The drought-driven exposure of Chiapas’ “drowned” 16th-century Temple of Santiago has stirred echoes of Mexico’s early post-Conquest era. A time more complex, lasting and troubling than Mexicans have cared to candidly deal with.
Those troubles were best plumbed by a brilliant young Spaniard, Diego Duran (c.1537-1588), who began his cultural explorations when he was just ten years old.
Though he was to become a Dominican friar, it was as an adventurous child that friendships with Tetzcoco children revealed the harsh shadows of maladjustment. Those friends taught him that the ruins of the Mejica capital possessed host of secrets.
When we speak accurately of the intricate, harsh and accomplished world of pre-Hispanic Mexico, we use ideas, discoveries, even the vocabulary of a handful of intellectually accomplished priests of the 16th and 17th centuries. To a great extent that’s because they recorded their revealing discoveries. Yet much of this was denied, not understood, even today.
As the experiences with his boyhood friends and their families revealed to him, Duran learned that the indios of Tenochtitlan\Mejico possessed keen intelligence, discipline and ability. They were the authors of a complex, well-organized society. A society whose gods were brutally demanding. A civilization purposefully left in rubble by the Spanish Conquest.
It was only later, as Duran grew toward priesthood, that the realities of Moctezuma’s defeat became apparent. The ruin of the Aztec world revealed a terminal, “sudden sense of weakness.” Abruptly, the Nahuatl world believed its gods had abandoned it.
This was a fatal psychological/spiritual “divine desertion.” Diego recognized that the reality of such a gradual defeat turned the Mejica into a fearful, withdrawn and confused people.
But they refused to embrace the beliefs of their Spanish conquerors. That refusal was both deft and veiled. This cultural slight of hand made European priests proud of the illusion of their conversion of the “heathens” to Christianity.
They did not see what Diego recognized as a blinding pridefulness, something a clever ten-year-old saw as a joke played upon his Spanish elders. This was re-enforced as he and his Mejica friends stepped into the clutter and confusion of the wrecked aboriginal world to make endless discoveries. “From long experience in observing the toil and afflictions of the Mejica,” he later wrote, “I find a common and universal cause: Their spirit has been so hurt, so crippled that they live in fear ... These people were well organized and polished, but on the other hand they were tyrannical and cruel, filled with shadows of retribution and death. After the Faith (Catholicism) arrived, the shadows grew beyond measure. From that time on, these people have been afflicted with death, toil and anguish. All these helped break their spirit, intimidate them to the point that they distrust us ... Regarding the worship of God and the receiving of Sacraments, they dare not listen to God Himself or seek salvation of their souls because of their fears.”
This was made clear when Fray Diego scolded an Indian for following “old customs” of pre-Hispanic time. Patiently, the indio reiterated a lesson Duran learned as a youngster. “Father, do not be surprised. We are still nepantla.”
Duran, knowing that metaphorical word meant “in the middle,” asked what “middle” the indio meant. “The native told me that since the people were not yet well rooted in the Faith I should not ‘marvel’ at the fact that they were ... governed by neither one religion nor the other, that they believed in God and also (covertly) followed their ancient heathen rites and customs.”
(This the second of a series.)