Sweeping the Way: Divine Transformation in the Aztec Festival of Ochpaniztli

Introduction

 s w e e p in g t h e w ay Perhaps no other aspect of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica has engendered more interest than the sanguinary practices for which the Mexica of central Mexico (the so-called Aztecs) are particularly infamous. Since the arrival in the early sixteenth century of Spanish conquistadors and, soon after, Spanish Christian missionaries , descriptions and depictions of human sacrifice have held a special place in the literature describing Mexico’s aboriginal inhabitants. Worried that the native population continued to practice “idolatrous” and sacrificial rites—perhaps even in the guise of Christian pageantry—the mendicant friars paid special attention to understanding indigenous ritual practices. To this end they initiated an extraordinary series of manuscripts, many of them illustrated, that aimed to document Mexican calendars, associated calendrical rituals, and the nature of the aboriginal “gods.” These sources span the first century of Spanish presence in central Mexico. Although some studies, like those of the famed Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, also exhibit marked interest in recording the substantial cultural achievements of pre-hispanic Mexico, these colonial accounts of indigenous sacred practices were intended particularly to serve as models by which the friars might better recognize and, therefore, more effectively extirpate any lingering idolatry.1 Introduction  Introduction The series of eighteen spectacular, often grisly public festivals celebrated during the 365-day Mesoamerican year elicited particular attention from these Christian missionaries. This annual cycle, known as the xihuitl in Nahuatl (the lingua franca of central Mexico at the time of conquest), was observed across Mesoamerica. It comprised eighteen “monthly” periods that have been dubbed veintenas because of their twenty-day length, along with five uncertain, unnamed days known as the nemontemi. As scholars currently understand the cycle, each twenty-day period had its own particular festival enacted in elaborate public dramas . Some veintena feasts were devoted to rites propitiating agricultural entities likeTlaloc,anancientearthdeitylinkedwithrainandstorms,andChicomecoatl, “Seven Serpent,” patroness of maize, queen of Mexican crops. Others had a more martialcast,asinthefestivalknownasTlacaxipehualiztli,the“FeastoftheFlaying of Men,” which in the Mexica capital at Tenochtitlan (modern-day Mexico City) celebrated particularly the Mexican warrior class. This period involved dramatic gladiatorial combats in the city’s sacred precinct, along with human sacrifice, flaying , and the donning of those sacrificial victims’ flayed flesh. Still other rites were held in honor of special tutelary deities; in Tenochtitlan, this was so particularly for Huitzilopochtli, the Mexicas’ tribal deity of the sun and warfare. Incorporating human sacrifice, flaying, ritual cross-dressing, mock warfare, and elaborate sweeping and cleansing rites, the autumn celebration known as Ochpaniztli, “Sweeping the Way,” has proven to be among the most intriguing of these annual ritual dramas. The period was dedicated especially to a goddess of human sexuality and fertility known by a variety of epithets, including Toci, Teteoinnan, and Tlazolteotl. Physicians and midwives were among her devotees, along with parturients, adulterers, and diviners. During the Ochpaniztli proceedings , the power and presence of this sacred entity were evoked through various celebrants and effigies arrayed in the ritual attire of the goddess. She wore a headdress of cotton, had rubber smeared on her mouth and cheeks, and typically bore ritual implements that included a straw broom and a shield. A Mexican woman arrayed in this paraphernalia was eventually killed, decapitated, and then flayed. In the aftermath of her death, other celebrants and/or inanimate armatures were adorned with her paraphernalia, now including the skin of the dead woman. Brooms played a significant role in this ceremony, “Sweeping the Way,” and were used in purification rites or wielded as blood-covered weapons by midwives engaged in mock battles. In Tenochtitlan, Ochpaniztli’s activities had sacred and mythic dimensions and, as I will suggest, its curative and cleansing aspects helped  Introduction to reestablish cosmic and communal harmony. What is more, these aspects were intertwined with the more mundane realms of politics, militarism, and economics of the Mexica tribute empire. This study examines the extant corpus of representations, pictorial and textual , through which scholars have come to understand the annual Ochpaniztli celebration and its attendant deities. These sources were mostly created in the sixteenth century, in an unusual situation of collaboration and accommodation between the Spanish Christian friars, at whose behest the chronicles were begun, and the native Nahuas whose outlawed rites and proscribed deities the manuscripts describe. They reframe and describe the pre-Columbian central Mexican Ochpaniztli celebration and its patron goddess in ways...