The Learned Ones: Nahua Intellectuals in Postconquest Mexico

Chapter 3. Defending Indigenous Citizens When “Indians No Longer Existed” - Faustino Galicia Chimalpopoca

88 chapter 3 Defending Indigenous Citizens When “Indians No Longer Existed” Faustino Galicia Chimalpopoca How does one legislate and govern in a pluricultural nation such as Mexico ? Should indigenous lands be afforded special protections? What is the place of indigenous languages in Mexico? Questions like these, still pertinent today, are representative of the kinds of issues debated by nineteenthcentury Nahua intellectual Faustino Galicia Chimalpopoca (or Faustino Chimalpopoca Galicia as he sometimes signed his name).1 It is in the context of Mexico’s transition from colony to independent nation that we turn to this Nahua public servant and scholar of his own language and culture. A political appointee in both liberal and conservative regimes (most notably in the Second Empire [1864–1867]), he regularly represented, or lobbied on behalf of, indigenous communities. Along with these political activities, Chimalpopoca was also a professor of law, of his native language Nahuatl, and of the Otomí language. Dedicated to the transcription and translation of scores of colonial-period Nahuatl texts, he authored a variety of didactic and religious works in both Nahuatl and Spanish. He was one of the most active scholars of the Nahuatl language and culture during the nineteenth century, yet scant consideration has been given to his multifaceted career.2 In this chapter I advocate for a reconsideration of his not insignificant contribution to the political and intellectual landscapes of nineteenth-century Mexico, as well as Nahuatl Studies in general. Defending Indigenous Citizens · 89 Nineteenth-century Mexico is rarely considered a hotbed of Nahua intellectual activity, and as discussed in the introductory chapter of this book, original texts written in the Nahuatl language from this time period are few and far between. This does not mean that Nahuas ceased acting as intellectuals, or that they put down the pen for that matter. Instead, it is a reflection of two interrelated issues of the historical moment: 1) the creation of the juridical category of “citizen” in the newly independent Mexican nation; and 2) the declaration of Spanish as the republic’s official language .3 First, in establishing independence from Spain, criollo politicians had essentially erased ethnic identities by deeming residents in Mexican territory “citizens” with newly enacted laws. Whereas the process of ethnic compression that began in the early colonial period—varied attempts at converting highly stratified and heterogeneous indigenous groups into one generic mass of “Indians”—had been only moderately successful, the elimination of ethnic identification in favor of national citizenship theoretically disappeared indigenous people, enveloping them into the nation. This legalized disappearance often gives a false sense of silence or inactivity from indigenous fronts due to the fact that indigenous people are identified (and self-identified) to a considerably lesser degree. Secondly, with Spanish as the language of administrative dealings, Nahuatl (and other indigenous languages) became all the more peripheral, with written creative work in indigenous languages virtually nonexistent. Instead, in the nineteenth century , indigenous intellectuals oftentimes worked in the dominant language. Chimalpopoca is no exception; along with Nahuatl, many of his writings are in Spanish. How do we reconcile the idea of a politician/scholar who often wrote in the Spanish language with that of a Nahua intellectual? There is nothing antithetical between the two positions: Chimalpopoca’s activities and language choices, as we will see, are a sign of the times. Formative Years at San Gregorio Like Antonio del Rincón, the early colonial-period Nahua grammarian discussed in an earlier chapter, Chimalpopoca is said to have been descended from Texcocan nobility.4 Little is known of his childhood, except that he was a student at El Colegio de San Gregorio around 1810. Founded by the Jesuits in 1586, San Gregorio was originally designed to provide secondary education to indigenous males from prominent families.5 Similar to other schools operated by the religious orders, the primary goal was to prepare (mostly Indian) students to serve as teachers and models of Christian and 90 · Chapter 3 Spanish behaviors in their own communities. Along with general instruction (reading, writing, arithmetic), indigenous students were provided a conservative Catholic religious upbringing. Throughout the colonial period, San Gregorio was a renowned center for the training of padres lenguas , priests who spoke and studied indigenous languages. Indian students were regularly encouraged to continue to speak their languages (along with Latin and Spanish), since the European and criollo priests needed native-speaker teachers and informants to better tend to their indigenous flock...