The sun god and the savior: the Christianization of the Nahua and Totonac in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico

Abstract

Book & DVD. The first English translation of Guy Stresser-Pean's tour-de-force presents two decades of fieldwork in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico, where native pre-Hispanic pagan beliefs blended with traditional Catholic evangelisation from the sixteenth century and the more recent intrusion of modernism. The Indians of the Sierra Norte de Puebla are deeply devoted to Christianity, but their devotion is seamlessly combined with pagan customs, resulting in a hybrid belief system that is not wholly indigenous, yet not wholly Christian. The syncretism practised here has led the Totonac and Nahua people to identify Christ with the Sun God, a belief expressed symbolically in ritual practices such as the Dance of the Voladores. Spanning the four centuries from the earliest systematic campaign against Nahua ritual practices -- Zumarraga's idolatry trials of 1536-1540 -- to the twentieth century, Stresser-Pean contextualises Nahua and Totonac ritual practices as a series of responses to Christian evangelisation and the social reproduction of traditional ritual practices. The Sun God and the Savior is a monumental work on the ethnographic and historical knowledge of the peoples of the Sierra Norte. Included with the book is a DVD containing a documentary film--in English--made by Stresser-Pean in the Sierra Norte de Puebla.