Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial Mexico

3. Interpreting "Holy Wednesday"

Interpreting "Holy Wednesday" THE FOLLOWING ARESUMMARY COMMENTS based on my comparison of the two plays. The development of these interpretations and their expression in the texts may be traced in more detail in the commentary on the scripts. Mother and Child For Izquierdo, asfor other authors of contemplative Passion literature, the relationship between Mary and Christ is the nexus through which the devout person achieves an empathetic understanding of Christianity's principal sacred narrative. The portrayal of that relationship acts as a potent model both of and for inter-gender and inter-generational communication and conflict. Mary is the ultimate mother, Christ the supreme son; their interaction elevateshuman family ties to a cosmiclevel.The nature of those ties impinges, thus, not only upon religious practice but also upon broader constructions of kin relations, authority patterns, and personhood. The Nahua playwright's treatment of Mary and Christ differs significantly from Izquierdo's. The Nahuatl Mary isinvested with more authority and more knowledge than her Spanish counterpart. Her son isless inclined to contradict her and treats her with more deference. Mother and son engage in displays of agreement and solidarity that are lacking in the Spanish source. Given the Nahua elite's sophisticated codes of polite conversation, plus the fact that sixteenth-century Nahua women had more authority within the family than their Spanish contemporaries, these alterations are not surprising. Nor do they overtly contradict the friars' Christian doctrines ; the Franciscans were great devotees of Mary and would not have taken offense at this depiction of her character. However, the changes do, in two subtle ways, affect the play's overall message. 3 First, because the Nahuatl Mary fails consistently to oppose her son's plans and accepts his fate before the angel arrives, the letters from Limbo are left with no obvious function. If they are not required to mediate the dispute and persuade Mary, then what purpose do they serve? The significance of these ancestral voices is explored in the following section. Second, Christ is represented as a dutiful and obedient Nahua son. He is less responsible for his own actions than is his Spanish model. The Nahua Christ seems to lack any will to disobey his mother and does so only because his father and the ancient prophecies demand it. He does not even entertain the possibility of doing otherwise, as does his Spanish counterpart. In presenting a Christ who allows his behavior to be wholly determined by the demands of his parents and ancestors, the Nahua playwright contradicts Christian doctine in a manner that may be seen as an assertion of Nahua moral values. For the friars, to be a moral actor is to have free will, to be a responsible , autonomous individual who knowingly chooses the proper course of action. Nahuatl confession manuals propagated this insistence on personal moral responsibility, encouraging the native penitent, in Gruzinski's words: to put aside his surroundings, his social group, the weight of his tradition, and the external forces that used to influence his behavior, such as the power of a god's ire. . . . In other words, by centering on the "subject"—in the Western meaning of the word—the interrogation of the confession breaks down the ancient solidarity and social networks, aswell as the physical and supernatural ties. (1989:98) Nahuas, however, whose moral philosophy was aimed more at harmonizing human behavior with cosmic forces than at struggling against evil, appeared to the friars little disposed to take this sort of individualized responsibility for their own acts. Consequently, they were rarelyable to generate , for ritual confession, autobiographical narratives of their individual moral histories (Gruzinski 1989; Klor de Alva I988a; Burkhart 1989). By stripping his Christ of even the small degree of willfulness and rebelliousness exhibited by the Spanish Christ in his cavalier treatment of Mary, while at the same time placing more emphasis than Izquierdo on the inviolable nature of the ancient prophecies, the Nahua playwright endows his Christ with characteristics that the friars sought to eradicate in their Nahua charges. Christ tries his best to do as he is bidden by a hierarchy of authorities external to himself: an angry paternal God who must 90 Chapter 3 be appeased, ancestral prophets whose words must be fulfilled, a mother whom he strives not to offend. The Nahuatl Christ has no choice; his actions are determined by a pre-established pattern from which he feels no temptation to diverge...