The Church and Convento of Santo Domingo Yanhuitlan, Oaxaca: Art, Politics, and Religion in a Mixtec Village, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2009 The Church and Convento of Santo Domingo Yanhuitlan, Oaxaca: Art, Politics, and Religion in a Mixtec Village, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries Alessia Frassani Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1801 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] THE CHURCH AND CONVENTO OF SANTO DOMINGO YANHUITLAN, OAXACA: ART, POLITICS, AND RELIGION IN A MIXTEC VILLAGE, SIXTEENTH THROUGH EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES by ALESSIA FRASSANI A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2009 ii © 2009 ALESSIA FRASSANI All Rights Reserved iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Art History in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Professor Eloise Quiñones Keber Date Chair of Examining Committee Date Professor Kevin Murphy Executive Officer Professor James Saslow Professor Raquel Chang-Rodríguez Professor Ronald Spores Supervision Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Abstract THE CHURCH AND CONVENTO OF SANTO DOMINGO YANHUITLAN, OAXACA: ART, POLITICS, AND RELIGION IN A MIXTEC VILLAGE, SIXTEENTH THROUGH EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES by Alessia Frassani Adviser: Professor Eloise Quiñones Keber The mission-building campaign undertaken in the Americas in the years following the Spanish conquest (1521-1546) is the largest and most ambitious evangelical and artistic enterprise in the history of the Catholic Church. In the span of just a few decades, Spanish mendicant friars, at the head of the missionary efforts, established hundreds of conventos (missions) in both colonial cities and provinces. These institutions did not merely accommodate friars. Planned to carry out doctrinal, educational, and liturgical activities, they soon became booming economic and cultural centers. This dissertation focuses on the convento in the Mixtec town of Yanhuitlan in Oaxaca, southwestern Mexico, and is the first to provide a comprehensive study of a mission and its historical development. Previous art historical scholarship has usually granted separate attention to the architecture, painting, and sculpture of the Mexican missions, overrating formal qualities and neglecting the fact that all aspects of the convento were part of the same larger artistic and religious program. The sixteenth-century missionary complex consists of the main church, adjoining cloister, and residential and working areas; it houses several colonial altarpieces and a v collection of wooden polychrome sculptures. It was the most important artistic enterprise undertaken in Yanhuitlan in the early decades after the conquest and has remained since then the main focus of artistic and religious activities. First, the alliance of Mixtec leaders with Dominican friars and Spanish authorities made possible the erection of the mission, which became a powerful statement of the new hegemonic status of Yanhuitlan in the region. In the following centuries, activities of the confraternities became the most important impulse of art patronage. Spanish in origin, these institutions became gradually independent from the local parish and colonial authorities, filling the vacuum left by a waning traditional leadership. My dissertation integrates on-site investigation and archival and ethnographic research to address the various strategies of appropriation, manipulation, and display of Spanish, Mixtec, and hybrid art forms in the context of political colonization and religious evangelization. vi PREFACE The village of Santo Domingo Yanhuitlan is located in the Mixteca Alta (Highland Mixteca), a mountainous area of southern Mexico mostly inhabited by Mixtec speakers, an Amerindian language that is part of the Otomanguean family. While the Mixteca also includes the Mixteca Baja (Lowland Mixteca) and the Mixteca de la Costa (Coastal Mixteca), the Mixteca Alta can be considered a somewhat separate region given a peculiar climatic and orographic situation. Its highland setting in fact gives the region a cool and dry season, between November and April. Tropical humidity and temperatures are instead typical in the Mixteca Baja and Mixteca de la Costa throughout the year. Strong linguistic variations between the highlands and the tropical regions also indicate closer ties within the Mixteca Alta than with the other two areas. Map 1 shows the regions of the Mixteca, plus the area of the Central Valleys, where Mixtec enclaves were found in and around the town of Cuilapan. The more intensively studied area of Central Mexico is an adjoining region in the central highlands of Mexico, encompassing the modern states of México, Morelos, Tlaxcala, Puebla, and the Federal District (D.F.). Similar to the Mixteca, it constitutes a single geographical and cultural area, given its location on a high plateau and the common Nahua language and heritage shared by its inhabitants. Several indigenous and Spanish terms employed in this dissertation appear with different spellings in original documents as well as modern secondary sources. The lack of an alphabetical script in ancient Mesoamerica and colonial-era notaries’ ignorance of terminology related to local geography and socio-political institutions generated a persistent ambiguity. I employ modern spellings for Mixtec and Nahuatl names, except when I was not able to identify the modern equivalent of colonial names. This is vii particularly the case of Yanhuitlan’s barrios (neighborhoods) discussed in chapter 6, which no longer exist and are currently only known through oral traditions. In Appendix B, “Processional Angels,” I supply alternative spellings for each barrio. Although in modern Spanish there is a tendency to stress the last syllable of Mexican indigenous localities with an accent (e.g., Yanhuitlán), I avoid doing that. This practice does not correspond to the correct native pronunciation, where the penultimate is accentuated. Finally, recurrent Spanish terms are not translated into English. Instead, the first occurrence is italicized and accompanied by an English explanation in parenthesis. A Glossary provides common Spanish, Mixtec, and Nahuatl terms employed throughout this dissertation. All translations from Spanish are mine, unless otherwise specified. viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people and institutions have helped me grow as a person and student since I began graduate studies in 2001. First of all, I have to thank Professor Eloise Quiñones Keber, my adviser since year one at CUNY Graduate Center, who guided me through seven years of coursework, academic writing, fieldwork research, conferences, publications, grant applications, and dissertation drafts. I benefited enormously from her comments and support. Whatever level of scholarship I achieved as a doctoral student, I owe to her more than anybody else. The members of my dissertation committee, Professors James Saslow and Raquel Chang-Rodríguez of the Hispanic and Luso-brazilian Literatures Program, provided indispensable comments from the points of view of European Renaissance art and Hispanic literatures. Oaxacan ethnohistorian Ronald Spores kindly took me around the Mixteca several times and shared with me his knowledge of the region and enthusiasm for fieldwork research. I was first introduced to the Mixteca, its millenary history and culture, by Professor Maarten Jansen and Ms. Aurora Pérez Jiménez at Leiden University, in the Netherlands, where I studied for my Masters degree in 2001-2002. Their vision concerning the study and preservation of Amerindian cultures has had the deepest impact on my research, giving me an intellectual purpose I doubt I would have ever acquired had I not had the chance to study with them, albeit briefly, in Leiden. I entered the doctoral program at CUNY Graduate Center as a Fulbright scholar. This privilege enabled me to complete all residency requirements without any onerous work commitment. Fieldwork and archival research for this dissertation received the ix initial support of the Center for Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at the Graduate Center that sponsored my first exploratory research in Oaxaca in 2002. In 2005, thanks to a Samuel H. Kress Foundation grant from the Renaissance Society of America, I spent a summer in Mexico and Spain, laying the foundation for my year-long fieldwork during 2006-2007. The bulk of my research was assisted by a fellowship from the International Dissertation Research Program of the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and additional grants from the Renaissance Society of America, the Graduate Research Grant Program and the Martin M. Spiaggia Dissertation Award, these last two from CUNY Graduate Center. In the Archivo General de la Nación, Fundación ICA, and Fototeca de la Coordinación Nacional de Monumentos Históricos, in Mexico City; the Archivo Histórico del Poder Judicial del Estado de Oaxaca, Archivo General del Estado de Oaxaca, Biblioteca Pública, and Fundación Bustamante Vasconcelos, in the city of Oaxaca; and the Archivo General de Indias and Archivo Histórico