Nahuatl Theater Volume I: Death and Life in Colonial Nahua Mexico (review)

This is the first of a projected four-volume work of transcription and translation of surviving Nahuatl plays, with analytical essays. Volume one, co-edited by two of the foremost nahuatlatos today, is already proof that the series will become the prime reference work on this performative area of Aztec-Christian collaboration.

The book is divided into two parts: Essays and Introduction to the material, and en face translation of seven early plays with the Nahuatl and English texts, critical textual apparatus, footnotes, and appendices. Five are morality plays concerning topics deemed appropriate for the Indians, while two are biblical stories. We are led to believe that the authors will return to explore other works from this pre-1650 period in future volumes. There is no attempt at a strict chronological selection. In Part II, the theater pieces themselves are the prime matter. The two biblical autos are presented first: "The Three Kings," and "The Sacrifice of Isaac," followed by the morality plays: "Souls and Testamentary Executors," "Final Judgment," "How to Live on Earth," "The Merchant," and "The Life of Don Sebastián." The reader may find the English translations somewhat stilted, but it is because Sell and Burkhart desire to have us hear the formality of declaimed Nahuatl. The book would have benefited from diagrams of reconstructed early colonial stages or photos of the open-air chapels, which doubled as stage sets.

The essays are aimed at the specialist, or at least, at the knowledgeable amateur. Sell's contribution, "Nahuatl Plays in Context," is an introduction to the material and is part historiography and part technical material for the philologist. He is quick to remind us that the scripts and productions were a product of Nahua-European cooperation and not an imposition "from the top down." However, he needs to remember that these plays were not literature to be read in private, but primarily catechetical and liturgical in nature. My one major criticism of the volume has to do with the fact that the essayists have completely overlooked the liturgical context of these dramas. Louise Burkhart has a better grasp on the religious issues in her essay "Death and the Colonial Nahua"; she also includes visual materials. Burkhart deals with the Nahua and Christian notions of the soul, the body, the care of the dying, the afterlife, and divine judgment. One of the earliest plays is the "Last Judgment," with a script reputedly written by the exorcist Fray Andrés de Olmos. Burkhart has the biblical savvy to recognize allusions to Scripture in the Nahuatl texts; but she too has shied away from appreciating the performances within their Sunday/feast day liturgical home. The pedagogical quality of these performances is addressed by Daniel Mosquera's essay "Nahuatl Catechistic Drama." He suggests that "reaching out to medieval studies may facilitate understanding these plays" (p. 56) that, on the surface, appear somewhat simplistic. Mosquera sees continuity with earlier European drama in their "massive didacticism," and alludes to the eschatological-millennial context in his reading. The essay also suggests that the dramas were a clear proof of religious inculturation by a partnership of friar and native.

The final essay focuses on one biblical play, the "Sacrifice of Isaac," which Viviana Díaz Blasera attempts to deconstruct in "Instructing the Nahuas in Judeo-Christian Obedience." The author's premise is good: How would the Nahuas, used to human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism in pre-conquest times, have (mis)understood God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his only son? Unfortunately, Díaz Blasera appears oblivious of the fact that this play had a eucharistic reference and was performed on Corpus Christi in the presence of the eucharistic host displayed in its monstrance. Her reading is a literary analysis that has limited validity. Given this lacuna, Díaz Blasera recognizes the danger of re-presenting human sacrifice before Nahua eyes...