Myth of Quetzalcoatl: Religion, Rulership, and History in the Nahua World - Softcover

Alfredo Lopez Austin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1607323907 ISBN 13: 9781607323907

Publisher: Colorado & Utah State Uni Pres, 2015

Synopsis

The Myth of Quetzalcoatl is a translation of Alfredo López Austin s 1973 book Hombre-Dios: Religión y politica en el mundo náhuatl. Despite its pervasive and lasting influence on the study of Mesoamerican history, religion in general, and the Quetzalcoatl myth in particular, this work has not been available in English until now. The importance of Hombre-Dios and its status as a classic arise from its interdisciplinary approach, creative use of a wide range of source material, and unsurpassed treatment of its subject the nature and content of religious beliefs and rituals among the native populations of Mesoamerica and the manner in which they fused with and helped sanctify political authority and rulership in both the pre- and post-conquest periods. Working from a wide variety of previously neglected documentary sources, incorporating myth, archaeology, and the ethnography of contemporary Native Americans including non-Nahua peoples, López Austin traces the figure of Quetzalcoatl as a Man-God from pre-conquest times, while Russ Davidson s translator s note, Davíd Carrasco's foreword, and López Austin s introduction place the work within the context of modern scholarship. López Austin s original work on Quetzalcoatl is a pivotal work in the field of anthropology, and this long-overdue English translation will be of significance to historians, anthropologists, linguists, and serious readers interested in Mesoamerica.

About this title

About the Author

Alfredo López Austin is emeritus researcher and professor of history at the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. A specialist in Mesoamerican history and culture, he is best known for his extensive writings on and investigations into the belief systems and religion of pre-Columbian and conquest-era indigenous cultures in Mexico. Russ Davidson is curator emeritus of Latin American and Iberian collections and professor emeritus of librarianship at the University of New Mexico. Guilhem Olivier is a researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Històricas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma in Mexico City and lecturer at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Myth of Quetzalcoatl

Religion, Rulership, and History in the Nahua World

By Alfredo López Austin, Russ Davidson, Guilhem Olivier

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2015 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-390-7

Contents

List of Figures, 
List of Tables, 
Foreword: Return to Quetzalcoatl Davíd Carrasco, 
Introduction Alfredo López Austin, 
Translator's Note Russ Davidson, 
1 1 Reed, 
2 The Initial Focus of Foreign Origin, 
3 The Skeptical Focus, 
4 The Critical Focus, 
5 The End of a Truncated History and Its Consequences, 
6 Men and Gods, 
7 Space and Time, 
8 The Nature of the Man-God, 
9 The Life of the Man-God, 
10 The History of the Man-God, 
Epilogue, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

1 Reed

The protagonist of this investigation, Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the son of Iztacmixcoatl and Chimalma, was born — for the well-being and great good of men — in the high plateau of central Mexico in the year 843 or 895 or 935 or 1156 ... but then again, was he ever really born? The truth of the matter eludes us, for on the basis of a scrupulous examination of the sources, it is possible on the one hand to deny that he actually existed while affirming on the other that he died in Uxmal, on the Pirámide del Adivino (Pyramid of the Magician, or Soothsayer), on the fourth day of April, 1208, at six o'clock in the afternoon, Yucatán time.

Moreover, the problem does not date, as might be conjectured, to when the Spanish conquerors — commanding not just the battlefield of war but of historical narrative as well — added fragments of the indigenous tradition to the histories they wrote of the people they had defeated and subdued. Add such fragments, to a greater or lesser degree, they certainly did; yet the elusive nature of Mesoamerica's most compelling historical personage had proclaimed itself centuries before the fateful encounter between America and Europe. Those writing later, during the post-conquest period, were also influenced — in some cases, powerfully so — by the tales and legends surrounding this bearded priest-king. As he oscillated in the telling between the credible and the imaginary, Ce Acatl edged dangerously close to the brink where distortions and inaccuracies tend to cause historians to lose interest.

The indigenous sources — and here, if one insists on using the term precisely, is where the first taxonomic problem will be encountered — seemingly were contrived out of a perverse pleasure in the prospect of confusing future historians: many of these sources not only make reference to Ce Acatl but do so in a way that is richly detailed; and again, not only are they numerous and filled with details, they are also shot through with contradictions. The name by which he is known changes, variously, from Ce Acatl to Nacxitl, Tepeuhqui, Meconetzin, Ahpop, Guatezuma, Kukulcan, Ru Ralcan ... His life is split into two, so that we come upon him twice, under two names, the protagonist of two histories, in two separate epochs and in different pueblos, within the pages of a single author's work. Elsewhere he is mistaken for another, being given the name Topiltzin, while his mortal enemy is assigned another of his names, Quetzalcoatl. By turns, he is identified as being tolteca, chichimeca, or tenochca. In Spanish sources, he is mentioned as early as 1526, and different versions of his miraculous life have been pieced together — for example, in the indigenous communities of Coatepec de los Costales, in the present-day state of Guerrero, by Pedro Carrasco Pizana (1943) and in Jáltipan, in the state of Veracruz, by Antonio García de León (1966). Surprisingly, in the historical source where his appearance as a king or priest would be most expected, no such reference to him is made. On the other hand, the beautiful verses that tell of the destruction of Tollan contain commentaries on his life, as do glosses on the proverbial sayings of the ancient Nahua.

In light of this situation, we can readily grasp that a simple statement of the content of the indigenous sources would equal the length of this book, or more. The need for any such review of the literature has been obviated, however, by the stellar doctoral thesis of H. B. Nicholson. What is needed now is an investigation of the possible causes of this apparent confusion, a state of affairs that cannot, obviously, be ascribed to any deliberate, perverse intent to confuse and misdirect. If historian after historian, for more than four and a half centuries, has confronted the same problem, then providing a brief overview of the history of this biography would seem to be a useful starting point.

It was Alfonso Caso who logically divided the problem of Tollan and the Toltecs into three phases, the first of which he labeled "naïve" because it tried to explain miracles on the basis of miracles themselves. The second phase was termed "the skeptical" because it denied the existence of Quetzalcoatl. And the third he called "the critical" because — across the full complex of material — it sought to isolate and distinguish the mythical from the historical. Alfred Tozzer identified and added a fourth phase to this scheme, which he denoted as "the perplexing," or "the elusive," in that it maintained an unsatisfactory separation between the figures of the priest-king and the culture hero. For my part, I have found it helpful to use the classification adopted by Caso but to alter it slightly in two ways. First, by replacing the term phase with focus since, although a distinct temporal sequence is discernible, the lines separating these phases blend into each other; and second, by substituting the category "initial and of foreign origin" in place of "naïve." As for the characterization of perplexing, or baffling, that Tozzer adds, it really applies more to the entire history of the biography than to a particular phase or stage within that history.

In treating the history of the biography of Quetzalcoatl, my approach within each focus is chronological, and while all of the opinions and ideas I discuss have their place in the story, some are important because they have empirical value, some because of the influence they have exercised, others because they represent the thinking of a large cadre of scholars, and still others — a not insignificant number — because they are patently nonsensical or outrageous.

Finally, in setting the framework for this study, I cannot think of a comment more to the point than one made by Paul Kirchhoff to us, his students, when there seemed to be no way to clarify or sort out some confusing and conflicting information in the sources. "I failed to understand Mexico's pre-Hispanic history," he remarked, "until I discovered that each figure was his own grandmother." Kirchhoff said this in jest, yet I have had to recall his words all too often.

CHAPTER 2

The Initial Focus of Foreign Origin

According to the early fifteenth-century chronicler Peter Martyr, the first instance in which the Spanish learned of Quetzalcoatl occurred in March 1517, when the conquistador Francisco Hernández de Córdoba led an expedition into Yucatán. In Martyr's words, "[The Spaniards] saw that they [the indigenous inhabitants of Yucatán] had crosses, and in asking — through an interpreter — about their origins, were told by some that as he passed through those places, a man — endowed with great beauty — had left the aforementioned relic as a remembrance. Others explained that a man more resplendent than the sun had died on it. Nothing for certain is known." What is clearly known, however, is that Martyr was wrong in having conjured the presence of interpreters during that time. The report of the crosses, confirmed by other sources, nonetheless remains a starting point for a notion that would later interweave with the idea of a voyaging Quetzalcoatl. The cross is the first indication that Europeans believed they had discovered evidence of previous contact between the Old World and the New. A similar conjunction — in respect to the sacraments of baptism, confession, and Holy Communion, and to the ideas of the flood, of a Tower of Babel, of the confusion of tongues, of the trinity, or of a virgin who conceives a child — would soon come to be of profound concern to Christians. There are two ways to contextualize these associations: still distanced from the tradition of the redemption and from the intercession of divine truth and institutions, the Indies became a renewed scene of contact with supernatural, evil forces; or, unbeknownst to the Old World and to its historical-religious consciousness, the Indies were blessed with the redemptive presence of an apostolic current. Many years later, Fray Juan de Torquemada would take the first of these interpretations, that Satan was present in the Indies, to its logical extreme. The second explanation would have a strong impact on the life story of Ce Acatl.

Fray Pedro de los Ríos, about whose life we know little but who, in his commentaries, has provided extremely useful information about the religious thought of the indigenous population, is among those who find, in the very history of Quetzalcoatl, a basis for conjecturing that the Indies suffered contact with satanic forces. This way of thinking suited those who, like the good monk, entertained a medieval vision that transferred the Christian concept of the struggle between the powers of good and evil to the new lands across the ocean. If the native inhabitants believed that a heavenly god (Citlallatonac) dispatched an ambassador to inform a virgin (Chimalma) of her conception of a son (Quetzalcoatl) without any contact with a man, and if this story is accompanied by falsities and absurdities, then here is proof (for Ríos and his kind) that the Devil had preceded the arrival of the Spanish evangelists so that he could attribute to himself the glory of being the god in heaven who sent down the message. Quetzalcoatl, if we continue to follow Ríos's reasoning, is not a true person but a fictitious being employed by the Devil to poke fun at the naïveté of the unseeing natives.

The history of Quetzalcoatl is at its most disconcerting during this initial period of contact. New Spain's first viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, collected elements of it and sent them, in 1540, to his brother Diego, then serving as the Spanish ambassador to Venice. The viceroy does not seem to have harbored any thoughts of engaging in a critical analysis of the history; he merely relates the story of Orchilobos, the miracle-working father of Guatezuma, without inferring the presence of any demonic or apostolic contact. Between Huitzilopochtli — Orchilobos — and this Guatezuma, who appears to owe his name to a convergence of Cuauhtemoc and Motecuhzoma, Mendoza parcels out the most outstanding actions and events that other sources attribute to Ce Acatl. The viceroy's historical account takes place in Tenochtitlan. Moreover, despite the apparent string of confusions, it has a ring of authenticity, such as might derive from the specific traditional stories related by an indigenous informant.

It was perhaps Motolinía who took the first step toward sanctifying the life of our protagonist. He at least finds him honest and chaste, the first in practicing the sacrifice of bleeding his own ears and tongue against the evil corruptions of speech and hearing. All the same, he considers the teachings of the penitent Quetzalcoatl to be of little benefit, since it was Satan who subsequently applied this form of sacrifice to his worship and service. Motolinía also speaks of the prophecy of the return of Ce Acatl and states that the Indians had taken him for their god.

An anonymous work, the Historia de México bases its negative view of Quetzalcoatl on the great amount of mythical content provided by its informants. The son of two gods, Camaxtli and Chimalma, Quetzalcoatl, in this telling, begins a life punctuated by miracles and tales that defy simple understanding: his brothers place him on a mountain of fire to destroy him, but he squeezes himself into the crevice of a rock; upon emerging, armed, he hunts an animal that he delivers to his father; he later kills all his brothers and fabricates goblets out of their skulls; he ventures to Tollan, where he lives for 160 years; Tezcatlipoca arrives to persecute him and, taking flight, Quetzalcoatl spends 290 years in Cuauhquechollan, followed by a stay of 260 years in Cempoallan; and finally, perceiving that he is cornered, he shoots an arrow into a tree, works himself into the crack it has produced, and dies. How does the author of this history explain Tezcatlipoca's defeat of the wondrous Quetzalcoatl? To begin with, he believes in a life suffused with miracles. In addition, he ascribes a demonic nature to both of them; and since demons are fallen angels and angels are divided into the higher and the lower, Quetzalcoatl's status is deemed inferior to that of his adversary.

The picture sketched in 1552 by the humanist historian López de Gómara was diametrically opposed to this stream of thought, and I include it in this section principally for its role as a progenitor and not because it falls into the group that Caso labels naïve. In López de Gómara's voice we hear the influence of Renaissance thinking. Furthermore, if my sequence did not posit the interplay of contradictions among the three foci, and the great influence that time acquires in this process, I would not hesitate in giving López de Gómara his place among the authors of the third focus: those historians who labored to distinguish the mythical from the historical. From the outset, and despite the presence of the cross among the Indians of Acuzamil, he rejected the already-floated argument that the gospel had been preached in the Indies before the arrival of the Spanish. Subsequently, in referring to Quetzalcoatl, López de Gómara aligned himself with the euhemeristic tradition against any and all who would not see myth for what it was, but instead took it for the real and thus conflated or confused miracles and natural events. Theirs was the Quetzalcoatl as the virgin man — honest, penitent and temperate, religious and saintly — the preacher of natural law who served it by example. The native people believed he was a god and that he disappeared at the seashore, unknowing or concealing the truth of his death, and they took him as a numen of the wind. In short, López de Gómara strictly divided his information. On one side was the history of the actual person; on the other, indigenous beliefs grounded either in a simple-minded naiveté or in the sly desire to deceive. And through it all, the pellucid personality of Quetzalcoatl emerges intact, unchanged.

López de Gómara composed his history in the calm of Spain, his interpretation of events thus far removed from the immediate scene of action. In the New World, by contrast, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas felt the searing emotions produced by firsthand reports emanating from his own bishopric, reports whose findings he sanctioned by including them in his Apologética historia sumaria. Regarding the life of Quetzalcoatl, las Casas added little to what Motolinía had said: he was a man with white skin, tall, with a broad forehead, large eyes, long black hair, and a long, bushy beard. He preached that his people would return one day, and the native inhabitants took the Spaniards to be the heavenly descendants of this voyager, although their conduct soon blotted out that first impression. With respect to the other thread of the story, las Casas enthusiastically reiterated what Francisco Hernández, a priest in his bishopric who understood the native language, had managed to extract from an Indian notable. The priest discovered that the Indians believed in a celestial god with a three-person incarnation — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Izona, Bacab, and Echuac, respectively) — the second of whom was born of the maiden Chibirias, who dwelled with God in heaven. Bacab was slain by Eopuco, who flogged him and placed a crown of thorns around his head; afterwards, he was lashed to a piece of timber, on which he died. He remained dead for three days, and on the third day he came back to life and ascended to heaven, where he dwells with God the Father. Later, Echuac furnished and filled the land with all that was necessary for the benefit of men. This tradition had been transmitted to Hernández's informant from what his community knew, which in turn was based on the preachings of twenty men who had arrived sporting great beards and long robes but no headdress. One of them was called Cocolcan.

Exactly what it was that the Indian notable recounted to Hernández is difficult to know. From what can be deduced based on the names of the gods he mentioned, he seems greatly to have wanted to understand things as he was prone to, converting the indigenous narrative into full-blown Christian history. What is certain is that in las Casas's work one encounters within the same person, who is called by two names — Quetzalcoatl and Cocolcan — the bearded white man and the preacher of the new gospel, two ideas that some years in the future would converge and intermingle.

The impetuous bishop of Chiapas, however, was not prepared to draw this conclusion openly. He placed the responsibility for the report squarely on the shoulders of Francisco Hernández and made an anonymous Franciscan a witness to it, then further mentioned — by way of analogy — that, according to other contemporaneous reports, the apostle Saint Thomas had once preached in Brazil. He did not go so far, however, as to endorse all these claims categorically. "In the end," wrote las Casas, "these are secrets known only to God."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Myth of Quetzalcoatl by Alfredo López Austin, Russ Davidson, Guilhem Olivier. Copyright © 2015 University Press of Colorado. Excerpted by permission of University Press of Colorado.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Colorado & Utah State Uni Pres
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1607323907
• ISBN 13: 9781607323907
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264