Commoner Ritual and Ideology in Ancient Mesoamerica

6: Commoner Rituals, Resistance, and the Classic-to-Postclassic Transition in Ancient Mesoamerica

Commoner Rituals, Resistance, and the Classic-to-Postclassic Transition 143 Introduction Early Colonial period documents in Mesoamerica provide many examples of expressions of resistance and rebellion by indigenous peoples against Spanish colonial authorities (Jones 1989; Restall 1997; Terraciano 2001). Yet within these documents there are occasional references to the discontent of common people toward indigenous nobles who in some areas continued to exert considerable power over their subjects for centuries after the Conquest. For example, in the Maya Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, people are said to lament the hardships that a warlike leader imposes on subjects because of military drafts, famine, and strife resulting from frequent warfare (McAnany 1995:140–141; Roys 1967:103). Likewise, Kevin Terraciano (2001) reports the testimony of a woman named Catalina from Etlatongo, Oaxaca, during the Inquisition trial of Yanhuitlán in the 1540s. Catalina fled from the house of a male lord of Yanhuitlán where she was a Arthur A. Joyce And errin t. Weller C h a p t e r s i x Commoner Rituals, Resistance, and the Classic-to-Postclassic Transition in Ancient Mesoamerica 143 Arthur A. Joyce and Errin T. Weller 144 servant because her seven-year-old sister was sacrificed for the health of the lord and Catalina feared she would be next. Terraciano (2001:272) argues : “Judging from their statements, many slaves failed to see the sacred qualities of human sacrifice. A slave named Juan suggested that sacrifices were at times little more than vengeful acts.” Although these colonial documents record a period of social disruption and discord resulting from the Spanish Conquest, we believe that expressions of resistance to political domination are a component of all complex societies characterized by institutionalized power differentials and therefore have a deep history in prehispanic Mesoamerica that likely conditioned (along with other aspects of daily life) commoners’ “sense” of themselves (also see Brumfiel 1996; Hutson 2002; A. Joyce 2000; A. Joyce et al. 2001; R. Joyce 1993; Robin 1999). In this chapter, we consider evidence for ritual expressions of resistance in prehispanic Mesoamerica (Figure 0.1), particularly during the Classic period collapse (ca. a.d. 700–1000) (Figure 0.2). We follow poststructuralist and feminist theorists who have increasingly developed a more contingent and fractured concept of society than traditional approaches in archaeology and social sciences as a whole have (Bourdieu 1977; Butler 1993; Dirks 1994; Giddens 1979; Goldstein 2003; Scott 1990). All people are now recognized as having some power to produce or reproduce social systems and structure. Systems of political power result from social negotiations of all members of society so that domination is always contested to varying degrees. Although we recognize the complex and multifaceted ways in which all people contribute to social production and reproduction, we choose to focus this study on issues of resistance. Our focus does not imply that we view the agency of commoners as restricted only to resisting domination and we strongly reject the dominant ideology thesis (see M. Brown 1996; Hodder and Hutson 2003:96–99; Lohse, Chapter 1). We recognize that the lives of subordinate groups are rich and complex. As discussed by Arthur Joyce and his colleagues (2001; A. Joyce n.d.), resistance and other forms of engagement with domination are important forms of social production and are not simply reactions to a dominant ideology. The purpose of this chapter is to explore evidence of, as well as possible methods for, investigating resistance as one form of social production. We choose to focus on the Classic period collapse because periods marked by the collapse of political institutions give commoners a greater opportunity to express more overtly and visibly resistance to domination even when not actively rebelling against those institutions. Because of the Commoner Rituals, Resistance, and the Classic-to-Postclassic Transition 145 inconsistency of available data, this chapter does not attempt a comprehensive model of commoner resistance during the collapse. Instead, we explore two areas of investigation that we feel offer the potential to yield useful inferences on resistance. First, we consider evidence for the exclusion of commoners from ceremonies that embodied a public transcript of power (Scott 1990). As commoners were distanced and disengaged from state ceremonies , people may have more fully penetrated dominant ideologies and expanded modes of resistance. Second, we consider evidence for actual expressions of resistance both before the Conquest, when people were subject to the coercive sanctions of the Late...