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In the sixteenth century, Fray Diego Durán gave rise to a scholarly myth that the primary purpose of Nahua ritual baths was "purification." This article deconstructs his interpretation, focusing on baths performed on deities' impersonators (ixiptla), and particularly the so-called tlaaltiltin, "bathed ones." It argues that "baths," which often consisted of merely sprinkling one's face with water, had, above all, a transformative power. In the case of deities' impersonators, they helped them change their ontological status, converting humans into gods and, sometimes, the other way around. The article concludes that the fabrication of a deity's ixiptla necessarily involved applying a special kind of liquid, different for every god. Like godly attires, these "waters" contained the god's traits or essence that enabled the transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ekphrasis, understood as a metaphor for encounter, serves as a literal vessel for an encounter between Nahua and Spanish worldviews in the illustrated bilingual Spanish and Nahuatl encyclopedia Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (mostly written 1547–78), overseen by Bernardino de Sahagún in collaboration with Nahua scholars. Crucially, the function of ekphrasis—intensified verbal description of visual artifice—differed between Spanish and Nahua users of the encyclopedia, both in general and in this context. The twin missions of the text, to diagnose Nahua deviance from Christianity, and to record the Nahua world and its practices, directly conflict. This essay examines the differences between the side-by-side Spanish and Nahuatl accounts of a major Mexica ceremony, Toxcatl, with a special focus on rhetorical discrepancies between the two. It also argues that the unusually explicitly gruesome illustrations of this section may have functioned differently for the two audiences: as iconographic aids to identification of idolatrous ritual for the Spanish, but for a Nahua audience as ongoing ekphrasis-prompts, extending the ritual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I analyze Nahua playwright Ildefonso Maya's theatrical work Ixtlamatinij (1987). The Nahuatl term ixtlamatini, in the Huasteca, has two meanings that clash with one another. It can denote a person who has gained knowledge through lived experience, or instead someone who has obtained knowledge through university education. I argue that the conflictive meanings of ixtlamatini are key to understanding how Maya stages Nahua perspectives as valid intellectual production. In doing so, he proposes a wider conception of what constitutes a text, of what has ixtli (face): ceremonies, the environment, clothing, and language as a metonym of the face. The work Ixtlamatinij defends Nahua practices as an effective strategy to dismantle the discrimination aimed against Native nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sabina Cruz de la Cruz presents an auto-ethnohistory, an account written in her native language of Nahuatl based on her community experiences with illness and curing in the Huasteca region of Veracruz, Mexico. She documents her work with two curanderos to improve her poor health. The article is an invaluable record of contemporary, indigenous healing dialogue and traditions, some of which have similarities with colonial-era practices. It is an example of a collaboration between an ethnohistorian and an indigenous scholar writing her own history, and such collaborations will strengthen the field of ethnohistory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tercer abecedario espiritual (1527) was the most influential work of Franciscan friar and widely read spiritual author Francisco de Osuna (c.1492-c.1540). This essay focuses on descriptions of the soul in his treatise in order to highlight a series of correspondences between Nahua and Franciscan metaphysics. It argues that these correspondences, based on sensorial experiences of the material world and inductive reasoning, aided the success of the Franciscan project of evangelization during the early decades of the colonization of Mexico through the 1570s. Moreover, it contends they led to changes in the concept of the soul in the Nahua/Spanish contact zone. Because Nahua terms for animating forces ihiyotl, -yolia, and tonalli—which signify winds, heart, and heat—have been studied in close detail, this essay uses them as a framework to interrogate Osuna's representations. Such an approach demonstrates that scholarship comparing Mesoamerican metaphysics with that of colonizing missionaries requires reciprocal scrutiny of European concepts at the time of contact. Finally, this analysis explores Bruno Latour's 'compositionism' as a model for approaching the premodern qualities of meditative recollection and for examining the intersections between Nahua and Franciscan aesthetics of interiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous escribanos, notaries, based in the western part of what is now Mexico State, lived in small highland towns within the regions of Jilotepec and Metepec and wrote the documents studied here. They wrote the land sales, testaments, financial instruments, and powers of attorney for the women featured in this article. Their records described a cross-section of women participating in the civic work of their communities; identified cacicas, women of position in northern small towns (Jilotepec region) in the late colonial eighteenth-century; and showed the proportion of Nahua women who controlled land in southern small towns (Metepec region) within the extant early nineteenth-century testamentary record. Further, language data from these women's records serve to restore local meanings of land and society. Taken together, the evidence disputes the narrative of decline and indicates escribanos, indigenous male officials, acknowledged and fostered women's status and autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debt is one of the oldest and most widespread social arrangements that humans use to manage hardship--and it has also been one of the riskiest. David Graeber convincingly makes this case in his recent study of debt over the last five thousand years, but his focus on the Old World leaves open the question of whether similar contradictions emerged among the markets, cities, and states of the Americas. This article uses sixteenth-century documents to reconstruct the practices, institutions, and morality of debt in Nahua society during the Aztec Empire (AD 1428-1521) and show how debt was a double-edged risk in the Aztec economy. Debt played a constructive role, helping some households through hard times and carrying little of the negative moral valence commonly associated with it. However, debts could create new vulnerabilities when secured by selling family members into slavery. Exploitative debt, however, may have only become a problem during economic and environmental crises that made the risks of debt seem less than the risks of other ways to deal with hardship. Without careful attention to cultural context and historical circumstances, generalizations about debt's exploitative aspects are limited in their ability to explain debt's global extent and historical persistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies four perspectives of nakedness. First of all, nakedness as a manifestation of shamelessness and as a sexual transgression. This enables us to move forward in the understanding of the conception of body among the ancient Nahua. Secondly, it is examined as humiliation, punishment and mockery of the person. The lack of clothing is not just a sign of degradation, it also implies a depersonalization. Thirdly, the subject of the intimidating naked body is discussed. For the most part, we focus our attention on the exposure of the female sexual organs. Men are afraid of beautiful and seductive women because the latter can kill the ingenuous who desire them and wish to possess them. Lastly, nakedness is expounded as part of ritual event. In this case, the lack of clothing is a necessary step for transitioning into another status. Nakedness is conceived of as a new birth, an origin, something new. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of the ability of the Nahua tícitl (Pre-Hispanic Medics) regarding diagnosis and treatment in the Postclassic period. The tícitl related their medical theory with magical elements, probably leading to the practice of empirical and cosmogonic medicine. This study allowed us to clarify that the various medical specialties reflect the art of healing of the tícitl, as well as the progress in the development of medicine, which is why the tícitl occupies an important role in Nahuatl society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay sheds light on the often contentious and always-in-process social relations among indigenous peoples of distinct social classes in colonial Mexico. Through a discourse analysis of one of Tlaxcala's most important heritage sources, the Nahuatl-language annals of seventeenth-century Tlaxcalan noble and statesman Don Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza (Historia cronológica d e la noble ciudad de Tlaxcala), I examine the subjective and objective factors that challenged Tlaxcalan noble claims to political authority, and provided the means by which indigenous commoners could advocate for themselves during the seventeenth century. A discourse analysis of this source demonstrates that tax and tribute issues as well as mestizo and/or non-indigenous interests disrupted noble hegemony. Equally, commoner recourse to the Spanish legal system and their denial of material items and labor to the nobles were mechanisms to register dissatisfaction and potentially affect change. In this way, this study advances how we understand inter-indigenous relationships of the colonial period, particularly how indigenous nobles and commoners negotiated their inherently intertwined social, political, and economic lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the strategies employed by Nahua community of Mexixo to deal with health problems. Drawing on qualitative research, it discusses the choice of plural therapeutic itineraries, including the use of informal and formal healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we analyzed the founding mitochondrial DNA (mtdna) haplogroups A, B, C and D in 108 contemporary Mazahua individuals and 73 Otomi from Estado de Mexico to understand the genetic relationship between these populations, and with other ancient and contemporary Mexican populations. The Mazahua and Otomi inhabit the same localities in Estado de Mexico, speak languages that belong to the Oto-Manguean linguistic family and show cultural and historic similarities. Our results showed that haplogroup B is the most frequent in Mazahua whereas haplogroup A is highest among the Otomi. Haplogroup C exhibit similar frequencies. Otomi population exhibits a low frequency of haplogroup D and includes individuals that do not belong to any of the four mtdna haplogroups, whereas all Mazahua individuals in our study belong to one of the four mtdna lineages studied. The Mazahua and Otomi populations from Mexico State are statistically different according the results of the chi square test (p ⩽ 0.05). The principal component analysis using the frequencies of four mtdna haplogroups suggests that Mazahua and Otomi had little or no maternal genetic flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographic data collected from 1993 to date, I seek to demonstrate that contemporary Nahua develop certain aspects of their lives in the context of an economy of gifts. Nahua reciprocity expresses this in the basic economic form of "aid", called quipalehuiya locally. I argue that this "aid", given as goods or services, is reciprocated through social networks and provides a foundation for the model of interdependence that completely links this population with its social and ecological environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arthropods, since prehispanic times, was been of great importance among the Mesoamerican peoples, both because of its biological characteristics and its cultural impact. Indigenous groups have generated a deep and systematic knowledge about the different arthropods that are distributed in our country, which is reflected in the use of these organisms for feeding and medicinal use, mainly. There are only a few studies of zootherapy on prehispanic and colonial sources, but this documents represents a vast body of ancient and traditional knowledge about nature, so it is necessary to carry out scientific studies about these muniment in order to understand the knowledge and use of resources involved in the processes of health and disease among people Nahua prehispanic and contemporary. This work aims to identify the arthropods as medicinal resource that are reported in the Florentine Codex, Libellus of Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis and Historia Natural de Nueva España. Such works were consulted and were extracted his texts in spanish which mentions the arthropods useful in Nahua medicine; biological works were reviewed and listed on such taxonomic sources. Eleven arthropods were reported in this study, belonging to fourteen taxonomic orders, to cure 35 diseases. Despite the scant mention of this faunal group in these sources, it is important to record the different uses of these organisms that were part of the biocultural heritage of the Nahua people. It is essential to realize further studies and comparisons between more sources, as this will allow to understand some of the current uses that are still being given to animals in mexican traditional medicine, particularly with arthropods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Nahua villages of the region of the High Mountains (in the centre of the state of Veracruz), a form of customary Catholicism and a scheme of social organisation which integrated the civic and the religious in a single symbolic universe predominated until the 1980s. If one could then already observe the presence of certain evangelical churches in some districts, the phenomenon of religious differentiation became increasingly visible in the 1990s in a context of crisis in relation to land, increasing social asymmetry and an intensification of transnational migrant fluxes. Based on a case study, this article illustrates the expansion of evangelical organisations, in particular Pentecostal ones, within the context of a redefinition of interethnic dynamics. The aim is to analyse the capacity of these organisations to provide new paths to autonomy and dissidence in the face of traditional cultural and political structures, and to show how they took part in the production of new forms of socialisation that promoted access to exogenous networks and a redefinition of one's relation to the ethnic space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article focuses on the conceptualization of time and space in an early 16th century Título Primordial (in English, Primitive Land Title) from the town of Santo Tomás Ajusco (Tlalpan, Mexico). The author discusses the cultural history of the Nahua Indians and considers the settlement history of the Axoxpaneca Indians in the 15th century. He also reflects on the importance of these land title documents for understanding the prehispanic world-view and its interaction with Spanish colonial authorities in the 16th century.

Corn is of central meaning for Nahuat-speaking people of Sierra Norte, Puebla, Mexico. It is an integral part of personhood und closely related to ideals of harmony, of (gender) cooperation and (hierarchical gender) complementarity. The article explores the relation of disturbed male harmony, resulting from missing opportunities, to adequate corn production in the context of globalization. This may lead to increased illegitimate gendered violence by men. Besides, it will also be demonstrated how new forms of cooperation and complementarity between husband and wife are developed and may contribute to less hierarchical and less violent gender relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the traditional mycological knowledge of the Nahua of San Isidro Buensuceso, on the slopes of La Malinche Volcano National Park, in the state of Tlaxcala, México. The results described in this paper were obtained through interviews with villagers selected at random; a free-listing technique was used to determine the cultural significance of the mushrooms of the region. A total of 48 species, which had 65 Náthuatl names and 40 in Spanish, were identified. Although San Isidro villagers consider mushrooms to be a natural resource mainly used for food, they also use them for medicine, insecticides and trade. This paper presents traditional information on the morphology, ecology, fenology and consistency of the mushrooms found around San Isidro. It proposes that, from a cultural perspective, Gomphus flocossus, Ramaria spp. and Boletus spp. are the most important species of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nahuatl represents a relatively recent extension of the Uto-Aztecan language family into Mesoamerica. Ethnohistorians have linked Nahuatl's arrival to the historically attested migrations of nomadic people into central Mexico in the last centuries before the Spanish Conquest. Archaeologists have tended to treat migration as an explanation for a change in material culture rather than a social question to be examined theoretically. We approach this migration through the comparison of multiple data sets and conclude that what has previously been treated as a historical event is instead part of a longer term process tying together Mesoamerica's northern periphery with its highland core. While we find that certain themes from migration theory are reflected in this preindustrial migration as well, other variables are unique and bode well for archaeology's ability to address and contribute to theoretical issues relating to migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]