Bonfires of Culture: Franciscans, Indigenous Leaders, and the Inquisition in Early Mexico, 1524–1540 (review)

An intriguing feature of the early evangelization of central Mexico is the extraordinary manner in which the natives flocked with genuine zeal to be baptized at the hands of Franciscan friars. It all seemed to confirm Hernán Cortés’s efforts to reassure the emperor Charles V that the conquest of Mexico had more than made up for his losses in Europe by adding vast new territories populated by people who would merely need instruction rather than forced conversion. Unfortunately, this initial enthusiasm soon was replaced by disillusionment. The apparent enthusiasm for baptism was likely the result of the Mesoamerican tradition of incorporating the victor’s deities into the pre-existing pantheon, but the practice was in no way meant to be accompanied by the outright rejection of the other deities. As evidence of indigenous recidivism increased, therefore, so did a sense of betrayal and a growing distrust among the friars in the face of what they could only interpret as duplicity and bad faith. This led to a flurry of inquisitorial trials in the late 1530s under the leadership of Archbishop Fray Juan de Zumárraga that reached a tragic climax in 1539 with the burning at the stake of the Cacique de Texcoco, Don Carlos Ometochtli Chichimecateuctli.

The documents relating to these episodes have been widely available to historians since Luis González Obregón published them in 1912. Nevertheless, this is the first scholarly monograph that attempts a detailed reconstruction of the trials, placing them authoritatively in their historical context and delving into the circumstances behind each case and the chain of intrigue on both sides of the cultural divide. The author is as comfortable in the Inquisitorial methods deployed in Spain to deal with conversos and moriscos as she is in analyzing the structures and dynastic intricacies of the Valley of Texcoco and the Sierra de Puebla. She thus sheds as much light on the attitudes of Zumárraga and his illustrious coreligionist, fray Andrés de Olmos—both of whom had been involved in witchcraft trials in the Basque region before setting off to evangelize New Spain—as she does on the motives of the likes of Martín Ocelotl, Andrés Mixcoatl, the keepers of tlaquimilloli (the puzzling sacred bundles containing prehispanic relics), and the cacique de Texcoco himself.

The fluidity and adaptability that the author brings to light in her reconstructions also allow her to provide a thoroughly convincing reinterpretation of the Boban Calendar Wheel, now in the John Carter Brown Library, which she dates to the years shortly after the execution of Don Carlos. It is a beautiful example of the mid-way process between pictographic and alphabetic documentation in Nahuatl to which both natives and Spaniards clearly contributed. It therefore is a pity that the analysis of the Calendar Wheel should not be better integrated into the main argument of the book, for it would have allowed the author to resist a tendency to present a rather neat picture that draws too sharp a dividing line between the flexible adaptability of the indigenous actors (who allegedly did not know “moral temptation” [p. 157] and thus managed to “shape the contours of Franciscan teaching in ways that showed little regard for Franciscan dreams” [p. 191]) and the comparatively monolithic, “black and white” morality of the Franciscans (which, according to Patricia Lopes Don, prevented them from understanding “the natives’ values and moral dilemmas” [pp. 58, 174]). But this is a minor quibble in what is otherwise a very solid and illuminating study, whose evident merits will prevent it from gathering much dust in libraries in the foreseeable future.