Before Guadalupe : The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature

The introduction of the Virgin Mary to the Nahuas (or Aztecs) of Central Mexico has often been linked with the origins of the Mexican devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe. However, the Guadalupe devotion did not play a major role in indigenous life until after its foundation legend was published in Spanish in 1648 and in Nahuatl the following year. How, then, did Nahuas encounter, interpret, and appropriate Christianity's principal female figure? This anthology of Nahuatl-language texts offers the most in-depth examination to date of how Marianism was introduced into a Native American linguistic and cultural context. The texts, which include narratives, sermons, prayers, catechism lessons, hymns, and chants, date from the 1540s to the 1620s and represent Franciscan, Augustinian, Dominican, Jesuit, and Nahua authors.Far from fomenting some "syncretic" mixing of Mary with native goddess cults or presenting only rudimentary teachings, Catholic churchmen and Nahua scholars strove to adapt into Nahuatl a large part of the medieval cult of Mary, with its feast days, the rosary and other prayer traditions, and popular miracle legends. This was not simply an expansion of Spanish-Christian hegemony, for Nahuas who mastered the discourses and practices of Marian devotion controlled potent symbolic capital. Nahuatl texts and English translations are presented here in parallel columns, making the book useful to students of Nahuatl as well as to anyone interested in Marianism, evangelization, or Mexican religion.Extensive commentary on the texts traces their European background and illuminates their meanings and uses in the Mexican setting. Louise M. Burkhart is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Director of the Institute for Mesoamerican Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY.