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The Colonial Mixtec Community

2000; Duke University Press; Volume: 80; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-80-1-1

1527-1900

Kevin Terraciano,

Historical Studies in Latin America

Indigenous communities in Mexico have intrigued generations of historians and anthropologists and have influenced the conceptualization of agrarian “folk” or “peasant” communities worldwide. Since at least the 1940s ethnographers have lived and worked in Mesoamerican communities, observing cultures in their own day while imagining the preconquest past.1 In the last three decades especially, historians have used both Spanish- and native-language sources from the colonial period to analyze the internal organization of indigenous communities, considering how these structures survived in altered yet recognizable forms after the Spanish conquest.2 In the past, both historical and anthropological studies focused on corporate communities such as the Nahua altepetl (local ethnic state), Maya cah, and the undifferentiated pueblo of modern Mexico; however, findings from the two disciplines are not usually integrated or even compared.3 In contrast to previous research, this article uses a variety of Mixtec- and Spanish-language sources to define the nature and internal organization of Mixtec communities in the sixteenth century, and examines some aspects of their reorganization and transformation during the colonial period.4 In particular, I focus on two components of the colonial community in the light of a recent ethnography from the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca.Mixtec-language writings reveal how individuals referred to the groups to which they belonged. The sources speak of the corporate community as a complex sociopolitical entity or multilevel structure, as well as a set of social relations and obligations.5 People identified and affiliated themselves with multiple overlapping “communities” or associations of households. Some ethnographers have addressed the same topic by listening to the ways in which indigenous people referred to their own communities. John Monaghan’s book, for example, shows how Mixtecs of modern-day Santiago Nuyoo talk about their community in terms of a big house, where people shelter and feed one another.6 In Nuyoo people spoke about various social acts related to these unifying principles, such as feasting, gifting, marriage, and cargo or community service. Similarly, the first part of this essay analyzes how Mixtecs in the colonial period wrote about their communities as sociopolitical entities and places, and how indigenous- and Spanish-language sources reflect changes and continuities in those structures. The second part examines two indigenous institutions in the colonial period that organized many of the social acts analyzed in Monaghan’s ethnography by reading what Mixtecs and Spaniards wrote about them. The first institution, the Mixtec royal palace or lordly establishment, called the aniñe, was literally a big house; the second institution, tniño, was a system of reciprocal labor and responsibility. Changes in the aniñe and tniño reflected changing social relations and obligations in the colonial period. The gradual decline of the aniñe and the continued importance of tniño to this day reflect significant changes and continuities within Mixtec communities.The collection of Mixtec-language archival sources with which I am working includes more than 20 types of writing genres generated by notaries of the native cabildo, including last wills and testaments, records of community accounts, criminal records, land transactions, municipal council election results, and petitions to Spanish authorities. Since the language was not transformed in the early colonial period, Mixtec nobles continued to refer to specific sociopolitical institutions and general cultural categories in their own terms. Extant Mixtec-language sources span three centuries, from the 1560s to the first decade of the nineteenth century. My work is based on some 400 documents ranging in length from 1 to 70 pages; the collection is distributed evenly across time, representing more than 60 Mixtec communities, covering the entire culture area from the Mixteca Baja to the Valley of Oaxaca, excluding the Pacific Coast.Unlike most ethnographies, my study does not focus on a particular community. Instead, this essay is based on a close examination of documentation from many communities in the region, especially from the Mixteca Alta, and more specifically from the alcaldía mayor of Teposcolula and Yanhuitlan. During the colonial period, this jurisdiction comprised several dozen indigenous communities that are well represented in a superb collection of archival records stored in Oaxaca and Mexico City. I focus on shared institutions and concepts, identified by a common vocabulary, while noting regional and local variation whenever possible. Colonial indigenous-language sources are indispensable to my philological approach, but Spanish-language legal cases are also extremely valuable sources of information; in fact, each type of record sheds light on the other. Thus I use Spanish-language sources as well as native-language documents.Before proceeding, I would like to point out that indigenous-language sources indicate that people from the Mixteca did not use the name “Mixtec” to refer to themselves. Rather, indigenous writers consistently used the term Ñudzahui (pronounced ñu sawi or ñuđawi, depending on the dialect area), meaning “the rain place,” to describe the region, people, communities, language, flora and fauna, and cultural artifacts of the area.7 Thus, I use this term, which is still used by many people who live in the Mixteca.The term native community is deceptively simple, as if it were a discrete and universal entity. Previous studies have relied on Spanish or Nahuatl terms to describe preconquest and colonial Ñudzahui structures. In their own language, however, Ñudzahui writers rarely used terms such as comunidad, ciudad, pueblo, cabecera, sujeto, rancho, estancia, or barrio to describe their sociopolitical organization and affiliation. Even translations of indigenous-language texts reduce important words to rough Spanish equivalents or simply omit complex terminology altogether. Spanish-language sources indicate how colonial officials understood indigenous settlements in terms of their own experiences and pragmatic concerns, and how they attempted to relocate and reorganize them. Colonial policies and depopulation had a major impact on indigenous settlement patterns, but indigenous forms of organization were not transformed entirely. The fact that Ñudzahui writers continued to employ traditional terminology in reference to structures, sometimes modifying or qualifying standard terms with descriptive vocabulary and loanwords, demonstrates the vitality of this organization. Let us consider, then, how they spoke about their communities in the early colonial period.Ñudzahui-language sources show that all settled places were called ñuu. This term conveyed “place” in the broad sense of the word, as a settlement or even a region. Many place-names contain ñuu as a prefix, often reduced to ñu, such as Ñunduhua, Ñundaa, and Ñundecu.8 In the colonial period and beyond, people continued to use their own names for places that were renamed by Nahuas and Spaniards; for example, the three places mentioned above were known to Spaniards as Guaxaca or Oaxaca (from the Nahuatl Huaxyacac), Texupa or Tejupan (from Texocpan), and Achiutla (from Achiotlan), respectively. Fray Francisco de Alvarado’s Vocabulario en lengua mixteca, published in 1593, employs the term ñuu alone or modified to define terms such as “pueblo,” “territory,” “villa,” and “site of a pueblo.”9 To settle a site was literally “to make a ñuu” (yoquidza ñuundi).10 Ñudzahui writers called the world in which they lived ñuu ñayehui or “places and people,” referring to all the people collectively in their innumerable ñuu.11 The ñuu was as central to local indigenous organization and identity as the altepetl in central Mexico and the cah in Yucatan. At the time of the conquest, the Mixteca contained hundreds of ñuu and well over a million inhabitants.Many of the most prominent and populous ñuu in the Mixteca, however, were better known as yuhuitayu and were only referred to as ñuu in the most general sense as a settled place. A yuhuitayu resulted from the marriage of a male and a female ruler who each represented the lordly establishment of a separate ñuu. For example, in the mid-sixteenth century, doña María de Guzmán represented Ñundecu (Achiutla) and don Felipe de Saavedra represented Disinuu (Tlaxiaco), and the yuhuitayu resulting from their marriage joined the resources of both ñuu until both rulers died.12 When don Felipe gave his last will and testament in 1573, he reaffirmed that his wife was to rule the yuhuitayu until she died, and then the couple’s eldest daughter would inherit don Felipe’s part belonging to Disinuu.The yuhuitayu is represented in preconquest-style codices and postconquest pictorial writings as a royal couple facing one another, seated on a petate (reed mat). The term yuhuitayu is a metaphorical doublet: yuhui is “reed mat” and tayu is “seat” or “pair,” depending on tone (Mixtec is a tonal language); as a writing convention in the codices, tayu is a tone pun for both the seat of ruler-ship and the married, ruling couple (see figure 1).13 This pictorial image has been interpreted as simply a royal marriage, but the glyph also represented a place and its rulership. The petate or seat motif was a Mesoamerican symbol of authority or government. Nahua authors of the Florentine Codex and Primeros Memoriales associated the reed mat throne (petlatl icpalli) with the altepetl and its rulers. The Nahua historian Chimalpahin suggested that the petlatl icpalli was a synonym of tlatocayotl or “rulership.” However, it is important to note that Nahua and Ñudzahui painters depicted the mat motif differently. Whereas the Nahua tlatoani (male ruler) is depicted in codices from central Mexico seated alone on a reed mat, the Ñudzahui man and woman shared the mat, facing and gesturing toward one another. Ñudzahui codices reflected a construction of hereditary rule and succession that required direct descent from two royal parents.14 The yuhuitayu represented an alliance of two lordly establishments from two separate ñuu, each represented by a male or a female ruler.The ancient yuhuitayu of the preconquest codices survived the conquest and persisted throughout much of the colonial period. The term appears in the earliest and latest extant native-language archival sources dated 1571 and 1807.15 In Alvarado’s Vocabulario the yuhuitayu, or “tayu” for short, is associated with a number of Spanish terms, such as “ciudad” (tayu canu meaning “large tayu”), “cabecera del pueblo” (sacaa tayu meaning “where there’s a tayu”), “comunidad,” and “pueblo” (yuhuitayu).16 Both ñuu and yuhuitayu were consistently used terms in all parts of the Mixteca represented by colonial documentation—the Valley of Oaxaca, the Mixteca Alta, and the Mixteca Baja around Huaxuapa (Ñuudzai) and Tonalá (Ñuuniñe). It is difficult to find a document that does not use one or the other term, but it is important to note that not all ñuu were yuhuitayu. Only a ñuu which was represented by a royal couple could be called a yuhuitayu. In general, the term yuhuitayu was not used in reference to smaller settlements which lacked a lordly establishment. For example, an indigenous official distinguished between the yuhuitayu of San Pedro y San Pablo Yucundaa (Teposcolula) and the nearby ñuu of Santiago Yodzonduhua in 1681.17 Likewise, don Domingo de Celís, who came from San Pedro Mártir Yucunama to make his testament in Yucundaa, consistently called the latter place a yuhuitayu and the former a ñuu.18Ñuu and yuhuitayu were divided further into smaller constituent parts; terminology for these subunits varied by region. In the Mixteca Alta around Teposcolula, Tamasulapa, and Tlaxiaco, the term used was siqui. In the Mixteca Baja the term for a subunit of the ñuu was dzini, and in the area of Yanhuitlan it was siña. The differences among these three terms, apart from regional usage, is unclear. They may be somewhat analogous to three Nahua terms for subdivisions of the altepetl—calpolli, tlaxilacalli, and chinamitl.19 Indigenous aides who worked with Alvarado on the Vocabulario defined the Spanish term “barrio” as siqui.20 Other entries reveal additional terms; for example, the term collacion reads “vide barrio” (see barrio); “a cada barrio” is listed as ee siqui ee siqui (each siqui), and “a cada collacion” is listed as ee siña ee siña, ee dzini ee dzini (each siña, each dzini).21 Thus the Vocabulario indirectly equates siqui, siña, and dzini. The term siña appears in several other entries, such as “vezino del barrio” tai yehe tnaha ñuundi siñandi siquindi (person who belongs to a ñuu, a siña, a siqui).22 The perrochia (parish) also involves use of siña and siqui: huahi ñuhu ee siña & siqui, ee sichi ee ñuu (a church for one siña and siqui, one section, one ñuu).23 Like the ñuu, the siqui was also a named unit. In the colonial period, the number of siqui in a given ñuu varied considerably, from several to dozens.The relationship between ñuu and smaller subunits was fluid and dynamic. Phrases combining references to the ñuu and the siña, siqui, or dzini were not uncommon. Even Alvarado’s Vocabulario includes a few ambiguous equivalences. For example, for the everyday query “De qué pueblo eres?” (To which pueblo do you belong?) the given phrases are na ñuu yehe tnahando (To which ñuu do you belong?) and na siña yehe tnahando (To which siña do you belong?).24 Thus both ñuu and siña were equated with “pueblo.” Likewise, “vezino del barrio” is tai yehe tnaha ñuundi siñandi, siquindi (person who belongs to a ñuu, a siña, a siqui).25 These examples in the Vocabulario are confirmed by similar usage in mundane documents, where distinctions between ñuu and siqui could be unclear, comparable to the occasional pairing of ñuu and tayu. For example, members of the largest siña of Yanhuitlan, Ayusi, often called their home a “ñuu siña.” A siqui could achieve ñuu status by becoming independent of the composite structure. The dynamic nature of these structures reflected a complex system of sociopolitical organization at the time of the conquest. Indeed, this complexity is represented in the many elaborate pre-conquest codices or writings attributed to the Mixtecs.Thus the Ñudzahui ñuu was comparable to the Nahua altepetl and Maya cah, though its constituent subdivisions (siqui, siña, dzini) and complex alliance systems (yuhuitayu) resemble the Nahua case more than the Maya. The second section of this article considers additional comparisons between the Ñudzahui and Nahua community of the early sixteenth century, including lordly establishments, local government, and systems of rotational labor. First, however, it is important to understand how Spanish officials interpreted and reorganized these structures in the colonial period.Colonial changes altered but did not transform the yuhuitayu-ñuu-siqui configuration beyond recognition. When the Spaniards arrived in the Mixteca, they encountered several hundred settlements spread out rather evenly across the land, separated by the mountainous landscape and numerous small valleys. In terms of settlement patterns, the ñuu was less nucleated than a typical Mediterranean city-state in this period. The demographic catastrophe of the sixteenth century must have contributed to the general appearance of dispersal. Spaniards intended to create more manageable units by moving some of the outlying settlements to the center, relocating settlements from hilltops and slopes down to level valleys and plains, and re-creating the semblance of a Mediterranean city with its rural hamlets. These activities were called congregación. In general, congregación began late and was confined to only a few areas in the Mixteca; it was limited mainly to the removal of a few communities from hilltop sites to the valley floor, and the collapsing of some structures onto themselves (siqui moved to the created center of a ñuu, for example).26 The distance of this movement was often characterized in terms of “a stone’s throw” (a un tiro de piedra) or “a musket shot” (a un tiro de arcabuz). For example, the new Teposcolula (called Yucundaa by Ñudzahui) was moved to the foot of the hill, and its former site was still partially settled and referred to in some documents as “Teposcolula la vieja.”27 People from outlying areas were moved to the center, but most siqui and ñuu remained intact. By the second half of the seventeenth century, the new alignment did lead to increasing concentration, but not to the extent that Spanish officials had planned.The purpose of congregación was to shape larger settlements into cities; existing clusters of siqui were reorganized according to the traza layout with important civil and ecclesiastical buildings arranged around a central plaza.28 In many places, however, the colonial center did not meet the expectations of a typical Spanish plaza, because the type of center imagined for the traza layout had little basis in native settlement patterns. The Spanish municipality was based on a dominant urban center surrounded by scattered, subordinate settlements. But a nucleated center was not really a pivotal component of the preconquest ñuu. A concentrated center was not a defining characteristic even in densely populated central Mexico, where individual subdivisions had always been the basis of a strong separatism among and within altepetl.29Spaniards did not grasp or were not concerned with understanding the complex and dynamic nature of Ñudzahui sociopolitical organization. They envisioned the Mixteca in terms of dominant centers with nearby “barrios” and more dispersed “estancias.” They created permanent kingdoms with subordinate satellite settlements by recognizing the most prominent yuhuitayu in a given area as cabeceras (head towns) and designating all smaller yuhuitayu, ñuu, and siqui as either sujetos (subjects) or barrios of the cabecera. In densely populated valleys some yuhuitayu were bound to be overlooked by the new arrangement. For example, several yuhuitayu in the Nochixtlan Valley, located within a few kilometers from Yanhuitlan (such as Chachoapa, Tamazola, and Yucuita), were reduced to subject settlements. As administrative units with jurisdiction over numerous surrounding places, cabeceras subordinated ñuu and other yuhuitayu that were formerly autonomous or associated with the larger unit in a more reciprocal fashion. In the new system, sujetos channeled their labor and tribute to the cabeceras but received minimal political representation and economic compensation. The process of designating cabeceras was not entirely arbitrary. Spaniards were inclined to single out larger settlements located along main roads and were probably influenced by the acquiescence or resistance of local rulers in the 1520s and 1530s. Previous arrangements with the Mexica were also a key factor, especially considering the important role played in the early period by Nahua “allies” and translators. Encomienda assignments also influenced subsequent political jurisdictions.30Though congregación and reorganization did not drastically alter settlement patterns, the concentration of status and power in local centers reinforced the Spanish conception of cabeceras.31 People continued to use their own terms for yuhuitayu and ñuu throughout the period, but the new arrangement demanded some terminology which distinguished a nucleus from its outlying parts. Ñudzahui writers, cognizant that the introduced concepts were not the same as the yuhuitayu and ñuu, called a cabecera dzini ñuu (head ñuu) and designated sujetos as daha ñuu (tribute ñuu).32 Such terms only appeared in specific contexts and genres of legal documentation, especially in election documents and legal petitions. The new terminology recognized another level of political relationships between entities which was quite separate from the preconquest order. By the late seventeenth century, many Ñudzahui writers had adopted loanwords such as cabecera and barrio, but much of the original terminology was retained throughout the colonial period, including terms for subunits of the ñuu.33 Siqui were maintained as identifiable units into the eighteenth century in many places; for example, references to multiple siña are observable as late as 1783 in Yanhuitlan.Thus the Spaniards reshaped sociopolitical relations among the various entities without fundamentally altering their physical structure, the area settlement pattern, or native terminology for these structures. But the new configuration simplified sociopolitical relations and set the stage for the eventual splitting off of subject units from head municipalities. In fact, the indigenous response to the imposition of a static, hierarchical model of organization began as soon as the real nature of the Spanish reordering became apparent. Many indigenous communities sought independent cabecera status from the mid-sixteenth century onward, a process which gathered momentum by the end of the seventeenth century. For example, several so-called “sujetos” and “estancias” sought autonomy from Yanhuitlan in 1552, 1558, 1580, and 1582.34 In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, scores of former barrios, estancias, and sujetos in the Mixteca attained autonomous status.35 Attempts to establish yuhuitayu or separate ñuu status contributed to the fluid sociopolitical situation. Late colonial campaigns for autonomy represented resistance to the sociopolitical reorganization as well as the continuation of an “ancient process of community fission” inherent in Ñudzahui sociopolitical organization.36So far, Ñudzahui communities have been discussed in terms of structures and places that were reorganized under colonial rule. This essay now turns to concepts of community based on social and political relations within the yuhuitayu, ñuu, and siqui.In recent years many anthropologists have focused on internal social relations and symbolic practices, rather than macro-level structural forces, as defining characteristics of the contemporary native community.37 The emphasis on social and cultural acts as vital forces in the formation and maintenance of communities ascribes agency to native peoples and refutes the notion of a conservative “closed corporate community.”38 It is clear that social relations were crucial to the maintenance of communities in the colonial period. The yuhuitayu, for example, embodied a set of social and political relations organized by a hereditary nobility. This prominent group of elites who represented their communities in sixteenth-century pictorial and alphabetic writings, and who organized relations among all social groups in the Mixteca, confronted numerous challenges from the sixteenth century onward. The eventual decline of the nobility reflected changing social relations and altered forms of government which ultimately redefined the nature of communities. This section studies some aspects of this transformation by considering the relationship between lordly establishments and the sociopolitical structures discussed above, focusing especially on three indigenous concepts and institutions, namely, toniñe, aniñe, and tniño.Rulers of the Ñudzahui yuhuitayu were invariably called yya toniñe (lord ruler) and yya dzehe toniñe (lady ruler). Male and female lords bore the general title of yya and were customarily addressed or referred to with honorific pronouns. The conception of sa toniñe or “rulership” was in many ways the equivalent of the Nahua tlatocayotl. The Vocabulario defines a “señorío” as sa si yya (that which belongs to the lord/s) or sa si toniñe (that which belongs to the rulership).39 Toniñe also appears in association with “ciudad” (yuhuitayu toniñe) and “pueblo” (yuhuitayu toniñe and ñuu toniñe).40 A yuhuitayu could not exist without an yya toniñe and an yya dzehe toniñe. Thus the ruling couple was an extremely important symbol of high status. In several mapas drawn during the sixteenth century, including those done for the Relaciones geográficas around 1580, many yuhuitayu from the Mixteca included images of their ruling couples as proof of autonomy (see figure 2). In 1583 officials from Santiago Yolomecatl, a “sujeto” and “estancia” of Teposcolula, argued for independence from the cabecera on the grounds that they had their own ruling couple. Juan Bautista Contuta informed Spanish officials through an appointed translator that his ñuu refused to pay tribute to the cabecera because “we have our own caciques, don Pedro and doña Juana.”41 This assertion of yuhuitayu status, significant as it was to native concepts of sociopolitical organization, had little meaning within the Spanish cabecera-sujeto scheme.Spaniards acknowledged local hereditary rulers, however, and they even recognized the importance of noblewomen in the Mixteca. Colonial officials used the term cacica to designate a señora natural (native female lord) of a cacicazgo. Cacica was the feminine equivalent of “cacique,” a term that Spaniards adopted in the Caribbean islands and applied to all native rulers in New Spain. A cacicazgo was the “sum and combination of all traditional rights, duties, privileges, obligations, services and lands pertaining to the title of a native ruler.”42 In other words, the cacicazgo was the Spanish legal interpretation of the Ñudzahui toniñe.In recognition of the two constituent parts of the yuhuitayu, Spaniards applied the legal concept of conjunta persona (joint person status); the concept recognized a union of royal patrimonies in marriage but specified when a male cacique derived his authority in a given place from his wife’s position. For example, in 1566 doña Catalina de Peralta and don Diego de Mendoza were called “caciques” of Teposcolula. However, the cacica doña Catalina was born and raised in Teposcolula and inherited the rulership; her husband, don Diego, came from Tamasulapa. Their relationship was clarified when they were called “caciques of Teposcolula, doña Catalina and the said don Diego as her joint person.”43 The Spanish principle of “conjunta persona” entitled men to represent the yuhuitayu in legal proceedings, even when their separate patrimonies were not at issue. In fact, the term was invoked only when a cacique represented a cacica’s patrimony; the reverse was not necessary in the colonial legal system. Similarly, when a cacique and a cacica appeared together before Spanish officials, the male generally represented the couple in the proceedings. The Spanish legal system accorded native noblewomen properties and titles by virtue of their birth and marriage, but the accepted norms of Spanish public discourse preferred male actors in the legal and political realm.In the Mixteca, yya toniñe or rulers of yuhuitayu lived in royal residences called aniñe.44 The aniñe was the palace of the yya, usually equated in Spanish-language documents with a palacio or a Nahua tecpan. Archaeological and documentary evidence suggests that the structural characteristics of palaces in the Mixteca were similar to those in central Mexico. In general, single-story stone and adobe structures, each with its separate entrance, were arranged around sunken patios.45 The aniñe of Yodzocahi (Yanhuitlan) was described in early-sixteenth-century documents as a complex of large houses containing nine patios.46 The famous Map of Teozacualco (called Chiyocanu in Ñudzahui), drawn in 1579, depicts a palace next to the new church (see figure 2). In this case, four separate structures are arranged around a central patio, each with its separate entrance, with one entrance to the entire compound (where footprints lead). Several descriptions of palaces confirm the basic layout of the Teozacualco aniñe. The arched doorways represent Spanish influences on the buildings, or at least their representation. A string of yuhuitayu proceeds upward from the aniñe, representing recent generations of the ruling dynasty of Teozacualco; the heir apparent when the map was drawn, don Francisco de Mendoza, is seated alone at the top of the procession, directly above his parents.One of the best, earliest accounts of an aniñe comes from Yucundaa (Teposcolula). Documentation from the 1560s describes the aniñe of Yucundaa as a structure which stood “behind and opposite” the monastery, on or adjacent to land named Ytonocoyoo, on the site where the building called “casa de la cacica” stands today (see figure 3).47 Doña Catalina de Peralta, heir to the rulership of Yucundaa, laid claim to the palace with ancient paintings and colonial testaments. The palace consisted of separate dwelling places or rooms within a compound, divided by patios and separate entrances. When doña Catalina took possession of her aniñe, she and her husband walked through the entire complex with several male and female nobles. They entered the main patio and, before all the witnesses, sat on a reed mat together as a sign of true possession. The ceremony personified the image of the yuhuitayu depicted in the codices—that is, ruling figures seated on reed mats, usually inside or in front of a palace. The royal palace was the actual site of a reed mat throne, the seat of power where the lords lived and ruled. The act of seating was performed five times, once in each separate part or aposento of the complex. The choreographed repetition of gestures was designed to make a lasting impression on the social memory of the community. The couple sat on “petates y asientos de indios” (reed mats and Indian seats) or “petates e yquipales” (from the Nahuatl icpalli—the document was written in Spanish, using some Nahuatl loan vocabulary). The only part of the complex where they did not take a seat was the “aposento de cocina” (kitchen room), though the couple entered and took possession of it to