El aguila y la cruz: origenes religiosos de la conciencia criolla, Mexico, siglos XVI-XVII (review)

El águila y la cruz: Orígenes religiosos de la conciencia criolla, México, siglos XVI-XVII. By SOLANGE ALBERRO. Fideicomisa Historia de las Américas. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1999. Plates. Bibliography. 192 pp. Paper.

The growth of creole identity in New Spain is one of the most important questions of the colonial period. When and how did criollos come to define themselves as such? North American historians have tended to deal with the issue in terms of social and economic forces. Solange Alberro seeks to explain it as a religious phenomenon closely connected with the development of a distinctively Mexican form of syncretistic religion.

She divides this growth into two periods, the Franciscan and the Jesuit, dating the former between 1525 and 1578, the latter from 1578 to 1648, year of publication of Miguel Sánchez's Imagen de la Virgen María. This was the first published account of the apparitions of our Lady of Guadalupe, which, together with the Virgin of Remedios, completed the construction of criollo identity. Both Franciscans and Jesuits followed a policy of deliberate and conscious syncretism, an adoption and adaptation of pre-Hispanic religious symbols, beliefs, and practices to the new Christian order. They differed widely, however, in their methodology. The Franciscans sought to retain what was "innocent" in such practices as songs and dances. Despite official opposition to syncretism, the Franciscans was more open and receptive than they were willing to admit. "In spite of the declarations of principle by the first evangelizers in the sense of an absolute rejection of any compromise with paganism and of a deliberate will definitively to eradicate it, in fact there were implicit negotiations between natives and missionaries." (p. 39).

The author refers to the second age as the "Jesuit offensive." This meant a wholehearted embrace of pre-Hispanic culture (including the attempt to restore the Nahuatl language to its pristine purity). The Jesuits apparently believed that by the 1570s idolatry was no longer a threat and so was not a question of retaining what was merely "innocent." Whereas the Franciscan juxtaposed the two cultural/belief systems, the Jesuits combined them. The mendicants sought to keep the republics of natives and Europeans separate, the Jesuits saw a more unified republic that was predominantly mestizo. The mendicants sought to remove the pagan elements from the pre-Hispanic symbols, while the Jesuits accepted them in their entirety and articulated them directly with Christianity. They deliberately sought to appropriate the mythic indigenous past, including such symbols as the nopal, the eagle killing the serpent, and the tuna/heart. They formed a new complex, starting from their idolatrous content: the cross, thorns, cochineal, blood. This process was aided and hastened by the growing identification of the city of Mexico with the entire viceroyalty.

The book is solidly researched, but the author's narrow focus causes her to overlook certain important factors. She omits certain things such as the alternativa and the idea that criollo identity may have originated within the mendicant orders, the first area in which there was overt conflict between the peninsulars and the "sons of the land." This reviewer believes that she overstates the conscious nature of the syncretism, mistaking it for what was really triumphalism. Much of what the author presents is hypothesis and supposition, often preceded by such words as es probable (p. 136), podemos pensar (p. 88), no parece arriesgado atribuir (p. 96). More troubling is a consistent mistranslation of Nahuatl terms (pp. 53, 54, 71, 91, 130, 150) or erroneous assertions about them (teotl and xan, on p. 53). The book has no systematic or analytical index.

In spite of these criticisms, this is a challenging book, defining criollo identity from a point of view that North American scholars have too often neglected.

STAFFORD POOLE

...