Mexican American Religions

An Introduction

Brett Hendrickson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367250133
• eBook ISBN: 9781000441529
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Mexican American Religions is a concise introduction to the religious life of Mexican American people in the United States. This accessible volume uses historical narrative to explore the complex religious experiences and practices that have shaped Mexican American life in North America. It addresses the religious impact of U.S. imperial expansion into formerly Mexican territory and examines how religion intertwines with Mexican and Mexican American migration into and within the United States. This book also delves into the particularities and challenges faced by Mexican American Catholics in the United States, the development and spread of Mexican American Protestantism and Pentecostalism, and a growing religious diversity. Topics covered include:

• Mesoamerican religions
• Iberian religion and colonial evangelization of New Spain
• The Colonial era
• Religion in the Mexican period
• The U.S.-Mexican War and the racialization of Mexican American religion
• Mexican migration and the Catholic Church
• Mexican American Protestants
• Mexican American Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity
• Mexican American Catholics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
• Curanderismo
• Religion and Mexican American civil rights
• Pilgrimage and borderland connections
• Mexican American Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, and Secularism

Mexican American Religions provides an overview of this incredibly diverse community and its ongoing cultural contribution. Ideal for students and scholars approaching the topic for the first time, the book includes sections in each chapter that focus on Mexican American religion in practice.

Part I

Mexican American religious history

DOI: 10.4324/9780429285516-2

1 Indigenous religions

Mesoamerica and the North

10.4324/9780429285516-3

The story of Mexican American religions begins in Mesoamerica, the stretch of land comprising most of central Mexico and Central America. Today, this region is home to millions of Indigenous people including many whose ancestors lived in the great Maya and Aztec Empires. The story continues among the peoples of what is now northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Like people around the world, the various nations and groupings of Indigenous people of the Americas had and have complex cultural, ethical, and ritual practices that help define who they are as people, connect them to deities, and make sense of their lives. The religions of the Aztecs and of the many peoples extending northward from central Mexico not only persist today as living traditions, they also contributed in profound ways to the mestizo culture of Mexico.

Indeed, the combination of living traditions, both Indigenous American and European colonial, create the unique circumstances in which Mexican American religions emerge. Chapter 2 will take up the role of Iberian Catholicism in the colonization and evangelization of Indigenous people. In this chapter, the focus remains on the cosmologies and religious activity of Indigenous people in what is now the nation of Mexico and several states of the U.S. Southwest. Particular attention is paid to the religion of the Aztec Empire because this powerful and numerous people had an enormous impact on Spanish evangelization and the eventual character of Mexican Catholicism. Moreover, as an imperial force themselves, the Aztecs had an important influence on other Indigenous peoples throughout much of Mexico. The chapter also examines the religions of a sampling of Indigenous nations from what is now the southwestern region of the United States in order to explore how these groups encountered and interacted with Spanish colonists and missionaries.

It is important to note that much of the historical information about pre-Hispanic Indigenous Mesoamericans is mediated through the voices of Spanish colonizers. In fact, a great many of the earliest historical accounts were written by Catholic priests and friars and, therefore, inevitably reflect their biases. Two points can be made concerning this situation. First, one must take care to read Spanish Catholic histories of Indigenous religions critically, remembering that the authors of these histories were a conquering force. Second, Spanish histories, one-sided and oppressive as they may be, nevertheless reflect the five-century reality of the Americas: a place where European colonialism, which includes evangelization, has changed everything permanently. The story of Mexican American religions, thus, starts not only with Indigenous Mesoamericans but also with the colonial collision of Native peoples with Europeans.

Aztec origins and migration

The Mexica people migrated to the central valley of Mexico from their ancestral home located somewhere to the north, a place they called “Aztlán,” which is translated variously as “place of whiteness” or “place of the herons.” The name by which the Mexica are often known—the Aztecs—means the “people of Aztlán.” Aztlán is sometimes also associated with an origin site known as Chicomoztoc, “Place of Seven Caves,” the place of emergence of the Nahuas, a family of tribes that included the Mexica and several other groups important to the history of central Mexico. Neither the Mexica themselves or archaeologists can locate with certainty this ancestral homeland, but there is a likelihood that the place lay somewhere in northern Mexico or the U.S. Southwest. (This last possibility—that the Aztec originated in what is now the United States—has been an important source of pride for many Mexican Americans today; see Chapter 11.) Aztlán was reputedly a land surrounded by water and imbued with divine guidance, and it served as the archetype for the island city of Tenochtitlán.¹

The Mexica began their exodus from the north in the twelfth century C.E. Their main god, Huitzilopochtli, had promised them a rich land, and they eventually arrived on the shores of Lake Tetzcoco in 1318 C.E to claim their divine inheritance. Over the next two centuries, the Aztec Empire grew to encompass much of central Mexico, through both treaty and military occupation. At the core of the empire was the so-called Triple Alliance with the Acolhua and Tepaneca peoples, who like the Mexica, spoke Nahuatl and traced their history to a northern homeland. The Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, today known as Mexico City, was then and continues to be one of the largest cities in the world. It grew as an island city, connected by easily defended causeways and water routes to the surrounding area. Heavy tributes from vassal states and robust trade made it a wealthy metropolis.²

Scholars have pored over surviving Aztec codices as well as early accounts by Spanish colonizers to gain an understanding of the religious beliefs, practices, and community structures of the people of central Mexico. As was the case with the Spanish, the Aztec religion played a central role in authorizing the power of the Aztec Empire even as it regulated many aspects of life. In what follows, various features of this religion are discussed, including its cosmology, calendar, pantheon, primary rituals and their functions, and the Aztec conception of the human being. While many serious differences existed between the religion of the Mexica and that of the invading Europeans, there were also several features that allowed for comparison with Spanish Catholicism.

Cosmology and calendar

The Aztecs conceived of space as multilayered. Above the earth were thirteen levels of heavens where various deities resided as well as the natural elements of the sky, such as the sun, planets, stars, rain, and birds. In the highest heaven lived Ometéotl, the creator deity and god of duality. Below the earth layer were nine levels of underworld, a place known as Mictlan. The majority of those who died entered Mictlan and proceeded through many trials and challenges to reach the ninth and last level, where they ceased to exist. Exceptions to this oblivion were few and reserved for those who had died in specific ways, including in battle, in childbirth, and from particular diseases. These people, instead of entering Mictlan, went to other realms created and overseen by specific deities, where the deceased enjoyed honor and joy.³

The Aztec terrestrial realm was symbolically tied both to their principal deities and to their conceptions of the human. At the center was the capital city of Tenochtitlán, which itself reflected in its location and layout the mythical northern land of Aztlán. The Great Temple sat in Tenochtitlán, where the Aztecs made worship and offerings to the great gods Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. In Aztec and other Mesoamerican cosmovisions, this center itself represented a direction, a place that anchored and oriented the rest of space. Radiating out from this center were four quadrants, each associated with a particular color and characteristic. Sources vary as to the names and features of these directions, but Davíd Carrasco, a historian of Mesoamerican religions, describes the Aztec directions this way: East was called Tlacopan and was the yellow home of fertility and the dawn. Mictlampa was in the red north, and it was known for barrenness. In the west, Cihuatlampa, was the humid, bluish green region of women. The thorny south, known as Huitlampa, was associated with the color white. The fifth direction, the center, Tlalxico, was the black navel of the world.⁴ In Mexica cosmology, each of these directions represents a cosmic force as well as a child of the god Ometéotl. Their struggle for supremacy explains the conflicts and tensions rampant in the earthly realm.⁵

These cosmic conflicts and wars played out in the somewhat predictable cycles of Aztec timekeeping. The Aztecs employed three calendars. The first was a 260-day cycle in which numbers and the names of animals were matched in ways that yielded divinatory insights. This calendar was used to compile a sacred almanac of auspicious days and times for various events. A second, solar calendar counted the 365 days of the solar year and marked agricultural seasons as well as ritual observances. These two calendars interlocked into the third calendar, a 52-year cycle. The completion of such a cycle was a momentous event that could augur the end of the world. Indeed, the Aztecs believed that the world had already been destroyed four times before, and each fulfillment of the 52-year cycle created another opportunity for their current world to come to its end. These worlds were commonly referred to as “suns,” and so the Aztec considered that they lived within the time of the Fifth Sun, and most of their mythology unfolds within this vast period.⁶

Major Aztec deities

Like other Mesoamerican peoples, the Aztecs engaged with many gods. These often represented natural forces or features, such as the sun, the moon, and rain, and they were related to each other as a large family of brothers, sisters, and other relations. The myths associated with the gods helped explain the rhythms as well as the vagaries of the natural world. They, likewise, supplied the basis for Aztec ritual life and political structures. There were dozens of deities, many of whom had been absorbed into the Aztec pantheon as the empire expanded to include new people and their respective deities. However, it is clear that some gods were of central importance due to their function, their prominence in Aztec ritual life, and their representation in major temples in Tenochtitlán.⁷

Atop the Great Temple in the center of the Mexica capital sat two altars, one to Huitzilopochtli and the other to Tlaloc, architecturally signifying the importance of these two deities to the Aztecs. Huitzilopochtli was known as the Hummingbird of the South, associated with the sun, and was the Aztecs’ patron god. Besides being a great warrior, he led the people southward from Aztlán to central Mexico.

Tlaloc, in contrast to Huitzilopochtli, ruled over rain, mountains, and other natural phenomena. He preceded the arrival of the Mexica and had been a central deity for the earlier Mesoamerican civilization at Teotihuacán. His worship at the Great Temple focused on sustenance and agriculture, and his followers relied on his care even as they feared his might as it was expressed capriciously in natural disasters and floods. Together, these altars knit together Aztec military might and domination of the natural world.

Two important female deities were Coatlicue and Coyolxauhqui. Coatlicue was the mother of Huizilopochtli and, as such, was revered as a patroness of fertility and motherhood. Her daughter, Coyolxauhqui, was the goddess of the moon. Huitzilopochtli went into battle against her, decapitated her, and mutilated her body, thus establishing his dominance as well as the sun’s daily conquering of the night.

Rarely depicted but revered was Ometéotl, the creator force and the progenitor of all gods and humans. Ometéotl was the Lord of Duality and contained both male and female, known respectively as Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl. Ometéotl presided over the highest heaven, which was known as the “place of duality.” Some commentators see in this dual god a kind of theological unifying force for the many different aspects and figures in Aztec cosmology.⁸

Another ancient deity that was common throughout Mesoamerica, well before the arrival of the Mexica, was Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. He is the god of wind. In some early sources, Quetzalcoatl is considered to be the creator of humankind, in concert with the dual powers of Ometéotl.⁹ Nahuatl philosophers believed that Quetzalcoatl, in an act of self-sacrifice, brought the time of the Fifth Sun into being. He also was frequently associated with a pre-Aztec cultural hero known as Ce Acatl Topltzin Quetzalcoatl, who embodied the concept of man-god and savior of civilization. The Aztecs, like other Mesoamericans, believed that Quetzalcoatl would someday return to usher in a new cosmic era.¹⁰

Rituals

Aztec religious rituals were held throughout the year to observe festivals and auspicious days, often in relationship to the agricultural cycle. Many rituals featured sacrifice of one kind or another, including frequent human sacrifice, to re-enact the gods’ sacrificial maintenance of the cosmos and to appease these gods ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I: Mexican American religious history
• PART II: Topics in Mexican American religion
• Bibliography
• Index