Local Religion in Colonial Mexico (review)

According to Nesvig, among North American historians, the study of popular religion in Mexico has been marked by a tendency to overemphasize either a rapid and effective imposition of Catholicism on the native peoples during the sixteenth century (Ricard's spiritual conquest), or to pay excessive attention to the official anticlericalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.¹ Nesvig moves beyond these tired themes by examining religious beliefs and practices at the local level in colonial Mexico. The book's concept of local religion is informed by the earlier work of one of its contributors, William Christian Jr., whose Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, 1981) compared local forms of Catholic practice and belief with dogma and the official policies of the Church. Local variations from the latter were sometimes in conflict with, sometimes tolerated by, and sometimes gradually incorporated by the Church.

One of the strengths of this volume is its contributors' attempt to take account of each other's ideas. Chapter 2, "The Concept of Popular Religion," by Carlos M. N. Eire, further contributes to the internal cohesion of the book by developing an analytical framework for the study of popular religion that facilitates a dialogue among the book's subsequent chapters; a careful reading of this essay will be well rewarded when reading the rest of the book. Eire's discussion of past approaches to the study of local religion is anthropologically aware, without excessive jargon or reference to authorities. He proposes a framework for the analysis of local religion that recognizes four categories of dichotomy: social and cultural ("lay/clerical, folk/learned, or suppressed/oppressor"), spatial and dimensional ("local/universal, below/above, or ancient/new"), typological and structural ("religion/doctrine, piety/theology, or riot/order"), and historical and qualitative (pagan/Christian, superstition/religion, or magic/religion") (26). He employs this framework to impose "a greater degree of order and cohesion" on the study of popular religion.

Most of the subsequent chapters present case studies centered around local Spanish, native, and African communities, although in Chapter 2, Antonio Rubial García takes a broader perspective, arguing that just as native peoples applied elements of Christianity to their own traditional pre-conquest practices, many facets of Christianity in Mexico acquired their own adaptations to native culture.

In Chapter 3, Nesvig analyzes an all-but-forgotten defense of the capacity of natives to receive training for the priesthood, written in 1543 by a Franciscan named Alfonso de Castro, who held the unusual opinion that Indians had neither greater nor lesser ability than Spaniards to comprehend and adhere to the Catholic faith. Nesvig argues that this work has fallen into obscurity because it was never translated from Latin, while the works of other defenders of native rights (for example, Las Casas) enjoyed wide circulation because they were translated into the vernacular. Although the theory is plausible, it begs the question as to why other works were so widely translated (they served the geopolitical interests of other European states) and Castro's not.

Chapter 4, by William B. Taylor, presents an example of a local devotion coming into conflict with the Church hierarchy. David Tavárez, in Chapter 5, analyzes conflict in three Zapotec communities "over native ritual practices" (121). Edward W. Osowski, in Chapter 6, examines the differences between gender roles in the religious practices of Spanish and native communities by focusing on native itinerant alms collectors. He shows that despite Spanish objections, native women often served their communities as alms collectors and that native attitudes toward the practice held it to be important in maintaining the strength of community ties.

Brian Larkin analyzes the appearance of the names of Mexico City's confraternities in the wills of their (mostly Spanish) members in Chapter 7, tracing an apparently declining confidence that these organizations could help their members achieve salvation. Nicole von Germeten, in chapter 8, illustrates how free African and Afro-Mexican men could enhance their social status through membership in confraternities. Javier Villa-Flores...