La Cueva de las Mulas: re-creations of Tepehuan worldview during the colonial period

Abstract

In this paper, I have analysed a rock art site named La Cueva de las Mulas in Mexico. In an earlier work, I proposed some arguments attributing the work to the Tepehuanes, an indigenous group of the north of Mexico, and placed the execution in the seventeenth century. In this study, I focus on the discourse and symbolism expressed in the sets of paintings with the most images, Groups 2 and 3. I analyse the iconography, the symbolisms and the structure of each panel. I summarise some aspects of what is known about Tepehuan culture, its pre-Hispanic past and the historical processes since the conquest from the perspectives of historical and anthropological disciplines. I explore the hypothesis that the cultural clash with the Spanish sparked the emergence of this type of rock art amongst the Tepehuan as a strategy of cultural resistance. I argue that this rock art was an attempt by the Tepehuan to reformulate their oral tradition. Their aim was the construction of a new universal order, a new history, a new explanation of the world, from the distant past until the moment they expressed their ideas on the walls of the cave.