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Persistence of Native Values: The Inquisition and the Indians of Colonial Mexico*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Richard E. Greenleaf
Richard E. Greenleaf*
Affiliation:
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
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Extract

The Holy Office of the Inquisition in colonial Mexico had as its purpose the defense of Spanish religion and Spanish-Catholic culture against individuals who held heretical views and people who showed lack of respect for religious principles. Inquisition trials of Indians suggest that a prime concern of the Mexican Church in the sixteenth century was recurrent idolatry and religious syncretism. During the remainder of the colonial period and until 1818, the Holy Office of the Inquisition continued to investigate Indian transgressions against orthodoxy as well as provide the modern researcher with unique documentation for the study of mixture of religious beliefs. The “procesos de indios” and other subsidiary documentation from Inquisition archives present crucial data for the ethnologist and ethnohistorian, preserving a view of native religion at the time of Spanish contact, eyewitness accounts of post-conquest idolatry and sacrifice, burial rites, native dances and ceremonies as well as data on genealogy, social organization, political intrigues, and cultural dislocation as the Iberian and Mesoamerican civilizations collided. As “culture shock” continued to reverberate across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Inquisition manuscripts reveal the extent of Indian resistance or accommodation to Spanish Catholic culture.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , January 1994 , pp. 351 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1994

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Footnotes

*

This essay is an expanded version of a paper presented at the American Historical Association, December 28, 1992, with inclusion of new archival documentation on Central Mexico and Oaxaca and new viewpoints on the Indian Inquisition of Diego de Landa in Yucatán, 1558-1562.

References

1 See Greenleaf, Richard E. “The Mexican Inquisition and the Indians: Sources for the Ethnohistorian,” The Americas, 34 (1978), 315–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Greenleaf, Richard E. “Historiography of the Mexican Inquisition: Evolution of Interpretations and Methodologies,” in Perry, Mary Elizabeth and Cruz, Anne J., Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 248–76.Google Scholar

2 See Greenleaf, Richard E. “The Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain: A Study in Jurisdictional Confusion,” The Americas, 22 (1965), 138–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The Provisorato became a parallel institution to the Inquisition after 1571, and the provisor headed the new jurisdiction that was designated to enforce Indian orthodoxy under the Episcopal office.

3 Bricker, Victoria R., Ritual Humor in Highland Chiapas (Austin, 1973)Google Scholar.

4 See the excellent studies of Quezada, Noemí, Enfermedad y Maleficio. El Curandero en México Colonial (Mexico, 1989)Google Scholar; Amor y Magia Amorosa Entre Los Aztecas: Supervivencia en El Mexico Colonial (Mexico, 1989); and “Sexualidad y Magia en La Meyer Novahispana. Siglo XVI,” Anales de Antropología, 24 (1987), 263–87.

5 Robertson, Donald, Mexico Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period (New Haven, 1959).Google Scholar

6 Scholes, France V. and Adams, Eleanor B., Proceso contra Tzintzicha Tangaxoan el Caltzontzin formado por Nuño de Guzmán, año de 1530 (Mexico: Porrúa, 1952)Google Scholar.

7 Greenleaf, Richard E., Zumárraga and the Mexican Inquisition 1535–1543 (Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1962)Google Scholar, chaps. 3 and 4.

8 See Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid) Inquisición, Libro 574, fol. 34, fols. 134v–135r. A published version of the cedulas of reprimand is Carreño, Alberto María, Un Desconocido Cedulario del Siglo XVI (Mexico, 1944) pp. 159–61Google Scholar.

9 See Greenleaf, “Sources for the Ethnohistorian;” de Alva, Jorge Klor “Colonizing Souls: The Failure of the Indian Inquisition and the Rise of Penitential Discipline,” in Perry, and Cruz, , Cultural Encounters, pp. 3–22 Google Scholar; and de los Arcs, Roberto Moreno “New Spain’s Inquisition for Indians from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century,” in ibid., pp. 23–36 Google Scholar, both of which rely on Greenleaf’s works.

10 Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico)[hereafter cited as AGN], Inquisición vol. 212, exp. 7. This famous Zumárraga proceso has been missed by researchers because it is mis-dated 1570 on its title page.

11 AGN, Inquisición, vol. 42, exp. 10.

12 AGN, Inquisición, vol. 37, exp. 12.

13 Gay, José Antonio, Historia de Oaxaca, 4 vols. (Mexico, 1950), I, pp. 629–34Google Scholar.

14 Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla) AGI, Indiferente General, deg 2978, fols. 650–656.

15 See Greenleaf, “Sources for the Ethnohistorian” for a resumé of treatises on idolatry, sorcery and paganism written by Inquisition commissaries in the Mexican provinces.

16 Hodge, Frederick Webb Hammond, George P. and Rey, Agapito, Fray Alonso de Benavides’ Revised Memorial of 1634 (Albuquerque, 1945), pp. 159–67Google Scholar and passim.

17 AGN, Inquisición, vol. 1001, exp. 12.

18 A brief note on the provisor’s auto of 1723 was made by the Tribunal of the Holy Office in AGN, Inquisición, tomo 803, exp. 52. For the detailed data, see de Villaseñor, Joseph Antonio, Teatro Americano, Descripción General de los Reynos y Provincias de la Nueva España … año de 1748, 2 vols. (México, 1952), II, pp. 268–70Google Scholar.

19 Scholes, France V. and Adams, Eleanor B., Don Diego Quijada: Alcalde Mayor de Yucatán, 2 vols. (Mexico: Antigua Librería Robredo, 1930), I, pp. v-ciiiGoogle Scholar.

20 The opinion which sustained Landa’s jurisdiction is published in the 1613 treatise of de Aguilar, Pedro Sánchez, Informe Contra Indolarum Cultores del Obispado de Yucatan (Mexico: Editerai Navarro, 1954), II, pp. 181–329 Google Scholar.

21 Scholes, France V. and Roys, Ralph, Fray Diego de Landa and the Problem of Idolatry in Yucatán (Washington, D.C.: The Carnegie Institution, 1938)Google Scholar.

22 Clendinnen, Inga, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatán (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

23 Tedlock, Dennis “Torture in the Archives: Mayans Meet Europeans,” American Anthropologist, 95 (1993), 139–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Gibson, Charles, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico 1519–1810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1954), p. 134.Google Scholar