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INTRODUCTION KEVIN GOSNER University of Arizona William B

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INTRODUCTION KEVIN GOSNER University of Arizona William B INTRODUCTION KEVIN GOSNER Universityof Arizona William B. Taylor, in the introduction to his chapter on local religion in Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico, wrote: The administrators and their assistants often knew little about local practices and rarely cared to solicit lengthy descriptions from those who knew them well. The colonial record of Indian religious practices is most striking for its patchiness, for how much is missing compared with other aspects of social and political life ... The written record, then, comes mostly in small pieces from particular times and places. Only with many such pieces, evaluated separately and together, can pat- terned tendencies be discerned with much confidence.' In this special issue of the Journal of Early Modern History, each of the contributors, John Chuchiak, David Tavarez, and Rick Warner, grap- ples with the challenge that Taylor has described. Their studies of regional campaigns against Indian idolatry in colonial Mexico explore empirical questions about these events and critically examine debates about conceptual frameworks and historical methodologies. How did Spanish clerics define idolatry? Are their accounts useful for recon- structing the actual practices of native peoples? And how were these accounts shaped by the larger political contexts in which they were writ- ten ? These questions provide a common focus for all three of the authors. The cases that they have studied all occurred well after the glory days of the sixteenth century, when Franciscans, Dominicans, and other mendicants established the first Indian parishes and undertook their ini- tial attacks against idolatry.' These campaigns are notorious in the history ' William B. Taylor, Magistratesof the Sacred:Priests and Parishionersin Eighteenth-Century Mexico(Stanford, 1996), 46-47. 2 The classic account of the missions in early Mexico is Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquestof Mexico(Berkeley, 1966). Other important works on efforts to Christianize the native peoples of the Indies include: Inga Clendinncn,"Disciplining the Indians: Franciscan Idcology and Missionary Violence in Sixteenth Century Yucatan," Past and Present94 (1982): 27-48; Richard E. Greenleaf, Zumarragaand the MexicanInquisition, 1536-1543 (Washington, D.C., 1961); and John L. Phelan, The MillennialKingdom of the Franciscans in the New World(Berkeley, 1970). 110 of the Spanish conquest, none more so than those of Diego de Landa, in Yucatan. In 1562, with authority as the Franciscan Provincial, Landa tortured some 4,500 Mayas in an effort to identify backsliders, leaving 158 dead and countless others horribly maimed.' However, by the end of the century, campaigns of such violence were largely over. Throughout the new colonies, the Crown's magistrates, as well as Spanish settlers and townspeople, were eager to establish the routines of collecting trib- ute, mobilizing Indian labor, and promoting local commerce. Provocative attacks against idolatry, especially those aimed at the native nobility whom the colonizers sought as allies, were widely viewed as an obsta- cle to these goals. In Spain, Church authorities themselves argued over moral philosophy and bitterly disputed the efficacy of missionary vio- lence.? The reformers, for the most part, won out, and thereafter, the friars and early bishops moderated their tactics. The decision, in 1572, to exempt Indians from the authority of the Holy Office of the Inquisition was a reflection of this new thinking.5 For their part, Indians found more circumspect ways to preserve old rituals, and gradually they reshaped newly introduced Catholic practices to suit their own pur- poses.6 Yet, as these authors demonstrate, the prosecution of idolatry did not cease altogether. Relations between local priests and their indige- nous parishioners remained fraught with tensions of different kinds, and the persistence of heterodox religious practices among native peoples 7 always held the potential of erupting into overt conflict? I Inga Clendinnen, AmbivalentConquests: Maya and Spaniardin Yucatan,1517-1570 (Cambridge, 1987), 76. ? See Lewis Hanke, The SpanishStruggle for Justice(Boston, 1965). ' Richard E. Greenleaf, "The Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain: A Study in Jurisdictional Confusion," T7teAmericas 22 (1965): 138-166. 6 The literature on native religionsafter the conquest is extensive.Among the influential studies are: Louise M. Burkhart, TheSlippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth CenturyMexico (Tucson, 1989);Fernando Cervantes, TheDevil in theNew World:The Impact of Diabolismin NewSpain (New Haven, 1994);Nancy M. Farriss, Maya SocietyUnder Colonial Rule: Zhe CollectiveEnterprise of Survival(Princeton, 1984); Serge Gruzinski, The ConquestOf Mexico:The Incorporation of Indian Societies into the WesternWorld, 16th-18th Centuries (Cambridge, 1993);Jorge Klor de Alva, "Spiritual Conflict and Accommodationin New Spain: Toward a Typology of Aztec Responses to Christianity," in The Inca and AztecsStates, 1400-1800: Anthropologyand History,ed. George A. Collier, Renato 1. Rosaldo, and John D. Wirth (New York, 1982), 345-66; Sabine MacCormack, Religionin theAndes Visionand Imagination in Early ColonialPeru (Princeton, 1991 ). ' See, for example, Victoria R. Bricker, IndianChrist, Indian King: The Historical Substrate of Maya Myth and Ritual (Austin, 1981); Kevin Gosner, Soldiersof the Virgin The: Moral Economyof a ColonialMaya Rebellion(Tucson, 1992);and Serge Gruzinski, Man-Godsof the MexicanHighlands: Indian Power and ColonialSociety, 1520-1800 (Stanford, 1989). .
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