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UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Nahua and Spanish UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Nahua and Spanish Concepts of Health and Disease in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1615 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Rebecca Ann Dufendach 2017 © Copyright by Rebecca Ann Dufendach 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Nahua and Spanish Concepts of Health and Disease in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1615 by Rebecca Ann Dufendach Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor Kevin B. Terraciano, Chair This dissertation uses a wide variety of original historical sources to examine Nahua (Aztec) and Spanish concepts of health and sickness in the sixteenth century, and how both cultures applied these concepts in their attempt to understand the widespread, devastating epidemics that plagued colonial Mexico or New Spain. The Nahuatl and Spanish texts of the Florentine Codex and the Relaciones Geográficas, in addition to several other pictorial and alphabetic writings, abound with information on a topic that is little explored and poorly understood: how did indigenous peoples comprehend and remember the terrible, recurring diseases that wiped out about 90% of their population over the course of a century? How did they associate disease with the arrival of the Spaniards, the conquest, Christianity, and colonial rule? How did they speak and write about these matters? And how did their words on these topics differ from what the Spaniards said? How did Spanish cultural concepts, based on Greek, Roman, and Christian understandings of the body, conform with and contradict Nahua beliefs and practices. What were the implications of the similarities and differences? How did the dominant group attempt to discredit native practices and beliefs regarding health and illness that they considered pagan or superstitious? Did Nahua concepts persevere and survive? ii This dissertation addresses these questions for the Nahuas of central Mexico, focusing on the period from 1519 to 1615, a period in which at least three major epidemics ravaged the indigenous population of New Spain. But the findings are applicable to all parts of the Americas in the early modern or colonial period, up until the early nineteenth century, when nearly all indigenous peoples in the hemisphere came into contact with Europeans and Africans and the pathogens that they carried with them across the Atlantic Ocean. Many works have addressed the nature of the epidemics and the extent of the demographic decline, but few studies in the Latin American field of history and related disciplines have endeavored to recover indigenous voices on this topic. This dissertation contributes to the research of ethnohistorians who seek to recover indigenous perspectives of history by reading numerous different types of historical sources, including native-language alphabetic documents and pictorial writing systems. By correlating historical evidence from the colonial period with ethnographic evidence from the modern period, I show how certain Nahua and Mesoamerican beliefs and practices about health, sickness and healing have endured in Mexico today, despite all odds. This dissertation also contributes to the history of science in the Spanish colonial world by examining texts on medicine produced by indigenous authors and healers, knowledge that was sought after by Europeans. Finally, this interdisciplinary study enhances our understanding of a deadly trans-Atlantic exchange from the perspective of indigenous peoples who managed to survive and record their experiences. iii The dissertation of Rebecca Ann Dufendach is approved. Pamela Munro Teofilo Ruiz Mary Terrall Kevin B. Terraciano, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2017 iv For Das v Table of Contents Acknowledgements vii Vita viii Introduction 1 Chapter One: Filth and Purification: Nahua Concepts of Illness and Health 36 Chapter Two: Spanish Concepts of Health and Interpretations of Disease 120 Chapter Three: Epidemic Invasions: Illness during First Contact 170 Chapter Four: Epidemics Beyond First Encounter, 1535-1615 247 Conclusion 307 Bibliography 327 vi Acknowledgements I am privileged to thank Nahuatl speakers, writers, and artists from the past and in the present. Without the intellectual guidance and support of Kevin Terraciano, this work would have been impossible. Gratitude is also due to Mary Terrall, Pam Munro, and Teo Ruiz for their comments and insight. Louise Burkhart has given generously of her time and her observations have improved my work. I am always grateful to my family for their love and support. vii Vita Rebecca Dufendach EDUCATION PhD University of California Los Angeles Department of History 2010-present Latin American History Doctoral Candidate Advisor: Kevin Terraciano MA Northeastern University, Department of History 2008 Latin American History Thesis: “Injecting Modernity: Regulating Hygiene in Porfirian Oaxaca, Mexico” BA Northeastern University, History and Education 2006 TEACHING EXPERIENCE Seminar Instructor, UCLA 2015-2016 Atlantic Exchanges: Peoples, Goods, and Pathogens in the Early Modern Period Teaching Associate, UCLA 2012-13 Poverty and Health in Latin America: Historical Roots Poverty and Health in Latin America: Social Determinants of Health Poverty and Health in Latin America: Mesoamerican Healers Teaching Assistant, UCLA 2011-12 Colonial Latin America, 1492-1800 Modern Latin America, 1800-2000 Mystics, Heretics and Witches in the Western Tradition 1000 – 1700 Course Reader, UCLA 2011 The Making of Modern Mexico, 1900-2001 Teacher, History, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios 2009-10 Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus, MX Teacher, English Language, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios 2008-09 Superiores de Monterrey, Laguna Campus, MX AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIP Department of History, UCLA 2015-2016 Laura Kinsey Teaching Prize Department of History, UCLA 2015-2016 Robert N. Burr Writing Fellowship Center for Medieval and Renaissance, UCLA 2014-2015 Research Fellowship Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies, UCLA 2014 Travel Grant viii Ahmanson Graduate Student Research Support Grant, UCLA 2014 History of Medicine Research Grant International Institute, UCLA 2013 Doctoral Research Travel Grant Latin American Institute, UCLA 2011, 2012 Foreign Language Area Studies, Nahuatl CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS "The Nine Texts of the Florentine Codex" 2016 Panel Organizer, Presenter American Society for Ethnohistory, Las Vegas, NV "Epidemics and Nahua Communities: Disease 2015 in the Relaciones Geográficas" Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies, Tucson, AZ “Cocoliztli: Visual and Textual Depictions of Illness 2014 in Sixteenth-Century Mexico” Panel Organizer, Presenter American Society for Ethnohistory, Indianapolis, IN "Contract for Land of Sale in Azcapotzalco, 1739" 2014 Northeastern Nahuatl Group Annual Meeting, Yale University, CT “De manera que el Buen Medico: Sahagún’s description of 2013 Epidemics in the Florentine Codex” Panel Organizer, Presenter American Society for Ethnohistory, New Orleans, LA “Nahua Concepts of Health and the Body in 16th Century Mexico” 2012 Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies, California State University, Los Angeles, CA “Disease in the Florentine Codex” 2011 American Society for Ethnohistory, Pasadena, CA LANGUAGES Spanish, fluent in speaking, reading, and writing Nahuatl, intermediate speaking, reading, and writing Latin, intermediate reading and writing Zapotec, elementary speaking, reading, and writing ix Introduction In her exploration of the common diseases or cocoliztli experienced by the indigenous people of Veracruz, Mexico, Sabina Cruz de la Cruz describes her cultural concepts of illness. Her text is written in Nahuatl, the language of the indigenous people of central and eastern Mexico. She explains that yacatzompilli, what could be translated as the flu or gripa, occurs when people fail to bathe properly after being caught outside in the rain.1 Cruzes’ text indicates the healing power of bathing to maintain health, a perspective held by Nahuatl-speaking peoples living in the sixteenth century. Nahuas living in the early colonial period presented their views of health and illness in the writings that they produced in their native language of Nahuatl.2 Like Cruzes’ text, perceptions of illness in the colonial period were translated into terms and cultural concepts that could be understood by non-Nahuatl speakers, by Spaniards. This dissertation explores the process of translation of cultural concepts of illness and health, and how it influenced the different ways that people understood epidemic diseases in the period between 1520 and 1615. In colonial Mexico, or New Spain, Nahuas and Spaniards translated Nahuatl- language texts into Spanish, but the translation from Mesoamerican to Iberian worldviews was not a simple process. Early modern Iberian understandings of health and illness were based on cultural and religious traditions, recorded by physicians and priests. They approached the issue of health from a completely different perspective. In his prologue to the first of twelve books on the society and culture of the Nahuas of central Mexico, a lengthy manuscript now known as the Florentine Codex, fray Bernardino de 1 Sabina Cruz de la Cruz, “Cocoliztli tlen ahachica techpano” Yolitia: Revista en lengua Náhuatl Num. 4, March (2017) 14. 2 All translations from Nahuatl to English are my own. Regarding texts with previous translations, I used them to supplement my translation
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