Social Reproduction of Late Postclassic Ritual Practices in Early Colonial Central México

The circulation of ritual texts in southern Oaxaca, 1629-1656

In Oaxaca, some of the evidence for the clandestine circulation of ritual texts in indigenous communities in the seventeenth century comes from a rather marginal area: two Amuzgo-speaking towns in the jurisdictions of Igualapa and Xicayan, in the southwestern Oaxaca coastal area. While very little can be ascertained about this case, it is known that the priest Gerónimo Curiel, who was appointed beneficiado of the Amuzgo towns of Xochistlahuaca and Xicayan in 1616, later obtained an appointment from the Bishop of Oaxaca, Fr. Juan Bohorques, as a "general judge" of idolatries in 1622. In this capacity, he toured his parish,

discovering many other places of idolatry, and seizing idols, books, characters, and other instruments of idolatry which the idolaters used […]. In the year of [1]633, while he was carrying our this ministry, having learned that a cacique in that region was a great idolater and a sorcerer who employed many forms of sorcery, attempting to indoctrinate those who were not like him, [Curiel] arrested him and conducted a trial, seizing the books, characters and instruments which he employed, and sentenced him to serve His Majesty in the Fort of Acapulco… (AGI Indiferente General 3000, no. 217; my emphases)

Although this passage provides little biographical or narrative details about literate ritual specialists, it does suggest the existence of textual artifacts that went beyond pictorial representation (books, characters), and their use by a leading political figure in one of the two Amuzgo communities in which Curiel served.

On the other hand, two years after Curiel tried and punished the anonymous Amuzgo ruler, Gonzalo de Balsalobre, a young priest in the town of San Miguel Sola in south central Oaxaca, had his first confrontation with a literate ritual specialist called Diego Luis.  Diego Luis had in his possession a ritual text written in Chatino, a language genetically related to proto-Zapotec, which he had translated into Solteco, the variety of Zapotec spoken in Sola. Apparently, the original text had come from Lorenzo Martín, principal of the Chatino-speaking town of Xuquila, who had given it to Félix de Alvarado, who had passed it on to Diego Luis. When Balsalobre learned about this fact, he brought Diego Luis to trial, confiscated the offending text, and had it burned before the door of Sola’s church, after parading Diego Luis as a penitent. As a precautionary measure, Balsalobre banned the idolater from the township of Sola for an unspecified period of time.

However, this sentence would by no means put an end to the circulation of ritual texts in Sola. A surprised Balsalobre learned nineteen years later, in February of 1654, as he was taking a declaration from Lorenzo Martín, son of Diego Luis, that the texts had been transcribed by the specialist’s son and had thus escaped the flames:

[Lorenzo Martín’s] father had a book in the Chatino language which he received from don Félix Albarado, and this book of the devil was translated into the language of Sola. Upon his father’s orders, this confessant made a transcription so he would learn to employ the said book. When they found the original in his father’s hands, his transcription remained in his possession, […] and he saw the original burn before the gates of the parish church in the presence of all the inhabitants of the region on the day that Diego Luis was punished […] [Lorenzo Martín] did not produce his transcription before the local priest, and [Lorenzo Martín] returned it to his father after he had completed his sentence and returned to the region… (AGN Inquisición 456, 592v-593r).

In fact, the Balsalobre trials and investigations of idolatry in the Sola township, conducted between 1653 and 1657, could hardly have been possible without the confrontation between Balsalobre on the one hand, and his star informant, witness and nemesis Diego Luis. After the 1635 trial and punishment of Diego Luis, who appears to have specialized in acts of divination related to the maize harvest, childbirth, and the death of elders, there were no reports of Balsalobre’s extirpation activities until December 1653, when he began an investigation of Diego Luis for his reincidence in idolatrous practices. During the course of the inquiry, Diego Luis, who was by this time 88 years old, decided to incriminate and give ample information about close to a hundred clients and specialists who consulted him or had access to his ritual texts (Balsalobre [1656] 1892: 241). The information provided by him resulted in the instruction of at least 18 separate legal proceedings against idolaters, and in a trial involving 36 officials of Sola for propitiating the goddess Nohuichana before fishing trips.

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