The Rain Gods’ Rebellion
The Rain Gods’ Rebellion
The Cultural Basis of a Nahua Insurgency
James M. Taggart
University Press of Colorado
Louisville
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ISBN: 978-1-60732-949-7 (cloth)
ISBN: 978-1-60732-950-3 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-60732-956-5 (ebook)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5876/9781607329565
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Taggart, James M., 1941-author.
Title: The rain gods’ rebellion: the cultural basis of a Nahua insurgency /
James M. Taggart.
Description: Louisville: University Press of Colorado, [2020] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019058294 (print) | LCCN 2019058295 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781607329497 (cloth) | ISBN 9781607329503 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781607329565 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Nahuas—Mexico—Puebla (State)—History—20th century. | Insurgency—Mexico—Puebla (State)—History—20th century. | Land use, Rural—Mexico—Puebla (State) | Rain gods—Mexico. | Nahua mythology. | Nahuas—
Social life and customs.
Classification: LCC F1221.N3 T345 2020 (print) | LCC F1221.N3 (ebook) |
DDC 972/.48—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019058294
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019058295
FIGURES 1.2, 2.2, 5.1, and 9.1 first appeared in Remembering Victoria:
A Tragic Nahuat Love Story by James M. Taggart, University of Texas Press (2007). Figure 7.2 first appeared in The Bear and His Sons: Masculinity in Spanish and Mexican Folktales by James M. Taggart, University of Texas Press (1997). They are reprinted
in this book courtesy of the University of Texas Press.
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Contents
Rebellions in the Sierra Norte 13
San Miguel and the Rain Gods 27
“The President and the Priest,” 1975 54
“The President of Hueytlalpan,” 1978 78
“The Water in Ixtepec,” 1978 93
“A Humble Man's Predicament,” 1978 108
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to many foundations and people whose indispensable help enabled me to carry out long-term fieldwork in Huitzilan and organize the results into a book. Those who funded the fieldwork are the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Specialist Program, Sorbonne University, and the Lewis Audenreid Professorship in History and Archaeology at Franklin and Marshall College.
Their generous support enabled me to make many visits to Huitzilan between 1968 and 2012 where I met and received the indispensable help of Nacho Ángel Hernández, who taught me his Nahua language, carried out a survey of labor migration, told me his stories, helped me correct transcriptions of stories I recorded from him and others, and explained narrators’ obscure allusions. Other Nahuas in Huitzilan, who contributed more stories and offered invaluable insights into their culture, are Nacho’s older brothers, Miguel and Nicolás or “Colax,” Miguel Ahuata de los Santos, de la Co Ayance, Antonio Veracruz, and Miguel Fuentes. Juan Hernández shared his ideas and stories about rain gods that were key for my understanding of how he and other Nahuas positioned themselves relative to the Church. Mariano Isidro and Juan Mauro, of Santiago Yaonáhuac, told rain gods’ stories in which they described their more egalitarian community, which enabled me to place the Nahua experience in Huitzilan in a broader comparative perspective. My beloved compadres, Juan Gravioto and Antonia Santiago, invited me into their lives and gave me honest and needed advice for how to live my life in Huitzilan. My dear compadres, Aurelio Aco and his wife, Mencha Cortés, and their children, Alonso, Rolando, and Irene, provided me with generous hospitality during my visits to Huitzilan over the span of forty-seven years.
Many scholars provided important criticisms on earlier drafts of this manuscript. They include: James Maffie, whose work clarified my understanding of ancient Nahua metaphysics; Kelly S. McDonough, whose work on Nahua intellectuals is an inspiration; and Alan and Pamela Sandstrom, whose work on contemporary Nahua pantheism is a model of ethnographic clarity and significance. I have also benefited from many discussions of Nahua culture and anthropology with Johanna Broda, Davíd Lorente, Catharine Good Eshelman, Michel Graulich, Dominique Raby, and David Robichaux. I thank Catherine Good Eshelman for sponsoring my teaching at the Escuela Nacional in Mexico City, where I had the chance to participate in many discussions on Nahua culture with ENAH graduate students. It was a great privilege to know Alfonso Villa Rojas, who supported my work on Nahua stories and lent me his personal tape recorder during the early years of my fieldwork in the Sierra Norte de Puebla. Alan Dundes provided constant encouragement for connecting oral narratives to theory. My beloved wife, Carole M. Counihan, read two drafts of this book, and offered excellent editorial advice for clarifying the argument. For thirty-five years we have had many stimulating discussions of anthropology at our dinner table. Charlotte Steinhardt, the acquisitions editor for the University Press of Colorado, skillfully guided an early draft of this book through a rigorous pre-publication review, which provided many excellent suggestions for revision. I thank Elsa Dixler for carefully copy editing of the original manuscript and Ihsan Taylor for skillfully supervising the preparation of this book for publication.