Mesoamerican Figurines: Small-Scale Indices of Large-Scale Social Phenomena

10. The Weeping Baby and the Nahua Corn Spirit: The Human Body as Key Symbol in the Huasteca Veracruzana, Mexico

10 The Weeping Baby and the Nahua Corn Spirit The Human Body as Key Symbol in the Huasteca Veracruzana, Mexico Alan R. Sandstrom Many North American anthropologists continue to be fascinated by symbols , meaning systems, and the emic realm in their studies of culture. The aim of their research strategy is interpreting, or giving an account of people ’s behavior. The focus on meaning, however, is often accomplished at the expense of important economic, ecological, political, or social variables that in themselves can go a long way toward explaining human behavior. Exclusive reliance on meaning-based analysis will, I argue, always be inadequate to the task of explaining behavior, owing to the fundamentally flexible nature of cultural symbols. Shared symbols do not constrain behavior in the same way that economic and ecological factors do. Individuals are more likely to vary their interpretation of cultural symbols in response to pragmatic concerns than the reverse. In this chapter, I examine how contemporary Nahua incorporate ideas about the human body into their religious thought and symbolism. Nahua concepts of the corn spirit in particular indicate that the human body is a key symbol in Nahua religious ideology. Nevertheless, although the concept of key symbol can be helpful in analyzing esoteric symbolic systems, it needs to be used with caution in light of the Nahua data. Understanding the role of the body in Nahua symbolism is necessary but not sufficient to explain why individual Nahua respond in specific ways to this important element of their culture. Finally, I will suggest that genuine progress in improving our understanding of Mesoamerican religion can best be achieved through cooperative archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic investigation rather than reliance on one analytical approach. The publication in 1980 of Alfredo López Austin’s monumental Cuerpo humano e ideología: Las concepciones de los antiguos nahuas (see López Alan R. Sandstrom 262 Austin 1988 for the English translation) established the central symbolic importance of the human body in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican thought and stimulated numerous ethnographers to apply his insights to the analysis of contemporary Native American religious systems.1 On the place of the human body in ancient Nahua culture, López Austin writes, “As an ideological system, concepts of the human body [occupy] the center of the world view since [they respond] as much to the yearnings, needs, worries, and drive for understanding that is innate in man as [they do] to the universality of all that exists in a world that was conceived as anthropomorphic” (1988: 1: 419, corrections in the translation mine). I have discovered that contemporary Nahua also have elaborated conceptions of the body that are fundamental to their cosmology and worldview. Similar concepts are shared by many indigenous groups throughout Mesoamerica and beyond, indicating that these ideas form a system of great antiquity (see, for example, Classen 1993).2 Ethnographers have written extensively about religion in contemporary Mesoamerica, yet advances in techniques for analyzing and explaining field data have been slow and sporadic. Two major factors have slowed theoretical progress. First, Mesoamerica is composed of a mosaic of indigenous groups, each of which, despite fundamental similarities, has developed its unique blend of pre-Hispanic traditions and Spanish Catholicism. This situation is further complicated by the intrusion of North American Protestantism in recent years. The sheer complexity of this syncretic process and the varying influences of pre-Hispanic and Euro-American factors make it difficult for investigators to generalize about the nature of indigenous religion (Beals 1967: 450; Madsen 1967). The second factor is even more problematic. Recording systematic and in-depth information on indigenous religious beliefs and practices has proven extraordinarily difficult even for a single ethnic group. Anthropologists have found that certain factors (discussed below) often make field research focused on religion in indigenous communities a protracted and frustrating experience. Although the situation has changed in recent years, the greatest obstacle to progress in understanding contemporary Mesoamerican religion remains the scarcity of in-depth, holistic descriptions and analyses of specific religious systems.3 López Austin’s analysis of the ancient Nahua worldview suggests one avenue of inquiry that promises to lead literally and figuratively to the very heart of contemporary Native American religion. However, methodological problems of collecting empirical information on abstract conceptions of the human body continue to hinder progress. As a prime example, much The Human Body as Key Symbol in the Huasteca Veracruzana, Mexico 263 research...