Un Descargo de Conciencia and Its Unintended Content: Two Indigenous Oral Traditions from Western Mexico

Un Descargo de Conciencia and Its Unintended Content: Two Indian Oral
Traditions from Western Mexico



Introduction

In 1692, the Spaniard Leandro de Orozco Aguero gave testimony against
the Indian Pedro Gaspar before the public notary Agustin de Oro in a
Catholic court.[1] This testimony was addressed to the highest spiritual
authority of the region, the bishop of Guadalajara, and it included
sorcerers, sorcery, the devil, and the fifth hell. The written testimony
suggests that Pedro worked for Leandro's father in 1689, when Pedro had
asked, "if he [Leandro] wanted to know from where the acrobats, the good
bullfighters, and the good musicians learned the skills [required] for
these crafts."[2] Leandro had answered "yes," and Pedro said that his
father, a sorcerer, had explained that those who wanted to learn these
crafts went to a place where there was "un ojo de agua grande (a large
spring)." They took off all of their clothes, submerged themselves in the
spring, emerged in a valley that resembled a plaza, and they walked toward
one end where an older man with a beard sat. As they walked, they could
perceive games with bulls, puppets, dancers, acrobats, musicians, and
tamers of wild beasts. Pedro claimed that the older man was the presidente
of this place, and when the supplicants reached the presidente, they paid
their respects, and he asked them what craft they wanted. Each person
answered according to their wish and the presidente would make the person
face a ferocious bull and afterwards, he would bless the supplicant.
Others would perform the respective crafts they wanted, and after the
blessing, they would leave through the spring as they had entered. Then,
the written record records that Pedro told Leandro that this valley was
known as the fifth hell and the presidente was the devil.
However, Pedro said that he had not entered the spring himself, but he
knew this account was true because his father was a sorcerer who had
related this story since Pedro was a child, and then, to apparently prove
that his father was a sorcerer, Pedro began another story. He said that
one day he and his father were watching the volador ceremony which requires
that four people who are each tied to a rope descend from a trunk that can
measure more than 75 feet [Figure 1].[3] However, as the voladores

spiraled down, "the trunk broke," and Pedro's father later said that
another "sorcerer had done it… he broke the pole because he was jealous
that they performed well."[4] Pedro asked how, and his father responded,
"he [the sorcerer] placed himself some distance away from the trunk, and
through the devil's craft, he threw a small black flint with such subtlety
that no one saw."[5]
Both stories served a purpose. Leandro told "The Presidente" three
years after the fact either as a form of expiation or to plead for mercy
from Catholic authorities, and Pedro told "The Broken Trunk" to prove that
his father was a sorcerer. After acknowledging these probable reasons, it
is possible to classify them as "oral traditions," which Jan Vansina
defines as historical sources of a special nature because they are
preserved in a form suitable for oral transmission whose preservation
depends on the memories of generations of human beings.[6]
Vansina has also proposed a classificatory scheme, which he names the
"chain of transmission." He posits that a given oral tradition begins with
the "observer" who "reports whatever it is he has observed in a testimony
which he calls the initial or proto-testimony."[7] The observer is not an
eyewitness, and Pedro's father may have heard "The Presidente" from an
eyewitness, which would make Pedro's father the "observer" who created its
proto-testimony, but because he was a shaman who kept the community's lore,
he was most likely an informant who maintained it. Pedro's father passed
it on to Pedro who passed it on to Leandro who testified before Agustin who
recorded it. Pedro was an informant who preserved "The Presidente," but
Leandro was different because he was the "final informant" who related this
account to a "recorder" that transcribed it.[8] The chain of transmission
is different for "The Broken Trunk" because both Pedro and Pedro's father
witnessed the event, but Pedro abdicated his role as eyewitness when he
accepted his father's description and interpretation of said event, and he
became the "observer" who transmitted a magic-laden testimony to Leandro,
the final informant who passed it on to Agustin, the scribe that recorded
it. Their different chains of transmission and different content make "The
Presidente" and "The Broken Trunk" into two different and very valuable
oral traditions that can counter the, mostly, Spanish narrative of colonial
Mexico (1521-1821).
These oral traditions reside among a specific people and within a
specific region of western Mexico. Leandro claims that he spoke "mexicano"
with Pedro Gaspar, and with this statement he has admitted that the
conversation occurred in Nahuatl. This information also offers the
possibility that Pedro was a native Nahuatl-speaker (or Nahua).[9] Second,
Agustin de Oro writes that Pedro is from San Gaspar in the jurisdiction of
Jalostotitlan, and although there were many communities in Mexico with this
name, the only one the qualifies was San Gaspar Tlacintla, in the region of
Los Llanos [Figure 2],[10] a

region that sat halfway between the western city of Guadalajara and the
northern city of Zacatecas.[11] Given this information, my study proposes
that "The Presidente" and the "Broken Trunk" have animate and innanimate
elements that reflect the landscape of San Gaspar Tlacintla and Los Llanos,
and that these "oral traditions" contain mostly Nahua paradigms obscured by
Leandro's Spanish-Catholic interpretation.

The Written Page and Orality

A number of supplementary sources for Los Llanos are needed to decode
"The Presidente" and the "Broken Trunk." The Relación geografica de
Teocaltiche (1584-85) is one of the earliest, and like other Relaciones, it
contains detailed information about the physical and human geography of
Teocaltiche and Los Llagos. Visita documents are another type of documents
that were created by Spanish travelers. They resemble journals and at
least three exist for Los Llanos: one by Bishop Alonso de la Mota y Escobar
in 1604; another by Domingo Lazaro de Arregui in 1621; and a third by
Bishop Don Felipe Galindo in 1696. Then, there are a series of testimonies
that some inhabitants of San Gaspar, Teocaltiche, and other nearby
communities gave in 1618 to denounce the abuses of a local priest. Also,
the first Libro de difuntos housed in Xalostotitlan was created by several
priests to record whether the people from the jursidiction of Xalostotitlan
who had died from 1659 to 1686 had received the final sacrament. Memorias
are another kind. They are fiscal documents that were created by officials
of cofradías to record the amount of alms collected (memorias de limosnas)
and spent (memorias de gastos) during a given year. San Gaspar Tlacintla
has memorias de limosnas and memorias de gastos from 1673-1683, and those
from 1676 were written by a scribe named Pedro Gaspar. These supplementary
documents, "The Presidente," and "The Broken Trunk" have to be examined
with two methodologies in mind: oral history and the New Philology.
The Relación geografica de Teocaltiche preserves many oral traditions
from Teocaltiche that may pertain to Los Llano. For example, the scribe
was the Spaniard Hernando de Gallego, and he wrote that the inhabitants of
Teocaltiche offered prayers and tamales of various types to the morning
star because it heralded the sun, which they worshipped the latter.[12]
Hernando was a longtime inhabitant of Los Llanos, but the informants whom
he made "all effort of asking questions" told him about this custom.[13]
They were Nahua inhabitants of Teocaltiche named Don Baltasar de Mendoza,
Juan Gregorio, Miguel Zacarías, Don Pedro y Diego de Mendoza, and the
Nahuatl-Spanish translator Antón Julián.[14] As a result, the probable
chain of transmission for the oral tradition of the morning star was from
the Nahua informants of Teocaltiche to Antón the translator, and then to
Hernando, the recorder.
Leandro, Hernando, and the priests who wrote the first Libro de
difuntos were recorders, but in a sense, they were also oral interviewers
who relied on different approaches to elicit information. Hernando de
Gallegos, like the writers of other Relaciones, had to follow a script of
forty-nine questions to obtain information about Teocaltiche and its
environs. He was a longtime resident of this region, and he probably
answered some of the questions, but for others he relied on Antón Julián
and perhaps some of the other informants, from whom he made "all effort of
asking questions… from the said [49 question] inquest that the lord sent,
that was written..."[15] Likewise, the priest Leon de Santiago wrote, "In
San Gaspar, On November 16, 1683, Diego Arayca who was married to Luisa
Magdalena drowned, and I buried him in his town," but he was most likely
not an eyewitness. He, like other priests who wrote in this Libro de
difuntos, asked people a series of questions: where was the deceased from;
who had he or she married; and how had he or she died. This type of
information with question prepared before the interview can be mined for
truths by following the advice of Alessandro Portelli, who suggests:
if one 'accepts' one's collaborator and the idea that oral research
connects most fundamentally to meaning, one can discover truths
elusive in other sources… [because] in oral research and especially
for study of memory in history, the gap between the verifiable
empirical historical record of events and the ways they are remembered
and interpreted itself turns into empirical information, becoming a
source of 'truth' for investigation.[16]


Leandro was another type of interviewer because his testimony came from a
conversation. As such, it was a type of "semistructured, yet open-ended
interviewing method that places a premium on 'listening' and
'conversation', a collaboration akin to a jazz performance," where three
issues of method and representation arise.[17] First, there is a need to
build a conversational collaboration through the search for mutual
acceptance; second, a balance has to be struck between "listening" with an
open mind for the truth in a person's story; finally, there is the issue of
representation, which has given rise to many scholarly controversies.[18]
These three issues were present in "The Presidente" and "The Broken
Trunk." First, in 1689, Leandro built a conversational collaboration with
Pedro perhaps by speaking in the latter's Nahuatl, which may have served to
overcome Leandro's standing as the boss's son. Second, Leandro listened
within his own Catholic and European framework of reference. Third, this
frame of reference later led Leandro to represent these conversations in a
letter addressed to the bishop of Guadalajara and written by the public
notary. As with all oral interviews, issues of ethics surfaced and
Catholic morality triumphed over Nahuatl influence, which resulted in
Leandro's testimony in 1692.
However, three years earlier, Leandro had conversed with Pedro in
Nahuatl and listened to information that he later denounced. Did Leandro,
whose noble name and education suggest that he was of European descent, use
Nahuatl to talk to Pedro and go beyond Catholic precepts? Susan K. Burton
has proposed such a possibility in a more recent context. She is an
English-speaker who conducted interviews with Japanese speakers, and she
theorized that people compartmentalize mores by language to free themselves
from the bounds of a given language.[19]
The time gap between the oral and the written is also significant for
"The Presidente," "The Broken Trunk," and the visita documents. Fred H.
Allison studied the changing perspectives of informants over time in
"Remembering a Vietnam War Firefight: Changing perspectives over time,"
when in 2002, he interviewed Michael Nation, a person who had fought in
Vietnam as a Marine, and who had given an interview to an intelligence
officer in February 1968, two days after a firefight where several of his
fellow Marines had been killed. Allison discovered that the 1968 interview
revealed a narrow view of Nation's role, which was in marked contrast to
the 2002 interview which contained "color, drama, gore, even humor. And
something else… justification."[20] How did the conversation or
conversations between Leandro and Pedro begin? The initial conversations
are gone, and it is almost certain that Leandro's Catholic faith played a
role in the way that he structured his testimony. The same holds true for
the visita accounts, which an author (like Bishop Alonso de la Mota y
Escobar) could have written as he rested and night fell, but if he lacked a
lamp, he would have had to wait until morning, and if he had early duties,
he would have to wait even longer before committing the information down.

Another important factor to consider is the interference that occurrs
when oral accounts are written down by a scribe or recorder, which applies
to "The Presidente," "The Broken Trunk," and the Relación geografica de
Teocaltiche. The main factor for this is that transcripts fail to convey a
lot of what Francis Good names the "humanity of the spoken word," and which
among other things includes pauses, changes in tone, repetitions, and
stuttering which usually supplements, but which may, at times, counter the
actual meanings behind the words.[21] It will never be known whether
Leandro or the informants from Teocaltiche were nervous, calm, or angry
when they gave gave their acounts because the written product failed to
capture the shifting and supplementary sounds that conveyed these and other
possible feelings. Finally, Good, Vansina, and other oral historians have
recognize that the human recorder (or scribe) is also an editor who decides
how to adapt utterances to the written page.
The final factor to consider is the interference caused by the
language, which has been amply studied by James Lockhart and other New
Philologists. Lockhart began this school of thought characterized by its
emphasis on understanding Indians through their documents in order to
decode how their "communities and their leaders responded to the
institutions of colonial rule."[22] He outlines its creed in Nahuas after
the Conquest where he explains:
Done by Nahuas for Nahua eyes and for the purposes of everyday life,
these documents, though most of them are ostensible in Spanish genres,
are not only more individual in their language, conventions, and
content than the Spanish counterparts, but more complex in belonging
to two traditions rather than one…They are both more difficult and
potentially richer…than Spanish records. A realization of their
nature has called for a New Philology to render them understandable
and available and put them in their true context.[23]

Kevin Terraciano, another proponent, posits that communities such as
"Nahuatl altepetl, Maya cah, Mixtec ñuu, and the Zapotec queche were
'containers' of indigenous culture represented by hereditary elites or
leaders who actively sought to defend and promote their local
interests."[24] The conversations between Leandro and Pedro occurred in
Nahuatl, and they can only be understood by accessing Nahuatl documents
from the colonial period within the colonial bishopric of Guadalajara and
even beyond.

The Fifth Hell and Los Llanos

A saying from Jalisco claims that "each person creates his own hell,"
and this is a good description of the roles that Leandro, Pedro, and
Pedro's father played to bring the fifth hell of the "The Presidente" to
literary life.[25] Leandro asserted that he learned of this fifth hell from
Pedro Gaspar who in turn learned about it from his father, a sorcerer.
Leandro also claimed that Pedro and his father were both inhabitants of San
Gaspar Tlacintla. If this is the case, then animate and innanimate
elements of the plaza-shaped valley were forged from the memories that
Pedro and his father gained in San Gaspar Tlacintla and the greater region
of Los Llanos because as in any other oral tradition, each informant
reshapes what he or she receives from his predecessors.[26] As a result,
"The Presidente" contains springs, valleys, bulls, bullfighters, acrobats,
and musicians that should be present in San Gaspar Tlacintla and Los Altos
during the seventeenth century.
Several persons named Pedro Gaspar have inhabited San Gaspar
Tlacintla. In 1618, a Pedro Gaspar was the regidor.[27] In 1672, a Pedro
Gaspar who had been married to Catalina Veronica died.[28] San Gaspar had a
cofradía of Mary of the Immaculate Conception, and in 1676, a Pedro Gaspar
was the scribe who wrote its memoria de limosnas and memoria de gastos.[29]
Then, in a 1683 petition, the scribe Nicolas Alonso wrote that the alcalde
of San Gaspar Tlacintla was a Pedro Gaspar. Finally, a Pedro Gaspar died
so suddenly in 1684 that he neither gave a confession nor received the
sacraments.[30]
Where any of these individuals the Pedro Gaspar accused by Leandro?
Several scenerios are possible. One is that the informant Pedro Gaspar was
in his twenties when he was the scribe of the cofradía of the Immaculate
Conception (1676); in his thirties when he was the alcalde of San Gaspar
Tlacintla (1683); and in his forties when he worked for Leandro's father
(1693). Another possibility is that the same Pedro Gaspar was a scribe and
an alcalde, but that he died in 1684, and that a different person worked
for Leandro's father. However, only a single humble paragraph described
the person that died in 1684, which seems unlikely for a person that had
served a term as a scribe and an alcalde. Other explanations are possible,
but at the very least, one of these persons is a relative of the informant.

The next beginning occurs when Agustin de Oro begins to transcribe.
He writes "an Indian named Pedro Gaspar who was born in San Gaspar… while
working for his [Leandro's] father asked if he [Leandro] wanted to know
where the acrobats (maromeros), the good bullfighters (toreadores), and the
good musicians learned the science of their crafts."[31] With this phrase,
the scribe begins to place Pedro as an accused person, but Pedro is also
a Nahua who has been immortilized as the narrator of an oral tradition that
begins in a landscape that is very similar to seventeenth century Los
Llanos.
The Relación geografica de Teocaltiche (1584-85) is one of the first
document which mentions animate and inanimate elements in Los Llanos that
are also found in "The Presidente." The Relación characterizes Los Llanos
as a cold land whose towns were along rivers that never ran dry, and whose
climate was more dry than wet, and more flat than mountainous.[32] It was
also a land of grasses inhabited by Nahuas and an unnamed group, and the
Nahuas had horses that they bought as colts, and they broke them, and rode
them because of a dispensation from the Audiencia of Nueva Galicia.[33]
Some Nahuas also used oxen to plow their lands.[34] The crops from Castile
did not grow here, but the Nahuas and the other group harvested corn,
beans, cotton, squash, and maguey in enough quantities that Spaniards
regularly tried to buy or get a hold of the surplus so that they could sell
it to Zacatecas and nearby mining communities.[35] This trade was possible
because of the royal road that, in its path between Guadalajara and
Zacatecas, passed through Teocaltiche and the northern third of Los Llanos,
and which was wide enough for "two-wheeled carts and mule trains."[36] At
this time, the communities of Teocaltiche and Lagos occupied the most
important positions in Los Llanos. Teocaltiche was the administrative
center of the region, and it was centrally located because it was 21
leagues from Guadalajara, 26 leagues from Zacatecas, and only a few leagues
from the Indian communities of Tlacintla (later San Gaspar Tlacintla),
Mechoacanejo, Mitique, San Juan, Teucaltitlan, and Xalostotitlan [Figure
1].[37] Meanwhile, Lagos was a Spanish settlement next to a lake, and in
the eastern half of Los Llanos.[38] It was also one of the waypoints along
the royal road to Zacatecas, but this stretch of the royal road was
exceedingly dangerous because nomadic and semi-nomadic Indians often
attacked travelers.[39]
As time passed, the geography of Los Llanos became more in tune with
the plaza-shaped valley of "The Presidente." Bishop Alonso de la Mota y
Escobar traveled through Los Llanos on a visita in 1604, and he wrote that
fifteen to twenty very rich Spanish householders lived in this community
and twenty Indians lived in a nearby village, but they were dwarfed by a
sheep population of 20,000 head![40] Then, in 1621, Domingo Lazaro de
Arregui traveled on a visita through Lagos, and he mentioned that it had 30
Spanish householders who were rich men because they owned very healthy
haciendas.[41]
The situation was more complex in the western half because Nahuas and
Spaniards lived in close proximity to each other. Before visiting Lagos,
Bishop Alonso de la Mota y Escobar had traveled through Jalostotitlan, San
Gaspar, and Teocaltiche, and he found this region to be exceedingly fertile
because the Indians and Spaniards had cattle that would graze on the plains
of grass that were available, and he added that for consumption and trade,
Indians harvested corn, raised birds, and fished.[42] He counted 36 Indian
householders in Jalostotitlan, 30 Indians in San Gaspar (Tlacintla), and
about 200 Indian and Spanish house-holders in Teocaltiche.[43] He also
mentioned ten to twelve Spanish-owned haciendas in which cattle and crops
were raised around Teocaltiche.[44] Then, in 1618, the inhabitants of seven
Indian communities of the western half of Los Llanos (including San Gaspar
Tlacintla) gave testimony in Nahuatl against their secular priest Francisco
Muñoz, which implies that their inhabitants were Nahuas.[45] Three years
later, Lazaro de Arregui named Los Llanos as one of the most fertile areas
of western Mexico because of its fertile land was home to abundant herds of
cattle and harvests of corn and other agricultural products. He also wrote
that Jalostotitlan had one clergyman and four or six Spaniards, and he
added that the population of this and other nearby towns was 147 mostly
Indian householders. Finally, several priests stationed in Jalostotitlan
(1659 to 1686) wrote in the first Libro de difuntos that many Indians from
San Gaspar who died had worked as laboríos, hacienda workers.
With this information, it is possible to hypothesize that the
conversation between Pedro and Leandro was one where a Nahua laborío was
bragging to the son of an hacienda owner about "the good bullfighters
(toreadores)."[46] Was Pedro a good toreador (bullfighter)? Possibly, and
he would be one of many because an hacienda required several good
toreadores, a term which appears to have been a synonym for vaquero
(cowboy) during the seventeenth century because François Chevalier found
that in many regions of Mexico, people of European descent together with
mestizos, mulattoes, and free negroes formed a semi-nomadic population of
cowboys, but in the region of Lagos, he discovered that Indians performed
this role alongside Spanish land-holders. Hacienda owners also needed many
cowboys to herd an hacienda's herd, which had aggresive bulls that were not
castrated during the seventeenth century.[47]
Nahuas from San Gaspar and Los Llanos became good cowboys because they
learned these skills as they took care of the ganado mayor and ganado menor
of their cofradías of the Immaculate Conception. The Franciscan Friar
Antonio Tello wrote that the Franciscan response to an epidemic which had
struck western Mexico from 1542-1545 had been to build hospices to care for
the sick, and cofradías of the Immaculate Conception to fund said
hospices.[48] The Franciscans had also encouraged Indians to raise ganado
mayor and ganado menor as a way to support the cofradía, and Indian men and
perhaps women cared for these animals as part of the communal labor that
they gave in service to the cofradía. Through this care and because of the
climate and grasses of Los Llanos, these animals thrived.[49]
In the early seventeenth century, secular priests replaced most of the
Franciscans of western Mexico.[50] However, the Nahuas of Los Llanos
continued to support their cofradías of the Immaculate Conception. For
example, in 1618, the leaders of the cofradía of the Immaculate Conception
of San Gaspar Tlacintla testified against Francisco Muñoz.[51] They wrote
that they were happy to regularly provided a ram whenever a priest visited
their town to say mass, but they accused this secular priest of illegaly
taking 14 rams that belonged to their cofradía.[52] Furthermore, in 1696,
bishop Felipe Galindo Chávez y Pineda visited San Gaspar to check the
accounts of its cofradía of the Immaculate Conception, and he wrote that it
had 356 head of cattle, 150 head of either sheep or goats, and 509 beasts
of another type.[53] This was far less than the animal populations of the
great haciendas, but it was not an insignificant amount. It required care,
and I propose that the inhabitants of San Gaspar began to care for these
animals at a young age, and as they grew older, some became laboríos in
Spanish-owned haciendas where they could earn hard currency, which was
needed as increasing Spanish hegemony eroded Nahua and other Indian barter
economies.[54] Pedro presented a portion of this web in "The Presidente,"
as he gave his people a reputation as bullfighters/cowboys who knew the
science of their craft.
Pedro mentioned acrobats (or tight rope walkers), and I suggest that
this term refers to those who participate in the volador ceremony of "The
Broken Trunk" because it resembles those that were practiced since pre-
Columbian times. The voladores of San Gaspar have to be considered master
acrobats because their performance requires the same skillset. The Jesuit
Francisco Javier Clavijero gave one the best descriptions of this
ceremony.[55] He wrote that the Aztecs cut the large trunk of a tree that
measured more than 25 varas (about 75 feet), placed it upright on the
ground, and attached four ropes which they wound thirteen times around the
trunk. Then, five people climbed to the top: a drummer and four voladores.
Upon reaching the top of the trunk, the drum player balanced himself on
the top of the trunk and the voladores attached themselves to the ropes,
and as the drummer began to play and dance, the four voladores "flew" head
first thirteen times around the trunk. "The Broken Trunk" does not have
this level of detail, but the apparent respect for the skill of its
voladores comes through because the sorcerer casts his spell "because he
was jealous that they [the voladores] performed well."[56]
The good musicians also learned the skills of their craft in the
cofradías of the Immaculate Conception. In central Mexico, pre-Columbian
iconography in stelae, ceramics, and codices show that Indians used various
types of flutes and drums to accompany their musical performances. Similar
evidence is lacking for Los Llanos, but Tello claims that after the
establisment of the cofradías of the Immaculate Conception, the Franciscans
had the elites of the Indian communities participate in choirs to sing the
Catholic liturgy, and they had them sing with tolling bells for their
departed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.[57] However, he also noted
that Indians could not always do this because epidemics continued to affect
them into the seventeenth century.[58] Furthermore, in the Nevertheless,
those who were singers and musicians were highly educated because they
could read musical script, Spanish, and even Nahuatl.[59]

From Nahuatl to Spanish and Back

Who identified the plaza-shaped valley as the fifth hell and the
president as the devil? The answer is most likely that Leandro translated
the Nahuatl terms into Spanish and imposed Catholic values to them. During
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the word presidente referred to an
office which had juridical, executive, and legislative powers, but which
stood below the king. For example, to curtail the activities of his
subjects, in 1527, the crown appointed Nuño de Guzmán as the presidente or
chief judge of the first audiencia, which was given juridical, legislative,
and executive powers.[60] At first, it would seem that Leandro or the
scribe chose to use presidente to avoid using king (rey), which was
reserved for God and the Spanish king, but it is also possible that Leandro
believed that presidente was a more accurate rendition of the Nahuatl word
used by Pedro. Meanwhile, a discordance exists between Leandro's Catholic
conceptualization of the fifth hell and the Nahua system of belief that is
present in "The Presidente."
The plaza-shaped valley found in "The Presidente" is not the fifth
hell, but it does represent the underworld. First, the Nahuas believed
that heaven had thirteen layers, the underworld had nine layers, and the
earth made up the first layer of both heaven and the underworld.[61]
Second, the Nahuas and other Indians believed that certain places on the
earth like caves had power because they could serve as portals to the
underworld.[62] Less is known about springs, but offerings were also placed
here, and they may have also been regarded as portals to the underworld
because, like caves, they are openings into the earth.[63] Finally, Leandro
considered it an underworld because he identified it as the fifth hell.
Evidence about the difference between Catholic hell and the Nahua
underworld mostly comes from central Mexico. According to Louise Burkhart,
Nahua beliefs from central Mexico and Catholicism were based on different
moral systems because the overriding dichotomy of order/chaos ruled the
former, and good/evil ruled the latter.[64] She goes on to explain that
this difference forced the friars to choose Nahuatl terms for Catholic
concepts such as sin, devil, and hell that were less than literal: tlazolli
(lit. filth), mictlan (place of the dead), and tlacatecolotl (lit. were-
owl; a witch or necromancer).[65] These words show the different
dichotomies because for Catholics, sins were transgressions that could lead
to torment in hell, the kingdom of the devil. For the Nahuas, filth and
the tlacatecolotl were agents of chaos that caused decay and death, but
they believed that chaos invaded everyone, which led to death and an
inevitable journey to mictlan.[66]
The role of the Nahuas in such as system was to provide offerings and
practice ceremonies that guaranteed the continuation of an orderly
universe. First, the Nahuas of central Mexico believed that the sun was
one of the most potent symbols of order, and they sought to nourish it with
offerings of food and even human sacrifice to aid it in its eternal war
against the chaotic moon and stars.[67] The Nahuas of Teocaltiche appear to
have held similar beliefs. In the Relación geografica de Teocaltiche,
Hernando de Gallegos wrote that before sunrise, the Nahuas of Teocaltiche
offered prayers and tamales of various types to the morning star because it
heralded the sun.[68] Second, the Nahuas of central Mexico appear to have
practiced the volador ceremony as a way of ordering time and space. A
couple of writers have written that the four acrobats descended in thirteen
spirals, and with this action, they created a cycle of 52 (4 x 13), which
was an important unit of Nahua time because their calendar had units of
four glyphs and thirteen circles that led to a temporal cycle of 52. This
number also represented a spatial cycle because of the Nahuas of central
Mexico believed in a heaven that had thirteen levels and whose initial
level was made up by the earth, and four horizontal directions, which led
to three dimensional spatial cycle of 52. The Nahuas from San Gaspar
Tlacintla also had the volador ceremony, and although neither "The Broken
Trunk" nor other documents have described their ceremony with this type of
detail, its presence suggests the presence of the order/chaos dichotomy
here.
Another way that Nahuas upheld the order/chaos dichotomy was by
constructing and preserving ordered spaces, and of these, the largest was
the altepetl. Nahua writers used altepetl to mean "an organization of
people holding sway over a given territory," and one Nahua even referred to
"Japan, Peru, and the Moluccas" as altepemeh.[69] Its closes translation is
probably city-state because Lockhart writes that most were "comparable in
size to the early Mediterranean city-states," but the altepetl was
organized in a unique manner because it was based on subdivisions that were
more "cellular or modular as opposed to hierarchical."[70] These
subdivisions along with control of a territory and the presence of dynastic
ruler who was generally known as a tlatoani (lit. speaker) characterized an
altepetl.
It was these subdivisions that made the altepetl unique because all
human polities control territory and many of them have dynastic rulers. In
the altepetl, the inhabitants of these subdivisions had both political
power and responsibilities that they exercised in an orderly rotation. For
example, the central Mexican altepetl of Tlaxcala was divided into four
parts (Tizatlán, Quiahuixtlán, Tepetícpac, and Ocotelulco), and from 1545-
1614, Tlaxcalans selected a governador, their highest political office,
from Tizatlán to rule one year, then one from Quiahuixtlán, then
Tepetícpac, then Ocotelulco, and afterwards they began the cycle
again.[71] Something similar happened with work obligations. The ruler of
the altepetl required that his people work on his lands, and if an altepetl
had four neighborhoods (1, 2, 3, 4), then one week the people from one
neighborhood (1) worked on the leader's land, and the next week people from
another neighborhood (2) worked the land, and so forth until all four
neighborhoods had sent people, and at that point, the process began again.
San Gaspar Tlacintla is also named as an altepetl in Nahuatl documents
from the seventeenth century (1618, 1673-1683), and its inhabitants appear
to have also practiced the cyclical rotation of constituent parts. First,
Fray Tello wrote that the Franciscans required that each week, a number of
Indian men and women from each barrio (neighborhood) should work in service
to the sick.[72] Here Tello described the subdivisions of the altepetl with
the Spanish term barrio, and he wrote as if the Franciscans were ordering
instead of accomodating themselves to the cyclical nature of altepetl
organization. He did not mention San Gaspar Tlacintla by name, but he was
referring to many of the communities of what is now the state of Jalisco.
Second, the memorias of San Gaspar Tlacintla contain the names of the
officers of the cofradía (priosti and mayordomo), the escribano, and
sometimes, the alcalde (mayor). I have taken these names and placed them
in Table 1, which shows that from 1673
" " " "Table 1: Offices in San Gaspar " " "
" " " "Tlacintla " " "
"Year "Alcalde" "Priosti/Friosti"Mayordomo "Escriban" "
" " " " " "o " "
"1672 "Not given "Diego Jacobi " "Pedro Miguel "
"1674 "Alonso Lucas "Alonso Martin "Diego Martin "Diego Miguel "
"1675 "Pedro Miguel "Francisco "Diego Gaspar "Diego Felipe "
" " "Sebastian " " "
"1676 "Juan Bautista "Francisco "Juan Diego "Pedro Gaspar "
" " "Antonio " " "
"1677 "Alonso Lucas "Diego Jacobi "Juan Ramos "Nicolas Alonso "
"1678 "Francisco "Diego Felipe "Pedro Lorenso "Nicolas Felipe "
" "Hernandez " " " "
"1679 "Francisco "Pedro Miguel "Gaspar Baltasar "Diego Martin "
" "Martin " " " "
"1680 "No record "No record "No record "No record "
"1681 "Francisco de "Francisco "Gabriel Angel "Nicolas Alonso "
" "la Cruz "Hernandez " " "
"1682 "Pedro Miguel "Francisco "Andres Agustin "Diego Felipe "
" " "Antonio " " "


until 1677, the office of alcalde rotated in a fixed order between three
people [Table 1]. In 1673, the alcalde Juan Bautista was followed by
Alonso Lucas (1674), and Pedro Miguel (1675), and then, it began again with
Juan Bautista (1676) and Alonso Lucas (1676) before this pattern changed.
This rotation suggests that San Gaspar Tlacintla had three neigborhoods, if
these individuals came from different neighborhoods. There are two other
indications of rotation by multiples of three that lend further support:
Francisco Antonio was priosti in 1676 and 1682 (6 years), Diego Martin was
escribano in 1673 and in 1679 (6 years).
If San Gaspar Tlacintla indeed had three subdivisions, then the plaza-
shaped valley should be seen as a metaphor for this community. First, the
sides of the plaza-shaped valley held six different activities:
bullfighting, marionette skits, dancing games, games of acrobats, musicians
playing, and beast taming. These would fit perfectly within the altepetl
of San Gaspar Tlacintla and its three subdivisions because each would hold
two activities. Furthermore, the presidente, an elder with a long beard,
acted as a judge who decided what test was needed before he decided who was
worthy of practicing a craft. This appears to be a reference to the leader
of a guild or a cofradia. It has already been suggested that the cofradía
of the Immaculate Conception trained bullfighters (or cowboys) and
musicians. Did it also have a regulatory function for its inhabitants who
practiced these aforementioned crafts, or was Leandro imposing his views of
Spanish guilds?
Meanwhile, some evidence exists that the volador ceremony survived in
one Nahua altepetl until the twentieth century. The elder Máximo García of
Xicotepec in central Mexico passed on songs of the volador ceremony to the
Bodil Christensen who recorded them, and these contain hints of a blending
of the Catholic and Nahua dichotomies. The people of this altepetl begin
their song with a call to the trinity, but then, the supplicants sing,
"give them (the trinity?) this bird so that they receive it so that they
(the trinity) give strength to his children (of the community) for the
feast of the patron of the town (altepepixcatzin), San Juan Bautista."[73]
Then, as the people take down the pole they sing:
Now we take down this pole where the flowers took delight, and already
we give thanks with a little bit of chocolate and mole, so that the
holy people (teotlacatzitzintin) raise it up… all of the children (of
the town) say goodbye with other wax candles, and for this reason we
ask them (holy people) to reach another count of years.[74]

In this last verse, the people of the town ask to reach another count of
years (xihtlapohualli), and this verse preserves a vestige of the new fire
ceremony where every 52 years, the Nahuas of the Aztec Empire asked their
gods for one more cycle (xiuhtlapohualli) of order.

Conclusion

The oral traditions of "The Presidente" and "The Broken Trunk" are
historical documents because they present a mostly San Gaspar Tlacintla-
centered perspective about both the seventeenth century evolution of the
animate and inanimate landscape of Los Llanos, and they preserve Nahuatl
paradigms. "The Presidente" and "The Broken Trunk" are both oral documents,
and they have to be analyzed with the methodologies of oral history that
take into account how they came to be transcribed, and the methodologies of
the New Philology that take into account the language behind their Spanish
surface. Once this has been done, these oral traditions reveal that the
Nahua were cowboys who worked in their altepetl and in Spanish-owned
haciendas, acrobats who performed as voladores, and musicians.
Furthermore, the substance behind these oral traditions was Nahua because
in the end, the plaza-shaped valley is a timelss Nahua metaphor for San
Gaspar Tlacintla. The former is ruled by one leader, like an altepetl, and
this leader is a bearded elder who presides over supplicants who request
one of three crafts in a space that houses six games. These multiples of
three, like the memorias, suggest that plaza is an altepetl-centered story
whose nexus is San Gaspar Tlacintla.
-----------------------
[1] Agustín de Oro, testimony of Leandro de Orozco Agüero to the
bishop of Guadalajara, March 27, 1692, Parroquias, Jalostotitlan (1663-
1799), Historic Archive of the Archbishopric of Guadalajara (HAAG),
Guadalajara, Mexico.
[2] Agustín de Oro, "q si quieria saber de donde sacaban los
maromeros, los buenos toreadores, y los buenos musicos la siensia de estos
artes," HAAG.
[3] Picture by Ricardo Garcia.
[4] Agustín de Oro, HAAG.
[5] Agustín de Oro, HAAG.
[6] Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology
trans. by H. M. Wright (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1965), 1.
[7] Vansina, 21.
[8] Vansina, 20-21.
[9] Agustín de Oro, HAAG.
[10] Peter Gerhard, La frontera norte d la Nueva España translated by
Patricia Escandón Bolaños, with maps by Bruce Campbell (Mexico City:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1996), 137.
[11] Agustín de Oro, HAAG; Gerhard, 136.
[12] Relaciónes geográficas del siglo XVI: Nueva Galicia ed. by René
Acuña (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de México, 1988), 305-306.
[13] Relaciónes geográficas del siglo XVI: Nueva Galicia, 307.
[14] Relaciónes geográficas del siglo XVI: Nueva Galicia, 299.
[15] Relaciónes geográficas del siglo XVI: Nueva Galicia, 307.
[16] Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other
Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1991); quoted in Steve J. Stern, Remembering Pinochet's Chile:
On the Eve of London 1998 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 231-
232.
[17] Stern, 232.
[18] Stern, 232-233.
[19] Susan K. Burton, "Issues in Cross-cultural Interviewing: Japanese
Women in England" in The Oral History Reader 2nd Edition, edited by Robert
Perks and Alistair Thomson (London: Routledge, 2006), 171.
[20] Fred H. Allison, "Remembering a Vietnam Firefight: Changing
Perspectives over Time" in The Oral History Reader 2nd Ed., 225.
[21] Francis Good, "Voice, Ear, and Text: Words, Meaning, and
Transcription," in The Oral History Reader 2nd Ed.,365.
[22] Kevin Terraciano, "A Historiography of the Peoples of New Spain,"
4.
[23] James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and
Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through
Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 7.
[24] Terraciano, "A Historiography of the Peoples of New Spain," 4.
[25] "Cada quien crea su propio infiernito." Personal conversation
with Rafaela Aliaga on March 25, 2012. She was a resident of Jalisco,
whose memory has retained a lot of the folklore of Jalisco that she learned
from her father and her grandmother who was a curandera. She is also the
author's mom.
[26] Vansina, 131-133.
[27] Ytechcopa timoteilhuia yn tobicario (Acusamos a nuestro vicario):
Pleito entre los naturales de Jalostotitlan y su sacerdote, 1618
translated, paleographed, and with notes by John Sullivan (Guadalajara,
Mexico: El Colegio de Jalisco), 2003.
[28] Santiago, Death of Pedro Gaspar, February 20, 1672, Libro de
difuntos numero 1 (1659-1686), Church of Santa Maria de la Asunción (CSMA),
Jalostotitlan, Mexico.
[29] Pedro Gaspar, Memoria de Tributos, 1676, Nahuatl Documents,
Cofradía de María de la Imaculada Concepción (1673-1683), HAAG.
[30] Diego Benitez, Death of Pedro Gaspar, June 19, 1684, Libro de
difuntos numero 1 , CSMA, Mexico.
[31] Agustín de Oro, HAAG.
[32] Relaciónes geográficas del siglo XVI: Nueva Galicia, 300.
[33] Relaciónes geográficas del siglo XVI: Nueva Galicia, 302.
[34] Relaciónes geográficas del siglo XVI: Nueva Galicia, 302.
[35] Relaciónes geográficas del siglo XVI: Nueva Galicia, 301.
[36] Relaciónes geográficas del siglo XVI: Nueva Galicia, 303.
[37] Relaciónes geográficas del siglo XVI: Nueva Galicia, 302, 304.
[38] Relaciónes geográficas del siglo XVI: Nueva Galicia, 303-304.
[39] Relaciónes geográficas del siglo XVI: Nueva Galicia, 303.
[40] Alonso Mota y Escobar, Descripción de los reynos de Nueva
Galicia, Nueva Vizcaya y Nuevo León 1605 (Guadalajara, Mexico: Instituto
Jalisciense de Antropologia e Historia, Colección Historica de Obras
Facsimilares, 1966), 57.
[41] Domingo Lazaro de Arregui, 121.
[42] Mota y Escobar, 56.
[43] Mota y Escobar, 56.
[44] Moya y Escobar, 56.
[45] Ytechcopa timoteilhuia yn tobicario (Acusamos a nuestro vicario):
Pleito entre los naturales de Jalostotitlan y su sacerdote, 1618.
[46] Agustín de Oro, HAAG.
[47] Chevalier (1970: 112) and Jordan (1993: 93) note that cowboys
managed because they were mounted and used a specialized pike and ropes to
control or kill the bulls and the other animals of a herd. Terry G.
Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers: Origins, Diffusion, and
Differentiation (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1993),
93. Chevalier, Land and Society in Colonial Mexico: The Great Hacienda
trans. by Alvin Eustis, and ed., with a Foreword, by Lesley Byrd Simpson
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1970).
[48] Tello, Fray Antonio. Crónica miscelánea en que se trata de la
conquista espiritual y temporal de la santa provincia de Xalisco en el
nuevo reino de la Galicia y nueva Vizcaya y descubrimiento del Nuevo México
Book 2 with notes by Juan López. Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1997, 525-
526.
[49] Tello, 525-526.
[50] Román Gutiérrez, José Francisco. "Situación de la orden
franciscana en Nueva Galicia a principios del siglo XVII" in Actas del III
Congreso Internacional sobre los Franciscanos en el Nuevo Mundo (Siglo
XVII). Madrid: Editorial Deimos, 1991.
[51] Ytechcopa timoteilhuia yn tobicario (Acusamos a nuestro vicario):
Pleito entre los naturales de Jalostotitlan y su sacerdote, 1618.
[52] Ytechcopa timoteilhuia yn tobicario (Acusamos a nuestro vicario):
Pleito entre los naturales de Jalostotitlan y su sacerdote, 1618, 22.
[53] Don Frey Felipe Galindo, Visita of the cofradía of the
Immaculate Conception in San Gaspar, 1694, Libro primero de visitas
generales asi como particulares de Don Frey Felipe Galindo, HAAG.
[54] This is an area that deserves more study.
[55] Francisco Javier Clavijero, Historia Antigua de México 7th ed.
with a prologue by Mariano Cuevas (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 2009),
346.
[56] Agustin de Oro, HAAG.
[57] Tello, 525.
[58] Tello, 525.
[59] Turrent, Lourdes. La conquista musical de México. Mexico City:
Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993.
[60] Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman, and Susan M. Deeds, The
Course of Mexican History 8th ed. (New York: Oxford Univeristy Press,
2007), 120.
[61] Mary Miller and Karl Taube, An Illustrated Dictionary of The Gods
and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (New York: Thames & Hudson,
1993), 177-178.
[62] Miller and Taube, 56-57.
[63] Miler and Taube, 156.
[64] Louise Burkhart, The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral
Dialogue in Sixteenth Century Mexico. Tucson, AZ: The University of
Arizona Press, 1989.
[65] Burkhart, 40, 51, 173-174.
[66] Burkhart, 51; Miller and Taube, 177.
[67] For example, the Nahuas of the altepetl of Tenochtitlan had one
myth where the god identified with the sun had been conceived when his
mother had been impregnated with a feather, but his mother's one daughter
(the moon) and four hundred other sons (the stars) thought that she had had
an affair, and they sought to kill her. However, the new son was born as a
young warrior who slew his one sister and four hundred brothers. Karl
Taube, Aztec and Maya Myths (Austin, TX: British Museum Press, University
of Texas Press, 1993), 45-50.
[68] Relaciónes geográficas del siglo XVI: Nueva Galicia, 305-306.
[69] James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and
Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through the
Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), p.
14.
[70] James Lockhart, p. 14-15.
[71] Charles Gibson, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1967), 104.
[72] Tello, 525.
[73] Bodil Christensen, "Oraciones del culto del volador," Revista
Mexicana de Estudios Antropologicos, 23-24. "le entregamos este ave que lo
reciban para darles fuersas a tus hijos (ipilhuatzitzin; lit. children) por
fiesta fiesta ó veneración del pueblo o patrón San Juan Bautista…"
"tictemactia inin papalol, xic mocelilican ic mochicahuazque in te pilhuan
ipampa imahuiztililocatzin in altepeppixcatzin San Juan Bautista…"
[74] Christensen, 24-25. "Ahora ya aqui lo tumbamos este palo en que
se dieron gustos las flores ya aqui damos las gracias con un poquito de
chocolate y un poquito de moli, y que lo alcen los Espíritus o ángeles
(teotlacatzitzintin; lit. holy men, holy people) … todos los hijos nos
despedimos con otras luces de cera por eso le pedimos si nos deja llegar
para otro año (xihtlapohualli)."