Nahua Community Research Articles

New shapes and original creations: the dependent nature of the individual in a Nahua community in Mexico.

Background and aim of the work: Within of Nahua of Naupan, the impact of acculturation processes by the historical interconnection between different models of medicine has given rise to important revisions and reinterpretations of local medical culture. The main purpose of this article is the observation of dynamics and aspects related to processes of understanding, perception and management of diagnostic categories, as well as the local understanding of the person (the individual) in the rural district of Naupan, located in the North East part of Sierra de Puebla. Methods: The analysis presented in this work is the result of an ethnographic study carried out at the Nahua community (1,614 people) residing in the rural town of Naupan (Huauchinango, Puebla, Mexico). Results: The attention will be given to the synthetic analysis of the local conceptions of certain pathologies and how the individual is seen as an unstable and constantly changing aggregate, situated in a context where health-related issues are clearly linked to different levels of perceived reality. Conclusions: In settings where there are no systems of institutionalized medical knowledge, nosological concepts are seen in a subjective and indeterminate manner, due to the fact that in some cases they also vary considerably depending on the person. Faced with the choice of therapeutic options, the Naupeña population moves between integrating and rejecting medical concepts from different cultural horizons, through a continuous creation of knowhow that they see as more or less organized and transmissible knowledge about disease, treatments and methods of prevention and interpretation. (www.actabiomedica.it)

Violence and vigilance in Nahua communities of seventeenth-century central Mexico

While historians have long studied the institutional dimensions of crime and punishment, this article examines the informal, extra-legal efforts of Nahuas and other residents of central Mexican communities to contend with violence and resolve conflicts. Residents of Nahua communities could not rely entirely on the authorities for protection and justice; rather, by being vigilant and taking matters into their own hands, they played a vital but underappreciated role in policing their communities, dealing with disorder, and preserving the peace. As such, they shouldered some of the law enforcement functions of the state apparatus. At times, their contributions could prove indispensable to the administration of justice. Their efforts not only helped to maintain public order and protect one another but they also tell us much about perceptions of acceptable behavior as well as notions of civic responsibility and, by extension, community membership and social solidarity.

Prácticas de cuidado tradicional y espiritual en una comunidad indígena nahua

The object of study of nursing has been defined by various authors. When considering these definitions in Mexican practice, it is decontextualized or new definitions are created to attempt to standardize a view of the practice of care; these proposals consider primarily biological aspects, while sidestepping social, cultural and / or spiritual aspects that are part of the lifeways of individuals subject to care. Objective: Describe the practices of traditional and spiritual care in a Nahua community and provide information on the empirical knowledge of care practices in that community, which complement the conceptual frameworks of nursing. Methodology: Qualitative, phenomenological. Informants: tepatihs (tepatih: Nahuatl, referred to as “the healer”) and a Catholic priest. Both are complementary elements, responding to specific features of the community by dealing with situations of illness within their own ideological and cultural worldview, an important consideration to reinforce current theoretical frameworks relevant to nursing.

Expectativas de vida, género y ruralidad de jóvenes en una comunidad migrante del Estado de Puebla, México.

Las corrientes migratorias de población de comunidades rurales e indígenas de México hacia los EE. UU. contribuyen, en las comunidades de origen, entre las y los menores de edad, a considerar la posibilidad de migrar en su proyecto de vida. En investigación con estudiantes de preparatoria de la comunidad nahua de San Mateo Ozolco, municipio de Calpan, Puebla, México, se buscó identificar el proyecto de vida y las metas de 39 estudiantes, así los como obstáculos y las limitaciones que impedirían su logro. Se encontró que los procesos de socialización de género desde la familia o grupo doméstico, la escuela, otros agentes sociales y el contexto en el que viven inciden en sus subjetividades y en su visión de futuro. Se encontraron diferencias genéricas en las expectativas de las y los estudiantes, asociadas a construcciones sociales de género; elementos contextuales locales, como migración nacional e internacional de generaciones adultas, contenidos educativos que ponderan lo urbano sobre lo rural, y dificultades de orden económico, social y cultural que explican la tendencia encontrada a ubicar el proyecto de vida fuera de su localidad de origen.

El Carnaval de Mixtla de Altamirano. Reproducción identitaria y legitimidad política en la Sierra de Zongolica, Veracruz

La celebración del carnaval en San Andrés Mixtla, una comunidad nahua de la sierra de Zongolica, en el estado de Veracruz, se presenta como un espacio de análisis de los nuevos significados de las ceremonias rituales en las comunidades indígenas del siglo XXI. En este ritual se recrean elementos de la cosmovisión nahua de la sierra que la vinculan a la matriz mesoamericana a la vez que muestran características propias. La ceremonia, además de ser una tribuna para la reproducción identitaria de los moradores de la sierra, es un espacio de negociación política. En esta plataforma los elementos identitarios tienen también la función de legitimar a los grupos en el poder e ir construyendo puentes entre las formas tradicionales de organización sociopolítica y los nuevos cargos seculares.

Indigenous Autonomy, Delinquent States, and the Limits of Resistance

This paper focuses on struggles by Mexican indigenous communities to defend their patrimony and guarantee their own security in an environment dominated by the parallel power of organized crime, paramilitary violence, impunity, and a neo-extractivist economy. After reviewing the relationships between the radicalization of indigenous autonomy demands and transformations of the Mexican state, analysis focuses on recent developments involving a Nahua community on the Pacific coast of Michoacán state that has a long history of successful defence of its communal lands, alongside a Purépecha community in the central highlands that has been its longstanding ally. The violence of external actors reflects the penetration of all levels of government by organized crime, but violence is not a new historical experience in this region. What has changed is that the capacity of these communities to resist has been affected by their internal disarticulation by the same forces.

Tarascan Historicity: Narrative Structure and the Production of the Past in the Case of the Two Tariacuris

The recent translation and description of La memoria de don Melchor Caltzin, produced in 1543 and the earliest document written in the Tarascan (Purhépecha) language, opens an important window into the study of Tarascan historiography and state formation, which has generally been an understudied region of Mesoamerica. For too long, a more extensive document, the Relación de Michoacán, has dominated investigations of the Tarascan state, a late pre-Hispanic polity centered in West-Central Mexico, and wider Tarascan culture and history. I discuss how reading both documents in light of one another sheds light on the selective and ideologically skewed way in which they represent the past. While La memoria de don Melchor Caltzin focuses on a strict set of events to argue for the preservation of the rights of a Nahua community residing in the pre-Hispanic capital of Tzintzuntzan, it also sheds further light on the conspicuous silences in the Relación de Michoacán. Furthermore, the information contained in the Memoria indicates that an important stage in the development and consolidation of the state occurred thanks to an alliance between a king and foreign merchants. These data suggest that political consolidation was an ongoing process within the Tarascan state. The data indicating that merchants were key to this king's accession to power are indicative of a struggle to monopolize elite trade goods and lead to the discussion of the possibility that this struggle may also have been a factor in an earlier phase of state formation.

Cultura y economía para la sobrevivencia: procesos y relatos desde el etnoterritorio nahua de tehuipango, en la sierra de zongolica, veracruz

The paper focus on territory and etnoterritory of sierra de Zongolica in Mexico where the nahuas from municipality of Tehuipango –at the “cold zone” of the sierra– have begun to link their experience on international migration to new experiences that cause social and cultural changes. For the moment, reflection on the changes caused by leaving for the big cities of central Mexico and the north is not a priority issue in nahua communities in the area, given the historic necessity to meet basic needs. The marginality has by generations obligated peasants from Tehuipango to leave temporally their villages even for finding suitable soils to sow corn for feeding their families.Nowadays etnoterritory of Tehuipango and others neighboring municipalities have several fundamentals that were originated in different cultures. This article provides a contextual overview enabling one to deal with various stories of regional and local culture, from traditional agriculture and cosmology to the present day economic facts, as well as a description of the context and perspectives on the basis of its inhabitants’ foreign work experience.

Una guía para rituales de la lluvia en Petlacala, Guerrero

During their stay in the small Nahua community of Petlacala, Guerrero, the authors were able to make a copy of an eight-page, type-written pamphlet, containing a real or supposed guide for rain rituals, particularly for Saint Mark's Day, April 25.

“My Heart Can't Do What It Wants”: Sadness and Learned Empathy in a Nahua Community

SummaryIn this article, I draw on my experience as a friend and (honorary) daughter in a Nahua community in Guerrero, Mexico, to show how emotions and empathy between “informants” and the “anthropologist” were central to my work. Through examples involving sadness, I suggest that “learned empathy,” or the embodiment of a new emotional arrangement during long‐term fieldwork, allows for a better understanding of some native conceptions. In addition, I introduce the concept of “emotionally contextualized discourse,” where affects are intensely expressed and complement the verbal message in a way that is consistent with indigenous communicative modes. I conclude that attention to these emotional components during fieldwork makes possible a more humanistic, dialogical research process.

An analysis of two indigenous reproductive health illnesses in a Nahua community in Veracruz, Mexico

BackgroundThis article describes the local concepts indigenous Nahua women hold regarding their reproduction. Specifically it provides a description of two indigenous illnesses—isihuayo and necaxantle, it discusses their etiology, symptoms, and treatments, and it analyzes them within the local ethnomedical framework and sociopolitical context. A perception of female vulnerability is shown to be an underlying shaper of women’s experiences of these illnesses.MethodsThis research took place in a small Nahua village in Mexico. Qualitative data on local perceptions of these illnesses were collected by a combination of participant observation and interviews. Ethnobotanical data was obtained through interviews, and medicinal plants were collected in home gardens, fields, stream banks, and forested areas. The total study population consisted of traditional birth attendants (N = 5), clinicians (N = 8), and laywomen (N = 48).ResultsResults showed that 20% of the village women had suffered from one or both of these illnesses. The article includes a detailed description of the etiology, symptoms, and treatments of these illnesses. Data shows that they were caused by mechanical, physical, and social factors related to a woman’s weakness and/or lack of support. Traditional birth attendants often treated women’s illnesses. Five medicinal plants were salient in the treatment of these illnesses: Ocimum basilicum L., Mentzelia aspera L., Pedilanthus tithymaloides (L.) Poit., and Piper umbellatum L. were used for isihuayo, while Solanum wendlandii Hook f. was used for necaxantle.ConclusionsThe research on these two ethnomedical conditions is a useful case study to understanding how indigenous women experience reproductive health. Reproductive health is not simply about clinically-based medicine but is also about how biomedicine intersects with the local bodily concepts. By describing and analyzing indigenous women’s ill health, one can focus upon the combination of causes—which extend beyond the physical body and into the larger structure that the women exist in.

Indigenous Miracles: Nahua Authority in Colonial Mexico

Indigenous Miracles: Nahua Authority in Colonial Mexico

Framing the Sacred: The Indian Churches of Colonial Mexico (review)

Reviewed by: Framing the Sacred: The Indian Churches of Colonial Mexico Gauvin Alexander Bailey Framing the Sacred: The Indian Churches of Colonial Mexico. By Eleanor Wake. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2010. Pp. xxii, 338. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-806-14033-9.) Eleanor Wake’s impressive new book on the perennially fascinating topic of the indigenous impact on the built and visual culture of early New Spain is a welcome addition to the literature in English. Its elegant, jargon-free writing; methodical overview of the secondary literature; and deft detective work based on extensive fieldwork will make this book invaluable as a primer for the subject for undergraduates, graduates, and interested members of the general public. The book takes us on a journey through time and space—both real and cosmic—beginning with overviews of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican beliefs and rituals centered on geography, the calendar, agriculture, and fertility, focusing on the role of plants and especially flowers, the leitmotif of this book. Chapters 2 and 3 explore familiar territory, telling the story of the implementation of Christianity by the conquerors on the existing sacred environment and the indigenous reappropriation of their own world through selective adaptation and interpretation of these alien forms and beliefs. We see again the ingenious systems of indoctrination used by the friar missionaries and the ways that the Nahua employed them to their own ends, as well as the cycles of tolerance and intolerance imposed by a Church that at times had little idea of what was going on. Chapter 4 rehearses the history of the [End Page 179] building of the great mission churches and the ways in which their unique structures (open chapels, posas) reflect the pre-Hispanic ritual environment and its colonial inheritor and how they represented continuity as much as novelty for the indigenous populations. Her relation of indigenous depictions of churches to representations of the altepetl (Nahua community) is particularly helpful. Much of this material is well known even to a nonscholarly audience and indebted to George Kubler, Joseph Baird, John MacAndrew, Jeanette Peterson, Samuel Edgerton, and Jaime Lara—just to name some of those writing in English. Yet there is not enough acknowledgment of the work of these pioneers and contemporaries, or even a clear statement about what is original and what is not. As a consequence, the survey of the literature in the introduction seems dated—the author’s points are well taken about the indigenous contribution to colonial culture, but she fights a battle against a Eurocentric mainstream literature that was won two decades ago. More problematic is her claim that she is using sources “hitherto not included in a study of this kind” (p. 8) such as lienzos (map documents), which are the foundation of a groundswell of recent scholarship (e.g., Barbara Mundy and Lara, both of whom she cites, but not enough). Her neglect of Lara’s work and dismissiveness toward that of Edgerton prevents her from opening up a fresh scholarly dialogue, and it is an oversight not to bring in some of the literature on colonial South America (Ramón Mujica, Adrian Locke, Thomas Cummins, Elena Phipps), which deals precisely with issues of indigenous participation in colonial architecture and visual culture and has been engaging the Mexican material directly for more than twenty years. Wake is at her most impressive in the later part of the book (chapters 5 and 6). Her meticulous and original study of the location and identification of pre-Hispanic embedded stones in colonial churches and their possible alignment with solar activity and radial sightlines with elements of sacred geography (mountains in particular) is very provocative, as is her unprecedented identification of this sacred geography in the backgrounds of Christian mural paintings. Also intriguing is her emphasis on flowers and their relationship to flower imagery in the Nahua Cantares Mexicanos (sacred songs)—although in this case the reader wishes she had gone further, reproducing some of the texts in full and going back over the material treated earlier in the book. In fact, it would have been preferable to have these splendid texts at the beginning rather than the conclusion. In sum, this is a very useful...

Multiple cytokine expression profiles reveal immune-based differences in occult hepatitis B genotype H-infected Mexican Nahua patients

A high prevalence of occult hepatitis B (OHB) genotype H infections has been observed in the native Mexican Nahua population. In addition, a low incidence of hepatitis B virus (HBV)-associated hepatocellular carcinoma has been described in Mexico. The immune response to infection among OHB-infected patients has been poorly evaluated in vivo. Therefore, we assessed the expression profiles of 23 cytokines in OHB genotype H-infected Nahua patients. A total of 41 sera samples from natives of the Nahua community were retrospectively analysed. Based on their HBV antibody profiles, patients were stratified into two groups: OHB patients (n = 21) and patients that had recovered from HBV infection (n = 20). Herein, we report distinctive cytokines profiles in OHB-infected individuals. Compared to healthy controls (n = 20) and patients who resolved HBV infection, OHB-infected patients displayed an increase in interleukin (IL)-2 secretion in addition to a characteristic inflammation profile (decrease in IL-8 and tumour necrosis factor-alpha levels and increased levels of tumour growth factor-beta). IL-15 and interferon-gamma levels were reduced in OHB-infected individuals when compared to those patients who resolved HBV infection. In contrast, OHB patients showed an increase in monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP)-1 and MCP-2 compared to healthy controls and patients who resolved HBV infection. These findings suggest that cytokine expression can influence the severity of OHB disease and could lead to new investigation into the treatment of liver and other infectious diseases.

Nahuatl among Jehovah's Witnesses of Hueyapan, Morelos: a case of spontaneous revitalization

The sociolinguistic situation of Hueyapan, Morelos, is similar to those described in other studies of modern Nahua communities: the language is in a rapid process of decline. This article describes the situation within one particular subcommunity of the town: the congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses. Here the Nahuatl language has experienced a revival within the last five years, to a degree where congregational meetings are now held mostly in Nahuatl, and where young Witnesses are probably the only group of youths in Hueyapan to communicate daily in Nahuatl. It is argued that this situation arose as a result of the combination of the general sociolinguistic background in Hueyapan and the specific value system and social dynamics that exist in the community of Jehovah's Witnesses.

The Cave-Dwellers’ Treasure: Folktales, Morality, and Gender in a Nahua Community in Mexico

Abstract In Nahua communities, both men and women may act as storytellers, but female storytellers are fewer and perform in more intimate contexts. As a result, there is to date no analysis of female Nahua storytelling. In this article, the author compares two cognate folktales and underlines how each storyteller, a woman and a man, deal with essential concepts related to morality and supernatural beings. Recent studies on women’s folklore point out that women’s discourse often takes place in a private context and uses ambiguity as an expressive strategy; this ambiguity, in turn, is linked to the immorality or illegitimacy attributed to women’s words by many societies. The Nahua case, however, suggests that Nahua female storytellers, although performing privately, prefer a discourse that stresses themes of morality, while some publicly renowned male storytellers may express ambiguous and amoral feelings. Ultimately, this disparity can be tied to the ambivalent opinion Nahuas hold toward the Hispanic world and to recent changes in female identity.

The Cave-Dwellers' Treasure: Folktales, Morality, and Gender in a Nahua Community in Mexico

In Nahua communities, both men and women may act as storytellers, but female storytellers are fewer and perform in more intimate contexts. As a result, there is to date no analysis of female Nahua storytelling. In this article, the author compares two cognate folktales and underlines how each storyteller, a woman and a man, deal with essential concepts related to morality and supernatural beings. Recent studies on women's folklore point out that women's discourse often takes place in a private context and uses ambiguity as an expressive strategy; this ambiguity, in turn, is linked to the immorality or illegitimacy attributed to women's words by many societies. The Nahua case, however, suggests that Nahua female storytellers, although performing privately, prefer a discourse that stresses themes of morality, while some publicly renowned male storytellers may express ambiguous and amoral feelings. Ultimately, this disparity can be tied to the ambivalent opinion Nahuas hold toward the Hispanic world and to recent changes in female identity.

Consecrated Transactions: Of Marketplaces, Passion Plays and other Nahua-Christian Devotions

Consecrated Transactions: Of Marketplaces, Passion Plays and other Nahua-Christian Devotions

Genetics and the History of Latin America

Genetics and the History of Latin America

Endogenous knowledge and practice regarding the environment in a Nahua community in Mexico

We expose some representations and practices related to the natural environment among Nahua peasants in a village located at the western boundary of Puebla and Guerrero states, in Mexico. Information was obtained by individual interviews and focal groups' work, following an open guide with ecological items considered as rooted in Mesoamerican cultures. The use of some local, vegetal resources, and the local perception of changes, mainly in the water availability, is documented. Survival strategies involve ancestral representations and material products, and entail a high grade of pragmatism. “Natural environment” is framed in a local culture that involves relational and sacred dimensions, usually omitted in other approaches. Hence, for the Temalac peasants, there is no dissection, at an operative level, between “natural facts” (for instance, water availability) and personal or social ones, being these often considered as determinant for the quality and accessibility of resources and weather conditions. We discuss the challenge for these elements posed by a growing migration rate and an increasing external influence.