While many, particularly in cities, have been busy greeting the
millennium, in the countryside this country's harvest festivals, in the guise of religious ritual, have been center of celebratory
attention.
In the ancient community of Jocotepec, at the western swing of Lake
Chapala, the end of the old year and the beginning of the new is the
time to honor two important religious icons, Nuestro Señor del Monte
(Our Lord of the Mountain) and Nuestro Señor del Guaje (Our Lord of
the Guaje Tree).
Present celebrations, which began in December and centered on El Señor
del Monte, are spiraling toward their booming, exhilarating peak -
January 16. This long-haul fiesta customarily features rodeos,
cockfights, a cornucopia of delicious traditional foods, ancient
dances, carnival games and rides, blazing fireworks, horse races,
music - all the color and fervor of Mexican rural religious
observances.
Dancing history
At the center of this fiesta are the danzantes that traditionally
compete in reenacting ancient Indian dance-dramas. Such performances
are often referred to as "Dances of the Conquest," but generally
combine tales of the Spanish defeat of the moors in Iberia with the
conquest of New Spain (Mexico). Competing groups, most of them from
surrounding pueblos, dwell on the tales that frocked Spanish occupiers
taught their fresh converts in this village 468 years ago.
European outriders
There are a number of versions of the founding of Jocotepec, some of
them plucked from legend, some constructed from desires to twine well-
known historical figures to village history. Sifting through these
interpretations, it seems apparent that shortly after Hernan Cortes'
defeat of Cuauhtemoc at Tenochtitlan (today's Mexico City) in May
1521, early European outriders arrived in this area. Some place this
arrival at the end of 1521, others as late as 1524. Whenever they
arrived, the first scouting parties encountering Lake Chapala thought
it was a sea. By 1524, a well-manned expedition of explorers, led by
Captain Pedro Alonso de Avalos (a cousin of Cortes), had "pacified"
the region.
Soon after, according to local chronicles, near the Indian village of
Xuxutepeque the Spaniards industriously destroyed an ancient temple
that had attracted worshippers for at least two centuries, possibly
more.
While some historians place the 1300s Nahua settlement of Xuxutepeque
where today's El Chante (a suburb of today's Jocotepec) is located, it
seems clear that all this area was home to nomadic tribes for
thousands of years, and that semi-permanent and "permanent"
settlements moved up and down the base of the surrounding mountains as
Lake Chapala rose and receded with changing climatic conditions.
According to legend, the Nahua at Xuxutepeque built a temple to the
god Ixtlacateotl early on. There, they frequently followed battles
with dancing and sacrificial offerings. According to one account: "As
sacrifice they offered the still-beating hearts of rival Indian
tribesmen captured in battle, making clay containers in which to burn
the blood of their victims. The containers were then thrown into the
water of the Lake." Whether or not this is accurate, Lakeside
fisherman have been pulling up small clay ollas for centuries, and
archeologists habitually call them "blood cups."
Fishermen, hunters
When the Spanish arrived, the Indians of Xuxutepeque were fishermen
and farmers, hunters and part-time warriors. The Purepecha (Tarascans)
of today's Michoacan area had recently invaded the region, occupying
the major political center to the south, Zayolla (today's Sayula), and
extending their control southward and across the mountains to Atlaco.
In the territory between Xuxutepeque and Zayolla a language called
Pinome was spoken. According to "A Guide to the Historical Geography
of New Spain," "Another language of Nahua affiliation prevailed along
the shore of Lake Chapala, at Xocotepec, Cuetzla (Cosala) and Chapalla
(Chapala)."
A new religion
With the Avalos expedition came Franciscan missionaries who soon began
constructing a church on the foundation of Xuxutepeque's destroyed
Nahua temple. Lake Chapala Indians proved willing converts, attracted
to the new religion in part by the colorful rituals and rich hierarchy
of saints that seemed in many ways to resemble their own religion.
At this point, local chroniclers and established history diverge.
Local historians, including many families that trace their residence
in the town back for hundreds of years, believe that Cortes gave the
community its "title of foundation" - which was granted by the Spanish
Crown November 20, 1529. However, Cortes had been relieved by the
Spanish Crown as ruler of New Spain in 1526.
Since its founding the village has been assigned first to the Catholic
diocese of Mechoacan (in today's state of Michoacan) and then to that
of Guadalaxara (a name that indicted not merely a settlement but the
vast area stretching west and north with no fixed boundaries in that
direction, and also known as Nueva Galicia.
Two 'protectors'
According to pious tradition, it was during this early period of
Spanish settlement that the village's two Catholic "protectors" -
Señor del Monte and Señor del Guaje - came into being. Allegedly hewn
from the same large guaje tree by a carpenter and a fisherman, these
two representations of Christ were to gain immense stature. Though the
original crucifix of Señor del Monte disappeared in the country's
subsequent turbulent history, the huge, roughly carved statue of Señor
del Guaje still survives in the village's chapel.
Plague strikes
The fame of Senor del Monte spread far beyond the Lake Chapala area
when the "Great Cholera Epidemic" of 1833 swept the region. Residents
of surrounding pueblos flocked to the church in Xocotepec (as it was
spelled then), beseeching Señor del Monte to protect them from the
disease. The epidemic soon ebbed.
Another plague struck in 1850, and again, say local historians,
Catholics filled the church and churchyard, praying for assistance.
Once more, the epidemic retreated. Disease returned to savage the
region in 1918, with the devout again successfully seeking
"miraculous" help.
As the 21st century revves up, the idea of appealing to a religious
image to put and end to waves of lethal disease may seem naive to
some.
It is important to remember how primitive medicine was then, even in
the scientific centers of Europe. And it is instructive to recall that
when the Spanish arrived in Veracruz in 1519, there were about 22
million indigenous inhabitants in Mexico. By 1580 there were only
about one million left. A series of European epidemics - smallpox,
measles, typhus, influenza - decimated Mexico's indigenous
communities, for they had no immunity against such Old World diseases.
Defining ceremony
While the "Novena y Triudo en Honor del Señor del Monte" may be
increasingly secular, the fiesta is fundamentally a religious one. As
Jacques Soustelle pointed out in his book, "On the Eve of the Spanish
Conquest," "In order to have a clear idea of what this religious
activity meant to them, it is necessary to redefine the words 'rite'
and 'ceremony,' and strip them of their conventional attributes that
they have acquired for our civilizations. For the ancient Mexicans
there was nothing more important than these motions, these songs,
dances, sacrifices and traditional actions," because these things
assured the stability of the world in all aspects, and without them
chaos loomed.
It is easy for the uninitiated - and the inexperienced - to
misinterpret the nature of such fiestas. The underlying sense of chaos
confuses such folks - because, the Indian view would contend, they are
blind to the chaos that is a constant in the world and that clearly
pervades their own lives.
It is the sense of chaos that gives such fiestas their own rules in a
ritual that (as Octavio Paz has noted) reunites contradictory elements
and principles in order to bring about the renaissance of the life and
order - particularly in a time harshly marked by fresh memories of
economic confusion.
(Allyn Hunt, former editor and publisher of The Guadalajara Colony
Reporter, has written for several newspapers in the United States. His
fiction has appeared in "The Best American Short Stories" and other
anthologies. Since 1985, he has written an opinion column for the
Mexico City News. He has lived in Mexico since 1963.
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