Commensalités pour les morts et les saints

In this article we will deal with the sacrificial practices on the occasions of commensality in the Mazateques Highlands (Sierra Madre Oriental) in Mexico. We will compare those which take place during the festivities of the Saints (Mayordomías) and the funeral rituals. Taking into account that sacrifice, in itself a problematic category, is made up of multiple forms of exchanges, we shall analyze the sacrificial logic at work in these two ceremonial contexts. If these convivial ritual gatherings participate in common with the Cult of the Dead and that of the Saints, then this would seem to imply that both cults have their own relationship with non-humans, with the type of sacrifice this entails, together with the status of the animal eaten at the shared meal. These common practices lead back to the frontier between two ritual spheres : that of the Church, where the pretentious festivities are characterized by ostentatiousness ; and that more subterranean aspect of Shamanism, where the rituals of healing and oblations play their part in the agricultural life, in averting misfortune, and in curing the afflictions of the body.