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To understand the manuscript creation process practiced by Indigenous intellectuals in the Americas this essay examines the work of the Nahua scholars who, along with Bernardino de Sahagún, created the Florentine Codex (1575–1577). Now fundamental to studies of the Codex is an evaluation of its three 'texts': the Nahuatl-language alphabetic text, the Spanish-language annotations including loose translations, and its bountiful images. Two sources served as iterative kinds of drafts for the Codex project: the Primeros memoriales (1558–1561) and the Manuscrito de Tlatelolco (1561–1566). Each of the manuscripts contains its own three texts, thus they are threefold, that enable an examination of nine separate but interrelated source texts. In considering the differences among the cumulative nine texts, this article uncovers new insights into an unstudied process of negotiation between the Nahua scholars, the elders whom they consulted, and their Spanish colleagues. As sites of mediation among colonial actors, the threefold manuscripts manifest on their folios the competing interests and agendas that shaped the production of knowledge in New Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper is a reflection on the phenomenon of voluntary isolation in Amazonia, about anthropology’s implication in its formation as a concept, and what anthropologists might profitably say about it as a concrete phenomenon in the world. While knowledge based on ethnographic fieldwork might by minimal or even totally absent for people in voluntary isolation, anthropological research has produced a very impressive understanding of indigenous Amazonian social forms in general, knowledge that can be brought to bear on the question.

Mesoamerican forms of shamanism have rarely been discussed in international academic debates. Through ethnographic information collected in the Sierra de Texcoco, in Mexico, what might be called a Nahua shamanic tradition is analyzed in light of the interlacing of relationship modes conceptually associated with hunting and agriculture. Nahua shamanism relates to a sacrificial cosmology that places predation as the first moment of a cosmic cycle of agonistic exchange, whose moment of retribution is linked to rain and agricultural fertility. The specificity of Nahua shamanism lies precisely in this articulation of logics of a hunting and agricultural nature, involved in the definition all at once of the entities at work, of the specialist himself and of the dynamics that govern the exercise of cosmic politics.

Plain English summary In many Indigenous communities, traditional midwives support mothers during pregnancy, childbirth, and some days afterwards. Research involving traditional midwives has focused on training them in Western techniques and redefining their role to support Western care. In Guerrero state, Mexico, Indigenous mothers continue to trust traditional midwives. Almost half of these mothers still prefer traditional childbirths, at home, in the company of their families and following traditional practices. We worked with 30 traditional midwives to see if supporting their practice allowed traditional childbirth without worsening mothers’ health. Each traditional midwife received an inexpensive stipend, a scholarship for an apprentice and support from an intercultural broker. The official health personnel participated in a workshop to improve their attitudes towards traditional midwives. We compared 40 communities in two municipalities that received support for traditional midwifery with 40 communities in two municipalities that continued to receive usual services. We interviewed 872 women with childbirth between 2016 and 2017. Mothers in intervention communities suffered fewer complications during childbirth and had fewer complications or deaths of their babies. They had more traditional childbirths and fewer perineal tears or infections across home-based childbirths. Among those who went to Western care, mothers in intervention communities had more traditional management of the placenta but more non-traditional cold-water baths. Supporting traditional midwifery increased traditional childbirth without worsening health outcomes. The small size of participating populations limited our confidence about the size of this difference. Health authorities could promote better health outcomes if they worked with traditional midwives instead of replacing them.

The Huasteca Potosina region has a relevant landscape heritage of biocultural diversity, due to high biological diversity and the presence of the Teenek (Huastec Mayan), Nahua, and Xi'iuy (Pame) ethnic groups. The object of this study is to analyze, among the different cultural groups of the region, how the performances of the relevant Socioecological Systems (SESs) influence the conservation of biocultural diversity. Quantitative approaches are used to determine the expected trends of indices (Informant Consensus Factor, ICF; Cultural Importance Index, CII; Shannon–Wiener Biodiversity Index, SWI) commonly used in the ethnobotanical field. Data of the main domestic forest species used by the groups mentioned above were collected in 2021. We analyzed the SES profile for each of the ethnic groups and a mestizo group, as well as their relationship with the biome they mainly inhabit and the domestic functions fulfilled by the ethnobotanical species. As a result, we found that the low deciduous forest and the sub-evergreen tropical forest biomes, which co-evolved mainly with the Nahua and the Teenek SESs, present higher diversity and effective use of species so that offer better chances for conserving the landscape heritage of biocultural diversity. Otherwise, the results also show the critical nature regarding the biomes inhabited by the Pame and the mestizo's SESs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Nahuatl-speaking villages located in the north of the state of Puebla, family and community educational practices adhere to the Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours model (LOPI). Attentive observation is encouraged as children's principal method of learning. Co-presence is favoured by the adult educators as a means to facilitate repeated observations, to demonstrate examples of the behaviours desired during work and to reinforce the spirit of observation by offering advice and moral support during leisure or socialization time. These practices are supported by a coherent Nahua theory of human development — particularly with regard to the psychological — of knowledge and know-how, which systematizes understanding of parental experiences shared by the community members and provides guidance for educational actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Available research on the contribution of traditional midwifery to safe motherhood focuses on retraining and redefining traditional midwives, assuming cultural prominence of Western ways. Our objective was to test if supporting traditional midwives on their own terms increases cultural safety (respect of Indigenous traditions) without worsening maternal health outcomes.Methods: Pragmatic parallel-group cluster-randomised controlled non-inferiority trial in four municipalities in Guerrero State, southern Mexico, with Nahua, Na savi, Me'phaa and Nancue ñomndaa Indigenous groups. The study included all pregnant women in 80 communities and 30 traditional midwives in 40 intervention communities. Between July 2015 and April 2017, traditional midwives and their apprentices received a monthly stipend and support from a trained intercultural broker, and local official health personnel attended a workshop for improving attitudes towards traditional midwifery. Forty communities in two control municipalities continued with usual health services. Trained Indigenous female interviewers administered a baseline and follow-up household survey, interviewing all women who reported pregnancy or childbirth in all involved municipalities since January 2016. Primary outcomes included childbirth and neonatal complications, perinatal deaths, and postnatal complications, and secondary outcomes were traditional childbirth (at home, in vertical position, with traditional midwife and family), access and experience in Western healthcare, food intake, reduction of heavy work, and cost of health care.Results: Among 872 completed pregnancies, women in intervention communities had lower rates of primary outcomes (perinatal deaths or childbirth or neonatal complications) (RD -0.06 95%CI - 0.09 to - 0.02) and reported more traditional childbirths (RD 0.10 95%CI 0.02 to 0.18). Among institutional childbirths, women from intervention communities reported more traditional management of placenta (RD 0.34 95%CI 0.21 to 0.48) but also more non-traditional cold-water baths (RD 0.10 95%CI 0.02 to 0.19). Among home-based childbirths, women from intervention communities had fewer postpartum complications (RD -0.12 95%CI - 0.27 to 0.01).Conclusions: Supporting traditional midwifery increased culturally safe childbirth without worsening health outcomes. The fixed population size restricted our confidence for inference of non-inferiority for mortality outcomes. Traditional midwifery could contribute to safer birth among Indigenous communities if, instead of attempting to replace traditional practices, health authorities promoted intercultural dialogue.Trial Registration: Retrospectively registered ISRCTN12397283 . Trial status: concluded. [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]

The Huasteca Potosina region has a relevant landscape heritage of biocultural diversity, due to high biological diversity and the presence of the Teenek (Huastec Mayan), Nahua, and Xi’iuy (Pame) ethnic groups. The object of this study is to analyze, among the different cultural groups of the region, how the performances of the relevant Socioecological Systems (SESs) influence the conservation of biocultural diversity. Quantitative approaches are used to determine the expected trends of indices (Informant Consensus Factor, ICF; Cultural Importance Index, CII; Shannon–Wiener Biodiversity Index, SWI) commonly used in the ethnobotanical field. Data of the main domestic forest species used by the groups mentioned above were collected in 2021. We analyzed the SES profile for each of the ethnic groups and a mestizo group, as well as their relationship with the biome they mainly inhabit and the domestic functions fulfilled by the ethnobotanical species. As a result, we found that the low deciduous forest and the sub-evergreen tropical forest biomes, which co-evolved mainly with the Nahua and the Teenek SESs, present higher diversity and effective use of species so that offer better chances for conserving the landscape heritage of biocultural diversity. Otherwise, the results also show the critical nature regarding the biomes inhabited by the Pame and the mestizo’s SESs.

Sometime between 1565 and 1743, three folios were removed from the central Mexican manuscript known as Codex Azcatitlan. Two of the missing folios were part of section referring to the conquest history in this manuscript. Through an analysis of extant images and the comparison with other indigenous accounts of the conquest, this study makes an argument for the possible content on these pages and proposes that the missing folios recorded significant sacrificial events and acts of violence against the Spaniards that were of great importance to the indigenous Tlatelolca authors and their intended indigenous audience. This paper argues that those images that might have been considered most offensive to a Spanish Christian viewer were excised, at a time when censorship was on the rise in New Spain.

In the modern maize myths of the Mayan area and the Gulf Coast where the protagonist is a woman, it is established that her sacrifice, usually carried out by the Sun, is the necessary event to transform what she contains at the potential level into concrete goods, that is corn. However, in cases where the protagonist is male, his death, brought on by his grandmother or his mother, is what makes the young man's transformation into the maize god possible. In a similar vein, Mexica culture establishes that it is the sacrifice of the primal female entity, performed by male deities, which creates the fertile earth in the cosmogonist myth of Tlaltecuhtli, of which a new reading is proposed. This transformation of the female telluric matter into fruitful land in the myth has a masculine valence. Congruently, it had to be a man who wore the skin of the goddess Toci after her sacrifice and flaying in the month Ochpaniztli to propitiate the periodic regeneration of vegetation and in primis of maize. [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]

La población indígena de Cuetzalan, México, tiene las características de aquellas que habitan territorios fronterizos desde hace siglos, fronterizos en el sentido de Gloria Anzaldúa, dado que siempre tiene que adaptarse a nuevas condiciones para sobrevivir como gente indígena. El artículo analiza esas adaptaciones como formas/lógicas de pluriversalidad, es decir, los maseualmej (sg. maseual) juntan la epistemología y ontología occidental hegemónica con una epistemología y ontología indígena. Usan las nuevas condiciones, introducidas por la sociedad nacional capitalista, como recurso en su resistencia contra su desposesión (de bienes, de conocimientos, de identidad, etc.). Mantienen su existencia e identidad como comunidad indígena porque conectan las dos lógicas y no las separan. El análisis se basa en investigación de campo de uno a tres meses en cada estancia entre 2003 y 2017 con observaciones participantes, conversaciones informales, así como entrevistas formales. El fundamento de mi análisis son las teorías del sistema mundo, de la colonialidad de poder y la teoría antropóloga de la persona.

This article re-examines human–object relations in an Indigenous Nahua context in Mexico. Inspired by the Deleuzian notion of assemblage, the study shifts the focus from the agency of objects to emphasize the emotions of human and nonhuman animals as "persons." Artifacts like clothes and water jars emerge as intersubjective connectors that transfer human substance and voice in short-lived, but emotionally charged, domestic assemblages. The focus on quasi-plain domestic artifacts defines love, the Nahuas' mode of relating, and motherhood, as central to their understanding while, more broadly, reframing the status of objects beyond anthropomorphism. [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]

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The present work analyzes the transmission of the oral tradition of the indigenous peoples during the colonial and contemporary period and how it was documented in manuscripts, canvases, maps, and genealogies. In these documents, a part of the vision of the Mesoamerican world was expressed: the ritual life, the sacred discourses, the cult of the ancestors and the gods that live in the areas surrounding the towns and in the hills that are considered sacred. One of the main premises that will guide this work is this: the indigenous communities are entities that produce knowledge, a part of which we can see documented in their documentation. The community's oral narrative is what guides the tlacuiloque ('scribes') in the representation of their history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Aquest article presenta un estudi exploratori sobre la presència i l’ús de la llengua nahua en l’espai de treball i el valor que té aquest ús dins del mercat laboral local. Es va realitzar un estudi de cas entrevistant quaranta-nou titulats de la Universitat Veracruzana Intercultural (Mèxic). Entre els principals resultats es destaca que, malgrat els fenòmens de discriminació i desplaçament, els treballadors estudiats van manifestar fer un ús oral i escrit del nahua en la seva activitat laboral, i la seva condició de parlants va ser considerada pels seus ocupadors com a necessària i important per a l’acompliment de les seves funcions. Això suposa que una formació professional pertinent i el desenvolupament de la funció laboral del nahua actuen de manera positiva en la seva revaloració. Aquest estudi també mostra les possibilitats d’investigar les llengües minoritzades de Mèxic des de la dimensió laboral de cara a una planificació lingüística integral. Paraules clau: mercat de treball, llengua indígena, educació intercultural, nahua, Mèxic.

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]

Since the sixteenth century, Central Mexican tiçiyotl (Nahua healing knowledge) has been portrayed as a male-dominated system akin to Western medicine. This has made Nahua women invisible in broader discussions of tiçiyotl. Though the historiography acknowledges that women were titiçih (healing ritual specialists), the scholarship has primarily focused on their role in midwifery. This article first uses early modern Spanish dictionaries to underscore discrepancies in the vocabulary used to describe indigenous healers. Then, using evidence from two sixteenth-century proceedings against Nahua women in Central Mexico (in conjunction with other primary sources), this article demonstrates that female titiçih were not analogous to Spanish midwives. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century female titiçih-like their ancestors-were practitioners of tiçiyotl who gazed into water, hurled corn kernels, applied salubrious materials, and communicated with deities through entheogenic substances to keep their communities whole. Moreover, this article argues that scholarship must decolonize tiçiyotl in order to explore and understand its complexities. This can only be achieved by moving away from Western terms and frameworks that do not adequately describe Nahua ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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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]

The system of writing employed by the Aztec Empire and its immediate neighbours in early 16th-century Mesoamerica has a number of characteristics that make it highly unusual in comparative perspective. Among them is the fact that it was almost entirely restricted to the recording of names or, more precisely, of personal and place names, titles and professions. All other areas of information were recorded by means of iconography and a numeral-based notation system. This article will discuss the nature of Aztec names and the manner in which they are recorded in Aztec writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Florentine Codex is a Renaissance-era illuminated manuscript that contains the earliest-known regional work on the birds of México. Its Nahuatl language texts and scholia (the latter later incorporated into its Spanish texts) were written in the 1560s by Bernardino de Sahagún's research group of elite native Mexican scholars in collaboration with Aztecs from two cities: Tlatelolco and Tenochtitlan. In the present study, I compared the contributions from these two cities and found many differences. While both cities contributed accounts and descriptions of land and water birds, those from Tlatelolco were mainly land birds, while those from Tenochtitlan were mainly water birds. Tlatelolco contributed over twice as many bird accounts as Tenochtitlan, and supplied the only information about medicinal uses of birds. Tenochtitlan peer reviewed the Tlatelolco bird accounts and improved many of them. In addition, Tenochtitlan contributed all information on bird abundance and most information about which birds were eaten and not eaten by humans. Spanish bird names appear more frequently in the Aztec language texts from Tenochtitlan. Content analysis of the Tenochtitlan accounts suggests collaboration with the water folk Atlaca (a prehistoric lacustrine culture) and indigenous contacts with Spanish falconers. The Renaissance-era studies of Sahagún's research group, on a now lost island in the formerly vast, bird-rich wetlands of the Valley of México, constitute the birth of Mexican ornithology and, coincidently, give the history of Mexican ornithology a distinctive, Aztlán-like beginning, significantly different from the ornithological histories of neighboring countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]