Identity, Ritual, and Power in Colonial Puebla

7. Ritual and Conflict: The Political Implications of Ceremonial Disputes, circa 1700 – 1750

132 chapter seven Ritual and Conflict in Colonial Puebla The Political Implications of Ceremonial Disputes, circa 1700–1750 Good Friday, the anniversary of Christ’s crucifixion, constitutes the most solemn day of the Catholic calendar and in eighteenth-century Puebla, municipal councilmen marked the occasion with the ceremony known as the Adoration of the Holy Cross. For this ritual, councilmen and other attendees gazed upon a cross veiled in black and sang a hymn to the Savior . Afterward, each individual approached the main altar to venerate the unveiled cross.1 On Good Friday, poblanos, like all Catholics, contemplated Christ’s passion and sacrifice and reaffirmed their commitment to the faith. In 1721, however, something went terribly wrong. A ritual that should have affirmed the strength of Puebla’s Catholic community highlighted , instead, its disunity. Tension first arose when the cathedral chapter refused to receive the procession of the Most Holy Burial in the main plaza and accept the royal standard from the lieutenant and nephew of the alcalde mayor, José Fernández Veytia y Linaje. Later, as members of the cathedral chapter approached the main altar to venerate the cross, they passed the benches occupied by the municipal council. The councilmen rose from their seats and bowed their heads in deference to the prelates but, according to the cabildo, the priests did not reciprocate the gesture. The archdeacon then sent a messenger to ask the lieutenant to have the cabildo remain standing throughout the entire ceremony. When the lieutenant refused, priests began hurling insults and cabildo members stormed out of the cathedral.2 Documentation related to disputes over ceremonial protocol and comportment provides historians with means to reconstruct crucial aspects of Ritual and Conflict · 133 colonial politics. Yet, despite the frequency with which ceremonies occasioned disturbances, few historians have concerned themselves with the political implications of these disputes. Scholars have, for the most part, treated them as products of a baroque obsession with honor, as mere anomalistic occurrences or, worst of all, ignored them completely.3 Those who have ignored or deemphasized conflict have generally examined how public rituals fostered cohesion. Various scholars have borrowed anthropologist Victor Turner’s related concepts of “liminality” and “communitatis” (the climax of the ritual process where everyday norms and hierarchies are suspended and people are united under a common worldview) to mainly argue that public rituals reinforced hierarchy, indoctrinated colonial subjects , and encouraged social solidarity.4 Even scholars seemingly sensitive to conflict have referred to ceremonial disputes as a counterpoint to the “true” function of ritual.5 Although rituals did indeed serve a variety of social functions, their importance proved so pervasive and so diffuse, they cannot be regarded as mere instruments of social control. The cabildo’s public rituals helped to shape Puebla’s richly textured political culture, and by giving short shrift to those that failed to foster social cohesion or legitimize authority, historians and art historians have displayed a bias for static models. Implicit in such scholarship is the idea that public rituals “reflected” society and, by repeating scripted behavior, helped stem the tide of change. Those that did not necessarily foster cohesion or help to maintain the status quo have been widely regarded as relative failures. Instead of looking at disruptions in public ceremony as “failures,” I consider what these divergences actually accomplished. By placing disputes firmly in the social, political, and economic contexts in which they were produced, scholars can explore the multiple functions of ceremony and its capacity for generating change. In colonial Spanish America, ceremonies did not merely reflect society; they transformed local political culture in subtle, but powerful, ways. Studying Colonial Politics through Ritual Disputes Politics center on “the distribution of valued goods—income, power, prestige , honor, and the like—over which individuals and groups compete.” Although many elite members of society could attain honorable reputations, this form of prestige could not extend to everyone because, as political scientist Robert Jackman has noted, “If everyone has the same prestige, the 134 · Chapter 7 category itself loses meaning.”6 In the early modern Spanish world, honor related to ascribed status (whether Spanish, legitimate, noble, or Christian) but also derived from reputation, or one’s recognition as virtuous. Ceremonies , therefore, provided arenas in which people could compete for a finite resource that enhanced their power. An honorable reputation achieved in the performance of ceremony could facilitate valuable social, economic, and political connections, and help one to...