing about the Baroque in Mexico at greater length in future posts.

Deciphering Mexico's Marys

Oratorio of St. Felipe Neri, San Miguel d'Allende, MX

When considering the images of Mary in Mexico, the first  question that comes to mind is why so many? In Mexico you are confronted by an assortment of Marys - upwards of 100 different kinds; the diocese of Monterrey claims thirty-nine and that of San Luis Potosi twenty-four.  This array of Marys can be confusing, particularly to the North American eye accustomed to religious minimalism.  Despite the centrality of Jesus in Christianity, it is clear that in Mexico Mary is queen.  Notice the placement of this figure of Mary in the altar below.  Mary is centrally located so that she is your focus  when looking up from a kneeling position. 

San Miguel d'Allende as above

The Spanish brought an intense devotion to Mary with them to the new world.  It was Mary whose image was on their battle standards and Mary was likely the first Christian image seen by many indigenous.  When Cortes claimed Montezuma's temple for himself, a statue of Mary was used to replace that of the deity who had occupied the spot.  Mary was a living presence for the Spanish and became the same for the converted indigenous. 

Yet, theologically, Jesus Christ is the central message of Christianity.  It is Jesus, his birth, ministry and Passion, that are the main concern of the New Testament.   Mary is mentioned and we are told that Mary is a faithful servant of God and that she is the mother of Jesus, but church dogma, doctrines that define Mary's relationship with God and the role that she played in Salvation, took centuries to be settled.

The Church's answer to Mary's identity can be found in the Marian dogmas which took almost 2,000 years to finalize.   These are Divine Motherhood (Council of Ephesus 431),  Perpetual Virginity (end of 2nd century CE), Immaculate Conception (in Spanish, Immaculada),  that Mary was without original sin, 1854, Assumption (Sp. Asuncion), that after her death Mary was taken up body and soul into Heaven, 1950.  All of the artistic representations of Mary that you will see basically fit into one of these categories, although many are hybrid as would be expected with the numerous local representations or advocations of Mary.

 These advocations (and I repeat, there are many)  are specific instances of Mary typically centering on some miracle, that the Church has deemed worthy of belief.   Sometimes a particular religious image involves both a dogma and an advocation.  For instance, La Immaculada (dogma of the Immaculate Conception)  is particularly revered in specific ways in the Yucatan, where she is also the Patron Saint.   

Nuestra Senora de Izamal

To share with you how this all plays out in real life, I turn to  a conversation I had with a local woman in the ex-convento of San Miguel Arcangel in Mani Yucatan the Wednesday of Holy Week last year.  The thin black shawl she wears was characteristic of  the local women I saw in rural Yucatan churches during that week.  She stands in front of the main altar of this beautiful church which dates from the 15th century.

in San Miguel Arcangel, Mani

She was a willing and animated informant and when I asked her about the statues of Mary in the church, she spent some time explaining the Marys, including their special roles and inter-relationships.  Here is her understanding of the Marys in the church, as well as some who were not represented there: 

• Virgen de la Luz (light) whom she said gave children. 
• Virgen de los Ojos ("eyes")  who she said cured problems with the eyes. She said this Virgin is a cousin of the next  two in the list.
• Virgen Asuncion-( Virgin of the Assumption) who is the sister of 
• Virgen Concepcion (La Immaculada Concepcion or La Immaculada), the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, also Patroness of the Yucatan whose image was shown above.

Two other Marys that she mentioned by name, but who were not represented in the church, were:

• Virgen del Carmen (Our Lady of Mt. Carmel)
• Virgen Dolorosa (Mary dressed in mourning black following the death of Jesus)

Please understand that her list was by no means complete and there may have been some theological and iconographic inconsistencies in her understanding, but I share her information because the intimacy with which she spoke about the images portrays a typical Mexican outlook on Mary. The relationships that people there have with these images are very personal and transactional.  They are approachable figures, almost human, and are regularly asked for favors which they often seem to grant.  My informant's understanding of familial relationships among the Virgin figures was something I had not run into before and perhaps  is more common in rural areas.

Here are some images of the Mary's referenced by my informant.  

"Virgen de los Ojos", Mani, Yucatan

After researching this figure, I think she may have actually been talking about the Virgin de la Salud- health.

Virgen Concepcion, Mani, Yucatan

Virgen de Dolores, Merida, Yucatan

Virgen del Carmen, Cathedral Mexico City

It is interesting that she did not mention Guadalupe, the Patron Saint of Mexico whose altar was present in the church at Mani.  Perhaps she assumed I would know about her or perhaps there was a deeper reason related to the Yucatan identity and the fact that the patron saint of the Yucatan is La Immaculada.   Yet, shrines to Guadalupe are a fixture in the Yucatan as they are all over Mexico. 

To understand the large number of individual identities of Mary,  we need to turn back to the necessities of the evangelization of  Mexico.  In my March 24 post, entitled "Converting Christianity", I wrote about the accommodations the Church had to make to pre-existing local beliefs and deities in order for Christianity to take root.   Scholars believe that the multiplicity of local Marys that evolved were rooted in indigenous goddesses  transformed by conventions of Christian belief and iconography.  This was definitely the case with Guadalupe of Tepeyac, now Patron Saint of Mexico, who will be discussed in greater depth in a future post.


   

Jesus of Mexican Holy Week

NOT MEXICAN JESUS

The middle-American Protestant Jesus is a generic image-  a nice, kind man perhaps surrounded by children or holding a lamb.  There are also images of the crucified Jesus with details spared and the resurrected Jesus clothed in light. However, the in-between Jesus- tried, beaten and tortured and then crucified is typically left to the imagination, apart from a few cinematic departures. 

The Mexican iconography of Jesus, particularly in the statues that are present in all churches, is very specific. - There are several "types" of Jesus that are related to different episodes in Holy Week, the days before Easter in which the story of the Passion unfolds.
These images are as follows:

• Jesus Nazareno
• Jesus whipped and tortured
• Jesus Crucified
• Santo Entierro 
• Jesus waking
• Cristo Resucitado

Jesus Nazareno, in English, Jesus of Nazareth is the living Jesus who has been arrested by the Romans, tried, beaten and later crucified.  As described in Scripture he is dressed in a purple robe with a crown of thorns on his head.  Some statues of this type have Jesus wearing a purple cape instead and show him seated after he has been scourged by the Romans.  Here are two examples:

Okutzcab, Yucatan, MX

San Bernardino de Siena Church, Xochimilco, MX

 In the figure of Jesus as the Man of Sorrows, He is portrayed in wearing a purple cape, rather than a robe:

San Bernardino de Siena Church, Xochimilco, MX

There is another variation, Christ at the Pillar, which shows him standing by a pillar during his scourging:

Mision San Francisco de la Espada, San Antonio, Texas

Campeche, MX

Jesus Crucified is the Jesus on the Cross after He has been executed:

Valladolid Cathedral, Valladolid, Yucatan, MX

Santo Entierrro, or Christ buried is present in all the Mexican churches that I have seen and is on view throughout the year, but actively used in Good Friday liturgies.  This is a representation of Christ in the Tomb that is also used in Spain in the Good Friday processions.  It is not seen in the US except in churches of Mexican heritage, such as in the missions of San Antonio and similar places.  The "tombs" are generally glass coffins of varying styles and complexity.  Here is my very favorite:

San Miguel Arcangel Church, Mani, Yucatan, MX

At 9:30 pm Good Friday night the Santo Entierro you see above is carried in procession to the cemetery in the town.  All of the Santo Entierros are carried in some sort of procession on Good Friday, although the times and routes of the processions differ. Here are a few more examples:

Cathedral, Valladolid, MX

Cathedral, Puebla, MX

There is a very interesting variant of Santo Entierro that I have seen only in New Mexico; 

this is Santo Entierro waking, as seen below.  If you look closely at this photo  (it is clickable), you can see Jesus' eyes are opening and that his hand has moved slightly. 

Santa Cruz, New Mexico

There is another representation of Jesus that will be  new for visitors from the US.
This is Cristo Resucitado, or Christ after the Resurrection.  Whereas in this country and most of Western Europe, the Risen Christ is show as a luminous human being, in Mexican iconography, there is a very specific representation of the Risen Christ that, historically, is derived from the Roman statue of the Apollo Belvedere. In the photo directly below, Cristo Resucitado is seen standing on top of his empty tomb. Notice the raised arm position of this representation of Christ.

Las Monjas, Merida, Yucatan

Itzimina Church, Merida, MX

The photo directly above was taken during a wonderful Good Friday Night service during which Christ is actually "resurrected" in a burst of light (strobe lights in this case).  This liturgy is done all over Mexico and is amazing to witness.  The Cristo Resucitado statue which you see in the lower right hand of the photo was rushed to the front altar area during the time when the church courtyard, where the service was held, went from total darkness to the burst of light which I described.  

There are other images of Jesus such as the  miracle-working Black Christs. However, these are not directly connected to Holy Week and will explored in a future post.

Mexican Christs: Cristos de Caña

Cathedral, Merida, Yucatan

Christ carried in Good Friday procession, Merida, Yucatan (Mary is visible behind)

In my last post, "Converting Christianity", I spoke of the transformation of Spanish Catholicism in its encounter with the indigenous faiths of Mexico.  The same occurred in the rest of Mesoamerica, as well and we will explore some of this in later posts.  This photo of the tortured Christ, which I saw carried in procession this past Good Friday in Merida is one of many such statues you will see in  the churches of Mexico.  They are made from corn in a process that I will describe and for this reason are known as Cristos de Caña, or Corn Christs. 

The one thing that all these statues have in common is that they are bloody, very bloody.
Take a look:

San Miguel Arcangel Church, Mani, Yucatan

San Juan Bautista Church, Coyoacan, MX

Santa Cruz, New Mexico

Figures like these need to be light-weight because they were and are frequently carried in religious processions.  A material that had been used in pre-Hispanic times was a kind of paper mache made of corn products.  The indigenous sculptors  actually held workshops to teach the process to the Christian priests and their workers.

To make the material  the corn husk was opened and the pith removed. A framework was made of  dried maize leaves fastened together and then covered with a mixture of corn pith paste and a sticky substance from orchid bulbs. After it was dry, a fine layer of the paste was spread over it and modeled. The red color used in the blood came from insects that fed on the fruit of the sacred (to the Aztecs) nopal cactus.

The materials that form these Christs were full of symbolism and significance for the indigenous.  Corn had been an Aztec god and maize was a sacred life-giving food. In these Corn Christs the two symbol systems, Christian and indigenous, are merged creating something that is completely new.  In their own unique way, they are a god within a god.

There has been much scholarly speculation as to why these figures are universally so bloody. True, there had been precedents in bloody Passion-week Spanish figures of Christ.  But, for the meso-american indigenous, the bloodiness had a different meaning and this is the point of view espoused by Jennifer Scheper Hughes.  If we think back to their religious practices, a lot of blood was involved because of the sacrificial tradition.  The Aztec priests are described as having been blood-covered from head to toe.  When you consider that one of the ways Jesus was described in scripture was as the "Great High Priest", it would make sense for those trying to "sell" the indigenous converts on Christ to make these Christs resemble the Aztec priests of old.  In the Aztec tradition, blood had meant power and the bloodiness of these figures is something the indigenous would have immediately understood and revered.  Remember, part of the conversion effort was to convince the indigenous that the new god was more powerful than the old ones and the bloodiness of the Christ figures is believed to have been a part of this initial effort. 

You may have noticed that in one of the photos, the Christ is lying in a glass casket.  This is a specific representation of Christ, Santo Entierro, that you will see in every Mexican church.  It is Christ, but a very particular representation of Him with a very specific use during Holy Week. We will explore this in my next post.

Converting Christianity: the Catholic-Indigenous "Dialogue"

Crucified Christ, San Bernardino de Siena, Xochimilco, MX

As strange as it may seem, the indigenous peoples' major difficulty was not in accepting this new god, Jesus Christ.  In their culture it was expectable to take the conqueror's god or gods into the old pantheon.  The way they understood it,  the conquerors had won because their gods were more powerful and given this, why wouldn't they  want the more powerful god on their side? According to their game plan, they got a new god , acquired extra power and kept their old gods as well. But, this was not what the Spanish had in mind.  They expected the indigenous  to immediately see the truth and superiority of Christianity and give up their native gods, customs and beliefs.  

What the Spanish got was resistance- armed uprisings in many places as well as resistance in the form of holding onto idols and concealing them and clandestine practice of old religious rituals and customs.  The Spanish became aggressive and vigilant in their effort to root out the old ways, for instance the tragic burning of the Mayan codices at Mani in 1562.

After a while, the bishops realized that conversion to Christianity was not going to happen over night and altered their policies.  They lengthened their conversion time-table and began to look within the indigenous beliefs and practices for places where they might form connections between the old faith and the new one. The process of conversion slowly changed into a kind of  dialogue in which, as it turned out,  visual elements played a central role.

The friars did not have to search far for points of contact between the two religious systems,  because  sacrifice was a central idea of both- Christ's sacrifice on the cross for Christianity and the centrality of human sacrifice in many Mesoamerican groups.  The indigenous could easily identify with the ideas of eating Christ's body and drinking his blood ( ritual cannibalism had been practiced by some groups), so much so that the Catholic clergy initially put this whole issue on a back burner until they felt their converts were far enough along in the faith to understand it appropriately.   


But, don't get the wrong idea, sacrifice was not the only bond between the two religious systems.  The cross, the central symbol of Christianity, was also a significant symbol in Mesoamerican religions, where it was referred to the Tree of Life, a symbol also found in many religions throughout the world.

Mayan Tree of Life, Palenque, Chiapas, MX

The Christian cross, as it evolved in Mexican christianity, was different than its European counterpart, at least in the early days of the Conquest.  In these early days Christ was never shown hanging on the cross, as would have been the case in the typical crucifix.  This would have been too close to the indigenous experience of human sacrifice and the friars took care to eliminate this comparison.  The early crosses you see in Mexico are unique.

Atrial Cross, Jilotepec

Atrial Cross, Las Monjas, Merida, Yucatan

In both of these atrial crosses (crosses in the atrium or patio or a convent or church), 
you see a head in the center of the cross.  This is the head of Christ, with Christ being in the Cross, not on the Cross, as we discussed previously, to eliminate any comparison between Christ's sacrificial death on the cross and pre-Hispanic sacrifice.  Both of these crosses are covered with the symbols of the Passion (the sequence of events leading up to and including Christ's crucifixion) as a teaching device. Some scholars believe that putting Jesus in the cross is also way of stating that Jesus is within the World Tree, which was center of the universe for the Mesoamerican indigenous peoples. 

The changes in the Cross are just one instance of the adaptations in Spanish Catholicism that were necessary in its encounter with the indigenous and the effort to bring them within the fold.  In fact, one could argue that  the unique visual culture of Mexican Catholicism is a by-product of this encounter,  that it is a record of the process of on-going dialogue between the two faith-systems.  The Christianity that the friars brought to the Americas was  a different one than emerged and we will continue to explore this fascinating topic.