Downloaded From: Books at JSTOR, EBSCO, Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, OAPEN, Project MUSE, and Many Other Open Repositories

’ The Rain Gods’ Rebellion The Cultural Basis of a Nahua Insurgency James M. Taggart © by University Press of Colorado Published by University Press of Colorado Century Circle, Suite Louisville, Colorado All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of University Presses. The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, University of Wyoming, Utah State University, and Western Colorado University. ∞ This paper meets the requirements of the ANSI/NISO Z.- (Permanence of Paper). ISBN: ---- (cloth) ISBN: ---- (paperback) ISBN: ---- (ebook) DOI: https://doi.org/./ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Taggart, James M., -author. Title: The rain gods’ rebellion: the cultural basis of a Nahua insurgency / James M. Taggart. Description: Louisville: University Press of Colorado, [] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identiers: LCCN (print) | LCCN (ebook) | ISBN (cloth) | ISBN (paperback) | ISBN (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Nahuas—Mexico—Puebla (State)—History—th century. | Insurgency— Mexico—Puebla (State)—History—th century. | Land use, Rural—Mexico—Puebla (State) | Rain gods—Mexico. | Nahua mythology. | Nahuas— Social life and customs. Classication: LCC F.N T (print) | LCC F.N (ebook) | DDC /.—dc LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ ., ., ., and . rst appeared in Remembering Victoria: A Tragic Nahuat Loe Story by James M. Taggart, University of Texas Press (). Figure . rst appeared in The Bear and His Sons: Masculinity in Spanish and Mexican Folktales by James M. Taggart, University of Texas Press (). They are reprinted in this book courtesy of the University of Texas Press. This book is published as part of the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot. With the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Pilot uses cutting-edge publishing technology to produce open access digital editions of high-quality, peer-reviewed monographs from leading university presses. Free digital editions can be downloaded from: Books at JSTOR, EBSCO, Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, OAPEN, Project MUSE, and many other open repositories. While the digital edition is free to download, read, and share, the book is under copyright and covered by the following Creative Commons License: CC BY-NC. Please consult www.creativecommons.org if you have questions about your rights to reuse the material in this book. When you cite the book, please include the following URL for its Digital Object Identier (DOI): https://doi.org/./ We are eager to learn more about how you discovered this title and how you are using it. We hope you will spend a few minutes answering a couple of questions at this url: https://www.longleafservices.org/shmp-survey/ More information about the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot can be found at https://www.longleafservices.org. Acknowledgments ix Introduction Rebellions in the Sierra Norte San Miguel and the Rain Gods “The Rain God,” “The President and the Priest,” “The President of Hueytlalpan,” “The Water in Ixtepec,” “A Humble Man’s Predicament,” “Malintzin,” “The Land Transaction” Aer the UCI “The Storm” Conclusion “Ahuehueht,” “The Drunk,” “The Drunk” II, Notes References Cited I am grateful to many foundations and people whose indispensable help enabled me to carry out long-term eldwork in Huitzilan and organize the results into a book. Those who funded the eldwork are the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Specialist Program, Sorbonne University, and the Lewis Audenreid Professorship in History and Archaeology at Franklin and Marshall College. Their generous support enabled me to make many visits to Huitzilan between and where I met and received the indispensable help of Nacho Ángel Hernández, who taught me his Nahua language, carried out a survey of labor mi- gration, told me his stories, helped me correct transcriptions of stories I recorded from him and others, and explained narrators’ obscure allusions. Other Nahuas in Huitzilan, who contributed more stories and oered invaluable insights into their culture, are Nacho’s older brothers, Miguel and Nicolás or “Colax,” Miguel Ahuata de los Santos, de la Co Ayance, Antonio Veracruz, and Miguel Fuentes. Juan Hernández shared his ideas and stories about rain gods that were key for my understanding of how he and other Nahuas positioned themselves relative to the Church. Mariano Isidro and Juan Mauro, of Santiago Yaonáhuac, told rain gods’ stories in which they described their more egalitarian community, which enabled me to place the Nahua experience in Huitzilan in a broader comparative perspective. My beloved compadres, Juan Gravioto and Antonia Santiago, invited me into their lives and gave me honest and needed advice for how to live my life in Huitzilan. My dear compadres, Aurelio Aco and his wife, Mencha Cortés, and their children, Alonso, Rolando, and Irene, provided me with generous hospital- ity during my visits to Huitzilan over the span of forty-seven years. Many scholars provided important criticisms on earlier dras of this manuscript. They include: James Mae, whose work claried my understanding of ancient Nahua metaphysics; Kelly S. McDonough, whose work on Nahua intellectuals is an inspiration; and Alan and Pamela Sandstrom, whose work on contemporary Nahua pantheism is a model of ethnographic clarity and sig- nicance. I have also beneted from many discussions of Nahua culture and ix Acknowledgments anthropology with Johanna Broda, Davíd Lorente, Catharine Good Eshelman, Michel Graulich, Dominique Raby, and David Robichaux. I thank Catherine Good Eshelman for sponsoring my teaching at the Escuela Nacional in Mexico City, where I had the chance to participate in many discussions on Nahua culture with ENAH graduate students. It was a great privilege to know Alfonso Villa Rojas, who supported my work on Nahua stories and lent me his personal tape recorder during the early years of my eldwork in the Sierra Norte de Puebla. Alan Dundes provided constant encouragement for connecting oral narratives to theory. My beloved wife, Carole M. Counihan, read two dras of this book, and oered excellent editorial advice for clarifying the argument. For thirty-ve years we have had many stimulating discussions of anthropology at our din- ner table. Charlotte Steinhardt, the acquisitions editor for the University Press of Colorado, skillfully guided an early dra of this book through a rigorous pre-publication review, which provided many excellent suggestions for revision. I thank Elsa Dixler for carefully copy editing of the original manuscript and Ihsan Taylor for skillfully supervising the preparation of this book for publication. Introduction This book presents the cultural basis of an agrarian revolt that took place between and in a Mexican community of Nahuas and Mestizos in a re- mote part of the Sierra Norte de Puebla. By cultural basis is meant a tradition of storytelling through which Nahuas became radicalized, inspiring some among them to take political action to remedy their predicament. Usually agrarian re- volts in Mexico develop with the benet of political brokers with close ties to a community and experience outside of it. The brokers import, translate, and modify a political ideology to t local conditions, sometimes with the help of peasant organizations that provide moral support and legal advice. I shall argue that a Nahua rebellion in the Sierra Norte de Puebla was primarily, but not ex- clusively, a grassroots phenomenon that oral narrators anticipated and described in stories of rain gods’ organizing and attacking, with bolts of lightning, the companion spirits of autocratic local leaders and unwanted non-Nahua settlers. The narrators of the rain god stories presented examples of behavior that vio- lated deeply held values in Nahua culture. The stories were fantasies of revenge that erupted in a rebellion late in when thirty to forty Nahuas in Huitzilan armed themselves, invaded two cattle pastures, and planted them with corn. The insurgency became known locally as the UCI, an acronym for Unión Campesina Independiente or Union of In- dependent Farmers. The Nahuas invited an UCI activist, with no prior ties to the community, to help them organize a group to protect themselves from their enemies and to recover land lost to Mestizos. The UCI activist encouraged the Nahuas to locate and invade intestate land, so the thirty to forty Nahuas seized two cattle pastures, which were the subject of a bitter dispute between the mem- bers of two elite Mestizo families. A bullet ended the life of the UCI activist within a year of the land invasion but the rebellion lasted until , when the Antorcha Campesina (Torch of the Farmer), the military arm of the PRI party, drove out the UCI and took control of the local government. Figure .. Map of the southern Sierra Norte de Puebla. History of Rebellions The UCI insurgency was one of many that have taken place in the northern sierra of Puebla. During the colonial period (–), there were at least six revitalization movements aimed

Load more