Visiting the Calvario at Mitla, Oaxaca
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VISITING THE CALVARIO AT MITLA, OAXACA In the centre of the Mexican town of Mitla stands a run-down Visiting the Calvario chapel on an overgrown pre-colonial pyramid. The chapel, housing three crosses, is the town’s Calvario, the local repre- at Mitla, Oaxaca sentation of the hill on which Christ died. Although busses full of tourists on their way to Chiapas or on daytrips from Oaxaca a critical look at the continuity City swarm the town every day almost none of them ever visit of a religious practice the Calvario. Instead they stick to the tourist zone to marvel at the famous mosaic friezes of the pre-colonial temples and shop for traditional souvenirs in the tourist market. If they would climb the steep steps to the chapel they would discover that despite appearances the building still sees extensive use as pilgrims from the wide Zapotec region visit it to bring offerings to and ask favours of the souls of their dearly departed. And as these offerings consist of elaborate arrangements of flowers, fruits, black candles, cacao beans and bundles of copal incense, such tourists might well start to wonder where the origins of these practices lie. It is this question to which an answer will be sought in this research master thesis. To achieve this, current theories on cultural continuity, syncretism, the materiality of religion and ritual theory are combined with a study of archaeological, his- William R. Arfman torical, iconographical and anthropological sources. In addition ethnographic fieldwork has been conducted to come to a bet- ter understanding of the offerings made in the Calvario today. Divided in three segments, the thesis first addresses the history of Mitla as ‘The Place of the Dead’, then of the Calvario as a ritual location and finally of the offerings for the dead. By then combining these three lines of research an interesting image is formed of the continuity of ancestor veneration in this busy tourist town. Sidestone ISBN 978-90-8890-008-2 Sidestone Press ISBN: 978-90-8890-008-2 Bestelnummer: SSP29430001 William R. Arfman 69332350 9 789088 900082 This is an Open Access publication. Visit our website for more OA publication, to read any of our books for free online, or to buy them in print or PDF. www.sidestone.com Check out some of our latest publications: Visiting the Calvario at Mitla, Oaxaca Sidestone Press RESEARCH MASTER THESIS NATIVE AMERICAN RELIGION AND SOCIETY FACULTY OF ARCHAEOLOGY, LEIDEN UNIVERSITY Visiting the Calvario at Mitla, Oaxaca a critical look at the continuity of a religious practice William R. Arfman Supervisors: prof. dr. Maarten Jansen dr. Alexander Geurds dr. Laura van Broekhoven Copyright 2008 by William R. Arfman Published by Sidestone Press www.sidestone.com Sidestone registration number: SSP29430001 ISBN: 978-90-8890-008-2 Cover Illustration: Photography: William R. Arfman 2005 Design: William R. Arfman & Karsten Wentink 2008 Title Page Illustration: Drawing: William H. Holmes 1895 Edited: William R. Arfman 2008 Layout: William R. Arfman Contents Preface 7 Introduction 11 Chapter 1: Objectives and Methods 15 1.1 Research Question 15 1.2 Methodology 15 1.2.1 Fieldwork 16 1.2.2 Written sources 18 1.3 The Chapters 20 Chapter 2: Theoretical Considerations 21 2.1Cultural Continuity 21 2.2Syncretism 24 2.3Material Religion 27 2.4Rituals 29 2.5Religion 32 2.6 The approach 33 Chapter 3: History of Mitla as a ritual centre 35 3.1 Early colonial Sources 36 3.1.1 Burgoa's Geográfica descripción 36 3.1.2 The Relaciones Geográficas of 1580 38 3.1.3 De Córdova's Vocabvlario en Lengua Çapoteca 42 3.1.4 Balsalobre's Idolatría y Superstición 45 3.1.5 The Villa Alta Confessions 46 3.1.6 Secondary Sources 47 3.1.7 The Murals 52 3.2 Early Explorers and Ethnographers 56 3.2.1 The explorers 56 3.2.2 The early ethnographers about the afterlife 58 3.2.3 Going to the Town of the Souls 60 3.2.4 The nature of souls 63 3.2.5 All Souls 64 3.2.6 The ancients and other extrahuman forces 65 3.3 The present situation 68 3.3.1 The ancients and the journey after death 68 3.3.2 All Souls 70 3.3.3 Mitleños about the Place of the Dead 72 3.3.4 Pilgrims about the Place of the Dead 74 3.4Conclusion 75 Chapter 4: Continuity of the Calvario as a ritual location 79 4.1Early Sources 80 4.1.1 The Calvario and its Predecessors 80 4.1.2 A Backdoor to Hell in the Ruins 84 4.2Early Ethnographers 85 4.2.1 The Calvario as a Place to Curse 85 4.2.2 The Churchyard and the Ruins 88 4.2.3 A Hidden Entrance in the Church 90 4.2.4 Other destinations on New Years’ Eve 91 4.2.5 “Now we are Civilized” 93 4.3 Recent Ethnographers 94 4.3.1 Inviting the Souls at the Calvario 94 4.3.2 Pilgrims about the Calvario 97 4.3.3 Mitleños about the Calvario 100 4.3.4 The ruins and the churchyard 106 4.3.5 The church and the souls 107 4.3.6 The Cave with the Big Mouth 109 4.4Conclusion 112 Chapter 5: Continuity of the offerings for the dead 115 5.1 Late Post classic and Early Colonial Sources 116 5.1.1 Burgoa on rituals 116 5.1.2 Codices and Counted Bundles 118 5.1.3 Archaeological and Historical Sources 126 5.2 Early Ethnographers 130 5.2.1 The helpful dead 130 5.2.2 Parsons on rituals 134 5.3 Present Day Sources 136 5.3.1 Present day ethnographers 136 5.3.2 The offerings explained 139 5.4Conclusion 146 Conclusions and Discussion 151 References 155 Preface Although my interest in religion as something that can be both appreciated and questioned can be traced back to my upbringing, the subject did not gain academic appeal to me until I followed some courses on the anthropology of religion and religious sciences to complement my archaeology programme. At first I saw these courses as a thing on the side, but quickly I learned that even in archaeology, and especially in the field of Mesoamerican studies, these ideas could easily be applied. After having written my B.A. thesis on the possibilities of applying modern concepts of ritual in archaeological analysis, I decided I wanted my M.A. thesis to be less general and aimed more at studying the historical background of a specific modern day case. But until I visited Mitla with some fellow students and two professors during a research project on present day market systems in Oaxaca, I had no idea what case would be suitable. However on that day, after having seen the main monuments, we also paid a short visit to the Calvario chapel (Fig. 1). Being there, everything fell in its place. The burning candles, fresh flowers, heaps of cacao beans and bundles of unclear content were such clear evidence of rituals taking place regularly in this early colonial chapel standing on a pre-colonial adobe pyramid right in the middle of a town overwhelmed by tourists. I had found my topic. Luckily one of my professors, dr. Laura van Broekhoven, was there to force me to overcome my anxiety to replace my planned week of vacation with a week of orientation in Mitla. For this I am incredibly thankful to her. Already during this orientation week when I stayed in a hotel, the owners, a talkative middle aged lady and her elderly mother who always spoke Zapotec1 with each other, turned out to be interesting and useful conversation partners for which I thank them. During the rest of the week I mostly had casual conversations with Mitleños I happened to meet, such as a bike-cab driver or two guys who thought I could sell them marijuana. Although I did go up to the Calvario several times during the week I never encountered any pilgrims there. These visits did however bring me into contact with two ladies, a mother and daughter, that owned the Miscelanea2 shop right across the street 1 Zapotec: one of the many indigenous languages spoken in the state of Oaxaca. Being from the Oto-Manguean language family it is often argued that in fact Zapotec is a language group which consist of several languages such as the Valley Zapotec spoken in Mitla. Zapotecs or Zapotecans is also used to refer the indigenous group speaking the language. Throughout this article the Spanish name for the language and the indigenous group is used and not the Zapotec one for sake of convenience since many spellings of the latter exist while the name Zapotec is widely known. 2 Miscelanea: a type of small convenience store Figure 1: The Adobe pyramid with the Calvario chapel on it (Picture by Arfman 2005). from the adobe pyramid with the Calvario upon it. During my several visits to their shop we talked about such things as where the people came from that made offerings at the Calvario, for what reasons they came, when they came, why I was interested in it, what the weather was like in the Netherlands, what kind of food the Dutch ate, and so on. During my last visit to their house they even invited me to come and stay with them when I would return the next year as I had said I planned to. Luckily for me this invitation still stood when I returned in 2005.